Tag: crit group

Yesterday’s biweekly critique group evisceration was more like a knuckle-rapping, since I was only able to bring the very next scene of my WIP, about 750 words long. So, it doesn’t make sense for this entry to be very long :).

For the Win:

• Did a good job portraying the protagonist’s squeamishness at the DIY operation he was undergoing.
• Did a good job portraying the sibling relationship between the protag and his sister.

StoryFail:

• A minor plot point that demonstrated my poor understanding of chemistry 🙁
• A couple of viewpoint errors
• Still not enough information for the (group) readers’ tastes about what the protag is after. (It was 95% clear to the “tech guy” in our group, but after all, he’s a “tech guy.”)

I should continue with this piece but for today, I’ve got a contest entry to prep :).

I didn’t read at the last crit group-flogging, but made up for it this time with two flash fiction pieces. I finally had the guts to try and combine some flash fic with a bit of fantasy. Did it work? Here’s what the group had to say.

Story #1, 100 words:

For the Win:

• It was a “complete story.”
• “Every word counts.”
• Good “rhythm” to the sentences.
• Plot/fantasy element was clearly understood, depending on the reader’s interpretation.
• In a session where the nit of the day seemed to be repeated words, the fact that I purposely repeated one particular phrase still worked.

StoryFail:

• More than one reader wanted, well, more.
• One reader noted the story title’s original connotation that has nothing to do with the story.
• My last sentence needlessly made my usually-ambiguous ending even more ambiguous by being too long.

Story #2, 1000 words:
For the Win:

• One reader immediately picked up on the meta-fiction aspect of the story!!
• “Weird, but believable.”
• Good “characterization” i.e. the way I played around with stereotypical epic fantasy adventure characters.
• Same thing about “adventure cliches”
• “Twisty phrases”
• A “satisfying” (read: unambiguous) ending.

StoryFail:

• Definitely went a little overboard trying not to make my sentences Carver-esque. Some of the them were too long. One reader made a comment about the sentence-length being good for an exercise, but not necessarily for this particular story.
• …which makes some of the good “twisty phrases” a little too twisty.

Okay, maybe that second story had a bit more of a fundamental Fail, but I’m just glad that for once, the Win columns are a bit longer than the Fail ones!

Still, this’ll probably be the last pieces I bring for the next few sessions. It’s a new subs period for quite a few mags, and now I’ve got a nice little pile of stories to revise and submit! Because there have been precious few scorecard entries this year, and that makes me sad.

It’s been a week since the last critique group and I’m only getting around to this now. That’s the problem with this time of year for me, but that’s okay–better to light an inch than curse the darkness, right?

I’m posting this for the sake of completeness (to contrast my failure to keep my scorecards up to date for the past few months).

There really isn’t enough to break down into lists of Win! and Fail! because all I brought to last group–all I could bring, given the life BS I had to contend with that week–were two rewritten scenes. I brought them looking for only two things: (a) to see whether I successfully clarified/improved on the story’s McGuffin (Group verdict: Win!) and (b) whether I could answer the question of what keeps the protagonist in the situation he’s in (Group verdict: A little bit o’ Fail!).

So, I guess I should go and do something with these suggestions now, huh?

So, some of my 2009 writing goals are off to a really fucking bad start. Life and death sometimes get in the way of writing, which is fine. But the good news is, I’ve thus far managed to keep my goal of writing one story a month, even though part of me thinks a 1,400-word story feels like cheating somehow, compared to last month’s 3,000 words. Then again, February is shorter.

Anyway, I finished and polished the bulk of this short-short story the night before yesterday’s critique group while watching the director’s cut of THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY on AMC at 2:00 AM. Hence, the many problems spotted by the eagle-eyed writers in my biweekly crucifixion session.

The Good

• The “switch” i.e. the change of direction at the end of the story
• The rhythm of the writing in some spots
• One pop-culture reference spotted
• The main character’s arc

The Bad

• My second paragraph should’ve been my intro paragraph.
• The fantasy element, telepathy, needed a bit more definition/consistency for one person
• One paragraph on an ex-girlfriend mentioned only once (among other things) could be nixed.
• I never named the story’s supporting character.
• My experiment with not using quotation marks for dialogue was a fail for one reader.

The Ugly

• A major plot point about what people think of the main character might’ve been a little negative when usually, the truth is that most people don’t think about us nearly as much as we think they do.
• …leading to the question of whether the main character is actually reading minds or seeing a reflection of his own POV.
• Another lively debate (like in the last group), this time about my use of the generic THE OFFICE/OFFICE SPACE/DILBERT cubicle-hell setting and how the protagonist’s co-workers were all painted as mean and blackhearted in some cases. One person strongly felt it was “overused” while another felt it was “awesome.”

I can definitely see both sides of that last point. The good news is that I think it’s all fixable.

Time once again to process my latest batch of critiques from my biweekly crucifixion session that is my critique group. The points are pretty brief. The passages I read totaled a mere 1,025 words. The important thing is that I finally managed to write an ending to this last WIP, and as soon as I figure out which of these critiques to use and finish up some rewrites, I can put a wrap on this beast.

The Good

• This story (thanks to a revised intro) is now solidly and unequivocably involves a faerie–really an ex-faerie–which enabled me to emphasize her “faerie-ness” in ways people seemed to like.
• The end had a “convincing twist.” One person used the words “O Henry-like,” but I’m pretty sure it was meant in a positive way.
• There was suprise the ending was happy, even “sweet.” Not my usual fare, it’s true. (Note to self, next story should include some “extreme horror” elements.) 😉
• Folks liked my juxtaposition of worlds where the mundane world of people in a dead-end job mixes with the world of faeries.

The Bad

• Some narrative problems describing some physical mechanics involving a truck poised on the edge of a bluff, a rope, and the best place to tie…well, I could say more, but I’d be giving away plot.
• I gave some (too) vague hints that the faerie in question had put herself in a LITTLE MERMAID-type situation. But folks needed/wanted more.

The Ugly

• Since I created a setting where the workaday world of grocery-store employees mixes with the world of faeries, some readers needed to know the extent to which the main characters’ co-workers were aware of that particular reality. (I kinda, sorta addressed this in a rewrite no one’s seen yet.)
• People wanted a little more about faerie mechanics in this little world I’ve set up, specifically where it relates to a plot point about faerie anatomy.
• There was some lively debate about the ending, the implications of which were strikingly clear to some who read it exactly as I intended, and strikingly unclear to others for whom questions were raised. I admit, I wasn’t prepared for that.

I’ll worry about that last point once I polish off the middle section of the story. Should take me another day or two if work and school (which starts tomorrow–ack!) doesn’t get in the way too much. It’ll put me behind schedule, but at least I’ve already started my next story!!

One of my New Year’s Resolutions is to make this here blog more than reposted tweets. Here’s a start, the return of the play-by-play of my biweekly crucifixion session that is my critique group.

My current WIP has been a bitch and a half to write. I wrote my last story in two weeks (and it’s gotten one good personalized rejection so far). My trauma with this piece has gone on for over two months! I’ve rewritten the intro about five times, fleshed out characters before removing them completely, and removed scenes I really, really liked.

Finally, there was nothing left to do but bring it to the group last night.

It’s been so long since my last dissection. Let’s see if I remember how to do one of these.

The Good

• The usual positive comments, the story “intriguing,” the prose “smooth,” and the characters “well drawn out.”
• One member enjoyed how the main characters, a couple, argued “fairly.”
• One liked the “ordinary setting” of the story (a grocery store), going with what the group sees as my pattern of stories of ordinary people in extraordinary situations (Note to self: time to break the pattern, maybe?)

The Bad

• How many drafts of the fucking thing did I write/rewrite and still not catch “two-gallon milk jugs” instead of gallon jugs?
• Might be too much focus on the wrong details, esp. in some conversations between the main characters.
• “Cut page 4.” (Similar to John Rogers’ advice that “You Don’t Need pg. 11.”)
• I sort of (playfully) rip on a particular recording artist and her fans. Only two out of the eight readers in group got it.

The Ugly

• I’ve got the right POV character, but maybe not the narrative focus on the right character’s actions/plans.
• The kinda-sorta-maybe fantasy element I’ve got going–I’ve got to be clearer about it either way.

Those last two points are gonna take some fixing. My biggest worry, before I even brought the story to group, was that kinda-sorta-maybe fantasy element, which was really evidence of things I haven’t quite decided on yet.

Can I fix it in two weeks and have an ending by the next group session, so I can keep another New Year’s Resolution of writing one story a month in 2009?