Tag: crit group

Tough Love

Wow, it’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these! It’s been so long since I’ve written anything new, being so focused on revising and submitting. But, I managed to write and revise a new piece in two weeks, and still have it come out half-decent, at least according to the group…

The Good
  • Story was called “fun”
  • Character not a stereotype (a dancer turned soldier, trying to be a dancer again)
  • Message of the story was delivered “gently”
  • Good ending with a change in the character (or, an acceptance of that change on the character’s part)
  • Story painted a picture of a future that was “right around the corner”
The Bad
  • Unclear at the outset that my protagonist was female
  • Character didn’t seem feminine enough to one member; the occupational hazard of a male writing a female POV.
  • The secondary character was introduced early, but wasn’t much of a character then.
  • Some minor story points that raised too many questions and were better off eliminated
  • Some “writerly” phrases better off eliminated, especially since they caused some confusion as to the setting.

The Ugly

  • Too many plot questions raised about the sci-fi element in the story, which some members admitted weren’t necessarily central to the piece, although…
  • Those questions raised philosophical questions about the business of artistry and humanity

And, I haven’t the first clue how to address that last issue… :(.

Tough Love

For the past two sessions of my critique group, I’ve cheated by bringing non-genre stuff. I’ve gotten no complaints so far, but I’m starting to feel like I’m violating the group’s social contract. I’m probably commiting a more grievous offense by bringing in a piece I’ve workshopped elsewhere. Still, it paid off today.

<rationalization>
I edited a 155-word flash piece that got very favorable reviews in one workshop and one near-unanimous criticism that I tried to correct. I did, and then I brought it to today’s group. Judging from the reactions, I think I fixed it!
</rationalization>

Now I just have to wait for some of the cooler flash markets to reject the pieces I’ve already sent them to make room for this one. I probably won’t have to wait too long.

Tough Love

I haven’t posted one of these in awhile, mainly because the last session was the only one in the past three or four where I brought anything. December and January were editing months. I’ve been focusing on getting stories polished and off my plate before allowing myself to get too far on new ones.

While I didn’t bring anything this time around, I think that I did some of my best critiquing of other folks’ work this session (and last time, too) if I do say so myself. At least I didn’t hear too many dissenting voices. But that’s not even the important thing–I say this because there’s also a correlating increase in my ability to spot mistakes in my own stories.

The (temporary) downside is that it’s slowed my yet-to-be-cemented rewriting process down.

#

I’ve got two stories slated to go out this week. A couple of flash things. Fingers crossed.

No Tough Love Today

The crit group was cancelled due to inclement weather, so that sucked. Just as well, because I didn’t have anything to contribute this week aside from my usual half-baked opinions of other folks’ writing, much like the half-baked thinking I’m about to share with you now.

I’ve come across a bunch of stories lately that make me wonder what would happen if I re-typed them and submitted them to the crit group. What would they say about unclear narration, too many points of view, or just plain too many adverbs ending in -ly in a story I tried to pass off as mine? Would they have the same comments regardless of who wrote the story?

And, I’m not talking about the authors everybody loves to hate, either. I’m talking about writers whose talent I’d gladly sell a testicle to Ol’ Scratch to have. So, I’m not hatin’ on anyone.

Makes me go, “Hmm…”

Tough Love

I submitted my last piece to group for the year. I’m not going to let any more unedited pieces pile up. I’m gonna finish them and spend the beginning of 2008 getting things back out into circulation.

In the meantime, here’s what they had to say about the latest thing, “Before Me Was a Pale Horse”…

The Good

  • One person said the characters “leap off the page.”
  • The same person noted that while she wasn’t at the last session to hear the first half of the story (though she heard my quick summation), she didn’t feel lost going through the second half.
  • Dialogue was realistic, i.e. “what people would say.”
  • One person liked how the narrator/protagonist was likeable, despite his obvious flaws.
  • Folks felt they got a clear picture of each character with a minimum of description (e.g. one character who “waddled over in his khakied, polo-shirted Sunday best…” was all the description they needed)
  • The story was paced well.

The Bad

  • A certain unclear passage regarding one character’s spacial distance to another.
  • The ending is too hitched to religion.
    (Which means I screwed up trying–if it was even possible to begin with–to use as many religious references as possible while minimizing religious themes.)
  • Again, I mashed two stories into one (possibly three, depending on how one reads the ending).
  • Some folks wondered if the protagonist paid too high a price for his flaws at the end. (Though one person didn’t necessarily see anything wrong with that.)

The Ugly
No ugly from the others; just from myself.

  • For one, I had the unfortunate experience of re-reading a short story by pure happenstance, one that I first read about four years ago, with the same fucking conceit. I about tore up the MS. I didn’t, because by any measure, I know my story’s different. But if some schmendrick comes up to me and goes, “Gee, isn’t your story just a blatant rip-off of _____?” I think I’d have to give that a response without automatically smacking the person upside the head.
  • The reason there were “two stories” was that as I wrote, I spotted a particular chink in my protag’s armor that was just too tempting to pass up…
  • …but instead of jamming the knife in and twisting at the end, I got squeamish. I copped out and “implied” the ending.

So, basically this leaves me trying to figure out how to have my cake and eat it, too. I got some good suggestions from the group. I just gotta be careful not to allow them to “write it for me,” so to speak. None of them want that, either.

Tough Love

I wrote a sort of Halloween story to have something ready for group yesterday. I wasn’t going to read, for a second meeting in a row. I’d decided to spend the rest of the year editing my latest long piece, “Masked,” aka the thirty-page beast. But I just had to do something, otherwise I would’ve felt like mooching. So I came up with something called, “Before Me Was a Pale Horse.”

The Good

  • Good build up–one person noted a pattern in which she’s never sure what my stories are exactly about until last moment.
  • Smooth writing (“As usual,” they say)
  • One person talked about the details I left out of settings, character descriptions, etc. and the fact that she still had a more or less complete picture of the characters and situations involved. (Looks like all that Hempel I’ve been reading has paid off.)
  • Good dialogue, used to fill in those details I left out, and to sneak in some expository information.

The Bad

  • Some of the readers in the group didn’t like the fact that they didn’t get all of the little Biblical references I snuck into the story. (Come to think of it, no one commented one way or the other on the title.) There were places I did it “right,” which is to say that I set the reference inside a sufficient context to make sense without any knowledge of Bible trivia.
  • (On a related point, people even read things into certain passages, thinking they must have been Biblically related when they weren’t.
  • A couple of folks wanted to know more about the protagonist sooner. (It’s a constant faux pas I make whenever I write something in first person, now that I think of it.)
  • Due to some plain ol’ bad writing on my part (a fact I couldn’t explain because of our group’s crit rules), I wrote a line that could easily be construed as a sexist dig at my protagonist’s wife, rather than the protagonist himself as I’d intended.

The Ugly
No real ugly. There never is, come to think of it. It makes me nervous, really. Not that I want to hear, “Jesus, your writing sucks.”

Actually, I do know what makes me nervous, but I’m probably not going to go into it here. At least not now.

Tough Love

Okay, I got a backlog of posts and post ideas going back a week or so. Here’s where I try to get to them.

Last week, I workshopped a flash piece for the crit group, formerly titled “NIGYSOB,” one of the Games People Play in the book written by Eric Berne. It’s been a week, so I’m trying to recall the context of the notes I made.

The Good

  • Good characterization.
  • Nice twist at the end.
  • It was apparently the right length (Just over 1,000 words. I’ve edited it down to about 920, though I have the sense that it might’ve been too much).

The Bad

  • The parentage of one of the characters was too ambiguous for most–especially when I intended absolutely none.
  • The escalation of the conflict felt rushed.
  • Some disagreement over whether or not I left enough clues to the “punch line.” Everyone felt I didn’t, but some liked it that way.

The Ugly

No real ugliness, this time around.

I joked about how I wrote and brought a finished flash piece when I’d started two longer-length shorts which I haven’t finished. Well, now I’ve got two pieces to finish and two to edit. I think I’ve got a legit excuse for not bringing something to read next week–I should be editing!

There, But for the Grace of God

My crit group is not like this, thank Christ. Now the business, from what I’ve heard, might be a different story…

(Sent by a fellow group member.)

EDIT: I’ll be damned, I thought I’ve seen this image before. Neil Gaiman posted it on his blog a few days ago in an entry I “starred” for later review in Google Reader. I found it since I’m home sick from The Diamond Mines today, and going through my horrendous backlog.

Tough Love

Sorry this is long overdue. Stuff to do, sick at work, writing to do, etc. But, I’ll go ahead and talk about the responses to the portion of “Masked” that I’ve read for group, about 10 pages just before the ending.

The Good

  • The group saw a good crescendo in the tension I was trying to build.
  • People liked the dialogue. It seemed realistic, they said. Script-like with tons of subtext. The way two brothers would talk to each other.
  • Someone commented on certain “little touches” I’ve added, descriptions about what my characters did while talking. (Hey, it’s not for nothing that I read all that Carver, Beattie, and Hempel.)

The Bad

  • I had a scene where the protagonist was listening to one side of a telephone conversation. For one, the conversation was probably too long, since some of the stuff in the conversation was repeated in a subsequent conversation. I got lots of useful suggestions on how to shorten the conversation.
  • A comment was made about the unclear relationship between the protagonist and another character–although I think any confusion would be cleared up if the story was read in toto.
  • I could’ve written a certain flashback scene a little better.
  • Some plot points I included in the back end of the story would probably better off in the beginning.

The Ugly
Okay, maybe these parts weren’t “ugly,” but I felt these comments needed special attention. I haven’t quite figured out exactly how to incorporate these particular changes yet.

  • Someone commented about a scene that takes place in the outdoors. Granted, I didn’t read a section that might have fleshed out a description of the outdoors, but I’ve thought lately to just how much trouble I have writing descriptions. (Call it a consequence of reading all that Carver, Beattie, and Hempel.)
  • Okay, so the story involves an unseen enemy. I thought I could refer to it as such, trying not to resort to stuff like, The Unseen Evil That Must Not Be Named. Now, no one suggested for a minute I do that. But, I could really use some sort of consistent tag to use throughout the story.

Well, I sent the whole 29-page beast to five folks in my writing group. I’ve heard back from one and I’ve got four to go. Then, I’ll edit, then I’ll send it out. Hopefully, this’ll be one I get paid for!

Tough Love

I went to Sunday’s crit group session ready to read, but only if I couldn’t avoid it. It turns out that I did manage to avoid it, which was just as well. Basically, I finished up “version 0.9” of “Masked,” but the only part that was presentable was the ending, which I didn’t want to give away.

And I finished up solely with the help of my AlphaSmart. Yes, I’ve handed over cash, so this thing is officially mine. And, worth every penny! Each and every day, I’ve generated a minimum of 500 words per session–the pulling teeth, “I really don’t feel like doing this shit,” taking my muse by the neck and wringing it like a wet towel minimum. The average has really been more along the lines of 750 words of draft and edits, not just on “Masked,” but on other projects as well, including a Raketenwerfer piece I should really get to finishing.

And since I also scored a copy of the Get It utility, I crammed the portions I needed to edit back into the AS3K, and now “Masked” is done! In the can, as they say. I printed out a clean, new copy and let it cool for a day. I’m not even going to read it.

The next project is on the sidebar. But, like I said, I’m taking a little break to get back to some reading, and maybe a bit of blogging.