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SNAPSHOT! The Horror Of Photography and Serial Killers and poo poo. It's going to be a teen horror novel. Or slow-reading-adult horror novel. Airport trash as they call it. My vision is to include B&W photos that accompany the story. STORY SYNOPSIS: KATE HILL's freshman year ended, and she returned to the pink frilly bedroom in her father's condo for the summer. He doesn't understand her, and she’s tired of pretending that everything’s normal. To stay busy (and to avoid her father) Kate takes a job at the antique store on the Marietta Square, and she spends time with her lovable grandfather, Marvin. MARVIN HILL spent most of his life hiding his own secrets. He’s killed over a hundred people, burying most of them in his garden, one deadbeat at a time. But at 75, Marvin's tired and wants to stop; After all, he’s had a successful run, avoiding detection for fifty years, why not quit while he’s ahead? MARY MEIER, an old woman who spends her days taking snapshots around the town square, starting helping Marvin in 1962 with his kills, in return for the opportunity to photograph each hunt in grisly detail. She won’t let Marvin stop. She's obsessed with removing the filth from her town, and if he won't help her, she'll expose him by sending a few photos to the local news and the police. A dead body shows up behind the antique store on the same morning that Kate finds a Polaroid photo shoved under the back door. The man in the blurry photo looks a lot like her grandfather. And the dead body in the alley? It's her grandfather's friend, Mary Meier. CHAPTER 1—The Garden Marvin finished planting a rose over his latest victim when the cowbell clanked at the garden gate. He pushed his glasses up the bony ridge of his nose and craned his neck to see who it was, but there were azaleas and a weeping willow in the way. With his hands on his thighs, he pushed himself up, wincing a little as each knee popped. It was Kate, his granddaughter, probably stopping by after work to see what he was up to. In the year that she was away at college, he'd forgotten how often she'd drop by unannounced. Having her back was great, but he'd come to appreciate his privacy, didn't like unexpected guests. "Back here Kate." He said, leaning back to stretch. He removed a pair of rawhide gloves, so old that three fingertips were gone, and then he scanned the ground to make sure it all looked normal. He nudged some pine bark over the fresh dirt with his boot — wasn't no point letting her see how much he'd dug up just for a rose bush — and then tossed the gloves onto the wheelbarrow. Kate followed the gravel pathway as far as she could, then pushed her way through the azaleas. "Planting another rose all the way back here?" She asked. "Thought it'd be nice along the fence. All the other roses," he waved to the other side of the yard, "were starting to fight each other for sunlight." Kate stuffed her phone into the back pocket of her jeans and pushed a long brown curl behind her ear. "Need any help? I'm done for the day at work." Marvin’s grin carved wrinkles in his cheeks almost back to his ears. "Coulda used you about three hours ago I guess. I'm pretty much done now, I just need to clean —" A steel rattle like a lunchbox full of knives came from across the yard. His eyes narrowed to tiny slits and he clapped his hands. "Hot drat I got him Kate!" He winked at her and snatched up his gloves. She had to struggle to keep up as Marvin threaded his way through the garden towards the source of the noise. He stopped, and held out his left arm to stop her, but being a foot taller than her, his elbow landed on her forehead. "Ow!" "Shh! Look!" He pointed down between two manicured bushes. Crammed inside a cage was what looked like a grayish-white rat on steroids, hissing and baring a mouth full of sharp needly teeth. "It's an opossum!" Kate said. "Possum, dear. Possum." His aw-shucks southern drawl disappeared, and he spoke with the staccato enunciation of a broadway actor. She shrugged. "That's what I said." He shook his head, squatted down and tapped the cage with the back of his hand. "You said O-possum." He pulled the cage out and held it up, "This nasty thing? A possum." The animal kept its teeth bared and hissed, trying (but failing) to draw attention back to its ferocity and rage.  She didn't even bother to look at it, too busy enjoying how she was ruffling Marvin's feathers. "Possum, Opossum. Same thing right?" Lowering the cage, he dropped his head and sighed. "You live in the south, dear. We do not call them O-possums. In Georgia, these are possums." "Possum? So what happened to the O?" "Who cares? It's a giant rat." She chuckled and he stood up with the cage, all wire mesh and tin trap doors on either end, and the possum was almost too big to be in such a small trap. Marvin said, "Not sure how this thing even got in here, it’s a squirrel trap. He must really love peanut butter." The possum’s fleshy ringed tail wriggled out through the mesh at one end of the cage. "What are you going to do with it Marvin?" He lowered the cage, and looked over his glasses at Kate. "Katelynn Hill. You know I hate it when you call me that." He lifted his head back up to look into the possum's eyes. "Just because you're in college doesn't mean my name changed. If you want to call your dad 'James Hill', you go right ahead, but I'll be damned if you're going to call me Marvin." "Sorry. What are you gonna do with it, Jeedy?" When Kate was a toddler, Jeedy was as close as she got to Granddaddy. Kate's mother hated it; the thought of her precious little angel using the initials for "God drat" to call out to Marvin. It made her blush deep red with embarrassment. And that made Marvin love the nickname all the more. Couldn't stand that woman, glad she was gone. He stared at the animal in the cage, and scratched his freckled scalp. "Don't know what to do. Never caught a possum before. Let's get it over to the wheelbarrow." Once he set the cage down on the wheelbarrow, the possum kept its mouth wide open, trying to make sure they remembered it was fierce. And raging. The tail, wiggling around, looked like an earthworm rolled in dog hair. Marvin unhitched the trapdoor on the side where the tail was poking out. The possum's tail wriggled out just enough for him to grab it. "Gotcha!" He said. He pulled the possum out as it clawed at the metal grate. It found a firm grip in the cage and it wouldn't let go. Marvin pulled the possum by the tail, straight up, cage and all. After a moment of desperation, the possum couldn't hold any longer and let it go. It tried to curl itself up, claws grabbing for his hand but it couldn't reach. "God but these things are ugly, ain't they?" He swung the possum towards Kate to make her jump a little, but she wouldn't. "You're not scared of a big nasty rat are ya? Look at those teeth?" He swung it again, but she stood her ground, watching the claws reach out in desperation. It swung back towards Marvin and before they knew it, the possum had clamped it's teeth on to his zipper. Kate laughed while Marvin tugged at the thing, dumbfounded. "Oh, hell." He tried, but it wouldn't let go. He pulled a faded pen knife out of his pocket, flipped it open with his thumb, and poked the possum between its shoulder blades. It wouldn't let go, so he poked a second time, and a third. "Don't hurt him!" Kate cooed, as if this was going to be her next pet. "I'm more worried about him hurting me!" He poked it again and it let go. He lowered it down to the wheel barrow, holding the tail so its claws skittering on the rusted surface. "So you're the one, grabbing all my tomatoes before they get ripe." He wagged the knife at the possum like a ruler-wielding school teacher. "You can't have 'em! They're for me." Kate said, "Come on, Jeedy, look at him, he's scared, don't tease him like that." Marvin did a double take at Kate. "What? You feel sorry for this thing? His only goal in life is to mess up my hard work. I bet he's been ruining my garden for a couple years, from the look of it. Just look at those claws." He raised the possum back up, careful to hold it farther out this time, and tapped the hind quarters with the knife to punctuate each word. "Look at this thing - it's a burrowing, digging, filthy, nasty beast." He raised it higher, looked at Kate and said, "Hell, even it's nasty tail --" "Marvin look out!" In a swift move, the possum's front claws grabbed his bare elbow and pulled itself towards his arm. Marvin brought his other hand in to swat it away but he didn't move fast enough, and its jaws clamped on the hand holding the knife. He tugged but it wouldn't let go, and the teeth pierced the rawhide and poked skin beneath. Marvin yanked his hand back as hard as he could, broke free of the bite and plunged the knife into the animal's throat. He made a low grunt as he pushed the knife even further in and then sliced his way out of the throat, cutting through tendons and veins. The blade came out in a wide arc, slinging droplets of blood on Kate's shirt. Her hands went up and she looked at the blood on her shirt. "Oh Christ!" Marvin dropped the possum and the knife and tugged the glove off his bitten hand. There was a crescent of red dots where the teeth went in, along the ridge of the tendon leading to his pinky, and around to the palm. Kate backed away from the possum, which was trying to stand as its blood pumped onto the ground. It rose, swayed a moment, then fell over. She took another step back and said, "Whaaaaaat the hell Marvin?" Marvin was looking at the red dots blooming on his palm. His eyes snapped up to Kate, about to correct her again — he really hated her calling him Marvin — when it registered that she was drizzled in blood. He blinked and pushed a concerned frown onto his face. "Oh my dear! I'm sorry. Look at you! So sorry. But you saw what happened, right? It bit me!" He raised his hand out to her. "Who knows if it has rabies? I probably need to see the doctor now, and they'll want to run tests on it. And …" She cut him off. "No, I get that part. But, that? I mean drat." She pointed at the knife and the blood puddling over the dirt. He blinked, confused for a moment, and then softened. "You saw it. It wouldn't let go of my hand, I had to make it stop." She was still pointing at the possum and looking at him, as if his excuse wasn't good enough. He wiped his hand off on his pants. "I bet I looked a little crazy there for a moment." He picked up the knife and said, "Kate, I'm sorry, for the mess." He wiped the knife across his pants, closed it and and put it back in his pocket. He looked down at the dead animal and checked his hand again. The bleeding had stopped, there were just small punctures in his skin. He picked up the carcass by the tail and dropped it into the wheelbarrow. "Come on, let's take care of this thing before it stinks up the yard." Kate looked at him, motionless. Marvin squeezed her shoulder and said, "Kate? Hey, come on now, I'm sorry if I scared you. That possum, it's vermin, just like a rat. I was about to suggest we take it out to the woods and let it go when it bit me. I just reacted to the pain I guess, I wasn't even thinking." She looked at the possum. "You're telling me you've never stepped on an ant, or squashed a roach?" She blinked once slowly and said, "Yeah, sure, I just wasn't expecting it, it all happened so quick." Marvin squeezed her shoulder again and looked over his glasses with a smile that settled somewhere between doting and apologetic. "I'm all right." She said. "I get it. Just, wow." She took a deep breath and said, "So where do you want to bury it? Why not right here?" "Oh, no, that won't do. I just planted that rose. We don't want to disturb the roots." He scanned the garden. "Let's go put it in the compost, it'll decompose faster in there." — The compost smelled of rotten vegetables and wet leaves even before she started turning it over. As Kate punched the rusted shovel into it, she breathed through her mouth trying to avoid the smell. "Augh. Jeedy!" He chuckled and said, "I can't tell if you're calling my name or taking the lord's name in vain." She dumped a pile of black wet leaves and said "Liddle ov both I subbose." "Well pick one. Augh. God drat that stinks." "Hah, good one Jeedy. Good one." Marvin held his hand and watched Kate turn the compost with the shovel. At just over six feet tall, he towered over her like a giant vulture; slightly hunched over, shoulders together and his bald head jutting out. While decades of working on his feet at the corner hardware store kept him in shape, the past ten years of retirement — and the inactivity that came with it — were making him wither like one of his old roses. He wasn't frail, he still had muscle, but he wasn't as strong as he used to be. Wasn't as powerful. The bite on his hand stung and he kept checking it for bleeding. The teeth only really scratched a little too deep. And the possum probably didn't have rabies. Rabies. That usually meant foaming at the mouth, or, what, a crazy violent rage? He wasn't sure. But it probably wasn't rabies. He just needed to make sure Kate didn't worry about him. It was probably nothing, and certainly nothing for her to fret over. Kate's muscles flexed as she flipped the compost once more and turned around in time to catch Marvin staring at her. "What?" "You've really grown up, I guess I didn't realize how much until you went away to college. You look great." She waved him away, embarrassed. "No, I mean it. All these girls up at the square - they're all emaciated, pierced tattooed with pink hair and nose rings, and you're just you. Strong and beautiful, like your grandmother. I'm proud of you." She pushed the stray curl behind her ear again and looked down at the possum. "Thanks, I guess. Let's bury this thing and get your hand looked at." "My hand's fine. And, look, I'm sorry I lost my temper with the whole," he waved around an imaginary blade, "stabbing-bloody-bitey-possum thing. Still not sure what that was all about." "That was some hosed up poo poo." "Kate! Language!" "What. You just said 'God drat' didn't you?" And now it was his turn to be embarrassed. His checked his hand again and said, "Go ahead and throw the body in there, let's be done with this." A raindrop landed on his bony nose and he looked up at the sky. "Hurry, dear, looks like rain." — Back inside Marvin was washing his hands under the kitchen faucet. Kate sat at the table. He lived in a brick ranch home from the fifties, where the kitchen not only opened into the living room, it also had a door leading to the carport and as a sliding glass door that let out to the back yard. If anything, the fifties were an era of efficiency. "So, how's Josie?" He asked, rinsing off the blade. He pulled a paper towel and dried it off, taking care to wipe away flecks of dried blood in the hinge. When Kate didn't reply, he repeated the question and looked around at her. "Kate?" She was lost in thought, staring at the knife. "Sorry. What?" "How's Josie?" Without looking away from the knife she said, "Josie? Oh. She's good. Saw her last night. I was going to see her again tonight, but dad asked if you wanted to come over for dinner. That's actually why I stopped by." He saw her, watching the knife, and turned his back to her, folded it and returned it to his pocket. "Sorry, can't do it tonight. I'm having dinner with Mary." He looked over the sink through the window. A few large raindrops splatted on his deck. "drat looks like rain. I was going to walk up there. Could you give me a lift?" When he turned around, she was looking at her phone. She pushed it back into her pocket and said, "Sure. I just texted Josie to meet her up at the square. Before we go, you're gonna change, right?" "What, you think these boots don't make the outfit?" "Well. They match that black-and-white thing you've got going, black slacks, white shirt and black tie, but, black boots with silver duct tape around the toes ain't exactly pretty." He tipped a foot forward to show off the dirty boot. "These? Fine. I'll go change. What about you? You want a clean t-shirt?" "Nah, Josie's got one I can borrow." "Good enough. Let me change and go." — He returned wearing clean black pants and loafers. Kate was wearing the gloves, wiggling her fingers through the three missing fingertips. "Jeedy. You know they sell these new? Sometimes even two-for-one. Same with the boots. If I can find a pair that's less than a hundred dollars, maybe I'll buy you some?" "Mock me all you want little girl, but I love my old gloves. And the boots too. Had 'em forever, probably since before you could walk." "Probably before you could walk." "Alright that's enough of that. Let's get going." magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 03:36 on Mar 27, 2014 |
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Mar 27, 2014 00:35
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sounds pretty good my man. gonna read this when i get home from work and 
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Mar 27, 2014 13:59
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I kind of think I almost prefer the silence of replies. It means it wasn't amazing, nothing to reply about, but not so godawful that you're driven to hit reply and scold me for the overuse of descriptions or aimless wandering of the story; two things I was mostly worried about. It probably also would have helped to have selected something better than "poo poo POST", and probably provided some description better than, "My Novel". This is a story I've been molding together over a year, slowly, God so slowly. I spend hours researching my city, old people, photography, murder, knives, possums, and read books on stories, plots, characters, writing. I've done a lot except for writing the thing, and revising it. Every time I think I'm done -- I mean, really think it's enough to stop putting off another revision -- I discover simple mistakes. I fix those. Then I read the whole thing again, and dislike the descriptions. They're cliche in the way they're shoved into the story. It's a necessary part of writing - getting your descriptions into the writing instead of just starting out with a paragraph telling me what the guy looks like, but I still hate them... they're just so easy to spot (OH! HE'S OLD! YOU SAID WRINKLES!). Even craftier ways of sneaking a description into the story still annoy the poo poo out of me. I want the descriptions be be only enough to give you a reference. I don't think I'll manage that one part of the craft. And another thing - the old guy, Marvin, he's southern, but moved to the south from New York when he was a teenager. His accent will slip from good-old-boy drawl to snotty dramatic princess, (Dr. Smith from Lost in Space). Is that going to be too much to ask of a teenage reader? Do you think the switch will confuse people as to who is talking? I should have put all of that in the beginning of this post, and I apologize.
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Mar 29, 2014 22:06
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magnificent7 posted:SNAPSHOT! The Horror Of Photography and Serial Killers and poo poo. Overall, you display a pretty solid writing ability. Reading your spoilers, I like the situation you've conjured up to introduce the characters and their way of dealing with things. Also, I just read your second post in re: Marvin's move from the North to the South and that sort of negates some of my criticisms, depending upon when in his life he moved down.
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Mar 30, 2014 02:23
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Thank you for the feedback. Those are definitely the areas that are driving me nuts (that lesson in diction came up as I was writing, and it's always been in the story. But yeah, now, it's doesn't belong). I want to make her obviously 19 or 20 from the moment I introduce her to the story. Several beta readers saw "granddaughter" and immediately thought "7 year old". To me that's the biggest challenge in this scene; get the characters on the stage, and get the story moving. Messing around with this "Kate was back from college for the summer" poo poo, when told through his POV is a pain in the rear end. I think I could have her show up and call out his name and say, "I just got off work and stopped by on the way home." - that at least jumps her up from 7 or 8 into her teens until he mentions college. Thanks again. Great feedback. edit: Regarding the photos mixed in with the story - it's a YA book, (well, teen) and I like books with pictures - Lemony Snickett's books, and the book I'm reading right now, which is pretty drat close to what I was considering. It's a great book, the photos are photos from the story; not photos of the characters doing things as described in the story (okay except for that lovely possum photo I threw in there).  Here's a review of the book I'm referencing as another examnple: http://www.readingteen.net/2011/06/book-review-miss-peregrines-home-for.html magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 06:29 on Mar 30, 2014 |
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Mar 30, 2014 06:16
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Hey Mag, I think you're on the right track here, with plenty of decent character and detail work but see if you can say the same amount of stuff in about 2/3 of the words. You're developing a nicely creepy David Lynch vibe but I think you can get a better punch by trimming more as you go. Don't worry so much about editing this stuff, mind; keep writing.
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Mar 31, 2014 22:18
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sebmojo posted:Hey Mag, I think you're on the right track here, with plenty of decent character and detail work but see if you can say the same amount of stuff in about 2/3 of the words. You're developing a nicely creepy David Lynch vibe but I think you can get a better punch by trimming more as you go.
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Apr 1, 2014 01:23
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I posted chapter two, picking up a lot of the input from here. http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3622883
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Apr 6, 2014 18:40
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magnificent7 posted:SNAPSHOT! The Horror Of Photography and Serial Killers and poo poo. This is Chapter 1. The stuff in bold happened offscreen, before chapter 1, and apparently was so uninteresting that you omitted it. That's unfortunate in that it has the only things we learn about Kate that are unique to her and not any generic non-entity. "loveable" is an utterly useless adjective. It tells us nothing. WHY is he loveable? What are some actual qualities he has? (Also, I can't see him as loveable, since he's a curmudgeon who doesn't like visitors.) quote:MARVIN HILL spent most of his life hiding his own secrets. He’s killed over a hundred people, burying most of them in his garden, one deadbeat at a time. But at 75, Marvin's tired and wants to stop; After all, he’s had a successful run, avoiding detection for fifty years, why not quit while he’s ahead? A hundred people. Really? Bullshit. Not a chance in hell that no one notices that, even if they are street people, and even if Marietta has like 57,000 people living in it. Eventually, someone somewhere would have seen something, especially in a town with that many people. Also, exactly how loving big is his garden if he can bury 51-90 loving people in it? Is he burying them all six feet under? If not, how does he prevent scavengers from digging the bodies up? These things suggest to me that you have not thought this through very much. How deep was the body buried quote:MARY MEIER, an old woman who spends her days taking snapshots around the town square, starting helping Marvin in 1962 with his kills, in return for the opportunity to photograph each hunt in grisly detail. She won’t let Marvin stop. She's obsessed with removing the filth from her town, and if he won't help her, she'll expose him by sending a few photos to the local news and the police. Not that it's totally out of character for a crazed psychotic, but to me, threatening to blackmail a serial killer who has gotten away with murder 100 times in 50 years sounds brain-dead. quote:CHAPTER 1—The Garden Good detail on Marvin... but your first sentence has a man burying "his latest victim". He has killed someone. Taken their life, and buried them in his garden. How does he feel about this? This is a prime opportunity to get inside his head and say something about Marvin, and it does nothing. It has as much impact as "Marvin liked tomatoes on his breakfast toast". quote:It was Kate, his granddaughter, probably stopping by after work to see what he was up to. In the year that she was away at college, he'd forgotten how often she'd drop by unannounced. Having her back was great, but he'd come to appreciate his privacy, didn't like unexpected guests. This last sentence is comedic. I'm thinking "NO poo poo, he likes privacy!" He kills people, buries them in his yard, and he doesn't tell Kate to announce when she is coming over? He forgets that Kate comes over occasionally? He does not even loving LOCK HIS GATE? The first warning he has that someone is coming is that they have entered his gate? No. If Marvin was as sloppy and careless as this, he would have been caught long ago. quote:"Back here Kate." He said, leaning back to stretch. He removed a pair of rawhide gloves, so old that three fingertips were gone, and then he scanned the ground to make sure it all looked normal. He nudged some pine bark over the fresh dirt with his boot — wasn't no point letting her see how much he'd dug up just for a rose bush — and then tossed the gloves onto the wheelbarrow. Again - sloppy as gently caress. He calls Kate over BEFORE he checks to see if it looks all right, and before he covers the dirt up. This is amateur hour for a 100-body killer. It makes no sense. He also has no reaction at all to nearly being caught. He should have one. Kate followed the gravel pathway as far as she could, then pushed her way through the azaleas. "Planting another rose all the way back here?" She asked. "Thought it'd be nice along the fence. All the other roses," he waved to the other side of the yard, "were starting to fight each other for sunlight." Kate stuffed her phone into the back pocket of her jeans - I agree that there's no reason to mention that Kate had her phone out if it's not part of the scene. - and pushed a long brown curl behind her ear. "Need any help? I'm done for the day at work." Marvin’s grin carved wrinkles in his cheeks almost back to his ears. "Coulda used you about three hours ago I guess. I'm pretty much done now, I just need to clean —" Again, you are not thinking like a 100-body serial killer. Commendable normally, except when trying to write a believable one. Marvin is encouraging Kate to drop by unannounced to help him with his gardening. That's not something a 100-body serial killer does. A steel rattle like a lunchbox full of knives came from across the yard. His eyes narrowed to tiny slits and he clapped his hands. "Hot drat comma I got him Kate!" He winked at her and snatched up his gloves. She had to struggle to keep up as Marvin threaded his way through the garden towards the source of the noise. He stopped, and held out his left arm to stop her, but being a foot taller than her, his elbow landed on her forehead. "Ow!" "Shh! Look!" He pointed down between two manicured bushes. Crammed inside a cage was what looked like a grayish-white rat on steroids, hissing and baring a mouth full of sharp needly teeth. "It's an opossum!" Kate said. "Possum, dear. Possum." His aw-shucks southern drawl disappeared, and he spoke with the staccato enunciation of a broadway actor. Was he a Broadway actor? Was he ever within 100 miles of Broadway? If not, then does this make sense? She shrugged. "That's what I said." He shook his head, squatted down and tapped the cage with the back of his hand. "You said O-possum." He pulled the cage out and held it up, "This nasty thing? A possum." The animal kept its teeth bared and hissed, trying (but failing) to draw attention back to its ferocity and rage. She didn't even bother to look at it, too busy enjoying how she was ruffling Marvin's feathers. "Possum, Opossum. Same thing right?" Lowering the cage, he dropped his head and sighed. "You live in the south, dear. We do not call them O-possums. In Georgia, these are possums." "Possum? So what happened to the O?" "Who cares? It's a giant rat." Who cares is exactly what I was thinking. I guess it's supposed to be charming, but it's pedantic and uninteresting. Is this just in here so you can establish that they are in Georgia? She chuckled and he stood up with the cage, all wire mesh and tin trap doors on either end, and the possum was almost too big to be in such a small trap. Marvin said, "Not sure how this thing even got in here, it’s a squirrel trap. He must really love peanut butter." The possum’s fleshy ringed tail wriggled out through the mesh at one end of the cage. "What are you going to do with it comma Marvin?" -snip- It swung back towards Marvin and before they knew it, the possum had clamped -snip- Marvin did a double take at Kate not a case for a double-take, I think. Try "gaped". "What? You feel sorry for this thing? His only goal in life is to mess up my hard work. I bet he's been ruining my garden for a couple years, from the look of it. Just look at those claws." He raised the possum back up, careful to hold it farther out this time, and tapped the hind quarters with the knife to punctuate each word. "Look at this thing - it's a burrowing, digging, filthy, nasty beast." He raised it higher, looked at Kate and said, "Hell, even "Marvin comma look out!" In a swift move, the possum's front claws grabbed his bare elbow and pulled itself towards his arm. Marvin brought his other hand in to swat it away but he didn't move fast enough, and its jaws clamped on the hand holding the knife. He tugged but it wouldn't let go, and the teeth pierced the rawhide and poked skin beneath. You'd think that a 100-body serial killer would have enough experience to keep an eye on his victims and be prepared for them to fight back. Marvin yanked his hand back as hard as he could, broke free of the bite and plunged the knife into the animal's throat. He made a low grunt as he pushed the knife even further in and then sliced his way out of the throat, cutting through tendons and veins. The blade came out in a wide arc, slinging droplets of blood on Kate's shirt. Her hands went up and she looked at the blood on her shirt. "Oh Christ!" Marvin dropped the possum and the knife and tugged the glove off his bitten hand. There was a crescent of red dots where the teeth went in, along the ridge of the tendon leading to his pinky, and around to the palm. Kate backed away from the possum, which was trying to stand as its blood pumped onto the ground. It rose, swayed a moment, then fell over. She took another step back and said, "Whaaaaaat No. the hell comma Marvin?" If she was actually shocked, like she should be, she should probably revert to the default old name and call him Jeedy. It would also sound better than 'Marvin'. quote:Marvin was looking at the red dots blooming on his palm. His eyes snapped up to Kate, about to correct her again — he really hated her calling him Marvin — when it registered that she was drizzled in blood. He blinked and pushed a concerned frown onto his face. 'pushed a concerned frown onto his face' So he's a sociopath who only fakes being like people. Okay, but has he really fooled people for 50 years into thinking he's 'loveable'? I think here's the problem with revealing that Marvin is a serial killer in the first sentence. This whole section would work so, so much better from KATE's perspective. What is Kate thinking, what is she feeling? Showing it from the perspective of the unemotional serial killer is a complete waste. If you really want this to be a 'Thriller', then there has to be some suspense. Starting off in the shoes of a serial killer from sentence one undermines the suspense because we already know he's a serial killer, which completely drains this scene of interest. If we start out in Kate's shoes, and do not reveal Marvin as a killer immediately, then this scene works as foreshadowing. -snip- Marvin held his hand and watched Kate turn the compost with the shovel. At just over six feet tall, he towered over her like a giant vulture; slightly hunched over, shoulders together and his bald head jutting out. This is the character going to a mirror to look at themselves, except without the mirror. While decades of working on his feet at the corner hardware store kept him in shape, the past ten years of retirement — and the inactivity that came with it — were making him wither like one of his old roses. He wasn't frail, he still had muscle, but he wasn't as strong as he used to be. Wasn't as powerful. This works better, though. -snip- He saw her, watching the knife, and turned his back to her, folded it and returned it to his pocket. "Sorry, can't do it tonight. I'm having dinner with Mary." He looked over the sink through the window. A few large raindrops splatted on his deck. "drat looks like rain. I was going to walk up there. Could you give me a lift?" 100-body serial killer doesn't even loving have a car? Excuse me? What, does he move bodies around that 57,000 person town in his wheelbarrow? When he turned around, she was looking at her phone. She pushed it back into her pocket and said, "Sure. I just texted Josie to meet her up at the square. Before we go, you're gonna change, right?" "What, you think these boots don't make the outfit?" "Well. They match that black-and-white thing you've got going, black slacks, white shirt and black tie, but, black boots with silver duct tape around the toes ain't exactly pretty." He tipped a foot forward to show off the dirty boot. "These? Fine. I'll go change. What about you? You want a clean t-shirt?" "Nah, Josie's got one I can borrow." "Nah, I'm fine in the shirt coated in blood from where you cut a possum's throat." Seriously? What the gently caress. Normal people - and I'm assuming that Kate is a normal person - tend to not be okay with wearing blood-spattered clothing around, especially in public. In fact, she would have changed BEFORE doing anything else like burying it in compost. Right now you've got some serious believability problems, and structuring it to reveal the killer in the first line doesn't really work. The reveal has zero emotion attached to it. We don't know anything about Marvin, and so when it's revealed he's a killer, we go "so what". There's no connection yet. Kate, your supposed main character is basically a blank slate. There's nothing special or interesting about her (and no, just being a lesbian does not count as interesting in itself). There's a golden opportunity to connect with Kate in this chapter, as she reacts to Marvin gutting the animal, but we're stuck in the head of Marvin and miss out. There are also some grammar issues to watch out for. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 18:03 on Jun 22, 2014 |
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Jun 22, 2014 15:14
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Thanks for taking the time to give me your input, I really appreciate it.
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Jun 22, 2014 23:29
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One of the challenges to reading a line-by-line crit of work is the frustration, both in the person doing the crit, and as the writer. Some of your questions are answered within the next few chapters, and some of them make so much sense I want to slam my head in a door. 100 dead bodies: great point that's come up too many times for me to ignore it any more. I'm changing it to thirty-seven; John Wayne Gacy had 33 buried in his crawlspace. That's a lot, but, over the space of fifty years, hopefully not enough to raise too many eyebrows. Does this make sense enough to suspend disbelief? I picked drifters (male and female both) because the community wouldn't know of those people's presence, and wouldn't miss them if they disappeared. These bodies aren't being found; it's just new people coming into town, panhandling or some other unattractive thing (in the eyes of the killers, so, "loose women" for lack of a better word). If the killers get to them within a month of their arrival, my reasoning is that the general public would just go, "oh, welp, they blew into town, and then they blew out of town." She's stalked the people to be sure they're alone. Stabbey_the_Clown posted:Is he burying them all six feet under? If not, how does he prevent scavengers from digging the bodies up? These things suggest to me that you have not thought this through very much. How deep was the body buried Stabbey_the_Clown posted:This is the character going to a mirror to look at themselves, except without the mirror. A lot of your other points haven't been ignored; most of them are already fixed. The issue of Kate's POV vs. Marvin's has been a thing I've struggled with for a long time, down to rewriting a version from her POV. Still not really happy with either one exclusively. But yeah - Kate's a paper-thin character right now. I gotta fix that poo poo. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 16:46 on Jun 26, 2014 |
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Jun 26, 2014 16:43
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Maybe it's nitpicky, but I've been to Marietta a number of times, and it's not really the best location for a serial killer. Marietta is mainly suburbs and shopping centers, so there's not really a downtown area where panhandlers, prostitutes, etc. would hang out. And yeah, too many people around to not get noticed, plus unless you're rich, you probably aren't going to have the garden space to bury 37 bodies, much less 100, unless he's cremating them first. Northern Georgia is a better location, as it's more spread out and more country-ish. I agree with most of the points the poster above me made, especially about how the grandfather slips up too much not to get caught. The fingerless gloves in particular caught my attention--would a serial killer really wear gloves missing the fingertips? The story doesn't have to be a superb work of art if you're aiming for "airport novel", but the characters need to be beefed up more, as they're really kind of one-dimensional. You need to grab your readers' attention in the first chapter and you haven't done that here. It's just dull and doesn't make me want to read further on. And I don't get the pictures at all. They just look tacky and don't really mesh well with the text.
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Jun 27, 2014 02:57
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lambeth posted:Maybe it's nitpicky, but I've been to Marietta a number of times, and it's not really the best location for a serial killer.
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Jun 28, 2014 00:48
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??? I would recommend somewhere around the Gainesville/Cumming/Canton area for a setting. More spread out and full of rednecks who like their guns and Ron Paul. No one would much of a gently caress there if someone was picking off drifters. I'm very particular about settings in my trashy airport novels, you see.
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Jun 28, 2014 17:47
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I live about 4 blocks from the downtown Marietta Square, and I continue to forget that the town proper is definitely big and sprawling. The downtown area, (the square and the old buildings on and around the square, with panhandlers and oddballs and old folks), provide a perfect backdrop to the story in my head. I've flip-flopped on making it a fictional location instead since there are no references to real buildings or any real history (as far as I can remember) anywhere in the story. It's possible I'll do that at some point, I'm not sure. I almost wonder if I'd hit on a built-in audience by referencing the city though. Here's a photo of the town square from the fifties.  Regarding the photos - I agree with you. It was an idea from back then. The possum photograph was junk, I'd planned to get better photos, but the more I'm working on it, the less I want to do photographs. They were the inspiration for the book, and being a weak reader myself, I do love pictures in a book to break up the monotony of words, (laugh all you want), but adding photos will bump expenses; making my project a red flag to most agents or publishers before they read the first word. Thanks for taking the time to read the chapter and taking the time to give any feedback at all! magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jun 28, 2014 |
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Jun 28, 2014 18:06
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magnificent7 posted:A lot of your other points haven't been ignored; most of them are already fixed. The issue of Kate's POV vs. Marvin's has been a thing I've struggled with for a long time, down to rewriting a version from her POV. Still not really happy with either one exclusively. But yeah - Kate's a paper-thin character right now. I gotta fix that poo poo. I just took another re-read of Chapter 1, trying to see what I learn that I can only have learned from Marvin's perspective on things. I am excluding things which are said out loud because either party can hear them.
What I see is that you have description without much personality. I do think Kate's perspective works better from an overall story perspective, but if you decide to stick with Marvin's perspective for this chapter, you should probably flesh things out more. How does he feel about his latest kill? "Where once he had felt pride and satisfaction at having done his part to clean up the trash, now Marvin just felt tired." What does he think looking at his roses? "Dozens of Rosebushes lined the fence, each one marking a kill. Yet it never seemed good enough. The drifters and panhandlers never stopped coming no matter how many he planted." What about the Possum? "On the face of the possum, Marvin recognized the look of anger trying to mask fear. He'd seen it many times before." "Marvin swing the possum by the tail, enjoying the fearful squeaks of the terrified animal." "The possum bit him. Marvin had forgotten that fear is the most unpredictable emotion of all. Once be wouldn't have been so careless. He was getting slow. This time it was just an animal, but next time..." "Marvin slit the possum's throat, reveling in his revenge as the blood sprayed out." "I was planning to take him out to the woods and release him," Marvin lied casually. No tomato-stealing varmint was going to get away with messing up his garden and live. What about Kate's relationship with Josie, which in your synopsis you say bothers Marvin? "Marvin loved Kate, but her relationship with another woman... it just wasn't natural. Back in his day men were men and women were women, and if they weren't, they didn't go around flaunting it. He never said that sort of thing out loud, of course, but he thought Kate could sense his discomfort at times. He was just glad she never pressed him on it." How does he feel about his dinner with Mary? "That drat loon had called him up again. She was getting more and more demanding these days, calling more and more often. She must have picked out another victim. It used to be that she only found one a year at best, but these days it was getting closer to once a month. Even in sleepy Marietta, people would start to take notice. He was going to have to talk to her." *** You get the idea - infuse personality into their observations and reactions.
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Jun 28, 2014 20:12
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I love what you wrote - drat that's awesome. I'm still new to adding descriptions to my stories and it's really felt like a blindfolded dart game - half the time it's too much, half the time it's too little, or misses the point I was going for entirely. Your interpretations are great. I STILL hate/avoid/dislike putting any of that stuff into a first chapter; there's so much info-dumping in first chapters in general that I'm just prejudiced against it. And yeah - I know that's a stupid loving thing to think. And speaking of thinking - I'm still wrestling with narrative vs. a real thought: quote:Dozens of Rosebushes lined the fence, each one marking a kill. Yet it never seemed good enough. The drifters and panhandlers never stopped coming no matter how many he planted.
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Jun 28, 2014 21:13
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Are you sure you want this to be from Marvin's perspective? And to mention the victims in the first sentence? It would be way more traditional to do it from Kate's perspective, but I could see it working from Marvin's IF the setup from the very beginning is sowing the conflict as he sees it: daughter is home from college, upsets status quo, potentially finds out about bodies. The beef with her father could be a secondary source of conflict. But right now it doesn't read like a freaky YA mystery/horror, because the conflict is "argh, this [o]possum!" and it never gets very close to Marvin's head narratively. For reference, if you did it from Kate's, the opening chapter would be - I'm home from college, this sucks - I'm an outsider because xyz - I go to grandpa because he's cool and ask for a job - He's being weird and not wanting me to be around. I talk him into it. - But something weird is going on here (as evidenced by a short exchange that she witnesses)
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Jun 30, 2014 01:39
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Defenestration posted:Are you sure you want this to be from Marvin's perspective? And to mention the victims in the first sentence? I appreciate your thoughts on this, I do. In reviewing both options, seeing it through her eyes is pretty uneventful except that her grandpa is acting weird and she doesn't know what to make of it. That's just not compelling enough to me to want to know what happens next. I want the first chapter, the first page, to start off with a hook. "Grandpa acting weird" doesn't do much for me. Grandpa burying a body and freaking out that his granddaughter showed up unexpected, that does it for me. However, in the above version of the chapter, I've done a poor job of getting in Marvin's head. But I can't stress enough - thank you for taking the time to read it, think about it, and give me your thoughts on it. I appreciate it. But this book isn't a mystery story, it's suspense; and the suspense exists on several levels; Kate's trying to determine if he's the killer, or if somebody else is about to kill him, and what to do about that. He's worried about Kate finding out, worried about the cops and several other people finding out, especially since he's trying to put it all behind him. The show Dexter comes to mind. While he's not exactly the antagonist in that story, the tension between Dexter and his sister is more interesting to me when I know both sides, and see how close she was getting to finding out, and then the queasy feeling when he was cornered and had to come clean to her. To me? That's way more interesting than just figuring out a mystery. But again - thank you very much for taking the time to read it, think about it, and provide your thoughts on it. I greatly appreciate it. magnificent7 fucked around with this message at 16:54 on Jun 30, 2014 |
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Jun 30, 2014 16:51
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| # ? May 15, 2024 10:16 |
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yo don't worry, I'm a professional, I won't be offended if you don't take my advice. We're all just saying things to think about here
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Jul 1, 2014 00:15
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