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This is really bad, sorry, it reads like a mumbly E/N post. There's almost no content, and there's essentially no character - guy is lonely, guy sees pretty girl, guy pines, guy says hello to girl. There's nothing there, there's no dissent, there's no texture, everything's described in the most plain, weak way. Your main character is a nobody, we don't learn anything about him, his situation is utterly vanilla, his monologue is almost entirely unilluminating. The prose tells us nothing. There are loads of books about people by themselves where the prose is an active part of the story, where the way the character (or narrator) talks to the audience gives us information that helps us to judge the protagonist and play along with their own inner thoughts. American Psycho has massive chunks of monologue, but it's thoroughly captivating because we're constantly learning about Patrick's view of the world by reading between the lines of his voice. Catcher in the Rye, A Clockwork Orange, Lolita, A Confederacy of Dunces are all things that do what you're not doing. What we, as readers, want to know isn't what the protagonist is thinking to themselves, but the entire scope of what their inner workings are. How are they deceiving themselves, or learning, or disengaging? The joy of being a reader is that you get to analyze the characters and engage in the act of interpretation. This story could, theoretically, function as a character study about a pathetic sadsack loser, but it's also tedious and plain, so I'm not being entertained in the actual telling of the story.
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May 29, 2017 03:12
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 16:24 |
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Narzack posted:Harsh, but fair. If I'm understanding what you're saying, it's that there is no firm voice of the narrator with which to form an idea of what he's thinking and what he's really like. Is that a fair takeaway? Something like that. The big issue is you haven't provided us more than the base of what's happening, there's no conflict or detail that isn't generic and vague. It's a very simplistic, utterly pathetic crush by a lonely guy on some random girl, written in the style of a flowery, forgettable blog post. Which, by the way, is why people are getting pathetic creeper vibes, because writing at length about obsessing over a girl and using phrases like "beautiful, lovely she" are things you see sad people doing on livejournal. "Boy wants to meet girl" is an incredibly boring story unless you have an amazing hook. If you wanted to engage us with this story on a narrative level, you'd have to find a way to create conflict in his actual voice - remember that interpretation is the most important part of reading. If you give the reader nothing to interpret, then they disengage. edit: I brought up Lolita earlier because Nabokov's story is essentially the same as yours, with more follow-through, but the key difference is that we, the reader, are allowed the immense pleasure of enjoying the massive friction between Humbert Humbert's innate narrative charm and his intensely disgusting actions. In his dialogue we're given conflicts, prejudices, opinions, etc, all laced in in ways that indicate that Humbert might not necessarily be aware of them - he's a vicious classist and racist, for example, but Vladmir has him frame his classism and racism as searing quips like "but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so". We're given the intoxicating impression of Humbert as a conspirator, apologist, and raconteur through all of these subtle idiosyncrasies. Your character has no inner life. This would be a more interesting story if he'd seen the perfect apple, spent all day pining for it, and then was able to purchase it. It would be the same story, but it would be interesting. Magic Hate Ball fucked around with this message at 21:24 on Jun 18, 2017 |
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Jun 18, 2017 20:38
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