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Sitting Here posted:Crits welcome. The nice thing going on here is what I felt was the basic premise of the story. The foreshadowing of the world ending by a series of slow events along with the woman remembering the specific time when her life ended. This balances nicely against her world “really” ending by the finale. I was searching for something to latch onto or to show through from the story as I read along. Most of what I found was in the contrast between calling them “roaches” and her insisting to herself that they’re still people. The use of the word roaches was enough that it didn’t come across as just colour, instead coloured my opinion of her, and negatively. And for me that’s where the characterisation and world building fell down because I didn’t feel her as fully developed or as full a person as she should be. For a large part of the story there’s a heft of exposition. Having finished I can see the purpose the introduction serves, but it read as superfluous and generic writing I didn’t realise the story needed until the end, and lacking enough of an immediate point that I might have stopped reading if I encountered this online. The encounter/stand-off/shooting/fleeing comes across as too much story for the point of it all; it’s a big long scene with no up or down, or feeling of push and pull. The ending is so brief and offers no authorial consideration to amount to much (I think this is the story you want to add to.) If this were a more developed story I’d be looking for a coda, but when the beginning falls flat and the ending is terse and abrupt the whole story doesn’t have the flow in storytelling for it to really work for me. Things I think could work are upping the characterisation, and giving the woman a voice. At the moment she comes across as too generic and everyman. She’s a tabula rasa when the story doesn’t demand enough from the reader as they read to validate any response they might give at the end. I wouldn’t shy away from giving her more opinions, and making her thoughts and interactions stronger and wouldn’t fear it taking from the reader’s views being placed on the situation. It read easily enough, and the only place I had any issue was when the boy went from standing next to Chance’s boys and appearing next to the girl with the gun, it was a little abrupt and from my reading was the happenstance too much. I did wonder whether it really is her son, but I’m not too sure that’s relevant. My take on it is the continuing slow death of society/the world. You state outright that the world didn’t “end” abruptly, and contrast it with the abrupt disappearance/death of the son. For me you’re asking questions of when an ending becomes final, and whether effort along the way for betterment can ever be too late given a drawn out end and a drawn out end that may have happened long ago, presuming a start is made.* I think the real way you can bring this up more is by showing a deeper and more fraught debate from the woman about how she feels about the roaches. Maybe even more visceral, or circular in her thinking. You can tie her in knots, and wrap up some authorial preaching and prognostication in it. If my guess on the theme is appropriate to you then I would maintain that there are less people who are as blind or free of worry from big issues as this piece seemingly makes out, and if they are they will take something entirely different to it from me. The pacing needs a little work, and for me it was heavy in telling me about the world without making the world interesting, and describing lengthy action for a feeling in the resolution that wasn’t strong enough. The balance for you is putting enough in to make the situation in the world more visceral in thought, and less empty, but keeping it open enough to let a reader push their own views of the world on it. *Superpowers that allow you to dodge bullets is comic book symbology almost up there with mutants for othering/prejudice.
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Jun 1, 2017 20:22
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| # ¿ Apr 28, 2024 05:26 |
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