Post by sturgeon on Sept 13, 2019 15:37:57 GMT
Dear John V C,
Using your middle name - very Bret Easton Ellis. William Something Burroughs. Irvine Fucking Welsh. OK, let's see what you've got to offer.
London. School. Fat joke. "I darkly place my bag back under my desk" - nigglingly imprecise. Kill those adverbs, dude.
Short sharp sentences. Disorienting. Meant to reflect the protag's distracted psyche?
Page 3. Anna. Anna. Sounds good, but WTF? Is this the same MC? This philandering, tar-choked, jaded old rut? Is this his future self?
It seems that yes, it is the same person, in the same timeline. Clearly older than I'd been led to believe by childish bullying in a German lesson. Old enough to be worrying about erectile dysfunction. This character is beginning to feel dangerously inconsistent.
The mutual cherry-taking scene has great dramatic potential, but the utter macho crassness of delivery leaves me feeling zero sympathy for our antihero.
I'm confused. Is this about being bullied, as it started, or about his relationship with Anna, as it continues, or just about what a dropout loser dick he is?
"But it's just a hallucination" - and you finally lost me here. Without signalling, without being a core part of the character, this is as cliché as a car exploding after it tumbles down a cliff.
There are way too many undistinguishable characters here. "I". Amer. Liam. Kieran. Connor. Anna. The Girls. Only on second reading do I realise that Mary Jane isn't yet another. They're all exactly the same. There are entire pages of unqualified dialogue - I can't tell who's talking and I don't care. They're all motiveless disaster zones.
And that's before we get to the really interesting part. Only halfway through do you drop in the gay relationship as redemption idea. But too little, too late.
On the plus side, adverbs turned out not to be a problem.
Wally Sturgeon
The Floor
www.tqrstories.com
Using your middle name - very Bret Easton Ellis. William Something Burroughs. Irvine Fucking Welsh. OK, let's see what you've got to offer.
London. School. Fat joke. "I darkly place my bag back under my desk" - nigglingly imprecise. Kill those adverbs, dude.
Short sharp sentences. Disorienting. Meant to reflect the protag's distracted psyche?
Page 3. Anna. Anna. Sounds good, but WTF? Is this the same MC? This philandering, tar-choked, jaded old rut? Is this his future self?
It seems that yes, it is the same person, in the same timeline. Clearly older than I'd been led to believe by childish bullying in a German lesson. Old enough to be worrying about erectile dysfunction. This character is beginning to feel dangerously inconsistent.
The mutual cherry-taking scene has great dramatic potential, but the utter macho crassness of delivery leaves me feeling zero sympathy for our antihero.
I'm confused. Is this about being bullied, as it started, or about his relationship with Anna, as it continues, or just about what a dropout loser dick he is?
"But it's just a hallucination" - and you finally lost me here. Without signalling, without being a core part of the character, this is as cliché as a car exploding after it tumbles down a cliff.
There are way too many undistinguishable characters here. "I". Amer. Liam. Kieran. Connor. Anna. The Girls. Only on second reading do I realise that Mary Jane isn't yet another. They're all exactly the same. There are entire pages of unqualified dialogue - I can't tell who's talking and I don't care. They're all motiveless disaster zones.
And that's before we get to the really interesting part. Only halfway through do you drop in the gay relationship as redemption idea. But too little, too late.
On the plus side, adverbs turned out not to be a problem.
Wally Sturgeon
The Floor
www.tqrstories.com