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Steakpirate

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Heya folks. I just finished piecing together an assignment for my Creative Writing class. It's a two page (plus a little extra) extension of a free-write we did in class.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on it, if you have a chance, and what I could do better.

 

You can find it here:

http://steakycw.blogspot.com/

 

It's currently the only post, entitled "The Man Who Wrestled a Shark."

 

I apologize for blogspot eating all of my indents.

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Only three things jumped out at me (besides the wayward indents).

 

1) There is no such thing as a "quiet din". The phrase is an oxymoron. Just what does a quiet but loud noise sound like? Perhaps you meant "tolerable din". Was the narrator trying to express his frustration over the table being too loud for Uncle Ray to tell his story?

 

2) "Mangy bastard"? The shark was loosing its hair to a skin disease? The only other sense of the word I know is "shabby" or "in poor condition". Our elders sometimes use that word to be disparaging but did Uncle Ray really mean that the shark he was fighting was in poor condition? I'd drop "mangy" and just go with "bastard" since, here, that would mean "an unpleasant or despicable person/fish.

 

3) Uncle Ray's "thick, southern accent" read as neither thick nor Southern to my mind's ear, and a touch inconsistent. But perhaps a Storyist living south of the Mason-Dixon Line should comment on that. ("Schnoz"? Must be Miami.) I would just drop the phrase "thick, southern accent" entirely and let the reader discover this characteristic. (Remind me why this was necessary for the story?) Anyway, writing in dialect is tricky and can be unintentionally insulting to the reader. Remember, less is more. (Okay, it really isn't. But less can be better.)

 

Y'all come back now. Y'hear?

-Thoth.

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Only three things jumped out at me (besides the wayward indents).

 

1) There is no such thing as a "quiet din". The phrase is an oxymoron. Just what does a quiet but loud noise sound like? Perhaps you meant "tolerable din". Was the narrator trying to express his frustration over the table being too loud for Uncle Ray to tell his story?

 

2) "Mangy bastard"? The shark was loosing its hair to a skin disease? The only other sense of the word I know is "shabby" or "in poor condition". Our elders sometimes use that word to be disparaging but did Uncle Ray really mean that the shark he was fighting was in poor condition? I'd drop "mangy" and just go with "bastard" since, here, that would mean "an unpleasant or despicable person/fish.

 

3) Uncle Ray's "thick, southern accent" read as neither thick nor Southern to my mind's ear, and a touch inconsistent. But perhaps a Storyist living south of the Mason-Dixon Line should comment on that. ("Schnoz"? Must be Miami.) I would just drop the phrase "thick, southern accent" entirely and let the reader discover this characteristic. (Remind me why this was necessary for the story?) Anyway, writing in dialect is tricky and can be unintentionally insulting to the reader. Remember, less is more. (Okay, it really isn't. But less can be better.)

 

Y'all come back now. Y'hear.

-Thoth.

I think you have a solid beginning here. It's obvious what's happening and the story has a strong focus in Uncle Ray's tale about the shark. Like Thoth, I think that Uncle Ray does not really sound like a Southerner of a certain age: it's more important to capture the cadence and the vocabulary of Southern speech than to try to reproduce the dialect. (My Sir Percy, admittedly, drops his g's all over the place, but there's a specific reason for that--to show that when he's not dropping them, the book's real hero is present and in control). I heard someone comment on NPR that the dropped g used to be standard pronunciation, so there's really no need to mark it.

 

I have two other comments on places where I think you could improve the story. One is in the use of details, which in fiction shouldn't be idly chosen or neutral but part of your emotional story world. When you're talking about the trees and such, you do this well, but with the people not so much. Is the real focus of the party on the consumption of preferred meats? Don't these family members talk to one another? If they don't, how does the strained silence feel? Where does it come from? I never went to a July 4th barbecue where the hot dogs were the highlight of the gathering.

 

The second suggestion involves Uncle Ray's tale. Sure, he tells it every year (and how many of us have an Uncle Ray at our family celebrations?). But precisely because he tells it every year, I'd expect the family to anticipate it with mixed emotions (perhaps separated by generation and/or gender). Where are the teenage cousins muttering, "I hope Uncle Ray doesn't tell that dumb shark story again"? The aunts chuckling knowledgeably as they predict the story's arrival? The kids of a certain age who can't wait for the shark story to appear? Granddad reminiscing about the first time he heard it? The family troublemaker ready to inform his peers that Ray can't surf and dreamed his story while under the influence? You could play that up in your first paragraph and give us some real insight into this family through their responses to and expectations of the shark story and the man telling it.

 

Nice job for a first effort, though! Thanks for sharing it with us.

Best,

Marguerite

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Thank you both very much for your advice and taking the time to respond.

I have a lot of trouble, I find, with character development and dialogue. One of the major issues with this assignment is that the teacher expects it to be 1-2 pages, so I always feel kind of bad when I hit the "limit", and try to end the story as quickly as possible rather than where it would have suited the story.

 

It's amazing how different the criticism/response is from someone who actually writes on their own time and someone who tends only to read. To me, the criticism about development and stuff is far more valuable than what I usually get, about grammar and generic word choice and such.

 

And re: the "Quiet din", I really couldn't find any words to express the idea of a constant but tolerable background noise, which is part of the reason I desperately want to invent my super-dictionary. I'll probably use the term "buzzing" for now. :P

I should be able to address many of the inconsistencies you mentioned in this revision, IE "mangy", (although I did mean to imply that the shark was in poor quality, as where I called him Bleeding Gums McGee, an "old dog", and a "half-toothed bastard"

 

 

It's very difficult for me to make many of the adjustments you've suggested under what I feel to be my current constraints, but I should have a lot more freedom if and when I have the opportunity to expand upon the story.

I think that for now I'll turn in my first draft with a few revisions, but do the real overhaul on my own time or for a bigger assignment, so I might be back to bother you about this same project.

 

Thanks again,

The Steak Pirate.

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Thank you both very much for your advice and taking the time to respond.

I have a lot of trouble, I find, with character development and dialogue. One of the major issues with this assignment is that the teacher expects it to be 1-2 pages, so I always feel kind of bad when I hit the "limit", and try to end the story as quickly as possible rather than where it would have suited the story.

 

It's amazing how different the criticism/response is from someone who actually writes on their own time and someone who tends only to read. To me, the criticism about development and stuff is far more valuable than what I usually get, about grammar and generic word choice and such.

 

It's very difficult for me to make many of the adjustments you've suggested under what I feel to be my current constraints, but I should have a lot more freedom if and when I have the opportunity to expand upon the story.

I think that for now I'll turn in my first draft with a few revisions, but do the real overhaul on my own time or for a bigger assignment, so I might be back to bother you about this same project.

 

Thanks again,

The Steak Pirate.

Let me clarify a bit (was in harried editing mode yesterday). I wasn't suggesting you provide detailed descriptions of anyone else at the party. In such a short story it's good that Uncle Ray is the only person we see clearly. What I had in mind (and this would address both my suggestions at once) is that you use your first paragraph to build a sense of anticipation in your reader about the shark story, so instead of focusing on the food and people eating, you could take the first few sentences to sketch the scene as you do now, including the first mention of food (because it tells us we're at a barbecue). Then take out the sentence about people chewing their preferred meats and indicate the "buzzing" with speech. You could attribute the speech to groups of people: "Cousins muttered, 'Think he'll tell that dumb story this year?' An aunt prodded her husband in the ribs. 'Guess what happens next!' " and so on. Or you could just give the speech without attribution as evidence of the "buzzing." Three or four examples is all you'd need, and it wouldn't expand your story much.

 

With Uncle Ray, the question is whether it's important for him to be a Southerner. If it is, do you have Southerners in your family or environment from whom you could learn the cadence? If not, perhaps time to hit the movies and listen to a few.

 

Grammar and spelling and the like are important, of course. But (1) I rarely give that kind of correction unless a story is in its final phases--what's the point of nitpicking when someone's going to rewrite half the prose? and (2) the pedants among us don't always realize that characters don't necessarily observe the rules of grammar, and it's revealing when they don't. It can be useful to know the rules so that when you break them, you're doing it deliberately and can defend your choice. But unless you're writing Commander Spock, you may want to take those "fix the grammar" comments with at least a small grain of salt.

 

Word usage is a different matter, unless you have one of those characters who does say things like "quiet din." And your own grammar--in describing a setting, say--should be as good as it can be without producing "the kind of sentence up with which I will not put," to paraphrase Winston Churchill.

 

But you're off to a strong start, and the revisions should be fun. How many ways can you think of to portray excitement, numb resignation, or some combination of the two?

 

Also, if I didn't say it before, Uncle Ray's tale itself needs very little work, just some pruning of improbable words like "schnozz."

M

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