Sample writing, critique away
 

I don't know where I am going with this... well, that is a lie. I know exactly where this story is going. I am but posting a small bit for thine critique first:

The Abhorrent Crime of Michael C.

http://timeline.aps.org/images/posters/oo_s2.jpg

Once upon a time in a kingdom far, far away, in an opulent satellite village of the capital city where the king's public house was - that is to say, the house that was open for the inquisitive public to wander through... ugh... so let me start over....

Once upon a time in a suburb called Chevy Chase, there lived a man by the name of Michael C. Michael C. had a nice house with authentic faux brick siding and a nice garden with two nice gnomes and a yawning terracotta frog (the frog too was nice). His next-door neighbor on the right (where house numbers descended) was Michael B. who had a nice house with genuine simulated wood shingles imported from the exotic faraway lands of Virginia and a more than nice garden with two gnomes and a terracotta fairy resting her red buttocks on a plump terracotta stump. Michael B.'s grass was green, jolly, and generally healthier-looking than Michael C.'s. Michael C.'s first neighbor on the left (where the house numbers ascended) was Mark D. who in all honesty had an equally nice house as his neighbors though it was frowned upon by consensus. All the wholesome people in the neighborhood glared when his house was brought to their attention because it was painted black, much like a high rollers bathroom in some upscale casino. Instead of a nice garden, Mark D. allowed crabgrass, wild grapes, and gargantuan cabbages to grow unsupervised. Instead of nice gnomes, Mark D. had two oversized (though still somewhat nice) pawns with handles on their bald heads from a chess set that would be most comfortable on multi-colored pavement tiles in a park. There was also a lone terracotta brick in Mark D.'s yard. Why? you may ask. Well, I'll tell you the whole tale: in the days of old, before he settled in a swamp and named a city after himself, Chevy Chase descended from mount Sinai with the Ten Commandments given to him by the Omnipotent Homeowners' Association... on second thought, it is a fairly long and tedious story...

Michael C. was a lawyer. And so was Michael B. Mark D. used to be a practicing lawyer, but fell out of practice. When our story took place he was teaching something obscure at College Park, poisoning young though inflexible minds with his philosophizing. A smallish, sallow man, he looked very much like that wee, slinky Judas figure from that much praised triple-portion movie that came out in increments recently... You know, the one made after a saccharine epic written by some English pansy linguist. Mark D. was a kind old man who hated children. It was a good thing then that his daughter shared his sentiment. They went along peachily. At the time Dolores A. (she took her famous husband's family name) was a district attorney for the Burns County. She visited her father fairly often and they would sit in the yard and talk at length about anarchy and plutocracy, both of which reigned at the time (former de jure, latter de facto). Lola's mother had died a horrible death a few decades earlier stricken by a severe case of dyslexia. How does one die from dyslexia? you may wonder. Suffice it to say that euthanasia was somehow involved. Nobody likes to talk about it.

Michael B. always had a crick in his neck from compulsively grooming his lawn. Because of constant neck pain his eyes bulged and he ground his teeth. He owned eight hundred dollars worth of novelty pruning scissors. He once walked into a plant nursery and asked where he could hire a plant nurse to hand him utensils while he operated. Pretty much everyone who knew him or knew of him considered him a man of renaissance, a genius (our Michael B. is indeed the one and the same Solicitor General Michael B. who held three successive U.S. Attorneys' General by their balls, firmly). He was a marvelous lawyer with a great deal of contempt for the law, a prodigious gardener who chose to sell his soul so that he may - albeit figuratively - clutch other people's testicles.

Michael C. was a tall, square-jawed, noble-looking man of flowing dark hair that enchanted many a kind maiden - too bad he was completely evil. Evil even by lax lawyer standards. Eviler still than that vile Dixiecrat Thomas Jefferson. Once he killed a man in cold blood and justified it as a freak racquetball accident. He escaped the state only to come back shortly after the Pope pardoned him. Or something. I never was a stickler for the intricate workings of the law. He had a decapitation fixation, feared slingshots and flying pebbles. Michael C. also hated both his neighbors. And, like I said, he killed a man - all true - but the Crime he was planning to commit on that hot summer day (when water was strictly rationed and when our story begun) would eclipse all this, several times over.

...

I somehow figured that what I was about to read would be tedious and suck, but it wasn't. It held me by the testicles.

Ditto. About the first sentence that is. Nothing does the latter to me...atleast nothing non-tangible... :o

You do realize how vulnerable you are by inviting critique? Please understand this is not an attack on you personally. Your technique of speaking familiarly with your reader is a good one to draw your reader in, but then you lecture indirectly, eg, "authentic faux brick siding" and "genuine simulated wood shingles", pointing out pretentiously their materialistic exhibitions. Though the oxymorons are commonly used in advertising, they distance you the narrator from your characters in a very snotty manner. You are more forgiving with Mark, though less descriptive, of his black house, and yard gone to wild growth, in an otherwise traditional neighborhood of manicured lawns. This shows further your disdain for the "home in the burbs, 2 cars in the garage, 2.3 kids, all attending soccer, kung fu, and gymnastics". While you as author/narrator are free to express your own opinion, you might want to think about all who you will alienate from your rebellious stance. Then again, I don't know who your potential audience will be. Perhaps the traditional is so loathsome to you, that it doesn't matter. If this is the opening to a book, you may want to suck your readers in a bit more before espousing your views so openly. If it is to be a short story, then of course your picture must be painted earlier and with more clarity.

BTW I am not a teacher or literary critic - merely a voracious reader. These are just my opinions, and again, not an attack. Heed or ignore as you wish.

FGM

I will ignore Kode because what he said means nothing, but I will not ignore you because you have something to say, regardless of the fact that you have no diploma in literature or history of deconstructionism. Indeed all that you read from the piece is intended, although I hold all three characters in high esteem or at worst am ambivalent towards. It is merely the neighborhood that I dislike. Chevy Chase is a freakily snobbish place.

Your disclaimers are superficial, though. It is highly unlikely that you will express anything but your opinion, and being no stranger to critique, positive or negative, I do know how to distinguish between personal attacks and criticism of my work. It is a short story and this is merely a first draft.

Seems intriguing. Some very good description included in the very early parts, but I'd like to see more before I say anything more.

Keep us updated.

The paragraphs are so long that I suspect it's boring. I'll read it when I'm bored.

...And I love you too :)

Either way, sorry for interrupting so pointlessly. :sad:

I liked it! :) I think it's a good thing it's a short story, because I daren't guess how long you'd be able to keep up all that witticism, the wonderous anecdotes and the quite heavy style. It was a tough piece to read (tough as in: it usurps a lot of energy through its narrative style), but very well worth it! It's comedy in a different way than Pratchett or Adams, which is good for all its originality.

What do you mean long? All the paragraphs are two sentences long.... oh... I see...

I think I agree with Fairygdmther, she has some very good points. I especially agree that it comes across to the reader as being somewhat pretentious in it's negative take on the suburban lifestyle. While you're obviously welcome to your opinions, I think you risk alienating your reader by expressing them in a manner that comes across as too disdainful. For example, the use of Nice as if it were a dirty word works well at first but it's used so much that I eventually felt the humour was replaced by fatigue and a feeling that the reader is being told off for ever having thought nice is acceptable. I don't know if this is a good way of expressing it but when I'm reading I like to feel I'm in on the joke rather than being laughed at.

I liked the absurd style of humour alot though; for example "Michael B. always had a crick in his neck from compulsively grooming his lawn. Because of constant neck pain his eyes bulged and he ground his teeth.". Thats a real gift of yours Kingz and you demonstrate it well in this writing.

All in all I'd probably keep on reading but if I felt I was being preached at or told off for not agreeing with your take I'd probably stop. It's not the content of that message, it's just how it's being expressed.

Ok, only one was really long. Well, I read it now. Sometimes long paragraphs indicate that the author is babbling about one thing too much. Well, this wasn't the case. It wasn't boring at all.

I partly agree with Dom and Fairygdmthr. A few more pages and you could alienate a lot of readers. In the worst case scenario, by the end of the story you would just be preaching to the choir, sort of.

"A smallish, sallow man, he looked very much like that wee, slinky Judas figure from that much praised triple-portion movie that came out in increments recently... You know, the one made after a saccharine epic written by some English pansy linguist"

This felt completely unrelated for example and directed my attention away from your story.

Oh, she's so nice.
Now, isn't that nice!
How nice of you to say that!

I hate the word 'nice' it is such a flimsy word. It really means nothing. I guess I kill it completely through repetition... or perhaps I want it to ring in people's ears?

I guess I am disdainful towards suburban life because it seems so artificial to me - no less artificial though than the life of people who live in remodeled churches or warehouses in inner cities. My snobbish disgust is bred of personal experience. I am making as much fun of other people as I am of myself. And why is ridicule bad? Writing has to be pretty bland to be agreeable to everybody.

*scribbles a note* http://www.classicgaming.com/cc314/e...nemyk6-bip.gif Check.

I absolutely found it underhandedly acerbic, scathing, soap-box-hoarding, disdainful, and merciless. I want more. Adding to Fairygdmther's criticism, it's this kind of severity that discomforts some 'sensitive' minds, for better or worse. So what? Why should you appease just one type of demographic? That you may be distancing a particular audience has more to do with their self-perceptions and decisions rather than what you present to them. There are other audiences that would appreciate this kind of parable, even if it is spiced to render it unpalatable in places. Pragmatically, you can't be both a good [fiction] writer and an apologist at the same time.

This is why I love writers like Florence King, Dorothy Parker, and Fran Leibowitz.

And Dom, nice is a dirty word, one of the best. I never use it unless I need something particularly penetrating on someone: "Oh, that's.....nice." It's brilliantly wicked.

This is what I want to say, except that Intrepid put it in a more eloquent way so I'm using his words instead. :D

I agree with you, ridicule is a good weapon for a writer and it works well. I just felt that you were loosing the humour a little and leaning towards vitriol (though thats probably too strong a word, I just can't think of anything better). I do agree with intrepid, you shouldn't pander to your readers sensibilities, but equally it's a wasted oppertunity if, instead of encouraging your readers to see your take on things, you alienate them. I think it'd be a shame.

Maybe I'm just talking rubbish, I don't know. Anyway it's just my opinion, and it wouldn't stop me personally reading the rest. Overall I liked it, it is very funny and I'm glad you shared it with us. It was nice.