(Untitled)

[littlemochatree]

Title: Dancing the "Scorpion-Pants" Dance
Status: Applicant
Summary: A little bit of history. Unfinished.
Genre: Narrative fiction? Let's say it's in the question mark genre for now.
Word Count: 902

Comments

...

[fallen_scholar]

It is not "complete crap." It is, however, unfinished. Beyond that, it's a piece of backstory, and a first-person character study does not fiction make.

Normally, I'd give this a lighting speed "no" based on those reasons. And it might only be the insomnia making me slap-happy, but I really like the voice to the piece. It has the right sort of wicked charm. The first paragraph needs rethinking and the second needs to be tossed, and the payoff of the final paragraph is lackluster, but that middle captures...something, some sense for vivacity. Character shines through much stronger than it generally does in something of the same ilk.

So this puts me in the bind. There's no substance to found a 'Yes' vote on, but my reaction to the work is a total 180 from the typical revulsion I typically think I feel when I've read applications that make the same mistake...so much so that I'm still trying to figure out how you did what you did there and why I think it sings.

So, consider it abstention with comment.

Re: ...

[littlemochatree]

it was black magic, pure and simple.

i am as happy with a "not-crap" as i am with a "yes" vote.

[fallen_scholar]

Looking over the other comments, there's the answer:

huh. what do you know. my life is stranger than poorly written, half-finished fiction. you have no idea how surreal that is. now i am left wondering if it's all just too bizarre to translate into fiction...cause this ain't even half of it.

Drop the fiction business and go into that woefully awkwardly labeled world of creative non-fiction. Not-me doesn't become you. But it has that certain level of audibility...I mean, I think that what struck me was that I was so impressed that you'd captured the way a good, lengthy storyteller talks. But if you can do that, then just do that, and don't mess with other genres.

[somerled]

Born in 1923, the father would have been 19 when the USA joined WWII. Especially considering at the time school was only mandatory until Grade 8, the father wouldn't have been an "orphan boy" or need to drop out of high school. How can you have him and siblings live on a farm yet near starvation and unable to find work for an adolescent male

oh dear. i guess i should have given some context.

[littlemochatree]

okay. first and foremost, thank you for reading the submission and also for the encouragement. i appreciate it.

that said, replying to this comment is like a hundred painfully awkward explanations that i've had to give over the years, all packed together in one.

well, it really is my fault, though, because in all the ways i predicted someone would rip this apart (line edits, the lack of story--hell, even the smugness of the narrator), it really didn't occur to me that it would be because of this--although in retrospect i really, really wish it had.

this fragment of a story is basically transcription. i mean, just blatant. i didn't even change the names. and i am a twenty-year-old someone who has a dad who would have been 84, had he not died when i was six. and this is what i had to say about it...the beginning of what i had to say, at least. of course, maybe there aren't scorpions in hawaii...i was only four or five at the time. my memory could be misleading

Re: oh dear. i guess i should have given some context.

[somerled]

My instinct would be to have the narrator say her father is dead. Since her father's father dies early in his life, there is already a parallel and therefore an opportunity (a) for the narrator to establish a family tradition/mythology of fatherlessness, and (b) for the narrator to indulge in a little dark humor. The narrator's style jibes with both. Doing this towards the top contributes to the urgency and inevitability of the story-urgent in the sense of it being obvious why the story is important to the narrator and inevitable in the sense of it being obvious why the narrator has to tell it in the exact way she does

Re: oh dear. i guess i should have given some context.

[littlemochatree]

you are a genius. and i cannot thank you enough.

experience of being 30? i think there was confusion in the wording of that sentence...i don't think it came off quite as i intended. it probably should have read something like, "i expected to be blah blah blah blah, but there's time left. whew. before I know it, i'll be thirty and blah blah." anyway. it doesn't matter.

Rejected

[somerled]

But we mean it in the nicest possible way.