Young Writers Society

A twenty landed on the pile of bills before me. At my right, Daniel Aulone pushed his palms against the rim of the table and leaned back in his chair.

“Your call, Miles,” he said.

His words were the first spoken in over an hour. A lot of heat had come off the last hand. Between Daniel and I, it had been close. Only a difference of four points. We had played the kind of spades where it didn’t matter if you were in 3rd or 4th place, as long as you could spectate.

I reached over to shake his hand.

“Good game, buddy,” he said, without looking up from the table. “Good game, guys.”

By then, a couple more bills were on the deck. Some refilled their glasses and lit another butt. Daniel, who had drowned three Millers before we started, opened a fourth. He took a long draw from his butt, and the sickly sweet scent of tobacco filled the air.

“Your call, Miles,” he said again, this time between heavy breaths.

Across from me, a guy with crisp ash blond hair and teal eyes laid out an ace. The game began.

“Lay off, Danny,” he said. “Try closing this one up and starting dry.”

It wasn’t that he had lost. Daniel could take a loss. Games didn’t get to him the way it did some of the other guys.


* * * * * *

My main concern is that I might not be showing enough emotion and reaction from the main character's point of view. What do you guys think?


Mod: Double-post - original here

Hey! Just to let you know, I've moved this to General Fiction, since this is where we put things for reviews! Fiction Discussion is more to do with generic discussion about pre-existing literary texts.

Now, of course, I feel obliged to review!

It's incredibly difficult to judge an opening without understanding how the story itself is to develop. There's no precise, scientific route to constructing a given story or, in this case, extract; don't feel you need certain ingredients and then worry when you feel that the amounts are slightly off target - if that makes sense. Instead, rather than asking whether there's enough representation of the focal viewpoint, or enough description, or imagery, or dialogue, or whatever, far more effective is to reread it and see whether it has achieved what you want it to. Don't get bogged down in tiny extracts. So here's what I, an average reader on first reading, am taking from this:

A group of friends are playing poker (? or some card game). Miles has little interest in anyone except Daniel (other characters comprise some anonymous "guy" and nondescript figures, none of which are yet relevant). Miles isn't too worried about his own position in the game, since he's been pretty narrative about the "twenty" and has no opinion on the game itself.

So, looking back, I think you're right. How Miles might respond under the pressure of a poker game might tell a lot about his character. I'd like some implicit character description, then (is he trying to control his breathing? is he tired by the game?) and maybe a little less on Daniel (the fact that his surname is mentioned right away gives the impression of a rushed third-person narration rather than controlled first-person).

I hope I've helped a little! Sorry to seem ranty, but honestly, you need to write a lot more of the opening scene in the same way (I really like how you describe things - great atmospheric development!) and then look back. See whether you're getting out of it what you wanted to put in.

-Mark

Well, as far as the emotion goes - if Miles is the kind of cool, "poker-face," veteran poker player who is either playing for the fun of it, has won so many times he knows he's not going to lose this time, or is so rich he doesn't care about losing a little money, then I think the amount of emotion in this is just right. I mean, I think for a poker game emotion ought not to be overdone unless the character playing is sweating it out because he HAS to win because he's broke/because he's in some sort of life-or-death-007 situation/whatever. In that case a ton of emotion is fine, but if you went crazy with the emotion in this situation (at least as it is so far), I would be rolling my eyes going, "It's just a stupid card game!"

As far as Daniel's emotion goes - he's not showing a lot of emotion, but he needs a cigarette and yet another drink. Which, sure, is probably at least partly just his character, but it could also be a sign of nerves. As could the leaning back in his chair. Trying to play it cool, maybe, while really getting a bit nervous. So you have to decide if that's what you want, and then that will be a nice little bit of emotion without being overdone (no sweat dripping down his face, no look of dread, etc and whatever).

Otherwise, I think this is pretty good - you drop us in the middle of the action but let us know what's going on (namely, a game of poker). Actually my only complaint is the guy with teal eyes, because I read that and was like, "Teal eyes? Wtf?" I'd just make them blue or even say blue-green, if you HAVE to have blue-green eyes. Teal was just an odd choice of word for eyes, because no one says "teal" eyes, they say blue eyes or blue-green eyes or blue-grey eyes or whatnot.

So, hope this helped!

~Blue