Ain't ya, kid

why not

Well, I read it all. Well, I mostly skimmed it.

You've got a great voice. You're really in there with the attitude and annoyances.

But you're severely lacking in the Interesting Category. Y'know when you're with a group of friends and a bunch of them are reminded of an inside joke? And they just go on with it? And on and on? And it's funny to all of them but to you, the eavesdropper, it's just a bunch of words that you can only imagine being funny or interesting?

That's kind of how it was to read these 9,000 characters. There was no conflict. Your narrator isn't even conflicted with her pointless lifestyle. Once or twice another character says something that hints at what should be the conflict, but it's never actually a conflict. That's the heart of a story: conflict. When someone wants to achieve something but meets obstacles. However, in this story, no one wants to achieve anything. (the most gripping conflict, I suppose, was whether or not she would finish peeing before passing out).

It's as if this girl has a running diary in her head...and honestly, most diaries aren't that interesting. Because a typical life isn't interesting. If the reader wanted to learn about a typical life, they would just go outside and do it (in that sense, I guess you made it "real", as you wanted). So there you have it...a whopper of a critique: Make it interesting.

Also, tone down your narration.

I use my arms to push myself up off the couch

Lines like that are just really silly to read. You would think arms are the first choice to use to push things. Unless you have something deviant to say, like "I use my face to push" or "I use my pogo stick to push", then don't bother saying it. The same rule applies to several other instances (such as "I find a black bra of mine"...whose else would it be? Gabe's? or telling us in such awkward, wordy language how she makes her screwdriver drink).

I found myself completely skipping the people watching scene. Scenes like that are used to define a character further. How she views the world. But because we've already been hanging with the character for so long (waking up, drinking OJ, driving in the car, sipping drinks), we really don't need to know her any better.

And also the use of present tense. The convention is past tense. Authors tend to save breaking the convention for special occasions when it is important and conveys a purpose. For example, writers use present tense to add urgency, immediacy, excitement. The use of present tense here, though, is stopped short by the lack of anything interesting going on.

So. That's about it. The voice is great, you've got a good handle on your main character (though we don't know much of anything about any other character), but you've got to put them in a good story.

Lemme know if you have any questions.

You're right, this does read easily. Nevertheless, I'd recommend breaking it up a little, because it was quite long.

I think your characters--especially Mina and your MC--were excellent. They were so real, and so honest. You did a great job using their reactions to their circumstances to develop them. The dialogue was also well-used.

I'd suggest toning down the swearing a little, though. You overuse it and the reader starts to grow desensitized to it. Swearing can be a great way to bring a character to life, but too much starts to distract from the story and irritates the reader.

Actually, I think if you gave your main character a little more drive, you could make this into a novel where she learns to make something out of her life. In fact, when she and her boyfriend talked about going to Oregon, I thought, Hmm, that would be interesting. That's actually a really good idea--you could shake things up for your MC a little.

Which reminds me of something else I wanted to say. Her relationship with her boyfriend was kind of fuzzy. Is she bored with him? Happy? It seems he cares about her in a critical way, but how does that make her feel? I actually think she had more reactions to Damon than she did to Gabe.

Other than those few things, though, this was really well written. I loved your characters; they were very human. You also did a great job of not rushing the action or the story, which a lot of people do. That combined with excellent grammar and punctuation made your writing flow very well. Great job.

I do not believe the length of this piece should be held against you, but rather I take the approach that it is a testament to your commitment towards developing your writing. Overall "Ain't ya, kid" had fantastic personality.

I need to get out of here. I go back to the bedroom and find a pair of my pink leggings on the floor. I put them on, and after deliberating, I go back through the piles of clothing until I find a black bra of mine and put it on too. Gabe’s shirt is so damn big on me that I don’t even need to take it off to do so.

This excerpt exemplifies that personality which is not only unbridled but courageous at times.

“You’re just a tragic little bitch, ain’t ya, kid?” he asks, grinning.

They all fucking have to call me kid. Even Gabe - he was the one who started it. It’s such bullshit, I’m not even that much younger than any of them.

“Don’t talk to me like that, dick.”

You do use a lot of swearing, but again I factor that towards raw personality and have frankly heard worse on cable television.

One aspect of your writing which I really enjoy, is your ability to place a small paragraph after a large one.

The air is real hot too. Everything’s hot.

These two small sentences are equipped with a lot of meaning, especially being placed after a longer paragraph. They reinforce certain senses your character(s) feel.

Even in longer paragraphs your short, snappy, sentences are like metaphorical balls of flavour and attitude that burst in the reader's mind.

I sense a Bob Marley connection in the conclusion of this submission where you write, "One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain."

Overall very well written. Keep on writing.

Sincerely,
Elitehusky (Writing Name)

Thank you, one and all, for the awesome reviews. Seriously.

I feel like I need to explain a bit, especially after sargsauce's review. This is Em's story:

Grew up in a lower-middle-class area of San Diego County. Her father died when she was five, around at which point her mother stopped caring about her and her older brother. So her mother was basically never there, and she and her older brother (David) raised themselves/David raised her. David and she were both extremely hard workers as they grew up - David really pushed her and motivated her to get straight-As, excellence in athletics/extracurriculars, the whole nine yards. And he did the same. They were extremely close; they were the cliche all-each-other-had, besides their friends. He was three years older, and he got into a top-notch school on the other side of the country. So he left her back home for her last three years of high school, but they still stayed just as close and he continued to make sure she kept her drive with the grades and everything. She did party and have a life in high school and everything, but she always maintained extreme control. She got into USC and they paid most of the way. Her first year was fine, though things started to change. She and her brother were no longer as close. She continued to work hard, but mostly out of habit - it was a strange feeling for her, because she had already succeeded, in a way. She worked hard all her life to get into a good school, and then she did. Her first summer after college she moved back home, as do almost all college freshman. Except that there was no real home to return to; the situation with her mother had come to that. So she stayed with friends. Sophomore year, back at school, things fell apart. The spoiled, petty kids at her school had started getting to her, she partied a lot more and kind of lost herself in that way, and mostly she had just lost all drive and purpose. So then, blah blah blah, here comes the piece written above.

I explain that because in my head, there is a story. It's just all between the lines. Em wouldn't be like "My daddy died when I was five, my mommy never cared about me, the only person I'm legitimately close to in this world is now barely in my life, I don't have a home anymore, I no longer see the point in anything, and now I'm completely self-destructing." She would just be like "The air's hot. Everything's bright. I feel like shit. I hate people. The air's hot." Lol. I mean, I know there was completely no way for you guys to know all this, save for a few minor hints here and there, but I want to explain.

Also, the piece was supposed to represent a kind of Conrad-ian existentialism. Not that I set out like "hm, I think I'll write a story to depict some good Conrad-ian existentialism," it just happened subconsciously because that was Em's frame of mind and thus it also was my frame of mind when I was writing it. And true to the core of existentialism, nothing was really supposed to happen; I didn't want anything to. (What I'm calling "Conrad-ian existentialism" is just the concept Conrad advocates in Heart of Darkness: that there is, truly, no real point or greater purpose behind anything, but you have a duty to your fellow man to continue playing your role in the world, regardless).

I'm sorry; I'm not trying to defend my story like "if you see it how I see it you'll realize it's quite good." Because I don't think it's that good. I just want to, like, explain the thought-process and stuff behind it, if you know what I mean.

Hey Attolia -

Long time, no read for sure. Firstly, I want to say that I love experimentation in style and voice - I think it's important to be reasonably flexible with one's writing, and so I appreciate the fact that you are branching out, exploring a different side of your personality, or just a different voice and world view. It interests me here that the tone is so different to anything I've ever read by you before - and as you know, I've read just about everything you have posted on YWS. Also, I am well aware of the fact that (a) not all stories - especially short stories - need to have an easily discernible plot and that (b) the type of character and situation here calls for a great degree of cooperation on the part of the reader to accept the relative plotlessness and pointlessness.

Even so, there is much room for improvement. I don't think I can critique this in an ordered fashion, so bear with my haphazardness.

Firstly, I think it'd be appropriate to start of with my first impressions. Yes, I had to print it out to read it all the way to the end (staring at a screen for that long makes my head hurt), and secondly, I had to make myself read it all the way to the end. I am going to ask myself the question: why was this reading forced? And secondly, at what point did you lose me and would have lost me irrevocably had I not persevered (for your sake, so that I could critique this properly)? One major problem I had with this - and I mentioned this to you already - was the overuse of swearing and the simultaneous lack of remotely interesting vocabulary. It's not just something as simple as a language thing, though, so I'll break it down for you: repeated and frequent vocab (i.e. 'fuck' repeated 38 times, 'shit' repeated 33 times, 'bitch' 14 times, 'damn' 19 times, 'hell' 14 times) makes the story weaker - not stronger - because it makes you as the writer come across as if you do not know what else to say, as if you're just hunting around for words to describe it. I mean, sure, if you want to convey a sense of blackness to the mood and her overall perception of life, do swear - but we are intelligent readers and we really do not need to have this degree of cussing to click with the idea that our MC is so over life.

Secondly - and this ties in with what I said above - the character, which obviously ties in with the plot. Sarg pointed out an issue in the 'interesting category' and a lack of conflict. Let me elaborate on this: a story is meant to be read. Reading - as in, having one's eyes slur over the lines and perceving reality through an MC - is by default meant to be a fluid process. Fluidity - or rather, flow is necessary to keep the reader reading. Fluidity is what makes your story be read. Fluidity is change, it is differentiating your MC or plot in such a way so as to make it seem different from others, it is not wallowing in stagnancy, it is called originality. Something I know that you are perfectly well aware of. So...we either need a character that changes, a plot that changes, or a changing perception of a stagnant plot. You with me? And here, Em undergoes no change, the plot is...well...slice-of-life, and her perception of the plot - the only thing that could possibly lift this out of its greyness right now - is unchanging.

This is what I am essentially reading: I wake up, I feel like crap. The apartment's crap, I still feel like shit, I go outside and that's fucking boring too, I go to Mina's (getting a bit interesting here), I hand over the package and Conor Morse is an asshole, Starbucks sucks, insecure people are fucking annoying, I'm screwed over, the drive back sucks, America's Next Top Model is bullshit, I feel like shit from all the drinking, Gabe is fucking annoying me, I go to the bathroom cos I feel like crap (running out of appropriate negative words here) etc etc etc etc.

Essentially, from a stylistic point of view, your MC's perception of reality hardly changes throughout the piece. Life sucks, end of story. That's the best summary of this piece I can do so far. There's no joy to life - there's not even any degrees of hatred to life - it's just a straight black-hard hatred. What's the reader supposed to get from this, exactly, that they can't get from the summary I've just give above? The experience? I hardly think so. I understand that this is the futile kind of existentialist view you are trying to purport, HOWEVER: life does not operate under a single world view. We follow many different micro world views in our microenvironments. Even if people are, on the whole and from the outside, pretty negative about it, creating a shallow, flat, two-dimensional character that really has the capacity for one emotion only - hatred/bitterness/sarcasm/whatever - does nothing for the story. Reading literature is multidimensional experience, and characters should invariably resemble their human counterparts. There must be some changes to the way they think throughout the piece: surely Em's internal dialogue is not just a string of swear words, surely there is something deeper to her reality?

I am not even certain this piece is able to be repaired. Stopping cussing every line would certainly help, but it won't remove the fact that her perception of life is the same. And the ending! It was a shocker of an ending - only serving to concrete the mediocrity of the writing, with the 'this-is-my-life-and-next-day-it-won't-change' either kind of idea. Where's the hope? Where's the thing that makes us all so human - the conflict of values, the conflict of world views, the presence of multiple world views to provide this conflict, the hints ot something greater, the hope alongside our weaknesses laid bare? Surely people as lost as this must - even if for the briefest moment - think of something better, a way out, as it were; surely they must dream of some sort of release, or consider it as a passing thought? For that is something that distinguishes us from many other species: the capacity to imagine. We can imagine heaven even in the worst possible kinds of hell; it's innate, this ability to conjure up alternate realities; without it we would lose the essence of what makes us human. And that's the nature of the unbelievability of this piece - not only the unchangingness, but also the lack of hints that change is even possible; by which I mean internal changes, rather than changes in external situations (like going back to uni / to Mexico etc).

And so. I will not conclude this as such, if only to say that you should feel free to PM me so we can discuss this further.


Navita

Hahahahahahah. I know we've already talked about this, but - first of all, I'm sorry again to have made you go through all that. And second of all, thank you! Don't think I thanked you yet. And remember! This was a practice round. My next one will mold the actual semi-decent writing of earlier stories with the un-inhibtion-ness (don't make fun of me I couldn't find the right word) of this one!