Rainbow (edited, revised AGAIN)

I often find that, in my eager attempts to be descriptive, my wording becomes very heavy. Criticism is smiled upon!

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What a state of paranoia Betsy could throw herself into at times! She complained via text messaging to her bevy of friends about the lack of decent tanning weather; perhaps her homeliness would magically fade away if she at least made her skin look a little bit healthier. God knows her mother's skin wasn't healthy in the least -- maybe the daughter could make up for what her mother didn't have. As her fingers chattered away, she leaned a bit harder against the side of the brick building to lessen the globs of acid rain forming on her screen.

Her mother sat in the barber shop, on the opposite side of the wall. In spite of the wet sheets falling from the sky, the girl wouldn't deign to be seen assisting her mother on a trip to get her hair cut. It didn't matter how ill her mother was; Betsy couldn't let the truth that she wasn't allowed to be home alone spread.

But her mother’s hair was getting more than cut; it was getting shaved. She had always cut her own hair, but she didn't have any shears around the house. The chemotherapy was getting the best of her, and she didn't want to have to contend with clumps of dead protein stuck beneath her pillow any longer. It wasn't the shave itself that bothered her -- she hated the knotted brown clump, and had been planning to cut it for years -- it was just the circumstance by which it was stolen from her.

The barber’s feelings were rather down, this being the third shave he'd given to a woman that month. A bright pink crossed ribbon clung to the window of his shop, portraying his vain hopes that the breast cancer rate would cease, along with -- even in the failing economy -- his income of hair-shaving money.

Finally, the girl outside proved to have reason for her move to be apart from her slowly dying mother. A grinning boy with a Mediterranean complexion came forward on his skateboard. The girl, being a literary maniac, can't help but think of his resemblance to the Cheshire Cat. Ah, but teenagers are fickle. At closer sight of the girl (still spilling letters onto the screen at a mile a minute), some inner disgust overcame him -- for reasons only a fellow capricious boy can diven -- and he began to scoot away without as much as a word of acknowledgement.

The girl, reasonably offended, glanced (fingers still going) at his descending silhouette, a sneer of disgust forming on her upper lip. Before she could shout after him with a word of reproach, a sight unfolded before them both.

The barber dropped the buzzing shears to his side, and a smile developed on the mother’s face. The boy's skateboard wheels slowed their churning to a halt, and the girl’s twitching painted nails suddenly stopped flailing. The woes of the world were pushed aside for a moment as a double-rainbow faded into the sight of four preoccupied minds.

I like your premise with this little piece, but I think you've correctly identified your main problem in your introduction: some of your sentences are very clumsily worded and generally, there's no fluidity in the writing. I'll go through paragraph by paragraph and do some nitpicking, and follow up with some other suggestions. I've not seen the original, if it's about, though.

NB (please read): I think I was quite harsh in this review, so don't be disheartened by the comments. I'm sure you understand that I'm just trying to help you to improve, but I'm the last to say that accepting criticism is easy, so if you leave it a few hours and some of what I've said still feels unjust or my point doesn't make sense, please PM me.

The teenager on the corner (lip gloss #FF0000 ">terribly misapplied This sounds very odd. Try "badly applied", or fiddle around with some synonyms. Definitely take out "misapplied", though, as it doesn't seem to fit here with "terribly". It's almost like a double negative. Furthermore, why is this in brackets if it's to crop up so readily later on?) is in a state of paranoia, complaining via text messaging to her bevy Yeah, I see what you mean here about unnecessarily stretching your vocabulary. I'd look for a simpler word, such as "crowd", even if it seems too basic. of friends about the lack of decent tanning weather. As her fingers chatter away, she leans a bit harder against the side of the brick building to lessen the globs of acid dew What exactly does the phrase "acid dew" mean? Do you mean "acidic dew"? I'm not sure how the dew would act as an acid... forming on her screen.

I'm not keen on your first sentence here. I immediately dislike your MC. She seems shallow, or worse, just a stereotypical teenager as seen in the news. I wouldn't rely so heavily on the teenage stereotype and have your character texting, talking about tanning, wearing lip gloss, and seeming universally popular, all in the same paragraph. One or two of these are fine, but you overdo it here and I'd take it out. It's unfortunate because the image of the girl against the wall is quite well drawn and I love the description of the screen. It only needs some tweaking for it to be a very strong description.

Her mother's in the barber shop, on the opposite side of the wall. In spite of the wet sheets falling from the sky This is very pretty, and it didn't require you to scour the thesaurus first. More images like this would vastly improve the piece., the girl won’t deign to be seen, by chance, assisting her mother on a trip to get a hair cut.

But the I'd stick with "her". mother’s hair is getting more than cut; it’s getting shaved. I'm unsure about the use of "getting" here. It's clumsy. If you can reword this sentence without using it, do so. She had always cut her own hair, but she doesn't have any shears around the house. The different tenses clash, so I'd reword again. The chemotherapy is getting to her, and she doesn’t want to have to contend with clumps of greasy dead protein stuck beneath her pillow any longer. I'm not sure what you're aiming to achieve with this. I'd follow more on the emotional side of things rather than go for such a graphic description. The reader isn't hit with the severity of the girl's mother's condition, but more with the slightly sickening nature of this sentence... I don't think it brings home the issue in quite the way you intended.

Again, I find your MC shallow, particularly since you juxtapose the fairly reasonable wish not to be seen with her mother with the revelation that her mother has cancer, which should be the genuinely harrowing focus of the piece. Call me naïve, but my first reaction is to be shocked at your MC for not supporting her mother in this, especially as it seems to be the first time this has happened (i.e. that she's been to the barber's in this manner). There's nothing wrong with having a flawed main character, but I have to find something to like in her if I want to read on. At the moment, there's nothing, and I'm put off simply by this character's arrogance.

The barber’s feelings are rather down, this being the third shave he has given to a woman this month. He has a bright pink crossed ribbon stuck to the window of his shop, #FF0000 ">portraying his vain hopes that the breast cancer rate would cease, along with -- even in the failing economy -- his income of hair-shaving money. This whole sentence is incredibly awkward. The reference to money is unnecessary and actually makes the barber seem more uncaring, so take that out. I think that you should put a full stop after "shop" and go on to a new sentence. "He hopes that this woman will be the last to fix him with sad eyes that have seen too much, and sit silently as her locks fall like feathers to the floor, but he knows otherwise." Or something similar; that's honestly just a suggestion of the kind of sentence I had in mind. I think you could come up with something a lot more fitting.

Finally, the girl outside proves to have reason for her move to get away from her slowly dying mother. A grinning boy with a Mediterranean complexion comes forward on his skateboard. The girl can't help but think of his resemblance of Louis Carroll's to Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat. I'm not sure it's even necessary to name Lewis Carroll. The Cheshire Cat is pretty well known, after all, and for this simile to work you're assuming the reader knows of it anyway. However, the boy, at closer sight of the girl Try "on closer inspection". (still spilling letters onto the minuscule screen at a mile a minute) and her sloppy job of putting on lip gloss, revulsion overcomes him, and he begins to scoot away without as much as a word of farewell.

Your style is very inflexible for a modern piece. This isn't an essay; be a bit more adventurous with your style and take it out of that fixed, stale formality which is stilting the flow. I'm lost as to why this girl's lip gloss would cause "revulsion". It seems like a bit of an overreaction, and the boy appears to be quite arrogant. Your characters have to be likeable and have some redeeming features - it's usually the other way around that this problem occurs, but it's still an issue here. Plus, much of this seems unintentional. Try to think about some more realistic reactions.

The girl is rather offended at this, and glances (fingers still going) at his descending silhouette Descending? Is he going down a hill? It's probably the wrong word, and "disappearing figure" might work better., a sneer of disgust forming on her upper lip, making the lip gloss look even worse. Here, I feel like I can see that you're openly criticising your character, as opposed to before, where she just genuinely seems awful and you don't seem aware of it. Before she can shout after him with a word of reproach, a sight unfolds before them both. This is also awkward. I'd leave it at, "She turns to shout after him with a word of reproach." Lead into the next paragraph with a linking phrase.

The skateboard grinds to a halt, as its rider realizes the lip gloss wasn't so bad. This doesn't feel like a great revelation to me. I was lost as to why he was repulsed and this just seems like a return to his senses. The girl's twitching nails suddenly stop flailing when she realizes the cause of the skateboarder's stop. Again, awkward. How does she realise that, anyway? I would rephrase. The barber holds the buzzing shears at his side, and a smile develops over on the mother’s face. The woes of the world are pushed aside for a moment as a double-rainbow fades into the sight You can't really "fade into" something. Another word, perhaps? I think "drifts" might work. of four preoccupied minds. The sight of minds? I don't think you mean that, so again, I'd reword.

I haven't much to say on the ending, only that it seems a bit rushed and I don't really get the emotion or the wonder at this "sight". There's still nothing endearing about any of the main characters, nor do any of them feel real enough for me to care about them enough to appreciate this happy ending. In fact, it doesn't even feel like a happy ending, because it doesn't address or redeem the flaws we've seen earlier.

I think you should primarily consider your characters and your wording in this piece. Some of your images are unique and work well, but most are dragged down by the confusing sentence structure. I'd recommend that you read your piece aloud and work around the areas where you stumble or feel that you're struggling to convey meaning. Character-wise, I've covered most of what I wanted to say. I'd finish by adding that even in as short a piece as this, it's possible to give a sense of character, and in fact is usually necessary, especially when you're dealing with such an emotional topic. I'll leave it at that, and just reiterate my NB at the top.

Feel free to PM me at any time if you have any questions and I'll get back to you in the next day or two. I was aiming to be helpful with this review, and as always my points are only suggestions and you don't have to follow any of them through. If you decide to do so, I wish you luck with editing.

- Jet.

Hey, Abigail!

I thought that the idea behind this story was wonderful--I've been in that barber chair before. (Not the one with the cancer; just the friend.) It's a really subtle way to raise awareness, as well as to inform people about the not-so-fun parts of cancer without beating them over the head with a stack of bumper stickers.

I'm enough of a creeper that I read a few of the other pieces in your portfolio to get a second opinion (what's a second opinion of your own opinion? a first and half opinion?) about your writing style. You mentioned at the beginning that you worry you sound "heavy"--I'm here to tell you that you're right. You sound like you're eighty years old. That's okay. Truman Capote wrote like an old fart when he was in his twenties. However, Capote's voice was, in its own way, completely bizarre and original.

That's not to say you're a plagiarist. I don't mean that at all. I mean that, when I read your writing, I pick up on what you're probably reading--maybe a little Austen? a little Wilde? a little Carrol?--and it's enough of a smack in the face for me to sit back and think about where I'd heard that syntax/wording/phrasing before. The 19th century. This wouldn't be a problem if you were writing a bodice ripper, or witty social commentary for Punch Magazine, circa 1870. However, when you write about day-to-day experiences, it's a little unsettling. The effect is that of the grown-up children in the movie Airplane!. You may actually like your coffee black, but it's very difficult for the viewers/readers/whatever to digest.

I'm totally guilty of this--I went through a phase where everything I wrote sounded like a translation of Dostoyevsky, because that's what I was reading at the time. It took me awhile to find my voice, and even know, I have to remember what it sounds like in the even that I get into Jonathan Safran Foer/Truman Capote/Sherman Alexie/Mari Sandoz mode. When you read as much as you write, it's easy to be a copycat--whether you realize what you're doing, or not. We want to write what we like to read, and we often subconsciously re-write books that we've read and enjoyed. It's how we get many of our ideas, after all. It may stifle your creativity if you try to stop this process altogether, so it's important to learn how to fine-tune your voice.

Here are a few exercises you can try to exorcise yourself of your Victorian demons:

- When you're home alone (it's kind of embarrassing to do this when you think someone might hear), try telling this story as you would talking to one of your friends. Record it. Listen to it and transcribe it exactly. Take out the "likes" and "ums". What are some of the quirks in your speech that you could carry over when you're writing? What makes your style of speaking different from someone else when they tell a story?

- Try freewriting. Set the timer for ten or fifteen minutes and write in a constant stream of words. Don't hit the 'delete' key, and don't stop. See what happens. It'll take a few tries to get the hang of it, but you can churn out some interesting stuff on the fly. When you don't think about what you're going, the voice that you use is completely natural. It ain't pretty, but it's yours. Pick out a few lines that you like. What do you like about them? And then pick out a few lines that you don't like--is there anything salvageable about their style or syntax?

- The first few times you try out writing in a new voice (for some people this is a smoother transition, for others, it takes some practice) round up a few people who know your writing well. They can tell you what works and what doesn't, and what doesn't sound like you in the least. This will help you get a feel for not only how you feel that you've written something, but also what it sounds like to your readers. It's the whole YWS concept of reviewing, except it's fine-tuned for a special purpose: voice.


Thanks for the read! I know I gave you a pretty big to-do list, so let me know if you have any questions or want me to take a look at something else.

I really appreciate the comments, everyone! I am going to work on it more right now ...