Summer Job

[Hi all. I do plan to make this story a LOT longer. Perhaps a novella or something of the sort, but here's a short excerpt that I hope you enjoy, and if I get enough positive feedback, I might just post some more. Trident]

Going out. Wish me luck!

Trident -


"Transubstantiation" is too much.

The story, being in the first person, is difficult to wrench from the narrator's navel, and, as it stands, I don't really see it as getting off the ground. That's not a bad thing; just not something I particularly like. Much of lit fic and chick lit and narrative fic is driven by character inundation, hoorah.

I don't really know that this leaves me "wanting more," though I would keep reading if there was more (does that make sense?). What I found most unsettling was the blandness of the characters. I almost immediately thought of John Updike's little short story about working in a grocery store, and how utterly uninteresting and more-of-the-same his characters became.

In that regard, I didn't feel like the narrator here was all that different from any other person. His voice was neither compelling nor mundane--it fell somewhere between the two: detached. Dialogue brings your characters to life, and the first bit of dialogue you have here is too 'blah' for me to get a feel for any of them.

The boss speaks as though he barely knows his own employee; the employee the same. It seems stilted, forced. Why not drop some sarcasm? Use a tag to express dismay? Something so that the readers understand how your character speaks--that's the most important part of crafting a character, but you know this.

Let me know if you add more to this.


Best,
Brad

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