Will You, Won't You, Watch?

Hullo, Maddy! I'll be your reviewer for the time being. Let's begin, shall we?

I knelt down on all fours, and was greeted with th#FF0000 ">e sharp, acid tang of insecticide. #FF0000 ">That just doesn't sound right. Also, when you say tang I think of taste, so I'm thinking she can taste the insecticide, which is weird. I knew what #FF0000 ">creature (Beware of superfluous words. Cut them down if possible.) it was before I lay eyes upon it- its excessive buzzing#00FFFF "> anyone would find irritating to the ears#FF0000 "> The bit I turned into a different color is supremely stilted. Sounds like you're trying too hard. Revise.. Once I got as comfortable as I could manage, with bare palms cold against #FF0000 ">Against what? and bony knees that scraped the tiles #FF0000 ">Since this is in first person, this is kind of a weird sentence. I'll explain why later., #FF0000 ">my eyes were I was engrossed. #FF0000 ">Totally strange for only your eyes to be engrossed. One would think the entire person as a whole would be engrossed, because engrossed means to be wholly devoted to something.




At first, I loathed this sickening need I had to witness it die a gruesome death. #FF0000 ">Telling, not showing. Show me the need, and give me something to hold on to so that I'll know she's sickened by her own need to witness death. #FF0000 ">I knew that i If I was able to understand its language, I’d be subjected to screams and pleas for the nightmare to end. #FF0000 ">First person. You don't think: this is what I know, unless you're trying to piece something together. On an ordinary basis, like say when you're watching a movie, you don't think, "I know those are special effects." No, you go, "Those are special effects."



The creature continuously spun, moving so fast #FF0000 ">that the mass of its body became a whirling blur of a black hole, and when #00FFFF ">each episode of rotation stopped#FF0000 "> Super awkward again. Revise., the creature would twitch and flutter feebly. I wasn’t sure if such a dense insect #FF0000 ">There are smart insects? oo" had the ability to sense the loss of salvation- if it did, then did these sporadic outbursts that seemed to give the creature a glimmer of hope make him brave, instinctive#FF0000 ">, or more so stupid? #FF0000 ">This line isn't half-bad, but it's incongruous. More on this later.



#00FFFF ">The energy in his fight appeared endless. #FF0000 ">Awkward. Revise. #00FFFF ">I soon believed #FF0000 ">Just tell me the thoughts. Don't say, "I believed", or "I thought" or "I know". When you think, you don't do that. We're supposed to be in your narrator's head, so no reason for him to do that in his head either. that he would take this battle to the very end- just as I braced myself for the final jerk, he would pull sudden drive out of thin air and push on.



“Still going, that bugger, is he?”



I nodded in response#FF0000 ">but did not turn around.



“It’s fascinating,” was all I uttered. #FF0000 ">There's nothing wrong with the word said. Just saying. Uttered strikes me as anachronistic here.



“Aw, is someone feeling sorry for the fly?”



“No,” I lied. #FF0000 ">Lied? Funny. Nothing above indicated he felt sorry at all. o0 “I’m just curious.”



I could hear him smirk. #FF0000 ">Smirking makes no sound. Snickering, maybe? The creature still buzzed.



“Well, he’s gonna get mobbed. No use caring now.”



His heavy footsteps slowly trudged away in search of his bedroom #FF0000 ">How does your character know the other guy was headed towards his bedroom? Perhaps he turned left or something? Also, in search of sounds strange, because it seems like the other character doesn't know where his bedroom is yet.. I remained.



Two minutes now, and the creature only possessed the faintest #FF0000 ">of life. The urge to observe a death was thrilling, but that’s what frightened me. I was unsure on how I’d react- watching the last, final breath of an animal being sucked away from its lifeless frame.



My eyes felt wet. How could I be weeping over one single, pesky fly? #FF0000 ">Amen. You haven't painted the character well enough for me to understand this, which is a major flaw in first person. I carefully studied his wispy legs, his fuzzy body. A fat tear crept down my cheek.



I couldn’t do it. I just couldn’t do it.



At once, I shot up. #FF0000 ">Lolno. That sentence just sounds really weird. ^^" Also, putting in at once actually slows down the sentence - beware of that. I sprinted away from the creature#FF0000 ">, and raced to my room, where on my bed rested the pillow I’d often sought reassurance from many, many times. I clutched at it, sobbing. My heart ached for the insect that suffered in pain, and tears tumbled down my cheeks. #FF0000 ">o0?



But more so, I wept at my own base nature. #FF0000 ">Not portrayed well enough.

The major problem with this is that it's all telling and no showing, which is a grievous mistake when you realize this is in first person. First person means you don't tell me as much, aside from maybe the biases of the narrator, but that could be shown in the narrative as well. First person means I get to see (be shown) everything first hand from the narrator's perspective.

You see, I think you were shaping this up to be an obsessive sort of piece, where she's completely swallowed by the idea of watching something die but finds herself too wretched a being for wanting to do such a thing by the end. Unfortunately, you jump from the beginning to the end so quickly I saw no transition and ended up a little more than incredulous at the pace of the entire thing.

If you showed us your MC's thought process, a lot of your problems would be solved. We'd know exactly why she's so horrified with herself, why she finds the fly so interesting, and why she can't finish it although she was so eager to start it at the beginning.

People do this a lot of the time. Think of yourself, back when you, at first, wanted to do something but decided against it at the last minute. What were you thinking between your initial and final decision? Similarly, something inside your protagonists' head clicked in those moments. Something came up in her thoughts, she realized something - and there was probably something that triggered that realization. Show us what she saw, and show us what she thought.

What's strange is that you do know how to show - you do it a couple of times here - but you tell the most important bits. The emotions are what you need to show the most, because emotions are the core of this story.

Just for good measure, I'll give an example of the difference between telling and showing emotion,






You can see that the second example gives a much clearer picture and is stronger on so many levels. Similarly, don't tell me she's disgusted. Show me she's disgusted.

Let me show you an example in first person.



Forgive my less-than-stellar writing, but my point is that the second has a clearer sense of what kind of reaction he really felt. Similarly, I'd like to see you do the same with this piece.

Another complaint I have is how artificial the voice sounds. Yes, artificial. First person always needs voice - something unique that makes the narrative stand out from all the other first-person books out there, and this has an almost erudite appeal, with the way the sentences are structured and the words chosen. However, it's also very forced.

Voice needs to flow naturally (so I guess this ties into flow, but we'll go there later). Your voice here is so forced it's obvious you're selecting words and stringing them this way and that in a way that's not natural to you. Most of the time, when we write in first person, we're forced to do that - use a voice that isn't ours, but our characters'. However, the trick is to make sure the audience doesn't realize the author wrote it. Of course they'll always know that, but they don't have to realize it. They need to think they're inside a "real" character's head.

This implies making the voice so smooth it feels real. I think the voice you're going for is similar to the voice Rice used in Interview with a Vampire and Lestat, and while we're on the topic of erudite first person narrators, I'll promote Nabokov's Lolita as well. I think Pale Fire is also good, though I haven't read it. Oates also used this kind of voice in Little Bird of Heaven - I'm not too fond of the book (personal preference), but you might like it. I suggest you check them out for an idea of how this kind of voice goes.

My last complaint is your flow. Flow is how the words sound when you read them out loud, so that the audience doesn't stumble or find anything awkward. It's fairly easy to fix -- just read this out loud (like I said) and if you find anything that's kind of hard to get through or makes you pause in a strange way, then rewrite that sentence. I pointed out the most obvious ones here, but there were plenty more I didn't really point out because it was partly due to your inexperience with this kind of voice.

Also, one last recommendation - cut out all the words you don't need. Be ruthless. If the sentence can survive without the word (and keep its original meaning without losing the flow), delete that word. It helps your flow.

What I'll commend you on is your use of voice in characterization. Bravo. ;D I don't see a lot of people doing this, and your choice of voice makes your characterization so effortless it's brilliant. 8] If you could smooth out the voice, it'll be even better. I'm also impressed you had conflict despite the focus of this piece being on emotions. Lots of people, when they write about emotions, disregard conflict because they think pieces focusing on emotion don't need conflict. This is so not true, so kudos to you again~

Anyway, I hope you found this review helpful! If you need anything/are confused by this review, PM me.

Sincerely,

Octave

I really enjoyed this, it was deep and moving and not incredibly long. The only error I could find was this:

...with bare palms #FF0000 ">cold against and bony knees that scraped the tiles, my eyes were engrossed.

This doesn't make complete sense, I think there's a grammatical error there, or a missing word, perhaps a typo, but either way this is all I could find. I loved how you made the character feel something for a "pesky fly" and the other character a complete foil to the main character, by being impassive to the death of an animal. It was a great piece and I enjoyed reading it a lot. You did an amazing job portraying the feelings of the character and making the reader feel bad for the fly. I mean I was sitting here reading it and regretting all the times I've killed a spider or fly or even a mosquito. I wonder if your character would hate killing one of those nasty little buggers.
Five owls out of five.