Published January 6, 2012
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139,331 Literary Works • 672,537 Reviews
Thanks sargsauce,
For your questions about where the old man lives, the wife and husband took the old man to a hospital in Utah for treatment, and now are on their way back. But, thanks for pointing that out, I'll work on making that more clear.
Yeah, I totally agree with you on using imagery to open up the story. I want to rework it, but still maintain the symbolism of the snow and the broken bridge. Should I interweave it into the dialogue?
Yeah, I occasionally separate the speech of one character by skipping the line so to increase the pause and also to increase the significance of their words. I think that in the two examples that you gave me, the one with the husband works and the one with the old man doesn't because the husband's denial of the old man's thoughts starts getting that tense atmosphere boiling. The break with the old man though doesn't really add much and I think I will change it. Thanks, I'll look at the other ones, too.
As for the pivoting, I really just wanted to show his body language. But, you think it was too much? Maybe too much all at once?
Thanks for the excellent critique.
An interesting story arc, but the execution could use a little work. It was interesting how oddly tense everybody seemed and then you reveal the truth and we understand. But the wording is stiff and dry.
You open with a ponderous description of weather and the passage of a train.
Lines like:
"The snow had progressively been getting thicker and thicker during the course of the train's route, and at the beginning of the journey there was no snow."
and
"the occasional shack or cabin would sprout out of the forest, but these dwellings had long been forgotten"
and
"withered foundations that whispered defeat when drafts slid through their walls"
are a chore to read due to their blocky nature or because they're so overtly painted with buzz words that they don't work for me. Furthermore, opening with weather is kind of frowned upon. It's fine if the writer has mounted an all-out attack of literary magic, but all of this feels like something I've seen many times before.
You had a habit of breaking up a single character's speech into multiple paragraphs which gives your reader pause, taking them out of the story for a moment as they connect who said what based on the words spoken. You have:
The husband said, "You are right, they are beautiful."...
"But it's not spring. It's winter."
When you could have:
The husband said, "You are right, they are beautiful."..."But it's not spring. It's winter."
Especially in this case, it was jarring:
"The snow is so white...But, I can't anymore."
"I can't stop thinking..."
Given the reader's knowledge at this point so early in the story, this line seems very weird.
This was also very weird. What's up with the judgmental waitress? Why should we care? Also, since it's such a big deal later, you'd expect a reaction of some sort out of the wife at this point.
The "told him anytime" sticks out like an unnecessary sore thumb. Do you think it was necessary?
The proper punctuation for this kind of situation where one character's dialogue is split mid-speech into two paragraphs is:
I still remember that smile.
"I ordered a Jack and coke," he said...
Notice the lack of quotation mark at the end of "smile."
An example of bulky, blocky writing. There's so much here that is in consequential and gets in the way. "mopped it up with a few napkins" would get the same idea across without distracting the reader.
This description is odd coming so late in the story. What does her ponytail matter at this point in the story just before your reveal? Yes, you got to slip in the "brown eyes" and "slits of green", but the connection is so faint that I fear you're losing more than you're gaining.
What's the purpose of "and stayed silent."? Look for little fiddly things like this. They take away every so slightly from your credibility.
This simile doesn't really do it for me.
I'm not sure if this was an appropriate thing to say since the wife had just finished saying, "We are going to look after him till he passes away." Not exactly "happy ending" material.
I liked this line.
So are you saying that the father had been living with the couple for a long time...and then they went all the way to Utah to get him treated...and then they're going back home? Because from the gist of what I understood, I felt that the father had been in the hospital for a long time, and the couple was picking him up to take home to look after him in his last days there. Except then the husband said, "He can't stay with us any longer." Yet at the same time, you say "We can't take him home with us" which sounds more like they had just picked him up from the hospital.
For example, imagine the difference between these two scenarios.
1) A mother and father go to pick up their son from a mental hospital, where he has been for 5 years. When they get there, he decides, "We can't take him home with us."
2) A mother and father go to pick up their son from the mall, where he had been for 1 hour. When they get there, he decides, "We can't take him home with us."
Doesn't situation 2 seem like a weird phrasing for the given situation? Likewise, that's what I'm getting from your story. No big deal or anything, but you should consider some rewording so that the reader doesn't have those conflicting ideas.
Why do we care that it's his "left hand"?
"Omniscient" is a weird word to use to describe a regular person...
What's with all of this in-depth description? Should we care that he pivots his elbow and that he covers only the left side of his mouth instead of his whole mouth, as he had been doing previously?
Cute, but cliche.
I think the grammar here is weird. Or maybe it's just the whole idea of this sentence that's weird...
The cliffhanger ending was interesting.
Anyway, all in all, the ideas you've assembled are interesting. But your word choice and excessive descriptions of the unimportant are holding you back. Also, put yourself in the reader's shoes and determine what the reader knows and what is appropriate when and how.