They had arrived at the wrong door. “This is the wrong door,” said Alfred matter-of-factly, refining his analysing stare. “I’ve seen and dealt with enough doors to know for a fact that this,” inserting a pause for added effect. “Thing is not the door we’re looking for.”
The four men standing around him took a moment to digest what he had just said, hesitantly coming to the same conclusion that Alfred had pointed out. “You’re sure?” The plump man approached the door carefully, noticing the gold trim encompassing the door knob, reaching a hesitant hand towards it.
“Woah! What do you think you’re doing?” Came a voice from within the door.
Alfred snapped a glance towards the door viewer. The plump man took an urgent step back.
“What do you think you’re doing?” The voice spoke again, though more urgently this time.
The four men all took one step back, giving Alfred and the voice enough space to talk business. “We have come to look at your door.” Said Alfred, as if this was a common occurrence within London.
“My door?” returned the voice through the door. “Why would you want to look at my door?”
The four men nodded at each other, accepting it to be a fair question.
Alfred took a moment to put together a legitimate answer, forming what one could consider a whole from many fragmented bits. “We have a fondness for doors.” He glanced back at the four men, welcoming nods of approval from what he would consider an excellent answer to such an odd question.
“And why are you so fond of my door?” countered the voice from within the door, hesitating to obviously digest what one would consider a very odd answer.
Alfred stepped closer towards the door, cracking each knuckle independently, adding to the effect of dominance within the conversation. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” Alfred spoke like thunder, causing the door to shudder. Alfred looked back at the four men. “Too strong?” He whispered. They nodded. Alfred frowned. He waited for a response, though a response did not come.
He tapped his foot impatiently, calculating the odds of a response after thirty seconds of silence, they weren’t in his favour. “Listen,” he spoke up. “We simply ask for you to let us carry about our business, we don’t want anything from you-” “glass of water?” A voice interjected from behind. “Shut up!” shot Alfred, continuing. “If you would just let us operate in peace, we would appreciate it very much.” He let his words take effect, waiting for a reply, though the voice through the door did not. Alfred, accepting victory, stepped away from the door and walked back towards the four men.
“Are you sure this is the wrong door?” offered the tallest of the four. “The curvature is exactly how it was briefed to be.” “The door knob is perfect,” added the plump man. “Never have a felt such a precisely made knob.” “I know a fake when I see it,” said Alfred, speaking with a certain certainty. “And this is a fake.” “How can you be so sure?” questioned the middle man, brushing off looks of shock from the plump man and the tall man. “Are you questioning the integrity of my words?” Alfred fired back. “Why don’t you tell us how this poor excuse of a door could possibly be the door we've been looking all night for?” Alfred waited for a response, yet a response did not come, only a look of confusion.
“I’d like to know because this is my door, and since I am quite fond of my door, I’d like to know why you’re so fond of my door.”
Alfred turned around, relieved. “What took you so long?”
“I was thinking of a proper reply, unlike yours, you’re always so aggressive, wrong door this, wrong door that, have you ever even seen a wrong door to know what a wrong door looks like? I have, and this, to me, looks very much like the door we’re looking for.”
Alfred turned back around to face the middleman, confused. “What did you just say?” The four men took a step back.
“I said, why are you so fond of my door?”
Alfred turned around, walking impatiently towards the door. “Wait!”
He stepped back towards the four men, singling out the one in the middle. “Say that again, but this time, say it to my face.” He noticed a tear swelling in the man’s eye.
“No.”
Alfred boiled, clenching his hand into a fist, walking with a slow intent towards the door.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” The voice shook, the fear was evident. “I was speaking to him.” The middle man pointed down towards the dwarf, the fourth man.
Alfred turned around, his expression blank.
“I’m not opening my door to a group of men wanting to gaze upon it like a bunch of psychopaths.”
Alfred took a deep breath, calming himself.
“Quite frankly, I just want to go to bed.”
“Then go to bed,” instructed Alfred. “Let us finish what we came here to do.”
“I can’t just leave you,” said the fourth man. “You need me as much as I need you.”
“I wasn’t talking to you.” Snapped Alfred towards the dwarf.
“Who else would you be telling to go to bed?” said the voice behind the door. “You wouldn’t send one of your men to bed, would you? You need them as much as they need you.”
“I didn’t!” Alfred begged, “I said for you to go to bed, why would I send one of my men to bed?”
There was a pause, transitioning itself into a silence, stretching out until it could pull no more. The four men remained still, unsure at the turn of events that had recently occurred.
Alfred remained still.
“It is time you moved on,” instructed the voice, interrupting the silence. “The door you seek is elsewhere. Goodnight.”
Alfred lowered his head, accepting defeat. Turning his back to the door, he walked away slowly, his frail form becoming more evident than ever. The four men turned to join him, leading themselves away in his wake.
_
“That was the door,” said the third man for the sake of starting a conversation. “I know for a fact it was.”
Alfred was silent, contemplating to himself whether or not he should send the middle man to bed, though he did like him enough when he wasn’t expressing his opinion.
“I’m convinced it was, too.” Joined the first man.
“I believe it was.” Followed the second man behind them all.
Alfred sighed to himself. It was late, too late to argue.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
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Original Text:
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125,008 Literary Works • 672,836 Reviews
This was an interesting read! I liked how you tried to catch the readers' interest and had them hooked on till the end. I mean, I was pretty curious as to why the men were looking at the door in the first place.
I agree with the other reviews that the story did get hard to follow at one point. Although, I wonder if that was deliberately done on your part. If so, I think, you could've executed it better. I also think the ending was a bit anti-climactic. Like the story itself was pretty good but I feel like maybe it was missing something.
I hope I was helpful!!
This story had some really interesting moments but can be confusing at some points. I think it would have been better if you used less characters and give most or all of them a name.
I also think that you have too many dialogues.
This story had some really interesting moments but can be confusing at some points. I think it would have been better if you used less characters and give most or all of them a name.
I also think that you have too many dialogues.
Yo, this was a bit hard to follow. It seemed vaguely Chekhovian (don't know if that's what you were going for), but the dialog was overly stilted and there were too many characters to keep track of.
More exposition would also be nice. What are the characters thinking/feeling throughout this? What exactly is the significance of the door? You don't need to give an exact reason if you'd like to keep it abstract, but you need to help the reader become more emotionally invested in this if you want the allegory to be interesting.
Hello, SamohT! Welcome to YWS - I hope you're liking it here so far! I am here to give your beautiful work a review!
First of all, I want to say how interesting this short story was - it was really captivating, and kept me interested the entire time I was reading it. I believe the way you are writing here is very clever, and there is a sense of humor detectable in your writing, which I for one really like. So, great work! This made for a wonderful little story, with just a few necessary edits to make it an even better one! So, let us delve into those points, shall we?
I'm going to list each of my suggestions and just go chronologically through your work:
1.) I noticed a grammar issue in the very first paragraph. Right where it is written,
"...know for a fact that this,” inserting a pause for added effect. “Thing is not the door we’re looking for.”
I would change the period after "effect" to a comma, and then decapitalize "Thing" after the next quotation. In my opinion this just makes the sentence flow a bit better.
2.) "What do you think you’re doing?” The voice spoke again, though more urgently this time.
Here I don't think you need to have the word, "though." The sentence seems to fit fine without it, and I think it would make more sense just to say, "more urgently this time."
3.) In the paragraph with, "a glass of water," I believe you should break that up a bit. Not that I thought it was too heavy or too much information for one paragraph, I just think that you need to make a new "paragraph" each time a different person speaks. The same would go for the paragraph just below, in which Alfred and his men are firing responses back and forth at each other. I don't however see anything wrong within these two paragraphs, besides the grammatical need to split up with each different dialogue. Does that make any sense?
4.) “I know a fake when I see it,” said Alfred, speaking with a certain certainty.
This sentence is in the paragraph I mentioned in the third point, when Alfred is arguing with his men. Here I think you ought to use a different word for "certainty," since you are already using the word "certain" just before it. It could be a word like, "determination" or "a certain conviction." You could also just make it, "speaking with certainty." Either way, I would suggest editing this part - you could google synonyms for "certainty" and come up with a lot of options.
5.) This might be a little petty, but I think you should remain continuous with your description of the men. I liked how at first you described them as "plump" or "tall" or "the dwarf." Then in the last section, they become "first" or "second," etc. I liked how before each adjective seemed to add to their personality. Again, this may not be that big of a deal, but I think it would strengthen your story if you kept these descriptor adjectives in there. I think you can, by all means, call them "first" or "second," but also identify the plump one and the tall one.
Alrighty- that's all I have to say as far as improvements go. But I would like to say again, that I thought this short story was very clever and a great read. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it, so thank you for sharing it! Great work, and I hope to be able to read more of your writing in the future. Keep on writing!
Please let me know if anything I said doesn't make sense or if you have any questions over what I said, etc.
-- Clare
Hi, SamohT. Welcome to YWS! I'm Pan and I'll be frying up a review for you today.
This piece definitely held my interest. It's got a mysterious, surreal quality to it, and I like the fact that we never find out what the importance of the door is and why they're looking for it. The content of your dialogue is good, though you need to trust in it more - I'll get into what I mean by that later in the review. There are also a couple of problems with how you punctuate your dialogue, but aside from that the punctuation in this piece is pretty solid. You've got a good grasp of pacing; it's just brief enough to hold my interest, and it never feels overloaded with unnecessary description. In short, I enjoyed reading this.
As far as improvements go, I'll list them point by point. Here we go:
Dialogue
This is more of a housekeeping error, but it's a crucial one. First we'll deal with the punctuation.
Having looked over the piece again, I can see this isn't a recurrent error, but it happened enough for me to notice it. Dialogue shouldn't be closed with a full stop if it has a reporting clause. This particular bit should be written as:
“I wasn’t talking to you,” snapped Alfred towards the dwarf.
You follow this standard for a lot of your dialogue, so I assume this was just a hiccup. Other errors I noticed were these sorts of things:
Reporting clauses should never begin with capital letters. It should be:
“Woah! What do you think you’re doing?” came a voice from within the door.
I'm assuming here that 'shook' isn't being used in the capacity of 'said' and thus that 'the voice shook' is not a reporting clause. This means that the dialogue should be closed with a full stop rather than a comma, like this:
"I wasn't talking to you." The voice shook, the fear was evident.
You can have a look at this topic for a quick crash course in punctuation in dialogue.
The second issue with your dialogue is that you don't always start new lines when new characters speak. Like here:
This part was incredibly confusing to read because all of the dialogue is smushed together into a big block. It's difficult to keep track of who is saying what. Always start a new line when a new character speaks.
The third issue is more of a recommendation. You use an extensive amount of dialogue tags to avoid saying 'said' - stuff like 'instructed', 'interjected', 'countered', 'spoke up', 'shot', 'questioned', 'fired' and however many others. It's okay to do that when the replacement tag actually adds information about how the words were expressed, but trust me when I say that the world will not end if you just use 'said'. It's an invisible word. When you use atypical verbs like 'questioned' and 'spoke up', you draw attention to the tag and away from the dialogue. This doesn't happen with 'said' because it's so commonplace.
In short, most of your dialogue tags should be 'said'. Only use a different verb if it's important to communicate how the words are expressed. Don't use them just to add variety.
Over-Clarification
This point also relates to dialogue, but it's more of its own issue. You have a tendency to surround your speech with too much support and clarification. You don't trust the reader to infer the meaning behind the dialogue, so you try to point them in the right direction too much. I'll show you what I mean:
With the bold, you are telling the reader that Alfred's response was odd, even though the reader can easily reach that conclusion for themselves. You're holding their hand too much. When you pause to ensure that the reader is keeping up with things, you remind them that they're reading a story. It's far more effective to write as if they aren't there at all - or at least to give the illusion that you're paying them no attention. If you rephrased the above quote like this, for example:
There was a hesitation. “And why are you so fond of my door?”
It's much more stripped back. You say that the speaker hesitates, but you don't say why, which invites the reader to engage with the story and infer the meaning behind the gesture for themselves. Good writing leaves gaps for the reader to fill in. Don't spoonfeed them.
Unclear Elements
I was a little confused by the ending parts of the story, most notably this part:
What is going on here? Is Alfred still speaking to the voice within the door? Has the person on the other side of the door come outside? Or is he talking to one of the four men? I couldn't follow what was happening. You might need to clarify who is saying what to make it easier to understand.
Overall
I really enjoyed reading this. It held my interest from start to finish. I was a touch confused for most of it, but it was an engaged kind of confused. If you fix the nitpicks and smooth out the more unclear parts, this will be a great little piece.
Hope this helped! If you've any questions, don't hesitate to ask.
Keep writing!
~Pan
Thankyou very much for this. Any feedback is useful, though what you have provided is even better. Thankyou.