Malone

Does this work? There's one particular sentence I don't like, but I'm short on ideas. I'd be interested to see if anyone is bugged by the same thing. This is a little excerpt from the novella I'm working on, but it should be able to stand on its own.

Cold fluorescent light is burning my eyes. They water while my leg twitches with nervous energy. I finish reading and look up at the class, grouped in a semi-circle around the room.
“That was really funny,” says a middle-aged woman, dumpy with a bad bleach job. “You should write for Saturday Night Live.”
You’re an ignorant cunt, I think, pleased, and say, “Thanks.”
“Was it really Jesus?” this from a brunette with huge tits and quarter sized nipples that poke against the fabric of her shirt.
“I dunno.”
“Of course it wasn’t Jesus,” the dumpy woman, Wanda, is speaking again. “That man was using drugs. Jesus would never take drugs.”
Her voice bounces against the speckled tile floor, echoes off the white stone walls. She’s sitting in a plastic blue chair and I dream that one of its thin metal legs will snap, sending her fat ass slamming to the ground.
I blink and they are all staring at me. “It’s amibiguous,” I tell them.
“I think it’s great,” says a tiny young woman still dressed in thin cotton pajamas that are decorated with dancing elves.
I wonder what her vagina looks life beneath the thin layer of fabric. Shaved completely? Maybe just trimmed into some exotic shape like a heart.
Outside the window, two panda bears are fornicating violently on the sidewalk and I try to remember the last time I ate LSD. The professor, who is short, bald, and has a tuft of brown hair under his lip that reminds me of a shit stain, begins criticizing what I’ve just read, but I only half listen. Why should I care about what this man thinks? Once he told me, while we smoked marijuana from my tall glass bong, that he has been working on a novel for twelve years, yet still doesn’t even have a title.
“…you’re telling too much,” he is saying. “I want you to show.”
“But I’m telling a story.”
“Show, Reilly, show. Like a movie.”
“It’s not a movie,” I reply, anger working up through my Lortab haze. “It’s literature. It’s supposed to be superior to movies and all that Hollywood bullshit.”
“Well, then at least try to be poetic. Your writing is too vague, too raw.”
“But life is vague. And raw. It’s just a series of random nightmares. And I don’t have time for poetry.”
He answers something but now I’m really not listening. I know what this pathetic, babbling Ph.D. scored on his SAT’s – 720 – and assume he must have misspelled his name. I want to scream curses and strip naked, explain to everyone in this shitty classroom we should all give up, because none of us will ever make any significant contribution to the world or change anything that matters after we’re dead. Instead I feel my stomach revolt and my throat begin to siphon as the room shrinks. Then I spew blood laced vomit all over the long folding table. The smell is strong with acid.
“I quit,” I tell them and leave the room. No one objects or even speaks but I slam the thick wood door anyway and throw my big portfolio that holds everything I’ve written into the first trash can I see while wiping my chin and whispering, “I am the anti-man.”

winner

I liked your writing a lot. It moves along at a good pace, it's descriptive but not overdone, interesting dialogue. It's spicy, but needs a little more. I didn't care for the profanity. That turned me away a little.

Brendan N

I think it's working well. Really liking the writing, there is not just a character speaking here, but also a presonality. The only thing that bugs me a little is the ending. I'd like to see you explore the ramifications of your character's quitting a bit further, or hint at them perhaps? What is the difference here between quitting and suffering the morons? Of course, you might lose effectiveness once you take this route.

Why should I care about what this man - who once told me, while we smoked marijuana from my tall glass bong, that he has been working on a novel for twelve years, yet still doesn’t even have a title - thinks?
- maybe a bit sloppy, but I love this for some reason.

Outside the window, two panda bears are fornicating violently on the sidewalk and I try to remember the last time I ate LSD.
- Love this sentence the most, it's the type of sentence the more cliched side of me would use to end the chapter/scene.

I think it's top notch writing, and I would like to see it function in within a larger work (where the significance of this scene can be greatly increased). It feels like part of a bigger story, and I do want to know more about the quitter .

Malone

Thanks for the feedback, guys.
winner: I agree that it needs more. This was originally twice as long, with much more dialogue, but I'm a minimalist and I've cut it down to this. Reading over it dozens of times before posting, I felt I needed to punch it up. I'm glad you confirmed this for me. Thanks for the good words.
Brendan: "Why should I care about what this man - who once told me, while we smoked marijuana from my tall glass bong, that he has been working on a novel for twelve years, yet still doesn’t even have a title - thinks?" This is the major problem I'm having flow wise with this excerpt. I think adding "thinks?" in there at the end throws the whole thing off. I'm going to rework it. Thanks for confirming my suspiscion.
Thanks again, both of you! Greatly appreciated!

JosephB

Yes. Works for me. Some pretty funny images. Especially the bit about the chair. My split second impression was that this was group therapy. It does have that feel -- assortment of odd characters, with the professor being the therapist stand in. Nice.

__________________
"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."
-- Albert Einstein

"I am really only interested in a fiction of miracles."
-- Flannery O'Connor

tlbyford

hey malone,
maybe if you made this two sentences?

example: "Why should I care what he thinks? This is the same man who once told me, while we smoked marijuana from my tall glass bong, that he has been working on a novel for twelve years but he doesn't even have a title for it yet."

just a thought

Malone

tlbyford: Thanks for the tip. I actually came up with the same thing in bed last night. Great minds think alike.

Korkskrew

I thought it was hilarious.

That line in particular made me laugh out loud, which I assure you, is a difficult thing to accomplish.

It has a bit of a George Carlin streak to it, which is a compliment by the way.

I suppose the biggest flaw is the prose, which can be awkward and wordy at times.

These two bits in particular stuck out. The first just needs to be broken up a bit more, as you have a pretty bad run-on there. The second has a weird tense. It's not incorrect per se, just really awkward because it keeps switching from past to present.

Simple things really, other than that, it's excellent. Very enjoyable to read.

__________________
"The older I get, the more I realize I'm right about everything."
- George Bernard Shaw, Paragon of Maleness.

Malone

Thanks korkscrew. I broke up the first sentence. I'm kind of in a run on sentence phase (blame Brett Easton-Ellis influence, although he pulls it off and I don't). The professor line was the one bugging me, and two of you hit on the same thing. Exactly why I posted it here. It's also been corrected. Thanks a ton!
On a side note, is anyone interested in actually reading the short story this group is discussing if I were to include it as a standalone piece to be included after the novella? It's an actually short story I wrote in college, but I've thrown the original away years ago. I thought it might be cool to rewrite it an attach it after the main story is over. Just an idea, ala Breakfast at Tiffany's or Fear and Loathing.

L00kbackinanger

I liked this a lot. The only observation I would make is that the dialogue needs to be more clearly formatted. It needs spacing out. Sometimes the break between the dialogue and the narrative blurred because the writing is mainly active. Made me laugh, good read.

__________________

"Automagically the game restarted; by chance a leaf fell at our feet. Brittle and veined with shades of umber. Delicately it crunched, like a shuffled deck."
Jacob Stillmarner, The Melody Of The Lucky Not Good, 1944

Frabes

Post as much of this as you want, I'm loving it.

The profanity is fine, without it you'd lose credibility.

Smoking with the professor, that was nice. A nod to Animal House, or did you have some other, more real, inspiration? I'd believe the latter, as I've come across more than my fair share of that type of prof.

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A Kind of Truth

Tsuki

Your writing is so aggressive and straight forward. I did indeed like the story, dispite the character not being of my tastes-- Im not too fond of blunt, sexually explicit literature such as this but i was still able to enjoy the story which is good. Ofcourse I think that the lack of boundaries made the story more realistic, and created good imagery. Good work : D

Malone

Thanks everyone. Comments are much appreciated.
Lookbackinanger: I wrote the dialogue like that on purpose originally, but after reading your comment, and then re-reading this for aroung the hundreth time, I can see your point, and will edit accordingly.
Thanks again everybody! You restore my confidence and give me the strength to work on through the ever present knowledge that this will probably never be published.

abbeyd21

You've managed to make a very strong character in a very short span. A couple people said they would prefere less profanity but I agree with the others. Without the profanity you wouldn't get a clear picture of the character. She seems abrasive and it would be hard to get that across wiout the profanity, especially in such a short time span.