Thread: Six (6, Seis, Shest...etc.) Synoptic Shorts (Literary, Not Sartorial) [Language]

Intro

I remember there was a point in time, before I propelled my way out of my caustic teenage years as a rebellious, confused, and driven kid, where I used to sit down and fret over what my writing would ever contribute to society. With so many literary freaks writing stories about corruption, human frailty, submission, absurdity, and all those other exciting subjects, how was I ever to be different; how was I ever to rise above all that, get recognition, money (for writing! To think…), and ultimate access to all the chemicals I ever wanted, as well as gain the fiery, modest spirit of a homeless genius (for some reason that was a highly seductive idea at the time). No matter how much I tried to creatively add to the language, my work never measured past my internal meter of being “well written, but little else.” What was I to do? At no point was I to give up the literary drug, but I wondered how I was ever going to get a good trip out of it, something that would rocket me into a higher paradigm of literary thinking and astuteness. I beat the answer out of my brain one shining, sunny afternoon. I was particularly thirsty for innovation, and was frothing at the mouth with lust for a way to effectively spill my thoughts out, so I snatched my typewriter up and started boxing the keys, drumming out a free write about a hit and run witness. That story came to be known as The Lone Witness. But I didn’t add what made it what it is today until much later, when I calmed and balanced my word lust, when I could level-headedly and consistently slap something interesting and fresh on computer paper aside from that dreadful “well written” garbage that I came to despise. So what was that magical lust that raped my brain, and left a hole in it large enough for the creativity to spill out, on that shining, sunny day? It was partly fear. I was afraid of being consistently above average and slightly interesting with my prose. I was shitting my pants over the thought of becoming a commercial writer or journalist, squeezing out products that I knew were not my maximum potential. And I was deathly frightened of giving up writing just because I could not add anything new to the art. Also, a part of me knew that there was no other way to live than to live through prose. And if your writing was average, your life was average. So might as well spin that prose into a raging bitch of a firestorm, destroying the weak and the average in its luscious path. Prose should aim to inspire that rage in you, and make you jump over the barricade, run with the wolves, and be free of the shit you thought was good writing. Because there is no other way to live, and it’s the only way to die.

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Target

I look into my blue-green eyed beautiful girlfriend. Her blonde hair lays nicely; soft, lustful, and tired. We are sitting in an eatery at Target, in an uncomfortable cramped booth, splitting a Subway sandwich. She doesn’t seem to be there. She is near palm trees and the ocean. The minorities talking and chattering behind us and the shopkeeper asking her coworkers about unmomentous events in their lives and the black woman being arrested behind her for petty theft of some cheap clothes- all of them turn into birds soaring above a tantalizing shore. Cawing, chirping, swooning birds. All of them among palm trees and the quiet, azure ocean. This kryptonite fortress of placid conformity and weak-willed pointlessness is hardly a picnic for me - yet she breezes through it with a picturesque fabrication of the mind. I am very jealous.
Oh, this squalid place… across sits a daft looking woman tethered to her transparent kid – he’s there, making aggressive, wanton noise, but no one seems to care or hear him. I try to focus in on my processed, so-called “fresh,” sandwich. Someone passes our table and asks if the magazine on the floor –People – is ours, and an ugly scowl forms in my mind. I politely say no. Christ do I need something to satiate my mind, to drown out this quotidian, urban sound.
This is a repository of mindless conundrums and vibrations of contempt. This place is as cognitively deep as a Mountain Dew soda can. I need out… Security! Arrest this heavy fog of normality... I want out. I snap my girlfriend out of her delusional fantasy and tell her that we must go.
We go to the escalators and a thought is looping in my head continuously; every up escalator leads you closer towards the bottom, every bottom escalator elevates you back to reality; every store window promises little, gives nothing, and promulgates its corporate portrait presumptuously.
We take the down escalator, escaping Target, and I vow to never set foot here again.

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Accident

A tall, gawky man, stock-still on a very decent corner of a clean street, saw a car do a clean hit and run on a biker, running a red light in the process and speeding off with no intention of decelerating. The biker went down like a brick, torpedoing into the ground swiftly and quietly with no observable lesions seen by the witness. The biker lay on the ground serene.
The witness got himself stuck, frozen in time, and could not move a cell, his nerves shot.
He regained composure after a while, but wished he hadn’t; as adrenaline tornadoed through his endocrine system, he began to worry excessively. Thoughts drowned his mind; the cops are coming, they’ll start asking questions, they’ll waste my time, why can’t I just walk away, why can’t I just be the man I want to be and walk away, why do I have to be so methodical, why is Tuesday Chinese night and Friday pizza night, but only if I am good and follow my diet…
He was scared. But the man on the other side of the street, the left side, was not. He was closer to the biker, and ran to him just as the car sped away into the dawn. He checked the scene for blood and was relieved to see a relatively clean area, aside from the awkward bike lying three feet away, upside down with its front wheel still spinning.
He started probing the biker for answers. His questions had a natural, genuinely inquisitive tone surrounding them. He sounded like a cop. Naturally, the biker replied. He answered all the man’s questions: Did you see the license plate (NO), did you see the driver (NO), is there any reason someone might want to kill you (NO), and so on…
The biker tried to catch his breath, and when he did he felt for any broken limbs or blood or anything. He found none. He actually felt quit fine. He told this to the man above him.
The man smiled and his not so yellow teeth to the biker. He calmly reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a pistol with a silencer screwed on. He aimed the gun at the biker and shot the wide-eyed man three times. He sighed, put the gun away, and looked up, and his heart stopped. He gazed into the eyes of the gawky, tall man across the street, conveniently standing in full view of the bloody cabaret.

Intro sets out a desire to achieve a higher standard of writing, to be better than merely well written, and slightly interesting with my prose. But if you you're going to set out that stall, at least cut out the typos and spelling mistakes.

The first three parts held my interest, and the rest I read only to complete it, and in the hope it would become interesting again. It didn't. I'm sorry to be so blunt. The last three parts veer so far from fiction, and it makes no sense to me. The part titled Accident was the best of the six, I thought, a story in itself.

wonton = wanton

so called = so-called

awkward bike laying three feet away = lying


I thought there were more. Maybe it was because, after reading that first part, I was expecting a higher level of technical ability.

The bluntness is fine, good call. I corrected the mistakes. Fog and Shift really were not fiction, just minute written little heaps of prose, they didn't belong anyway. Cuatro stories for now I guess. I checked out your work and it's all right. Considering I'm still a teen, I have some time for improvement before publishing anything. My intro (which was a creative writing exercise - to write an intro to your future book of stories) does promise a bit much, so I'll revise the stories to fulfill that "higher level of technical ability," eventually. Maybe after I finish Infinite Jest, I can be inspired and interpolate some actual genius into these stories

Reading the first part, for me there is too much tautology and there are too many 'literary' expressions there,. look here

I was afraid of being consistently above average and slightly interesting with my prose. I was shitting my pants over the thought of becoming a commercial writer or journalist, squeezing out products that I knew were not my maximum potential. And I was deathly frightened of giving up writing just because I could not add anything new to the art.

We only needed to know you were frightened once, try this,

"I was afraid of being slightly interesting, commercial, and giving up because I could add nothing new" I think I have kept the sense, the only word of yours I have changed is 'anything' to 'nothing'. Look at a book like Catch 22, there is something there in every line, it is incredibly dense, yet also clear and accessible.

You obviously have ideas, don't worry about running out of them, exercising the 'ideas muscle' improves performance like any other muscle, stay succinct.

Good advice Olly, head nod to you.