JackSpade

Author's Note: I feel this is one of my stronger pieces, so I would love any comments or constructive criticism you have. Thank you. ~Jack

Rick (Part One)

Isn’t it funny how people only come when they can extract something from your bleak miniscule life? How they take the precious few things you have, and turn them into something you hate. Ever notice how those people are usually the supporting protagonists in your life? But at the climax they end up being the antagonist, the evil of the story of your life. And you end up becoming the weeping lump of coal, left to suffer the burning sun on the side of the road. Sure, you’re the protagonist in the end, but you lost everything supporting the greater of your evil.

Rick was a shy guy who thought desert eagles were UFOs in slang terms. He was the average hidden in the middle of society guy. White-collared guy. Worked serving yours and everyone else’s bums. If it wasn’t for him and people like him, we’d be scavenging through our own feces trying to make heads or tails of what’s edible and what isn’t. He thought life was what he lived through, a haze of work and sleep. Throw in a little of the edible chips that have grown stale over the months in his drawer.

Life served out a vulgar can of Publix’s special kitty food every morning, every afternoon, every night, every Monday through Sunday. Seven days a week, Twenty four hours a day. Touching, how the simplest of metaphors can make you understand the lowest of circumstances. Where the only food you eat, is the same quality as what you produce in the restroom. Where there is no front room to your living area. There is only a sink, tub, toilet and bed right after you open the door.

It was another Sunday morning; the alarm clock rang after a brief thirty second nap. The clock struck seven on the dot in the morning. Life’s lower qualities of waking up to an incessant sound instead of the opposite sex in your arms and drooling on your pillow when you open your eyes. Probably better to open your eyes to, a sound...a noise so irritating that you can take it out on a button labeled Snooze, where the sight of human saliva, the sight of something that’s been hanging vertically for over an hour on the corner of someone’s mouth makes you want to take it out in the toilet. Or bathtub, whichever is closer at the time that the retching noises hit you.

Rick grabbed his keys and jacket. Funny phrase, what classic line isn’t this in? Maybe he wouldn’t have to grab his keys if he left them in his jacket pocket and maybe he wouldn’t lose them every second set of odd number days if they were in his jacket pocket. Hmm…we’ll never know, he doesn’t keep them in his jacket pocket. He closed and locked the door. It really doesn’t matter if he locks it or not, everyone in the rooms around him knows how to pick the lock and break into his room if they really wanted to. But I’m skipping ahead.

He starts walking to work. Too poor to own a car, yet he spends all his money on his clothes. His socks alone cost more than it costs to eat at a fast food joint breakfast, lunch and dinner for a month. Maybe if he got a raise, maybe he’d get a car…or get more socks…these have holes in them, as long as his boss doesn’t know. He answers phone calls all day, and yet he has to dress like he could pay for the deficit and then some, to keep the government out of debt for maybe two weeks.

He sees a black man walking strangely, like he has something in his belt. Let’s stop for a second. Let’s think stereotypes, in a big city, what do you usually think of when you’re walking through a run down neighborhood and there’s a man of a different race walking towards you? You’re going to get mugged or killed, usually. And when someone is walking funny like they are carrying extra baggage in there pants? That takes on a double meaning at this point, but you should get the picture. Let’s continue. The black man comes up to Rick and smiles.

“Hey man, how’s it going?”

“It’s going good, you?”

“Eh, living in this dump. I’m off to Howard’s to get my car back, see you brother.”

“Cool, see you later.”

Aww, you actually thought Rick was white, didn’t you for a second. You thought he was going to get mugged. Well, your right, he is white and he is going to get mugged. Hell, what would be the fun if I didn’t give in to stereotypes to make this man’s life worse, it’s the point of writing, cast the protagonist in a downward spiral so he has to pick himself up and beat the antagonist. Only, we don’t know who the antagonist is. Well, for right now, let’s assume there is none. Continue.

“Hey bitch, give me your wallet now!’ The black man said as he pulled out a .22.

Rick panicked, “Please, don’t, I only have enough for-“

“Shut it bitch. Give me your wallet!”

Rick reached in his pocket and pulled out his wallet. At which time the black man ripped it out of his hands and took off. “Thanks bitch!” Rick cursed and ran to work, hoping he had time to call the police and file a report. See that’s his mistake, thinking the cops care. I wonder why the guy took his wallet, maybe I already revealed it to you and you weren’t paying attention, oh well.

mandax

Jack, I know you're new here, so I'm gonna help you out with basic WF etiquette. Never, and I mean never, put "please read" in your threat title. You'll make many members angry and less inclined to critique your stories. Okay? Oh, and I'm going to try and read this a little later, but I don't seem to have the energy right now, I'm afraid. Sorry. :/

saintoflight

Interesting I haven't read a story quite formatted like this before. It made me read jerkily as I read it out aloud. But for some reason I didn't mind. Mmm yes interesting and different but it wasn't a story that necisarily left me hanging on for the next installment. Oh but I did like your detail and attempt in the beginning as Rick woke to his alarm clock. You allowed an indivdual unique spin on it that drew me to a closer understanding of the main character. Bravo.

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aliceedelweiss

'manda your too sweet, already teaching those new people how this place works? heh heh heh

I'd have to say this piece really annoyed me. at points it felt like you were arguing with yourself through it. And speaking directly to the reader about the story is HORRIBLY annoying to me. It distracts and doesn't make much of a story...Okay, so your trying to be original? Well...too far.

This is just, and I'm sorry, stupid. If it doesn't really matter, why write it? Never write something if it doesn't forward the story. especially if you go and say something, and then contradict what you just said, like about the keys in his pockets.

really I just don't know...some of the sentence were long and drawn out, and didn't need to be. I'm sorry if this was too harsh, but its my honest opinion and whats the point of lying during a critique? You have the ability to write something good, I think it just can't get through yet.

Alice

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JackSpade

I wasn't trying to be original, though it seems from other people's comments it is. I was trying to write where I would make both the character and the reader seem stupid for thinking, and to see if the reader was thinking as he read, which is a major part of reading.

Genge

Hm mm.
Interesting, but there are some problems with it:
1. There is no action, by action I don’t mean blowing up trucks, I’m not the Stalone audience, I mean something happening that you want to know more about. You take everyday activities and you use them to fill us in on the character. Building character is usually good but you’ve ended up packing your story with exposition. Even in literary fiction it is usually best to show, not tell.
2. I see what you’re doing when you comment on the guy grabbing his coat and keys, or about the readers thinking that he will be mugged. The problem is you’re talking about clichés so the readers already think of them before you tell them to. You are underestimating them by winking at them so forcefully.
3. Your plot is cliché. It’s been done again and again. Give it a twist, turn it into something unexpected, make him get mugged by a small white man with thick glasses (since there are guns in the world it doesn’t matter if your opponent looks dangerous or not) and them have him feel like crap because he got mugged buy such and insignificant thief.
4. Your writing, although interesting, is just too convoluted. You have a ring, a certain style which could work but the rest of us aren’t in your head, so keep it simple, or at least simpler. Chose one or two ideas you want to explain and do so with style. If you choose to illustrate too many details you confuse the reader and he can’t tell what’s important and what isn’t.

Chris Miller

Hi JS,

He got mugged because he dresses too rich for the hood, right?

Your writing shows talent and insight, but lacks discipline and maturity. (Does that make me sound like Yoda?) In other words, your problems are strategic, not tactical.

This is sort of a cross between a story and an essay in that it is mostly an undisguised dissemination of the author’s personal views, i.e. telling. The terms antagonist and protagonist seem overused, as though the author has recently learned them and is anxious to take them for a spin.

I think if you were to focus on the narrative of this guy getting mugged, but stay in the tight 3rd person this’d have some real potential. Let us see the world through your protagonist’s eyes, and not yours (not directly). As is, we get to know the narrator a lot better than the character, which is fine, but interferes with the story and makes it kind of preachy and confusing and boring.

“And you end up becoming the weeping lump of coal, left to suffer the burning sun on the side of the road.”
So many mixed metaphors that accomplish nothing.

Actually you could do away with the entire 1st paragraph, lose nothing and have a better opening. This is often case with my own work too. I don’t know why we feel the need to clear out throats so extensively in openings.

“hidden in the middle of society”
hidden-in-the-middle-of-society (few know how to the dash)

“Maybe he wouldn’t have to grab his keys if he left them in his jacket pocket…”
wouldn’t have had (tense problem)

“It really doesn’t matter if he locks it or not, everyone in the rooms around him knows how to pick the lock and break into his room if they really wanted to. But I’m skipping ahead.”
Very awkward tense shifts.

Space after “…” (ellipses)

“Let’s stop for a second. Let’s think stereotypes,”
Awkward shift to 2nd person POV here.

“…in there pants?”
their

“Well, your right…”
you’re

“Hell, what would be the fun if I didn’t give in to stereotypes…”
Now you’re in the 1st person. Your POV is very disorganized, like your ideas.

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