Ragnar

Here is a story about an argument between family members about the career choice of a child. It is mainly about dialogue and thus other parts are not as delved into. I would prefer mainly a critique of the dialogue, though any other part is welcome as well (though parts are somewhat intentionally deficient) Here is the story:

The Argument: A short story in the line of Sebastian Henrique

Sebastian hated these conversations. They’d been happening more and more of late. Pick-up damn it! Pick-up! The suspense and dread filling him were the worst. His father didn’t understand and he had to. He ought to! He’d been to college, even said he loved it. In reality he didn’t understand the importance, the extreme necessity for Sebastian’s decision.

Sebastian began to pace faster every time the phone dialed. His father should be there, it was his lunch break.

“Hello?” the voice on the phone said.

“Yea… Hi Dad, we really need to talk about something.” Sebastian said, sounding trepidacious.

“What’s wrong, you sound… odd. Did something happen at school?” his father asked with marked concern.

Sebastian began taping the side of his desk, his stomach beginning to clench because of the argument he knew was coming.

“No Dad, it’s just well, I think I’ve found a way to pay for grad school.” Sebastian replied slowly.

“Look, we’ve been through this. Get a real job, wait a few years and then go back to school. See how real life is before you waste more money. You’ve spent enough going as it is.”

“No Dad, listen. I’ve got a way to pay off undergrad and also pay for graduate school at the same time.”

“What, are you joining the Army?” Sebastian’s father said in a mocking tone.

“No, no, no, I’m going to join the MEI!” Sebastian responded quickly, “I’ll be able to visit an entirely new planet, earn my degree and pay off my debts!”

“What, are you an idiot?” Sebastian’s dad said in an angry tone, “You may as well join the Army for what it’s worth. You know, I watch the news and everyday they mention how dangerous it is; or this or that latest industrial accident. Sorry son, I just can’t support you on this. Hell, do you even really want to go to Mars? It’s a cold dead rock in the middle of nowhere. There are other, saner ways to pay off your debts.”

“Dad, look. It won’t be the most fun experience at times, but they need scientists. Especially geneticists. The amount of science personnel is abysmally low compared to both the EU and China. They need people like me. Yea, I’m primarily am going for money, but I can really make a difference too, and that’s also important.”

“You have to deal with getting your own life together before you try to fix everyone else’s. You aren’t just some disembodied brain to think on this or that, you’re a person too, Sebastian.” His father said softly.
Sebastian began arguing that it was his life, but he was quickly cut off by his father.

“Look, we’ll talk this over tomorrow with your mother. You know how happy she’ll be about you leaving the whole God damned planet. You’ll be lucky if she doesn’t tear your hair out.”

“Alright, meet me at my dorm at around 11:30, and from there we can go to the Apple Bees here.”

“Fine, fine, fine. But we’re sitting in the smoking section, unhealthy or not, I’m tired of your constant whining.”

Why was his dad so angry? Why did he act so stubborn and selfish? Couldn’t he realize how amazing this opportunity was? “Ok Dad, whatever you want,” Sebastian said submissively. “Lets just go, talk this over and be done with it. I don’t want to fight about this anymore. I’m going to go.”

“Ok, we’ll talk tomorrow. Good bye.”

Sebastian hung up the phone. He wanted to hit something. How could his dad be such an ignorant ass? He knew he’d have to clean his room now. His parents would complain about his lack of responsibility and say he wasn’t adult enough to go to Mars.

Sebastian steeled himself for the job ahead, and got to work.

X

Sebastian wanted too end it, end that annoying noise. He quickly reached over and slammed his hand down on the alarm clock.

He knew he had to get up; his family would be here soon. Wait! I didn’t finish cleaning, Sebastian thought. Sebastian quickly began to rife through clothes and papers, throwing them out of sight. He didn’t care, as long as it was anywhere his parents wouldn’t see.

After several minutes of cleaning a short knock rapped on the door three times announcing his father. Sebastian walked over to turn the lock. He thought “What am I forgetting?” to himself, as he opened the door, exposing both his parents, and as he quickly realized, himself.

I’m not wearing any pants! He thought, reaching for a blanket to cover his nude body. “Sorry about that! I um… I just woke up!” Sebastian said with his free hand in front of him, as if to ward off some uncertain danger.

“Christ, you knew we were coming and you couldn’t even put on pants? You certainly have enough of them lying on the floor.” Sebastian’s father said contemptuously.

“Why do you always have to be an ass?” Sebastian said without thinking.
“Excuse me? What did you just say? I drive over an hour to get here, to talk with you about this damned Mars lunacy, only to have you expose yourself to me AND your mother and you have the nerve to call me an ass? Who the hell are you?” Sebastian’s father exclaimed.

“Now Peter,” Sebastian’s mother interjected, “don’t be so harsh to him because you’re having a bad week.”

A bad week? Sebastian thought. What could she mean by a bad week?

“What happened Dad?” Sebastian asked sympathetically.

“It’s… it’s nothing. I don’t want to talk about it. Lets just umm… discuss you.” Sebastian noticed his father’s downcast eyes as his father said this.

“Ok, if you’re sure—“

“Of course I’m sure” his father snapped, “Now lets talk about Mars.”

“Ok, I know you both think I’m crazy, but just listen to me, going to Mars is a great idea. Not only will I be able to pursue a Ph. D., I’ll also be publishing my thesis in an exciting new subfield, applied Martian genetics and agriculture.”

“I thought this was mainly about money?” His father, practical as ever, stated.

“Well yes, but I could also contribute hugely to human knowledge and understanding!”

“So what? You have absolutely no idea how much you’ll enjoy doing research. And unlike here, if you travel to Mars, you’re stuck. If you want to leave, if you even decide Martian farming isn’t your thing, you can’t. You’d have to stay there.

“But Dad, I’ll have two years of study on Earth before I even set foot on Mars. I won’t just be jumping into something I know nothing about. Give me some credit, ok?” Sebastian said sullenly.

“Look, I, well I just want you to be alright, ok? Mars is dangerous, you’re young. It’s just not a good place to grow up or get focus. It’s a dusty red rock and nearly useless at that. Why colonize a rock millions of kilometers away when we have perfectly habitable stations in Earth Orbit?”

“Why not Dad? Why not! It’s there, Mars is a whole other planet. We could make a new paradise there, a new Earth! My research will help that, it’ll help create new versions of Earth plants suited to Mars. True terraforming may not happen in my lifetime, but it will happen.” Sebastian said with a sense of finality.

“Fine. Whatever. Don’t heed my advice. Good luck and good riddance.” With this, his father turned around and began to head down the hall.

Good riddance? How could he say that? Sebastian sat down, hurt and confused.

His mother began shouting, “Peter, damn it! Peter! Get back in here! You apologize to Sebastian!” His mother turned to him and said, “I’m so sorry honey, your father has been acting oddly lately. I have to go and try to calm him down. Good bye Sweetie.” With that, Sebastian’s mother left.

His father apparently didn’t care enough about him, so what the hell should he care about his father’s opinion? His mind was made up. He was going to Mars.

Glfralin

Well, this does leave a lot to be desired. It's not bad, but except for the Mars thing, its a bit cliched through the arguement. There is little imagery except him putting things away, getting out of be and being naked before his parents. The rule of thumb is to answer the questions who, what, where, when, why and how. The earliest these questions are answered the easier your reader can focus on what is happening.

You need to add the story yet. The conversation brings out a story, but I feel the story should be created first and the dialogue be a natural product of the story.

Keep working at it.

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Ragnar

A lot of it is cliche because I am trying just to get down how to write any sort of dialogue. I figured I'd start somewhat cliche. I did plan on having a bit more imagery usually, but I plan to write more once I've put down the world further to reduce clicheness.

mwd

FYI, it's bad form to respond defensively to crits. And you didn't even thank Glfralin for taking the time to read your work and write a response. When I read a thread where someone has posted their work and then replied like this, with some lame excuse, it makes me about ten times less likely to read/reply to the work myself.

But I did read it. The dialogue seemed a little forced, although it's hard for me to say why. If I had to give an explanation I'd say that the characters themselves aren't well developed. They seem a bit shallow, stereotypical. You have a son and father fighting, but other than that there's not much characterization. They don't feel like real people. I realize you were trying to focus on the dialogue rather than the characters, probably, but the problem is that usually well-developed life-like characters will result in better dialogue. If the reader can get a vivid image in their mind of the character, they can fill a lot of the gaps in their words, i.e., their mannerisms, way of speaking, etc. But when you have generic characters it becomes a lot tougher to do that, since your reader will feel like it's something they've seen before. It's almost like your characters are reading off a script.

If you want to write this story while keeping the focus on just dialogue, I think you'll need to use some tricks to make the dialogue sound more life-like. Consider having your characters speak less stiffly. They don't have to use perfect grammar. Try having our characters speak slightly differently, in terms of the words they use and the way they form sentences. Also, you don't need to put so much in your dialogue tags ('Sebastian responded quickly', 'Sebastian said submissively'). It doesn't really make the dialogue more believable. If anything it accents the fact that the words don't carry the tone and emotion of the characters themselves, and need extra assistance from tags.

On another minor note, you need to double-check your punctuation around quotes: about something.” Sebastian said should be about something,” Sebastian said. You always use a comma inside the quotes instead of a period if the tag comes right afterward. So you could do "Hello," Sebastian said. Or you could do Sebastian said, "Hello." But if the sentence continues after the dialogue, you need to use a comma rather than a period.

The concept is interesting. I'm wondering what the conflict will end up being. Maybe Mars won't end up being so great once he gets there? That was the most interesting part of this story, for me at least.

Hopefully you won't get discouraged. Writing dialogue is tricky. It's a skill, certainly, and you can develop it through practice, but it also helps if you have an ear for it, and can mimic the way different types of people would speak. It's an art, and the best way to get better at it is by doing it a lot. I'm not sure if I'd focus on writing stories with solely dialogue, though. I think I'd try to write stories that read with all the things I'd want... instead of doing one thing at a time, I'd focus on your prose as a whole. Since this isn't a mechanical process, I'm not sure how well it will help you, in the end, to practice one skill at a time.

Thanks for the read.

Ragnar

I am so sorry! I did not mean to come off as disrespecful at all! I am sorry I forgot to thank him, I do thank everyone for reviewing my work. I was just explaining why a great deal of it was cliche. Not that I'll be able to completely eradicate that from my work even after I've developed the world and go for a more unique storyline, but I was trying to discuss my methods with him. I am extremely sorry for the misunderstanding!

As for the story, I am thinking my next story will be both imagery and dialogue. As for when he gets to Mars, and the period after that, I'd like to eventually write a novel about that, once I've gotten better at writing, hence why I'm sending it to you guys to tear me apart and help me put it back together

Peter Thomas

Since you're inerested in Dialogue, that's where I'll stick, and it sounds like the other areas are lacking deliberately, so critique would be a bit useless anyway.

The first thing that jumps out at me is the fact that Peter doesn't even say hello to his son. That's pretty unfamiliar to me, and the fact that Sebastian leaps straight into the boiling water is also strange. When kids talk to their parents about a subject they know might not be received well, they tend to spend a lot of time asking "How is mum?" and "What's the weather like up there?".

The main thing with the dialogue seems that the two of them are discussing an issue from your point of view, rather than theirs. Peter's natural reaction to the statement "I can pay off undergrad / grad at the same time" would be to ask "how?" - no matter how against the idea he is. Curiosity is natural. But because you know he is against the idea already no matter what, that part of the conversation is skipped right over, and he jumps into the defensive role of "get a real job."

Another example would be the mother saying “Now Peter, don’t be so harsh to him because you’re having a bad week.”
A more natural response would be something like;
"Hey, don't take it out on him."
Parents don't generally randomly inform their kids of the problems they're having.

I guess, simply, if you can't imagine saying the words to your parents, or imagine them saying it to you, then the dialogue is lacking somewhere. Keep it real.

In your defense, it does suck getting critique - even when you know it's coming, and it's natural to provide explanations about it. Good on you for thanking them though (even if you disagree with it).


Best of luck with everything you do (or don't do) to this piece

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