Exercise #7: Discussion

[Creole Ned]

As posted on Write:

Exercise #7 is a simple one: Write a short story titled "The Downside". We have two additional contributors from the Quarter to Three forums (http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk/index.php) this time. Here are the stories from myself, russellmz and Arioch. jackrabbit's story should be posted soon™.

The Downside (http://creolened.com/fiction/downside.pdf) (Creole Ned)
The Downside (http://creolened.com/fiction/downside-russell.pdf) (russellmz00)
The Downside (http://creolened.com/fiction/downside-arioch.pdf) (Arioch)

jackrabbit should have his story posted soonish.

[jackrabbit]

Yeah, it's looking more and more like I wont hit the deadline on this one. My story took on some interesting themes and undertones I didn't anticipate, and I'm having trouble articulating the.

Rather than dump them altogether, I'm trying to write them well, and it's clearly not my forte. Hopefully I'll have this up soon.

[Creole Ned]

Yeah, it's looking more and more like I wont hit the deadline on this one. My story took on some interesting themes and undertones I didn't anticipate, and I'm having trouble articulating the.
Is this intentional irony? If not, I still offer kudos!

EDIT: I should have some feedback tonight on the first couple o' stories.

[russellmz]

i'll start off by slamming stuff i am unsure about in my own masterpiece. i spit it out pretty quickly and skipped sunday while working on the story, so i know it needs more work.

10. first or third person: i tried re-writing it with a third person pov, but i still liked the first person better, since i can blame embarrassing parts on my character's lack of storytelling skills.

20. more setting details: i don't really know which country the bad guys are yet, so i didn't give any details of where they are.

30. the ending: spelling out things too much for the reader? should i instead have shown some examples of the differences between the first and second clone besides the last sentence? should the main character explain the uncanny valley or should i just write he feels repulsed by the differences and leave it at that?

40. clone flaws and strengths: more? less? is she annoying? likeable? needs more life?

50. dialogue: i had almost none to start with. i wanted to get rid of it feeling like a plot summary of a story instead of an actual story. does it feel tacked on?

55. "graph paper" line: toss it or leave it?

60. other thoughts?


spoilers obviously:



Creole Ned
i sort of liked the story. the bar setting is well established. i liked the description of the demon and how he jumps ahead and explains the bumps on his head.

but it seems off to me that the guy goes down for going in a room marked private. jerry doesn't appear a big enough jerk to deserve his fate. maybe if he offhandedly breaks some commandments while he's in the bar? he already takes the lord's name in vain, although i don't know how he could make a golden calf in the bar...

and for a fantastical element, i need some explanation of the supernatural part, even if it's comedic or doesn't make that much sense in retrospect.



Arioch
i liked the play on the title and the last line amused me. Plus the super comfortable joke by thomas. actually, i like thomas more than the main character. more thomas.

it feels like there should be something in between the burger king scene and the last page, something to escalate the problem between the main character and his girlfriend. it seems like a big jump to go from "girlfriend won't share mattress", to "they breakup." like, it this was a sitcom episode, you gave the first and last ten minutes, but the middle ten minutes are gone. she catches him at night secretly carrying her to his side at night then moving her back in the morning? or having that description of the main character talking to the girlfriend in the end get put in the middle?

just on appearances, that big block of text at the end is off-putting. breaking it up would be nice for the reader, even if it was a little thing like "I paused, then continued," or just some spaces.

[Paladin]

Yay, feedback...

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at it.

Ned, I like you're take on it being a bar called The Downside. I had the same thought when I read the title. I had a couple of issues with the plotting, though. First, the bartender's explanation of meaning of "The Downside" came too early in the story for me. From that point on, the outcome of the story was very predictable. Equally predictable was the nature of the stranger in the trenchcoat. It might have been more interesting to have more dialogue between the barkeep, the stranger and Jerry where they push him from just looking for a drink and someone to bitch to, to getting him to sell his soul and blow his brains out. Aside from telegraphing the ending too early, I thought it was well written. What dialogue there is gets the story across. You might have too many instances of "Jerry" in the first two paragraphs, but that may just be my personal preference. The chick on the cell phone seemed unnecessary, and ultimately the story could have done without her in favor of more development in another direction.

Russell, kudos for the sci-fi setting. The story reminded me a lot of Robert Heinlein's short stories. If there's a problem with the story, and I'm not saying there necessarily is, is the narrator. You have a career senior soldier who becomes attached to one of his clone troops, which is an interesting story idea. However, when the clone is replaced, the only sense of loss we see... the downside... is that her replacement turns him off. It's short and simple, perhaps too short. Another idea, which probably would have lead to a longer story that you wanted to mess with, would have had him falling in love, which she returned, with 99. After losing her, confront him with having to lead dozens and dozens of identical copies, and either have him pull it together and discover the underlying humanity of these people being sent into the meat grinder of war or have him go apeshit nuts and keep getting his soldiers killed in the hopes of getting another clone just like 99 as a replacement. Definitely keep the first person, and I liked the graph-paper remark. I wouldn't mess with more details, except maybe change the headcrab mine. Not sure what you'd change it too, but headcrab immediately think of the ones from the Half-Life game and if there are supposed to be new, deadlier weapons in the future, one that slowly crushes your skull doesn't seem to fit in. Seems like they'd be looking to kill people quicker, especially when replacements are grown in a vat.

Arioch, loved the story. Don't change a thing.

[jackrabbit]

Ned's:
I like the route you went with the title, as this hadn't crossed my mind at all. The setting itself is a bit hard to imagine, so maybe more description about the bar would help. I do remember the character's name, though. And that he was wearing a cap. It has a good flow (no pun) and weaves through to the end in an even, well paced manner.

As far as the text, it feels cramped not to have a space between paragraphs. I don't know why, it just does. Overall, I like it.

Russel's:
I love this one, but I'm a sucker for good sci-fi with a good story to tell. I like that the theme of the story isn't pushed on you, and you're left to decipher it after the story is read. I also like that the writer of the journal is kept unidentified, and never really has anything more than a passing relationship with 99. The charm between the two is believable because of it. I like that you don't dwell on why 47 is different. To me, the reality of it is that she is NOT different, at all. A person builds their relationship on actions, and he has no history with 47. There's a psychological discussion going on the way you have it. I dig it.

The graph paper, in the future, seemed a bit awkward to me, as did the headcrab name, more than anything. Some of the sentences run a little long, and the line about the ammo carrier had me rereading it to find out who'd lost their leg. Other than that, great pacing, solid wrap-up (a feat I am incapable of).


Arioch's:
It wasn't until this third story that I realized what Ned had done. He recruited ringers. Fucking ringer writers.

I often praise Ned for his genuine-sounding dialogue. It's a difficult thing to write convincingly, and we even did an exercise on it. This one would have worked beautifully for that.

The characters are unique enough to identify, even though you never get an image of them. The story itself is plausible, and really gets in the mind of Pete, so that while you know he's irrational, you're still partially sympathetic.

The pacing and segments of the story are well timed and feel organic, there's no fluff between them, and I think that's good. Russel mentions it seems sort of sitcom-ish, and I get that. I just don't think it's necessarily bad.

There's also no spacing between paragraphs, and like I mentioned and can't explain, it feels cramped to me. It's a preference thing, much like me hating to read serif fonts.

Overall, a great take on the theme and excellently executed. I see now that I'm pitching in the triple A league, and I'll need to improve my game - exactly the reason for the exercises.

jackrabbit's:
Finally, regarding my own: I decided after revisiting it tonight that what I have is too complex for a short story, and too cliche for anything longer. I may come back and redo this exercise later, but I can't see myself finishing this story. I picked a shitty title out of the whole bunch (I should have stuck with "Tell Me When it Hurts") and couldn't close. I got to 7 paragraphs, and realized it was contrived crap. And this was BEFORE I read the others! You guys deserve applause for not taking the obvious routes.

[russellmz]

However, when the clone is replaced, the only sense of loss we see... the downside... is that her replacement turns him off. It's short and simple, perhaps too short.

i imagine cushing (i never name him but i consider his name cushing) as a stoic guy and i couldn't get him to say out loud how bad he felt about 99's fate, or even consciously realizing how much it affected him. i tried to cover that when i had him killing the last guy and a) needing to be pulled off and b) having ripped the guy's eyes out with his hands during the course of killing him. (plus, i thought that was badass)

the "repulsed" wording made me struggle. i probably should have copied a line from my so called life and wrote that "it hurt to look at her" or something like that to show his pain because he knew 47 wasn't 99 but she reminds him so strongly of her.

i also tried to make the instant replacement of losses a downside since it causes distance between the new clone and the squad who did not have time or process to heal from 99's loss like they did with tommy's.

After losing her, confront him with having to lead dozens and dozens of identical copies, and either have him pull it together and discover the underlying humanity of these people being sent into the meat grinder of war or have him go apeshit nuts and keep getting his soldiers killed in the hopes of getting another clone just like 99 as a replacement.

that going nuts and killing clones to find a match idea is great. i definitely need to use it someplace.

Definitely keep the first person, and I liked the graph-paper remark. I wouldn't mess with more details, except maybe change the headcrab mine. Not sure what you'd change it too, but headcrab immediately think of the ones from the Half-Life game and if there are supposed to be new, deadlier weapons in the future, one that slowly crushes your skull doesn't seem to fit in. Seems like they'd be looking to kill people quicker, especially when replacements are grown in a vat.

i have a long explanation i never put in the story but thought about for the world i made.

there is an argument of killing vs seriously wounding in real life militaries. killing takes out one soldier, but that's negligible in a war. call it a value of 0.000001. wounding someone takes him out of the fight, but not only that his buddies have to drag him to safety. treating a wounded guy also takes resources and occupies medics. so a value of 0.000002 or something. not to mention the morale hit from your friend screaming and bleeding the whole time.

i needed a way for 99 to treat cushing, but with normal weaponry being so lethal, most anything that didn't kill him would send him to a field hospital. and i already had one dud explosive. so i thought a headcrab mine would be useful for inconveniencing the enemy more than inflicting deaths. the us isn't the galactic empire, so an injury would require evac, while a death would just need a body pickup later.

if something dropped from the ceiling and grabbed your head, i think our generation of soldiers and the next would think of half-life and call it a headcrab. or maybe aliens and call it a facehugger.

Unfortunately, I'm not very good at it.

sir, your pants are on fire. your commentary was really good, and i definitely found it helpful. thank you!

[Arioch]

Ned
I really enjoyed your description of his drive to the bar, as well as Jerry's banter with the barman. I wasn't sure why Jerry didn't just go out to piss, though, I hadn't had the feeling that he was that drunk. I also had a problem with Satan's characterisation, as I don't think he would just kill for fun, but that is more a problem on my part, and it might as well have been a run-of-oth-mill demon. But I didn't really get it at all, though: Did the other guy intentionally block the toilet? Is the whole place just a trap, waiting patiently for guys wandering into the private room? I dug the ending, though, wih the barkeeper eating the sandwich. Overall, I thought it read like a story from Tales from the Crypt, which I mean as a praise.

Russell
I dig Science Fiction, first person perspective and diary style, so I lapped this thing up. I actually liked the graph paper comment, because it combines the coarseness of the vet with the possible nerdiness of the guy he was before the war. I would have liked something more descriptive/rude than "bad guys", a derogatory term of some kind, though that's hard to do when you don't yet know where they are coming from, obviously. I thought of Half-Life too, but the desciption made it sound like a cross between headcrabs and barnacles. I really liked the part with Tommy, and the gentle characterisation of 99, including the kleptomania, which actually worked as a red herring to me. I would cut the description of the uncanny valley, rather trying to express his feeling through different means. I think it works perfectly as a part of a greater narrative, as you consider it, if I read you correctly.

Arioch
I tried to make the narrator petty and unsympathetic, so I get why Russell likes Thomas more. I tried to focus on the conversations between those two, so we know only a little more about Peter than what he tells Thomas, which may lead to the "missing" second act. I never thought about the look of written text, so I will try to break up the text a little more next time.

[Creole Ned]

Feedback on Russell's "The Downside":


10. first or third person: i tried re-writing it with a third person pov, but i still liked the first person better, since i can blame embarrassing parts on my character's lack of storytelling skills.
The first person POV works well and seems completely appropriate here. I think a shift to third person would change the tone of the story significantly -- not necessarily for the better (or worse). The journal style works well and pretty much mandates using a first person perspective.

20. more setting details: i don't really know which country the bad guys are yet, so i didn't give any details of where they are.
I was curious about where the fighting was taking place but in a short piece like this where the focus is not on the battles themselves it doesn't seem important to fill in that detail. I found it a bit of a stretch to imagine combat-ready clones in the 2010s but not enough to take me out of the story.

30. the ending: spelling out things too much for the reader? should i instead have shown some examples of the differences between the first and second clone besides the last sentence? should the main character explain the uncanny valley or should i just write he feels repulsed by the differences and leave it at that?
If you mention uncanny valley you need to explain it since most people are probably not familiar with the term. You could leave out the reference and simply describe the new clone as being more like a synthetic being than an actual human. I'd probably lean a bit toward the latter. Mentioning how she never adjusts the hair curl is a good example of that.

40. clone flaws and strengths: more? less? is she annoying? likeable? needs more life?
Is the first Mills clone an homage to Agent 99? ;) She comes off as likeable and human, not really annoying at all. The kleptomania was an interesting but odd detail. I thought it might lead somewhere but perhaps you just meant it as color.

50. dialogue: i had almost none to start with. i wanted to get rid of it feeling like a plot summary of a story instead of an actual story. does it feel tacked on?
The first dialogue from 99 did feel a bit out of place in the context of the journal style but that may be because I wasn't expecting dialogue to start with. You could take the indirect approach with all of the dialogue and I don't think the story would suffer. What I mean by that is taking something like:

"I miss my family. I'm not even allowed to write. It's bullshit." 99 went on a profanity laced rant for a while.

And phrase it as:

99 told us how she missed her family and that it was bullshit that she wasn't even allowed to write them. She went on a profanity-laced rant for awhile.

Just my personal preference, though. The dialogue itself is fine but given the journal style, I'd probably lean toward making it indirect.

55. "graph paper" line: toss it or leave it?
I liked it. Leave it.

60. other thoughts?
I liked the story. It works well as a "slice of life" (albeit a bloody one) set against the backdrop of a larger story. I found the opening paragraph a bit awkward, just in the way things were phrased. I got what you were saying, it just didn't feel smoothly presented. I think I've also seen the word "extreme" abused so much through advertising that seeing "extreme training" pulled me out of the story a bit, but that's just a personal tick. I doubt many others would see it the same way.

The journal approach is neat and doesn't feel like a gimmick. I'm a bit of a sucker for dialogue-free stories because they present a challenge to both the reader and writer in terms of conveying character actions and motivations without using speech to state the obvious.

I'd be interested in seeing a longer piece in the same setting.

[Creole Ned]

Feedback on Arioch's "The Downside":

First, I salute you for the way you matched the story to the title, in multiple ways, no less. Well done. :)

This story is dialogue-heavy and works because the dialogue is snappy and moves along briskly. The protagonist comes across as a decent guy with some issues while his friend Thomas is a bit more practical and just wants to chill out with his friend, not be burdened with his problems.

I enjoyed the premise and I think you did a good job of making the seemingly banal details of bedframes and (combining) mattresses interesting. You convincingly demonstrate how the given situation spirals into a relationship blow-up.

The last line of the story is a great closer.

I'm sure there are a few minor things I could nitpick but none come to mind right now.

[Arioch]

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Two things I forgot about Russells story:

1. When I first read the cursive lines, I thought "Star Wars Scrolling Text". I liked that it wasn't just easy introduction but actually something in the story's reality.

2. I thought that the description of the death of 99 would benefit from something between the cool shovel element and the reveal that there was a fourth guy, to allow more focus for the scene, you know?

I feel uncomfortable in giving feedback in fields I don't consider myself super knowledgable, and I have no practice in it whatsoever. So please tell me if I'm rude or not helping.

[Creole Ned]

Feedback on feedback:


i sort of liked the story. the bar setting is well established. i liked the description of the demon and how he jumps ahead and explains the bumps on his head.

but it seems off to me that the guy goes down for going in a room marked private. jerry doesn't appear a big enough jerk to deserve his fate. maybe if he offhandedly breaks some commandments while he's in the bar? he already takes the lord's name in vain, although i don't know how he could make a golden calf in the bar...

and for a fantastical element, i need some explanation of the supernatural part, even if it's comedic or doesn't make that much sense in retrospect.
In retrospect, the story probably needs Rod Serling bookending the beginning and end, tersely explaining how the devil is in the details or in this case, a bar called The Downside...in The Twilight Zone. Then he takes a drag on his slim cigarette, speeding along his eventual lung cancer.

This is my way of saying that the story is a bit hokey and lacks any real explanation in that Twilight Zone episode kind of way.

Jerry is gruff, coarse and angry but he's a decent guy and here is an innocent victim. There's no reason he gets singled out other than he shows up at the wrong time.

One of the perennial issues with a horror story is how much to show, how much to leave unexplained. Most of my stories tend to be "weird tales" and I usually go more toward leaving things a bit ambiguous instead of neatly explaining everything. I get why it can be frustrating to the reader, though, especially when events seem random (as here).

Ned, I like you're take on it being a bar called The Downside. I had the same thought when I read the title. I had a couple of issues with the plotting, though. First, the bartender's explanation of meaning of "The Downside" came too early in the story for me. From that point on, the outcome of the story was very predictable. Equally predictable was the nature of the stranger in the trenchcoat. It might have been more interesting to have more dialogue between the barkeep, the stranger and Jerry where they push him from just looking for a drink and someone to bitch to, to getting him to sell his soul and blow his brains out. Aside from telegraphing the ending too early, I thought it was well written. What dialogue there is gets the story across. You might have too many instances of "Jerry" in the first two paragraphs, but that may just be my personal preference. The chick on the cell phone seemed unnecessary, and ultimately the story could have done without her in favor of more development in another direction.
Yes, the barkeep telegraphs but that was by design, partly to make the reader wonder if he should be taken at face value or treat what he says as a red herring. I've never been interested in the whole "selling your soul" angle. To me, the people in the bar are just meeting a quota, nothing more. The demon is not meant to be Satan himself, he's just a guy with a job.

Admittedly, these details probably don't come across as well as they might given how quickly I cranked the story out.

The woman on the cellphone is there so that not everyone in the bar is in on the "plan", a distracting element.

I agree that the man with the newspaper is a bit too obvious. On a rewrite I'd probably tweak his character the most.


I like the route you went with the title, as this hadn't crossed my mind at all. The setting itself is a bit hard to imagine, so maybe more description about the bar would help. I do remember the character's name, though. And that he was wearing a cap. It has a good flow (no pun) and weaves through to the end in an even, well paced manner.

As far as the text, it feels cramped not to have a space between paragraphs. I don't know why, it just does. Overall, I like it.
I'll include special jackrabbit editions of my stories in the future with spaces after the paragraphs. And you remembering the character's name means the story is a huge success regardless of anything else. :P The details of the bar could be fleshed out more. I was a bit unsure how much detail to put into what I felt would be a fairly brief story.


I really enjoyed your description of his drive to the bar, as well as Jerry's banter with the barman. I wasn't sure why Jerry didn't just go out to piss, though, I hadn't had the feeling that he was that drunk. I also had a problem with Satan's characterisation, as I don't think he would just kill for fun, but that is more a problem on my part, and it might as well have been a run-of-oth-mill demon. But I didn't really get it at all, though: Did the other guy intentionally block the toilet? Is the whole place just a trap, waiting patiently for guys wandering into the private room? I dug the ending, though, wih the barkeeper eating the sandwich. Overall, I thought it read like a story from Tales from the Crypt, which I mean as a praise.
He wasn't drunk, just saddled with a small bladder. Good point on going outside to take a leak, though. This is one of the problems when your plot machinations are thought up on the spot instead of as part of a carefully constructed overall design. :) And yes, the demon was run of the mill, not Satan specifically. Again, my fault for not making that clearer.

Yes, the other guy intentionally blocked the toilet. The idea was to get Jerry into the private room through whatever means they could and there was an unspoken agreement that washroom denial would work best. Another approach I considered as Jerry going in to "get even" with his girlfriend but going back to fill out the background to make that plausible ran into my lazy gene.

A Tales from the Crypt/Twilight Zone vibe is what I ended up gravitating toward so I'm glad to see you got that. This is a story I could easily flesh out more but I'm a bit indifferent to it. As an exercise, it did its job for me.

[Creole Ned]

Oh, and regarding spacing after paragraphs -- write the way you normally would. When I convert to PDF it's trivially easy to add the spaces for jackrabbit's old man eyes.

[jackrabbit]

It's not even that. It's an aspect of presentation and design, I guess. It's something from which I am unable to detach myself.

It's the same reason I never read Neil Gaiman's Sandman, and I really enjoy Neil Gaiman. The presentation of the comic just sucked. :(

[Creole Ned]

I've written a second draft of my story. It comes in at about 800 words longer. If anyone would like to compare/contrast it to the original, I'd be happy to have feedback on it.

The Downside - 2nd draft (http://creolened.com/fiction/downside-2nddraft.pdf)

Major changes were:

- a more detailed description of The Downside bar itself
- eliminating all references to Hell
- changing the physical appearance of the older man to make him less conspicuous and also to suggest a possible connection to the other man at the bar
- expanding a bit on Jerry's personal problems
- eliminating the older man's disappearing trick near the end
- lots of miscellaneous tweaks to phrasing and dialogue

[russellmz]

i liked it better this time around, ned. the hell reference removal definitely improved the story.

i'm not sure about the description of the outside. i got a pretty decent picture of the interior in the first version but in my mind i considered the exterior to be nondescript, remarkable only by the sign. like, in my mind, the sign occupied my entire view, while with a description of the exterior, i see the whole building and the sign is smaller in comparison.

most minor nitpick ever: is it "clicks" or "klicks"? jerry doesn't seem military, and i was wondering why he was using metric. i assumed this took place in the united states (football, red cent, bud beer).


as for my own story, i decided to do the following based on feedback:
- some minor tweaks for clarity (like the ammo carrier), shortened some sentences, edited the opening italic article
- added the year 2036 to the first date since this takes place within a generation or two after the 2010s
- gave the bad guys a placeholder name of "ickies"

- and closed up the klepto hanging thread by adding this to the paragraph after he mentions he doesn't have to write a letter to her family after her death.
The gravediggers gave me 99's personal stuff in a plastic container about half the size of a shoebox. Inside were her dogtags, my lighter, a bar and a half of chocolate, and her benefits form. 99 filled my name in the beneficiary field. She wasn't even allowed to put her family's name in that field.

- still wondering about the headcrab scene.

[Creole Ned]

Checking around, it looks like it could be either "klicks" (speculated to be a garbled abbreviation of "kilometer") or "clicks". I should have just written miles. :P

As for the exterior description of The Downside, I actually don't mind that it diminished the sign for you. It's probably the most obvious tip-off in the story now, so having it surrounded by other details obfuscates that a bit.

I don't specify a locale but some of the geography is based around areas on Vancouver Island (the town of Youbou becomes Yarbough, though the mill in Youbou has shut down) and we have Bud, football and cents here, too. :)

Thanks for the comments.

The changes in your story sound good, assuming "ickies" doesn't get elevated from placeholder status. ;) On the headcrabs, I'd probably change the name there, just because the Half-Life reference is too strong and it pulls me out of the story a bit. Feel free to send along the revised version when it's done.