Hunger Pangs Edit
Over all the plot is great. The
story is great. It flows pretty well. As a reader, not a lot of
boredom or wondering what the point is or when/where you're going to get to the
point. For not being that much longer than a typical short story
(2000-7000 words), it wasn't a drag to read.
Most of the issues are just...clutter
issues. Some technical things. The tense isn't steady.
Sometimes it seems like she's telling us a story in the moment with present
tense. We're with her on her shoulder watching it in real time.
Sometimes it seems like she's sitting down and telling us a story from
"back in the day" and we're not actually present for it.
It seems like every person she talks to
just talks and talks and talks and doesn't have an off switch. It makes
sense for some people to be like that (that's how it is in real life) but it
doesn't make sense that every last person she meets and has a conversation with
doesn't ever shut up. Look at what you want the dialogue to convey.
Decide how much of it is super important to the story at hand vs. how much of
it is unnecessary (for the scope of this short story) world building and such
as that. Ultimately, all we need to know is that she does make some bad
decisions and goes to places she shouldn't go where people "dare" her
to do things that make the reader go, "Wait...Why would someone dare her
to do that? I want to read more." And we need to know that
she's a ghoul and that there's a guy that hunts them who, basically, wants her
to do his job for him. (Was there a setup for her to sort of take his
place as a ghoul hunter because she can do his job better than him? That
almost seems like that's what's going on. While it does stand on its own,
it could totally be a set up story for something that could be much bigger and
broader.) Having an old school ghoul show up and be all "I've missed
my own kind and I'm lonely" does create a character that will, as lonely
people are wont to do, never shut up and be overly excited. So that makes
sense. Plus, he provides information that is interesting. Honestly,
for the scope of a short story it might be unnecessary, but it's interesting
enough that I don't see why you couldn't leave it in.
There's a lot of stream of
consciousness rambling and internal monologue that just needs basic cleaning
up. You don't want to write to the lowest common denominator, but you do
want to write to the majority. The majority isn't always so great with
keeping up with constant streams of thought intermingled too close with actual
narration. You'll want to make sure it's clear what is being told in the
story and what is being thought of in Mirri's head.
We noticed that there's not a lot of
swearing and just wanted to make sure that you either wanted minimal swearing
on purpose (Mirri might just not swear because she was raised a fine religious
girl) or if you actually wanted a completely clean story. This is minor
and not really an issue, just something we noticed.
Watch the words that end in -ly.
People generally find adverbs annoying. It makes it to easy to fall into
a telling instead of showing environment. It's almost like the reader
isn't being allowed to infer what's going on and really feel like
they're...feeling the story. It's more like the writer is telling them
what they should be feeling. People hate being told what they should
feel.
Powdered creamer doesn't mix into cold
coffee. It's unclear if she doesn't realize that creamer doesn't mix into
cold coffee that great or if she does realize that and wants to keep her hands
busy stirring like a mad woman.
When Forbo and Mirri are in the cafe,
they almost have the same conversation twice back to back. He mentions
her shark teeth and she reacts almost exactly the same way both times saying
she's never had a cavity, etc. One of those conversations should be cut
so as not to be repetitive.
Dialogue and actions that surround
dialogue don't always have to (nor should they) be in the same paragraph.
Technically, each bit of dialogue is its own paragraph. Though there are
stylistic things that are allowed in the writing world to adjust those
things. They just have to be done smoothly.
Example
This is how you have this paragraph:
“I’m adopted!” I blurt out. “My parents
are good people--” He raises a doubting eyebrow, “They are good humans. I was
born in Romania during the fall of the Soviet Union. They adopted me from an
orphanage. They are innocent!” I pleaded in a fierce whisper, the line cook and
waitress were starting to look at us. “What do you want from me?”
It should look more like this:
"I'm adopted!" I blurt out. "My parents are good
people--"
He raises a doubting eyebrow.
"Humans," I say, "correcting" myself.
The line cook and waitress are starting to look at us. I ignore them.
"I was born in Romania during the fall of the Soviet Union. They
adopted me from an orphanage." My voice lowers to a fierce whisper.
"They are innocent!"
He continues to sit, unmoved and silent. I meet his eyes.
"What do you want from me?"
Or something along those lines, anyway.
The only other thing is that there's
too many instances of sentences starting with "I". When
something is in first person, that's super hard to avoid doing.
Obviously, you can't weed out all of them, nor do you have to weed out all of
them. But, it would do a good service if they got weeded out at least a
little.
Otherwise, there's nothing punching us
in the face. It's a great story. The world you're making is pretty
cool.
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