Hello! My name is Cal. I’ve been a Slate Star Codex reader for years and read LessWrong occasionally, but just made an account for the first time today.
I would love some advice on improving my fiction writing. Writing short-form fiction has been a major hobby of mine for my entire life (really, starting at age 7 or 8), but I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, I just enjoy it a lot and enjoy reading other amateurs’ fiction as well. I’ve never tried to get anything published anywhere as I don’t think it’s at that level of quality.
Here is the smallest one of my stories. I would be incredibly appreciative of constructive criticism.
“Drainage ditch” is too vulgar a term for the narrow creek that ran through the fenced off little park twenty yards behind the last condo before we left.
It was good to be near it. I think all running water is like that, even that small amount of it—at the narrowest part a child could jump across, and I did, when I was eight or nine and we lived another few streets down from the place.
My grandma called it a “babbling brook.” This is still how I think of it: the water running fast enough at the narrow parts that it made the pleasant sound you can hear recorded on relaxation CDs buried in the bottom of a box in your storage closet.
Where the stream widened at the end of the park, though, it pooled shallow and near-stagnant among a patch of cattails and other wet reedy plants. There was always garbage in the water. I never thought of it as dirty, only invasive. It was just as much a part of the environment as the fauna: here was the forsythia (Forsythia suspensa), and the juniper trees (Juniperus virginiana), and here the empty half-liter soda bottle (polyethylene terephthalate).
And that time I ran back to what I knew as home, along the sidewalk that flanked Blue Spring and then the asphalt, and cut through the grassy hill behind the townhouses to get to the one that was mine. (The back door would have been closer, but we did not use that door.)
The beads of granular lawn herbicide (2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid, 3,6-dichloro-2-methoxybenzoic acid) embedded in the soles of my shoes meant that I was to leave them outside today on the porch.
In my sock feet I went inside only to get a Shoprite bag (HDPE) to stuff in my pocket to bring back with me, and back on the porch I put my shoes on one at a time without untying them.
The stick that I used to fish the empty cigarette box (LDPE and paper) from the water had only recently snapped from the pin oak (Quercus palustris) that stood tall above this park. The park he now stood in, of course, was neither public nor more than an acre and a half; he judged that harshly.
I characterized him alternately as watching over the goings-on in this neighborhood with a silent protectiveness and as too old and tired to see the scrubby pines and patches of clover as anything but pathetically little consolation for what used to be here.
He had been here before they had put these houses up, I was sure of it. The townhome I lived in as a child was built in 2001. The last one I lived in before I left the state was built in 1992, and failing in dozens of small insidious ways that pooled in the sump much faster than the pathetic battery backups (lead dioxide, sulfuric acid) stacked in the basement closet could handle. Security theater was unconvincing to the driving weight of the water.
The pin oak, which I would guess had stood there since the 1960s, would stand for fifty years more unless someone came to destroy it. He did watch, I knew, as the condos in the long gray buildings across the street settled down to piecemeal destroy themselves.
I took the cigarette box in my ungloved hand from the end of my fishing-stick and put them in the bag and then I did not think about what my mother’s reaction might be. I often thought of it before I did things; that day I did not.
And hence I filled the bag with invasive treasures: three-quarters of a faded water bottle label (polypropylene), an empty chip bag (oriented polypropylene), a small chunk of styrofoam (polystyrene).
I pulled the bag into a tight knot at the top, and down from my small fingertips to my elbow ran the freed little rivulet of water (water, trichloroethylene, 1,1-dichloroethene).
There are some very nice things here; I think the paragraph where you introduce the convention of treating chemical names like biological ones is particularly good, for instance, though the convention isn’t as effective after that when the chemical names are no longer pairs of words. Generally, I like your writing style at the word/phrase/sentence level, at least as it manifests in this particular piece of writing.
Many things about this piece leave me puzzled. That may be intentional (leave lots of intriguing dangling threads to keep the reader’s attention; leave ’em wanting more, not less), or it may indicate that this piece should really be considered as part of something larger that ties some of the loose ends together (it’s clear that this piece is depicting a specific moment in a longer life—“before we left”, “before I left the state”, “I often thought of it before I did things”, etc.). Though there are puzzles that I don’t think any context would resolve. For me, the resulting sense of not being sure what’s going on was disagreeable, but other readers might well differ.
The thing I liked least about this piece is that it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. That may just indicate that there’s something I didn’t grasp, of course. There are a number of things that seem like themes (pollution and waste; the pin oak, considered as a character who sees things on a timescale longer than ours; what happens to houses and neighbourhoods over time; childhood) but there doesn’t seem to be much development of those themes, and accordingly I’m left not sure what the point is (if there is a “point”, which of course there need not be).
The very end suggests that perhaps the point is something to do with insidious invisible pollution? Our narrator, as a child, thinks something is water but in fact it’s water, trichloroethylene, 1-1-dichloroethene. That doesn’t seem like enough of a shock, somehow, to pull its weight.
So it seems more as if it’s just drawing a sketch of one particular moment in the past—no “point” necessary—but it’s hard to square that with what seems like the very strong emphasis on pollution, waste and decay. Having said that, as a sketch of one moment in the past I think it does a good job.
There are a number of little details that don’t serve an obvious “structural” purpose but give the impression that some care has been taken over them stylistically. The back door that you didn’t use. The absence of gloves on your hands. Not thinking of your mother’s possible reaction to the rubbish-bagging. Often thinking of it on other occasions. Perhaps they’re there just for vividity, in which case I feel like maybe some of them are a bit too obtrusive. Or perhaps there’s some subtext I’m supposed to infer from them and am failing to get? I dunno. I don’t want to say “take them out” because they’re nicely written and they do add vividity, but I get a slight sense of a Chekhov’s gun left unfired.
Also puzzling (and also suggesting that maybe there’s some point I’ve failed to grasp): what’s the bag of rubbish for? Invasive treasures, you say; is our narrator packaging up the rubbish in order to hang it in pride of place on the bedroom wall? (Hard to square that with the word “invasive”, I think.) Or to throw it out? (But then why the suggestion that their mother might disapprove?) Or to hang it off a branch of that pin oak? (Seems unlikely, given how the oak is portrayed.) Or just a thing a child decided to do on a sudden whim? Since this rubbish-bagging is kinda the central event of this vignette, and our narrator seems to be quite excited about doing it (running home, putting shoes on without stopping to untie and tie them), I want to understand why it’s important to the narrator, and I don’t.
A few quibbles: There’s a slight mismatch between “It was good to be near it” and “I think all running water is like that” (like what? the previous sentence isn’t, strictly, describing the water). “Sock feet” feels odd; is there a reason for that rather than, say, just “socks”? Why trichloroethylene but dichloroethene? The pin oak is almost always “he”, which I like, but at one point we suddenly have “unless someone came to destroy it”. What’s “them” in the sentence beginning “I took the cigarette box”? Maybe “destroy themselves piecemeal” flows better than “piecemeal destroy themselves”.
The paragraph beginning “I characterized him alternately” feels like it wants to be nudged in the showing-versus-telling direction somehow. (I’m not very sure about this.) Elsewhere, you just state matter-of-factly that “he judged that harshly”, “he had been here before they put these houses up”, “he did watch”. But here, for one paragraph, you’re looking at it indirectly: I characterized him … . It seems like this breaks the spell a little.
Even though I’m not sure what the very ending is doing I like its craftsmanship, with the parallel between the drainage ditch / babbling brook at the start echoed by the rivulet at the very end.
Thank you so much (for both your kind words and your constructive criticism)!
The point was intended to be about pollution and I appreciate you pointing out that it wasn’t strong/clear enough—that’s something I want to work on. In the same vein, the narrator’s intention with the garbage fished out of the creek would be to throw it out so it isn’t litter, but I agree I don’t really make that clear, especially since they call it “treasures” and say that they don’t see it as unnatural. This is one of a few pieces that I’ve written inspired by various Superfund sites in New Jersey. The specific one in question, https://semspub.epa.gov/work/02/437463.pdf, is not as serious as some of the other ones I’ve written about on the Passaic River, or the American Cyanamid site (here are some cool photos) near where I grew up. It was both a major fear and inspiration to me as a kid.
I also really like all the suggestions you made about the oak, both avoiding the “I characterized him” and making sure that I continue to use “he” and not “it”. That and the gimmick of the chemical names not being necessary throughout the whole piece—I was on and off about that myself, whether I should keep them in just that one paragraph or leave them in the whole piece, but now that I have a second opinion it makes sense to take the extras out.
Will make changes based on this and consider the ideas you describe here in my future writing—I appreciate you taking the time to write this. :)
I’m not sure that I’m necessarily advocating taking the other chemical names out. After all, they play a necessary role right at the very end, and I don’t know how that would work without all the previous use.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was any doubt that pollution was a central topic! That would be hard to miss. But it’s not so clear what you’re trying to say about it. (Or whether you’re neutrally refraining from saying anything in particular, and just showing it in its natural habitat, as it were.) Perhaps if I were less ignorant that last parenthesis would tell me a clearer story. (Though I guess googling the chemical names would probably have sufficed.)
Hello! My name is Cal. I’ve been a Slate Star Codex reader for years and read LessWrong occasionally, but just made an account for the first time today.
I would love some advice on improving my fiction writing. Writing short-form fiction has been a major hobby of mine for my entire life (really, starting at age 7 or 8), but I don’t think I’m particularly good at it, I just enjoy it a lot and enjoy reading other amateurs’ fiction as well. I’ve never tried to get anything published anywhere as I don’t think it’s at that level of quality.
Here is the smallest one of my stories. I would be incredibly appreciative of constructive criticism.
Some rather scattered thoughts:
There are some very nice things here; I think the paragraph where you introduce the convention of treating chemical names like biological ones is particularly good, for instance, though the convention isn’t as effective after that when the chemical names are no longer pairs of words. Generally, I like your writing style at the word/phrase/sentence level, at least as it manifests in this particular piece of writing.
Many things about this piece leave me puzzled. That may be intentional (leave lots of intriguing dangling threads to keep the reader’s attention; leave ’em wanting more, not less), or it may indicate that this piece should really be considered as part of something larger that ties some of the loose ends together (it’s clear that this piece is depicting a specific moment in a longer life—“before we left”, “before I left the state”, “I often thought of it before I did things”, etc.). Though there are puzzles that I don’t think any context would resolve. For me, the resulting sense of not being sure what’s going on was disagreeable, but other readers might well differ.
The thing I liked least about this piece is that it didn’t seem to be going anywhere. That may just indicate that there’s something I didn’t grasp, of course. There are a number of things that seem like themes (pollution and waste; the pin oak, considered as a character who sees things on a timescale longer than ours; what happens to houses and neighbourhoods over time; childhood) but there doesn’t seem to be much development of those themes, and accordingly I’m left not sure what the point is (if there is a “point”, which of course there need not be).
The very end suggests that perhaps the point is something to do with insidious invisible pollution? Our narrator, as a child, thinks something is water but in fact it’s water, trichloroethylene, 1-1-dichloroethene. That doesn’t seem like enough of a shock, somehow, to pull its weight.
So it seems more as if it’s just drawing a sketch of one particular moment in the past—no “point” necessary—but it’s hard to square that with what seems like the very strong emphasis on pollution, waste and decay. Having said that, as a sketch of one moment in the past I think it does a good job.
There are a number of little details that don’t serve an obvious “structural” purpose but give the impression that some care has been taken over them stylistically. The back door that you didn’t use. The absence of gloves on your hands. Not thinking of your mother’s possible reaction to the rubbish-bagging. Often thinking of it on other occasions. Perhaps they’re there just for vividity, in which case I feel like maybe some of them are a bit too obtrusive. Or perhaps there’s some subtext I’m supposed to infer from them and am failing to get? I dunno. I don’t want to say “take them out” because they’re nicely written and they do add vividity, but I get a slight sense of a Chekhov’s gun left unfired.
Also puzzling (and also suggesting that maybe there’s some point I’ve failed to grasp): what’s the bag of rubbish for? Invasive treasures, you say; is our narrator packaging up the rubbish in order to hang it in pride of place on the bedroom wall? (Hard to square that with the word “invasive”, I think.) Or to throw it out? (But then why the suggestion that their mother might disapprove?) Or to hang it off a branch of that pin oak? (Seems unlikely, given how the oak is portrayed.) Or just a thing a child decided to do on a sudden whim? Since this rubbish-bagging is kinda the central event of this vignette, and our narrator seems to be quite excited about doing it (running home, putting shoes on without stopping to untie and tie them), I want to understand why it’s important to the narrator, and I don’t.
A few quibbles: There’s a slight mismatch between “It was good to be near it” and “I think all running water is like that” (like what? the previous sentence isn’t, strictly, describing the water). “Sock feet” feels odd; is there a reason for that rather than, say, just “socks”? Why trichloroethylene but dichloroethene? The pin oak is almost always “he”, which I like, but at one point we suddenly have “unless someone came to destroy it”. What’s “them” in the sentence beginning “I took the cigarette box”? Maybe “destroy themselves piecemeal” flows better than “piecemeal destroy themselves”.
The paragraph beginning “I characterized him alternately” feels like it wants to be nudged in the showing-versus-telling direction somehow. (I’m not very sure about this.) Elsewhere, you just state matter-of-factly that “he judged that harshly”, “he had been here before they put these houses up”, “he did watch”. But here, for one paragraph, you’re looking at it indirectly: I characterized him … . It seems like this breaks the spell a little.
Even though I’m not sure what the very ending is doing I like its craftsmanship, with the parallel between the drainage ditch / babbling brook at the start echoed by the rivulet at the very end.
Thank you so much (for both your kind words and your constructive criticism)!
The point was intended to be about pollution and I appreciate you pointing out that it wasn’t strong/clear enough—that’s something I want to work on. In the same vein, the narrator’s intention with the garbage fished out of the creek would be to throw it out so it isn’t litter, but I agree I don’t really make that clear, especially since they call it “treasures” and say that they don’t see it as unnatural. This is one of a few pieces that I’ve written inspired by various Superfund sites in New Jersey. The specific one in question, https://semspub.epa.gov/work/02/437463.pdf, is not as serious as some of the other ones I’ve written about on the Passaic River, or the American Cyanamid site (here are some cool photos) near where I grew up. It was both a major fear and inspiration to me as a kid.
I also really like all the suggestions you made about the oak, both avoiding the “I characterized him” and making sure that I continue to use “he” and not “it”. That and the gimmick of the chemical names not being necessary throughout the whole piece—I was on and off about that myself, whether I should keep them in just that one paragraph or leave them in the whole piece, but now that I have a second opinion it makes sense to take the extras out.
Will make changes based on this and consider the ideas you describe here in my future writing—I appreciate you taking the time to write this. :)
I’m not sure that I’m necessarily advocating taking the other chemical names out. After all, they play a necessary role right at the very end, and I don’t know how that would work without all the previous use.
I didn’t mean to imply that there was any doubt that pollution was a central topic! That would be hard to miss. But it’s not so clear what you’re trying to say about it. (Or whether you’re neutrally refraining from saying anything in particular, and just showing it in its natural habitat, as it were.) Perhaps if I were less ignorant that last parenthesis would tell me a clearer story. (Though I guess googling the chemical names would probably have sufficed.)