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I told you guys I write sometimes. REWRITE post #19
Sheri
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
I am such a chicken you guys don't even know how much nerve it took to post this.
So lemme know what you people think, eh?
EDIT: Added line breaks for Ori.
So lemme know what you people think, eh?
[font=Verdana]Memories For Sale The front lawn was covered in them. Fold-out tables stood in tidy rows lined with cardboard boxes. I had arranged them by genre – romance, mystery, horror. People milled about the aisles, browsing through boxes, sifting through the remnants of a relationship. From time to time someone would pull one out of a box, a small bauble like a colored marble -- but living, something alive there inside the swirl of colors – and examine it. They all examined them differently. A frail-looking old fellow in worn corduroy pants and cataract-filled eyes would hold each of them up to his good ear, listening to the memory whispered into the tuft of grey hair. A young boy with huge buck teeth would pick them up and shake them like wrapped Christmas presents, listening to their squealing protest. The fake fortune teller down the street, Psychic Mary, who couldn’t really see anyone’s future but was nice enough that the neighbors liked her, would touch them to her forehead, eyes closed, like a piece of ice to fevered flesh. The marble-shaped memories would soften, melt, mold themselves against her forehead as she listened to what they told her, then reform themselves as she pulled her hand away. Sometimes she would mutter names, places, pertinent facts. Maybe she wasn’t a fraud after all, I thought as I tagged a box of memories at ten cents each. They had been free (a huge sign on the front lawn said “Memories for FREE,†with the FREE crossed out and SALE scrawled underneath it in purple Sharpie), but nobody had wanted them then. Everyone wants to feel that they’re getting something of value, even if they don’t pay for it. A balding man, Frank from two blocks over, had asked me why he would want someone’s free memories. Why not, I’d asked. You don’t even have to carry them. They’ll take up space in my head, he responded tersely, and there won’t be any room for my own new ones. Who would want to fill their head with someone else’s worthless memories? So I’d priced them, from a nickel to a few dollars, depending on how strongly I felt about them – the less I wanted to sell them, the less they cost. At a small table closest to where I sat were jewelry and notes and books and any number of other things arranged beside their corresponding memory, with a sign above them declaring, “Buy a memory, get the item free!†A young blonde woman had bounded up to the table, dressed in all pink. Elle Woods, I thought. This was a girl who lived for men, whose sun rose and set by the belief that some day she, too, would join the ranks of beautiful, home-making housewives whose husbands bring them gifts of jewelry and chocolate and who somehow never gained an ounce. She spent a minute scanning the burnt pots and photo frames, then gasped and closed her manicured hand around a small diamond ring. How much for this? she asked me, thrusting the thing into my face. The memory wafted to me, like the green odor of cartoons – him sitting across a low-lit table, eyes dark with shadow, too dark to catch the firelight, reaching into his coat pocket and sliding sideways out of his chair – Free. But the memory is five cents. The girl’s babydoll blue eyes opened wide, bugged, threatened to pop right out of her pretty head, and she stuffed a dollar into my hand. Clutching the ring to her perky pink chest, she snatched up the shiny memory and yelled, Keep the change! She hurried off wondering what kind of woman would be insane enough to not want this memory. She hadn’t seen the one beside it, a neatly-folded sheet of paper, a Dear Jane letter, next to a blood-red memory that swirled with fog. I stared out across the lawn from the shelter of the garage. The boxes went on forever. They stretched out to infinity, full of birthdays and arguments and movies. In the far back corner of the lot, farthest from the road and myself, was the section I had labeled “Erotica.†The boxes there were packed, the memories in sloppy disarray, unlike the rest. A man in a trench coat had been hovering over them for two hours, picking up a memory here and there and giving a faint, throaty sigh as he rolled them in his fingers. As I watched, he picked out another and stared at it. The memory nudged at me, even from here – some were stronger than others. There’s a storm outside, thunder and lightening like the first time we met, and we’re down on the floor in our house, the house we bought together, my head resting on his huge barrel chest, his fingers in my hair. I’m wearing shorts, he is naked. I look up and his eyes are skies of unbearable blueness, like I’d never seen before and have never seen since, and he smiles and kisses my head, which I love because he’s tall enough to do it when we’re standing and sweet enough to do it when we’re not. I want him inside me. I want to take him in my arms and squeeze until he melds into my chest, fits into the space between my skin, like a canary inside my rib cage. I want him to occupy me; where my liver and lungs and heart should be, I want him. I look at him and I want him to hug my spine, to kiss my ribs, to make love to my blood and bones, the bits and pieces that make me up. The contents of a house, of a shared life, were laid out on a nearby table too flimsy to support the weight of their meaning. It buckled under the memories, heavier by far than their corresponding pots and pans, linens, towels, the multitude of wedding gifts left unopened and unused. The tiny round memories waited, reflecting the sunlight like crystals or absorbing it like onyx. I lifted a daisy-painted coffee cup from beside a tar-black memory, which trembled on the table and threatened to crack open and spill its contents across the yard, down the street, to flood the world in choking darkness– The kitchen is quiet. The clock doesn’t tick – it’s digital. I run my thumb over the childishly-drawn flowers near the rim of the mug. He sits across the table and this morning his eyes are icebergs of unbearable blueness. The folded letter sits between us. I’d gotten up earlier than he’d expected. So, that’s it? It’s my voice, but smaller, like when I was six. It disgusts me. Yeah. I’m sorry. The silence breaks over me like a wave. He’s sorry. I’ll pack up my stuff while you’re at work. I lower my head over the mug. The liquid is brown, smooth, and ripples when I breathe over it, ripple pushing ripple, cause and effect, like dominos. What did I do? Cause and effect. Nothing. I just – Silence. It stops up my ears with its immediacy. I don’t love you anymore. I hold the mug firm, to still the trembling in my hands. The silence stretches, yawns, lazy like Sunday morning, fits itself into the crevices in my skin and fills my pores until I cannot stand its touch, lewd and insistent. Get out of my house. Sara. . . Get out. A chair scrapes on tiles. Shuffling. A pause in the doorway, where I will him, please God, to say something, to apologize, to come kneel beside me and kiss my head and tell me he’s sorry, he’s sorry, he doesn’t know what he was thinking, he loves me, but instead the shuffle moves toward the door, which opens with a creak and closes with a slam and then the silence fills the space in my head again. I hold the mug so tightly that my knuckles turn white, then beyond white into transparency, until the veins in my hands stand out, gnarled and engorged, until I threaten to crush the ceramic into pieces, crumble it to dust. He does not return; the mug does not break. There was a tug on my sleeve. I looked down and the frail old man with small, cataract eyes looked up at me, his fist closed tightly around something. Who was he? Someone. Someone I loved very much, someone who hurt me very badly. What was his name? The old man’s voice was a waver, a ripple in the sea. I don’t remember. A woman bought it. Said she collected names. The old man looked down at his worn loafers, then back up at me. How long are you going to keep selling them? Until they’re all gone. Until I don’t remember him at all anymore. The man in the trench coat winked at me. The old man lifted his hand. The skin was grey, splotchy like huge freckles, fingers knobby, the branches of an ancient tree. He uncurled his fist and in his palm sat a perfect sphere, glittering in the sunlight like a million tiny stars, the universe inside of a marble. It very nearly glowed. How much is this one? The memory came like a flash flood, engulfing my senses. It’s early in our history. Things are still good. We are laying in bed, fully clothed, just enjoying existing, here, with one another. It is a moment of unspoken words, perfect, the things romances are made of, and I reach up one hand, pinch his nose and pull away. Got your nose. He stares at me for a second, the moment in which he could decide that I am, undoubtably, completely weird and leave me there, embarrassed, holding his invisible nose. My breath catches. His eyes open wide. Give it back! For five minutes we battle like children, me sticking my thumb between my fingers like my parents had done to me, him reaching and laughing and begging me to give his nose back, as he had done as a child. It was the moment I loved best, both of us completely vulnerable, completely foolish, and completely carefree, confident enough in each other to know that we could be, utterly and unabashedly, ourselves, free of any pretense, with no need to try to impress or be someone we weren’t. It was the essence of honesty, there in bed with me holding his nose between my fingers. Ma’am? The old man was still there by my side. I’m sorry, I said as I closed my hand around the shining memory. This one isn’t for sale. The old man peered up at me through the clouds in his eyes. He’d seen the memory, before he came over to me. He nodded. I took a step away from the old man, lifted the memory high into the air where it caught the sunlight and sparkled, created a rainbow in my hand, then swung my arm down and smashed it into a million tiny shards on the cold, black cement of the driveway.[/font]
EDIT: Added line breaks for Ori.
Sheri on
Posts
However, sometimes I think you are over-expressing some of your imagery with a phrase too many. For example,
That last phrase takes away from the power of the sentence and it doesn't really tell us anything that we haven't already put together.
Kill the bolded and this sentence reads much stronger. Try to avoid parentheticals because they break up the imagery too much. You might go through and look at all of the parentheticals and figure out if they are making the sentence stronger or just rewording a phrase. Changing it to "their weight" instead of "the weight of their meaning" implies the same thing but is more consistent with the rest of the language.
Kill this cliche. It's the only one I saw, so my old comp teacher would probably say you earned it, but I still think it jars. The paragraph works without this sentence, anyway, so that might be another sign.
Here is another device (Christ why can't I remember what they are called) that gets in the way of your tight sentence. You might go with crush to pieces or crumble to dust, but this sentence ain't big enough for the two of 'em.
That last sentence is tricky, but I think it'd be better to avoid the half-stop with the semicolon. With the semi-colon it sounds too melodramatic and I think it cheapens the feeling the narrator is getting across. You might not even want to run with a parallel here and instead use the mug to segue back to the table, but who knows, you're the writer.
The repetition of the "unbearable blueness" of the eyes, is unnecessary imo. It was strong enough the first time to stick an image in my head so there's no reason to do it again.
I thought the inside dialogue suited this story well except when it seemed to interfere/meld with Sara's thoughts. you may have been aiming for this, but as a reader i often find it confusing. For example: do you know what i mean? It goes, his words -> her thoughts -> his words. instead of his words -> her thoughts.
Could just be me that has a problem with this though. We'll see what others think.
Great story. keep it up.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
I urinated in the soap dispenser.
So spank me.
I think bundling actual objects to the memories for sale might be adding one layer of symbolism too many.
I'm not sure the part about how people didn't value the memories much when they were free is that important.
I don't know what your feelings are on this, but you might want to use the symbolic concept of selling memories as a jumping-off point for more of a plot (turning it into more of a fantasy story rather than just a symbolic conceit). Like, right now you have this:
1. Imagine if I could sell off my old memories.
2. Here are some highlights from among the memories I would sell.
3. But there is one memory that I would sooner destroy than allow anyone else to have.
But you could expand on this by showing how the sale of these memories actually affects the hero's life and her relationships with other people. Kind of like in Eternal Sunshine, where it actually goes into the repercussions of getting rid of all those memories, and really explores the strangeness of the concept. In your story it seems like you're not entire committed to treating the sale of memories as "real" in the context of the story.
So basically what I'm saying is you should consider making it way longer and more elaborate.
I had my mental red pen all ready to go when I was reading through it and it went unused. Kudos.
when the indigo children come
Memories, for me at least, tend to revolve around certain details such as a smell or a particular phrase and are a bit more impressionistic and abstract than what's being presented here, so I'd like to see a bit more of that enter some of her recollections. By no means get rid of the narratives within each memory, but maybe accentuate a detail or two here and there.
Also: good idea, great story, awesome potential if you take this further.
First off, thank you guys. I mean, five comments in 5 hours? Rad.
I'll organize by crit, I guess!
Muncie: I agree, some of the phrases get in the way, and some of the ones you suggested I cut, I will. Some of them I'll keep, because I think they do add a little bit, usually in the way the sentence flows (essentially, 'the bits and pieces that make me up' is staying and the rest can go). As for the cliche, it's gonna go -- the one I want to keep is the garage sale cliche of 'this one isn't for sale' (yes, bsjezz, I kept it, but see what I did to it? Eh, eh?).
Ravin: I know about the repetition, because it was intentionally done to draw a parallel, but I wasn't sure if it would work when I wrote it. What I'm getting from your comment is that it doesn't work, so I'll work on retooling one of them. I also know what you mean about the flow from speech to thoughts to speech; the lack of quotation marks probably doesn't help. When I first wrote it, it was really clear where the dialogue was and how it flowed, and in the style of my favorite author (Aimee Bender), I left the quotation marks out. Since it's a bit more complicated now, I think I'll have to add them. Think that'll help?
Officious: I considered that, but then I was informed that there's a Twilight Zone episode that pretty much does that in a much better way than I was thinking of doing it. >.> I kind of like this better. It's more of my style (which I know you guys don't know, since I haven't posted a story before). If I can come up with something truly fantastic, I might expand, but as it is, I already have enough trouble writing anything longer than 7 pages. XD As for the selling of memories, it is completely real -- she really is having a garage sale with little marble-like memories that people can buy. If it's not coming off as 'entirely committed,' then I'm doing something wrong and I'll work on it.
Ares: Yes.
(by which I mean, yes, stylistic, repetition for emphasis, etc)
Concept: Excellent ideas, I'll see if I can work some of that in.
You guys are rad. Thanks again. <3
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop
COMPLIMENT SANDWICH! NOM NOM NOM
Actually it's pretty good. I rarely ever say that (I'm Munacra the meanest critics of the mean) but the concept of the story is strong, creative and fresh. You also have a grasp of how to establish good and interesting character and when and where to establish imagery. That is to say, you have all the fundamentals down for sure.
I do think you can you can improve your craft. Most of these guys already got you for a lot I was going to say, but there's some problems to be addressed still.
This is a matter of preference but I don't think you should tell me how a character says something. Instead you should convey their tone through dialogue and action. How does someone say something tersely? How does their voice change? How does their body move? What do their eyes look like? Something like that. To me someone saying something tersely is one thing and to you is another. But if he says his dialogue with a scratch in his voice or with a twist of his lip, that communicates the idea more clearly. Plus it's just better writing.
Unless your narrator is omniscient she would have no idea what this woman was thinking. This is one those things that stand out and give mental bumps, that feeling of getting out of the story.
What clues your character that she is thinking that? The sentence before it does.
Since you already did describe the emotion she feels through action, there is no need to explain it afterwards. It just gets in the way of the story.
I liked the way you handled this transition. Very efficient and almost unnoticeable. Cool.
The memory is very well written and really drives everything home. Good work.
I feel that bolded part is a little overly dramatic and really sticks out. Show some restraint. Also this transition doesn't really work as well as the last one. It's too hidden. Make it a little more visible. Not a lot mind you, but enough to recognize it as a smooth transition.
nice.
See that's a much better way to handle dialogue. Show emotion and internal thoughts through externals. Why didn't you do that before?
Bordering on melodrama and cliche. Muncie already caugth you with this but I figure it bears repeating. You sometimes do go a little overboard with some of these descriptions although you keep it in rein most of the time. Death to cliches!.
The subsequent memory I liked a lot because it was very good. Except for this next part. I think you should cut out that tiny bit of authorial direction and let the story present its own conclusions about what this means.
ending = meh. seen it done before many times. Either strengthen this by adding an element which makes it fresh and interesting, or kill it and make a new one.
Ok so yeah, good work overall and I didn't know you could write. Excellente.
@oldmanhero tumblr
I think there are a multitude of ways you could go with this (and please, ignore the Twilight Zone episode - you should never shackle yourself based on what may or may not have been done before - focus on the internal truth of your story and it'll always be fresh) - as G suggested, how do the memories affect the people who buy them? What about those memories that only tangentially feature the guy (like Christmas lunch with the family, the first time Sara waterskied, etc)? Does the guy still exist? What would happen if they met?
But still, even if you decline to expand on the themes, it's very good.
I'm not sure I should name her. I mean, I know it's only mentioned once, but originally I was planning on leaving her nameless (ala Aimee Bender, again). But I can't figure out a way to the 'Get out/Get out of my house' dialogue to work without it. Is it better for her to have a name? Does it make a point when compared to the fact that his name is sold?
I'm just not sure what all the implications are. I named her on a whim, to make the scene work; it's not even a name I'm attached to. So I dunno what to do with it.
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop
Any crits I had have already been posted by others (e.g. excise the cliche, change some of the expository stuff from internal to external, etc.), but I was impressed with your ability to write a nifty little story centered around a pretty tired situation.
Also, good work, kiddo. It kind of reminded me of some of Gahan Wilson's stuff. You made yer "pa" proud.
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Yeah, this is a great story, and it reminds me strongly of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which is my favourite movie ever. There are certain lines that don't work for me, and drop into cliche that seem unnecessary, but those are paled by the fantastic imagery you have working here.
Thanks for the read, I look forward to the next thread you start.
I really love this bit. This whole piece is terrific, actually. I agree with most of the above crits, though I really disagree about adding quotations to the dialogue. Touch it up so that it reads more clearly maybe (though I had no problem following), but don't add quotes. I think it would really hurt the nature of the piece.
Fantastic work, Sheri.
Couldn't she have smashed all the memories though
That would have taken forever!
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop
Yeah. Maybe it's because I just finished reading A Million Little Pieces by James Frey (which uses no quotations or he said/she said statements for any dialog throughout, and succeeds quite well at doing it), but I think this story works better as a stream-of-conciousness type thing, and having the quotations in there would just be a distraction from the flow. If it's written well, so that the reader can easily surmise who is saying what, then the quotations themselves and the "he/she said" statements are largely unnecessary anyway, in my opinion.
If the dialog sections are just cleaned up a little, so there's no confusion of what is being said and what is descriptive text, then it'll work just fine, I say.
It is mostly the same, except for the ending.
I changed some things I wasn't sure I wanted to change -- so if something's different from the original and you liked the original better, let me know so I know what's working and what isn't.
Thanks, guys!
Sheri Baldwin Photography | Facebook | Twitter | Etsy Shop
Agreed completely.
Also, this line:
I think worked better when it was: I just really dig the last line, for some reason. When I read your edit, it didn't hit me at all like it did in the first draft.
Also, I think the "Wait..." line worked better with the name in there. As it is now, it isn't clear that it is him saying the line, plus I think having her name in there makes it feel more personal, somehow.
I think the original worked better, overall.
As it stands though, it feels a bit Hollywood - the guy arriving at the last minute to win back his love seems incongruous with the cruelty he displayed before. Would he care anymore? Presumably he's moved on, too. Similarly, saving the eyes - I understand what you're going for, but softening the end works against the general melancholy of the piece.