The Killing Floor - Week 2

[clauderainsrm]

What the hell is this? It's a special place for people to submit their work for critique. Not "You rock", but no being an asshat either. Actually looking at the work and thinking of ways to make it better.

Why "The Killing Floor"? - I've had this in mind for awhile. The working name was "The Cutting Room Floor". But then I got that Howlin'

Comments

[iwriteflash]

This was my week 0 entry. Looking for ways to improve it. Thanks
http://iwriteflash.livejournal.com/901.html

[banyangirl1832]

As you mentioned in the comments, there are a few comma issues, but nothing that's not easily fixable.

Instead of just stating the lines, I'd love to see each line more fleshed out into a mini scene. Put us in the wife's shoes, in the girl-child's shoes, in the girl friend's shoes. But the starkness works as is, so it's your choice.

Overall, this was powerful and I love that you did it for International Women's Day.

[iwriteflash]

The mini-scenes idea sounds interesting. I'll experiment with it and let you know the result.
Thank you for taking the time out to read. <3

[anyonesghost]

I actually like this as it is structured today, but I would personally use shorter sentences. Place full stops instead of commas. Even if they're fragments. It hits harder. It is more direct. And you're hammering these points home.

At least, that's my opinion. :-) It's a slightly different style, and certainly different from what banyangirl1832 is suggesting above, but it may work for you. (If it doesn't, that's fine too.)

[iwriteflash]

I did try it with shorter sentences in my rough draft but somehow the sentences seemed abrupt to me. I changed it to make it a single long sentence and somehow felt at that time that it was way more 'sing song'. The comma placement was a nightmare though and it's still not reading the way it should.

Guess it's going to take a few more rewrites to figure this one out. I'll definitely try with shorter sentences too.

Thank you for reading and commenting :)

[theun4givables]

I like the sing-song effect of the longer sentences, but I also see a bit of what the_lettersea is saying, too. I wonder if there's a way to combine these two different feelings...

An example would be this... First, your original sentence:

I am the girl in college you whistled and groped at, making me feel afraid, insecure and at-risk, trampling my self respect and dignity, and when I resisted your advances the best you could do was throw an acid bulb at my face.

How I would "play" with it, a little:

I am the girl in college you whistled and groped at, making me feel afraid, insecure, and at-risk. And when I resisted your advances? The best you could do was throw an acid bulb in my face.

I would lose the "trampling my self respect and dignity," probably. If I wanted to keep it, I'd probably do something more like this:

I am the girl in college you whistled and groped at, trampling my self respect and dignity and making me feel afraid, insecure, at at-risk....This is where playing around with it and figuring out how different things feel

[iwriteflash]

I see where you are going with the examples, Thank you. Somehow, when I wrote the rough draft the sentences looked bitten-off!

^ is a great help and I thank you for reading and responding :)

[elledanger]

This was really nice, but just verged on the edge of being free-verse, which is where I think it would have gained a bit more power. Made it feel more angry. To me at least it feels like a piece that should have some anger behind it. So shorter sentences, a few changes in word choice to make the rhythm more staccato, and that could then contrast with the final line.

I really enjoyed it over all though, it's very competent.

[iwriteflash]

I am glad you enjoyed reading it :)

While writing this I was thinking more in the line of contempt rather than anger, but I see how anger could have made it more 'punchy'. I am definitely going to try shorter sentences again to see how this comes out.

When you said it needed a few changes in word choice, did you mean there are a lot of flowery( or not!) adjectives hanging in there? Or something else?

I thank you for reading this and responding.

[elledanger]

Ahhh - yeah - contempt would work wonderfully. What I would suggest doing is reading it aloud and trying to hear the contempt coming across.

You want a lot of snarly, abrupt words with lots of hard consonants and plosives. If you're going for contempt you can get away with the longer sentences but you want to get the rhythm of it to feel like you're spitting the words.

And the word changes is more to do with choosing a shorter word in place of a longer one. Longer words with latin/ normadic roots also tend to have less power spoken. Especially when going with an emotion like contempt look at keeping your syllable count down.

[iwriteflash]

Thank you for the helpful suggestions. I think I know how to do this now. I'll tag you and all the others when I post the new version. Thanks for your time :)

[elledanger]

Oooh - I can't wait to see what you do with it! Good luck :D