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

[elledanger]

Okay - as with any crit feel free to take from it what you want, and disregard anything you don't agree with. This is simply what I'm seeing, and I tend to be fairly forthright.

This is a piece of two halves, two very distinct halves. If that was the intention, well done - you've succeeded. However I feel it could have been a much stronger piece by focusing on the latter half. ("For a long time, my dad had this huge shadow of a secret" onwards). It feels a little as if you were warming up to the topic, and by the time paragraph five hit, what came before was largely irrelevant. It's a lot of (very nicely written) scenery that doesn't add anything extra.

I'm not seeing any major issues with the writing here, merely the editing. If you can get a feel for where the 'story' kicks in and be a bit braver in removing what isn't actively adding to that, I think this could be a lot tighter.

There would certainly have been room to incorporate things that you were particularly fond of from the first half, into the latter half.

I get the impression the (past) secrets of the dad were meant to be reflected in the daughters (current) secrets, however the disjointedness of the two meant that didn't materialise. If that was the intention I would suggest looking including more interaction between the two to enable you to demonstrate the difference between someone no longer hiding their secrets and someone currently doing so.

Feel free to respond to me privately if you want, if you want to respond at all. And most of all, good luck and happy writing!

[banyangirl1832]

Thank you! I'll play around with the two halves, as it were, and try to get into the story sooner. Thanks for the crit!

[elledanger]

It's my pleasure and best of luck to you! :D

[theun4givables]

I would give my own separate critique, but I think elledanger has covered just about everything I could say, and much more eloquently, too. The imagery present in your piece (and in most of your pieces) is wonderful and full, but sometimes that seems to be all your pieces are -- and that makes them harder for me to relate to.

The story of the girl and her father and their individual secrets -- I would have loved to see more of that, more of her struggle against her own, how she might relate to her father when he struggled (or still struggles with) his own secret. I feel like that's the real meat of the story and it gets buried in a lot of description that, in the end, doesn't add a whole lot to the piece at all.

Of course, this is coming from a writer who is so bare-bones with description she's been making a conscious effort to describe things more, so. Take what I have to say with a grain of salt. ;)