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.

Editing is your friend.

The final section of this piece is good, and taken on it's own and expanded just enough to let the reader know that Tobias has been trying to learn how to tell jokes, it would work really well. The punch line would have a lot more punch to it. The problem is that so much has gone before it that you're at risk of reader apathy.

You seem to have a lot of ideas that are about three-quarters formed and instead of developing them you move onto the next segment. Rather than building any suspense, what this is doing is pushing your reader away and disconnecting them each time. And what you're doing is making more work for yourself. After each break you're having to recapture your readers attention.

Any one of these segments fleshed out on their own would have provided you with much stronger piece. Although I would ask whether you needed the first section at all? That Tobias and Levi are an angel and a demon doesn't impact on this particular story. Nor does the character work (the flirting and the situation comedy) add significantly to it.

Bringing the whole thing into tighter focus on the two characters and the struggle to tell the joke would have resulted in a tighter more direct, and funnier piece. Especially as the focus of the piece is laughing at the inability to tell the joke, something which sadly you needed to resort to telling your readers; more focus would have let the piece illustrate that for you.

It's a good idea, and the ground work is all there. just yeah - edit, edit, edit. Or as my dad used to say "If in doubt, cut it out."

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!

[theun4givables]

With the first section, it was more or less the set up -- here's where Tobias learned what a joke is and the spark of interest, etc. As a reader, these are the things I care about, but I also see why this might have been superfluous, in the end. ;) I am very much a "write everything I see/hear" sort of writer, when my characters start showing me scenes and feeding me lines of dialogue. Editing things down is sometimes difficult to me, because if my characters deemed it relevant I have a hard time seeing why it might not be necessary, in the end. ;)

Thank you for this -- this was really useful, especially since this was about as first drafty as I get for Idol entries. :)

[elledanger]

I think this kind of thing is where you as the writer need to wrestle control away from the characters. The characters want to do what they want to do, which is great and shows what a fertile imagination you have.
However to make your story stronger and to make your characters home more robust, you as the writer need to pull on the reigns and give the work over-all more structure.

What you might find happening is that the characters end up pulling you in an entirely different direction, which is perfectly okay! It just means that you need to go back through and re-edit and re-work it in retrospect for where the piece wants to go.

[theun4givables]

For anything that isn't a first draft, yes, I need to pull back on them some. With Levi and Tobias, they're still "new" around here (recently created within the past couple of years), and their novel is still very much in the rough draft stage. So they're still developing with each piece I write, which means I let them control a liiiittle bit more than I should.

Yeah, that's generally why I always look back over first drafts once they're complete, because I'm a discovery writer at heart, and since I'm also character-driven... They have to reveal everything to me on the first run through and then I can pare them down a bit on the second and third and fourth runs...

[elledanger]

It's cool, you don't need to defend the characters to me. I'm merely telling you how it's coming across to me, personally. What you do with that information is entirely up to you. I'm just happy to provide an outside pair of eyes.

And I wish you success in becoming the kind of writer than can tame a whole pack of characters!