These imagery of these lines sticks with me: "The grey birches leaned against each other above the black earth, too thin for birds to sing in. Minutes passed, and stillness settled over everything like dew."
And, yes, you did it, the fear creeping around the edges despite "Daddy's always okay, really" that he wasn't. Heart attack, maybe. The "big, sad face", the stubble, and that he can't climb to the tree house, nothing specific but it's easy to picture him as older that the age of the child might otherwise suggest. Somehow seeing him as an ex-soldier (toy tiger from abroad?), ex-fighter (prizefighter despite the wrestler footmoves), ex-labourer, someone tough but who's learned the world is even tougher.
Improvements? Some tightening, maybe? Mostly you've got the "show instead of tell" down pat. But if I had to pick...
I think there's enough other indication of the father that the toy tiger is unneeded.
Individual lines: "The platform surrounded a tree trunk at its centre, and I walked around to the other side" could be "I walked around the tree trunk to the other side of the platform".
Minor reworking/rewording in some places, for instance: "the whites of his eyes looking up at me" I kept reading as "the whites... looking up at me" which doesn't work, instead of "the whites of his eyes [as his eyes are] looking up at me" but it's hard to say what would work better.
"The grey birches leaned against each other above the black earth, too thin for birds to sing in. Minutes passed, and stillness settled over everything like dew."
And, yes, you did it, the fear creeping around the edges despite "Daddy's always okay, really" that he wasn't. Heart attack, maybe. The "big, sad face", the stubble, and that he can't climb to the tree house, nothing specific but it's easy to picture him as older that the age of the child might otherwise suggest. Somehow seeing him as an ex-soldier (toy tiger from abroad?), ex-fighter (prizefighter despite the wrestler footmoves), ex-labourer, someone tough but who's learned the world is even tougher.
Improvements? Some tightening, maybe? Mostly you've got the "show instead of tell" down pat. But if I had to pick...
I think there's enough other indication of the father that the toy tiger is unneeded.
Individual lines: "The platform surrounded a tree trunk at its centre, and I walked around to the other side" could be "I walked around the tree trunk to the other side of the platform".
Minor reworking/rewording in some places, for instance: "the whites of his eyes looking up at me" I kept reading as "the whites... looking up at me" which doesn't work, instead of "the whites of his eyes [as his eyes are] looking up at me" but it's hard to say what would work better.
But overall it's very well done. Very real.
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