LJ Idol Season 9, Week 16: A Terrible Beauty Has Been Born

[theun4givables]

Many thanks to dmousey, the_lettersea, jem0000000, and n3m3sis43 for your help (and encouragement!) with this piece. Y'all have been great. :)Rain splatters against the window, almost drowning out the rapid series of knocks against the door. Office hours are nearly over, but that doesn’t stop me from answering the call. Don’t nearly get the business I used to, not since the Incident

Comments

[dmousey]

<3 <3 <3 Love the changes you made! It flows and keeps you hooked from the first sentence! ;) ::smooch::

[theun4givables]

Thanks. :) I figured giving myself a day to let the various advice I had received stew together would work better in my favor. :)

[dmousey]

It certainly did! <3

[karmasoup]

I must admit, I'm terribly confused about what just happened here, but I do like the way the piece flows in this noir style, even if I don't exactly get it.

[theun4givables]

Thanks for saying that you at least liked the way the piece flowed. :)

It's a twist ending that I may or may not have pulled off well (I'm honestly too tired to judge and was equally tired when the ending was originally written). The narrator is actually a 10 year old boy who has read one too many noir novels in his short life-time. ;) He's pretending Dad is the client, who is hiding from Mom and the new baby in Daniel's room.

[karmasoup]

Ah, okay. Well, the issue is of course that the noir is true enough, but the 10-yr-old boy isn't, so nothing about the piece gave that away, leaving those of us who hadn't tracked the discussion in the work room scratching our heads at the ending.

I was one of the most precious 10-yr-old children most people had ever met, and had read ALL of Ellery Queen, Rex Stout, Agatha Christie, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle by that age, but even I couldn't have pulled off a work that would make me sound like I had the life experience of a jaded downtrodden mid 40-something with a finger on the pulse of the seedy underbelly of busy city life.

Reading it again with this new information, it makes more sense, though, I'd have to imagine this kid to be at least 15, at a bare minimum, to create this kind of narrative. Thanks for clearing up the confusion.

[theun4givables]

I actually haven't discussed this entry in the work room at all. I've offered the original version of this up to my flist, and the individuals above are who volunteered help/crit. :)

Thank you for your input. This sort of thing isn't usually my style, but I wanted to attempt something different (a twist, noir!tone in general, kid!narrator in imaginative-play mode), and it may have been all too much at once. But it was the only idea I had, so I ran with it. :)

[eska818]

I agree with Karmasoup - you handled the noir style really brilliantly, but the plot and what was actually happening with the story was very confusing, and there was no visible "reveal." You should really work with this though, I love the voice, though I don't think it's plausible for it to belong to a 10 year old :)

[theun4givables]

Thank you. :)

Reveals and I are not friends, hah. I don't normally write twists because I am so very bad at them. xD But it was worth trying, and if I had had more energy and time to devote to this, I think I could have made the hints/foreshadowing a little more obvious.

I'll do better next time. :)

[kajel]

I enjoyed the noir take on this. I got that Daniel must be a child at the end. ;) I was highly amused by that.

[theun4givables]

Thank you! :) I was hoping to amuse, so I'm glad that this piece worked for you.

[rayaso]

I enjoyed the noir, and I was a little confused about Daniel, but I got it at the end. A really fun idea!

[theun4givables]

Thank you! :) The idea amused me so much even though I knew I would struggle with the reveal a bit. I'm glad you managed to get it, though. :D