My noir short story is complete for anyone who wants to read it :)

[ITG]

Thats interesting. Several gentleman from the board, and several friends of mine read it never once mentioned the grammer, I read it through myself and I can't see that it is "unreadable", maybe a few mistakes of coarse, also Myspace dosn't let me format it correctly, sometimes you loose some things when you cut and paste it over.

Of course, maybe they slept during their grammar classes in school. For me, grammar usage does pop out at me and when there's alot of correction to be done, my teacher-grading mindset takes over and it makes for a higher level of distraction and loss of focus on the content for myself.

I think it has been mentioned several times that there are grammerical issues. Please I have asked, instead of beating a dead horse, if you ACTUALLY read it could you please give me some feedback on characters/plot.

Not trying to be harsh, but if the color combo (red/black) and the font wasn't so harsh on the eyes, I might take a wiff at reading it. But alas, I've had my fair share of chronic headaches this past year that I'd rather not bring on another one. I truly would love to read your noir, but with the combo that's there it's very difficult to.

 

[Atterbury Dodd]

1."Do you feel there could have been more description?"


I think certain small areas could use a little more description, but for the most part it was descriptive enough.


2."Do you feel like it could have been darker?"


I think you got the noir feel pretty well.


3."Do you feel like I could have used more slang of the era?"


That would probably depend on the class of people that are in the majority in your story. Lower class = more slang (this is just my opinion).


4."Was it to long, too short?"


I like the length.


5."Do you want more insight and background on the main character?"


I think he is a bit of a mystery man himself, so it might be in keeping with his character not to give to much background, only small hints.


6. Summary


Over all I think it has some real potential. Just work on some of the details, and smooth things out. Thanks for being brave enough to put your story up for critique (I enjoyed it).

 

[ITG]

As for the color scheme, if you look, red and black is the color scheme she has chosen for her other blogs as well, not just the story, so be nice and hush.

Yes, however, bloggers can change the font and the color of the font on myspace.

 

[Midnight Palace]

Do you feel there could have been more description?

I think you did pretty well with the description. The beginning set up with the alley and the dim lamp really caught me. I suspect it's because that's one of the noir elements I love the most, the hidden, abandoned, desolate city night. So I thought that was a good way to start it off.

Do you feel like it could have been darker?

This, I feel, is in the eye of the reader. Some will say it's fine as-is and some will want it darker. I would say to go with your gut instinct on this one. Personally, I know that some noirs just don't feel like noirs unless they have a certain darkness about them. For example, Gilda is a noir, but it doesn't really have the rain-slicked streets or the neon signs that are prevalent in other noirs. I like the city-at-night atmosphere and the ambiance.

Do you feel like I could have used more slang of the era?

Yes. I feel a bit more certainly couldn't hurt. Someone else mentioned that the lower the class of person, the greater the amount of slang. I agree with that.

Was it to long, too short?

I thought the length was fine, especially if you plan to make this part of a collection.

Do you want more insight and background on the main character?

Sometimes a little mystery is good. You could always have something surface in a future story to bring old things back

 

[Jack Scorpion]

I gotta say. It sounds straight out of 40-50s movies. Dana Andrews is in my head all the way.

I had some issues with setting. When the date 1949 was first mentioned, I was a little thrown off. I wasn't transported in time by description. You know? Describing what kinds of cars people are driving ... using comparisons to "contemporary" events or celebrities ... using phrases of the past. These would help me picture a scene from 1954. Instead, I just had a date.

I also don't associate "Green Card" or "Burbank Airport" with the early fifties (but I could be wrong).

I also had an issue with names. All the names are very good, but it was hard to keep track of them. I needed to be reminded who was who (just so many people in such a short story, you know?). Clever phrases like... "Hammond the Flying Fairy" or "Talk Show Randall" or "The Fake Wife, Doris," etc might help to stick images in the brain. Or, just describe them. For example, Lulu was the most memorable name and person in the story, because you described her, and she died in the first scene!

Good mystery. No holes. No weak motives.

 

[Nashoba]

Nicoletta: I agree with Atterbury and Midnight on pretty much all the points they made. It caught my attention and held it but I think it could use a little more developing of the characters especially your suspect. I think it was descriptive but not overly so. I found myself wondering a little about your PI, I wanted to know more about him....I liked the mystery around him. I think it's a pretty good draft, with some refining it could be a really good story, in my non-literary expert opinion

Captain: So....????? Is there more? The opening hooked me...I want to know what happens!!! Who is 'she'??? Please Sir.....I'd like some more.....

 

[pretty faythe]

Yes, however, bloggers can change the font and the color of the font on myspace.

True, she just happens to have red and black for everything, and as I mentioned, my highschool colors. lol

 

[scotrace]

Let's not correct each other, please. You would not pipe up with such boorish behavior over dinner with fellow loungers, and it's just as rude here.

Stick to helping NicolettaRose with the short story she has submitted for er... disemboweling.

 

[Paisley]

Tiki Noir
© RG Cardella 2004

The sun was slowly extinguishing itself in that liquid morass we call the Pacific. My shirt collar, that had been trying to decapitate me for the last three hours, was finally drawing blood. At least that’s what it felt like. I hoped that it was sweat I was feeling trickling down my spine. My feet felt like I had been walking around in Hibachi pots. As I stumbled down the street, mentally beating myself about the head and shoulders for being such a fool, I saw in the distance a sign that there was a God after all. Or should I say Goddess? The neon-rendered hula dancers gyrated around a trio of palm trees, as the words, “Tiki Bar”, apparently made from neon bamboo, blinked on and off in some arcane code.
Like a man finding an oasis in the middle of the desert, I lunged into the cool, dim interior. Stumbling up to the bar, I grabbed hold of the smooth edge and stood there for a moment or two to get my bearings. The place looked like it was right out of an episode of ‚ÄúHawaiian Eye‚Äù. There were Palm trees and the walls were covered in some woven material. Carved Tikis were everywhere in all shapes and sizes and from speakers hidden in the d?©cor came the haunting sound of Martin Denny. It sounded like a song called Lotus Land, one of my favorites.
A man in the most brilliant Hawaiian shirt ever made, floated up to the bar and said, as all barkeeps do, “What’ll ya’ have”? “What’ll I have”? I wanted to say some relief from this nightmare that has been plaguing me for weeks. I wanted to say how tired I was of this .45 automatic hanging like an albatross under my coat. That I wanted to feel the sand between my toes as I watched the surf break on some distant beach. Most of all I wanted to forget…her. That I would see her again was inevitable. That she would be the death of one of us was a given.
“A Mai Tai. Yeah, that’s what I’ll have, pally. And keep ‘em coming”.

You capture the heat and weariness of the main character very well.

The writing could be a little tighter in some places. For instance, "A man in the most brilliant Hawaiian shirt ever made, floated up to the bar and said, as all barkeeps do..." might read, "A man in a brilliant Hawaiian shirt appeared and asked..."

I am used to seeing some of these metaphors in print. For instance, "like an albatross" and "like an oasis in the middle of the desert" (by the way, where else do you find an oasis?). But your other metaphors, such as Hibachi pot shoes, and the personification of the shirt collar trying to decapitate the main character instead of using the tired old noose metaphor, makes the story sound fresh.

For your readers who aren't familiar with the tiki scene, you might want to use less tiki jargon.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

I liked The Captain's the way it is. I felt as if I were there. Just yesterday I wore an Hawaiian shirt that I didn't think was the so colorful but 8 (at least) people said it was THE MOST COLORFUL.
NicolettaRoses's is on my list to read today, so I'll chime in on that later.

 

[Baron Kurtz]

No critic, I

To get around the black on red eye gouging thing i copied it into a word document. I shall avoid the very real issues of readability brought about by grammar etc.

Here are a few things that i hope are constructive.

1) What era is it set in? There really isn't enough info there to pin it down. Some of the dialogue and characters seem very 50s, but a kids show? That smacked purely of modern times. You need to nail it - cultural references - into a specific era pretty early on in the story.

2) Characters: I don't know about others, but i find the retired 'n' lookin' for a quiet place to be a P.I. 'tec tobe hackneyed in the extreme. For this reason it really needs to be done in a new and interesting way. "I retired and moved to a quieter place" is pretty boring. this should be developed early on. Good reasons for getting out of the LAPD? - Build on the wife murder, maybe.

The inept local police force/police man is again incredibly familiar, very unrealistic, and most decidedly not in the hard boiled tradition. Check the 50s noir stories. The detectives of the official force are never useless. Their ineffectiveness is based upon their inability to work outwith the bounds set by their overseers - think the overbearing Police Chief or mayor - not their own ineptness.

3) I'm not getting any tension. there's little build-up in the plot.

4) There aren't enough clues. I was lost until the last sentence. The beauty of detective fiction, from gothic to golden age and into noir and the modern story is that the writer throws out enough clues to give you enough rope to hang ourself thinking it's someone it's not - the butler did it! no, the maid! etc etc. I couldn't see any obvious red herring. The worst detective stories to read are like this one - confusing jumble of evidence summed up in the last two paragraphs by hero 'tec. I think the characters are there that you could use to help this. Make the ex-wives a bit more sinister, a bit more shifty and evasive in their answers.

5) Dialogue dialogue dialogue! The staple diet of the detective story. Right now it's stilted, unrealistic. That's not how people talk. It needs work.

6) I liked the general focus and direction of the story but the seediness of television could be played up a bit more.

7) Adjectives! More adjectives! Not Lovecraftian more, but more!

Enough for now.

bk

 

[Baron Kurtz]

Captain: Start another thread!

bk

 

[PastimeSteve]

Lots of potential

Nicoletta -- as someone who writes every day as part of my PR job, I have to give you a lot of credit for being incredibly brave to post your draft for others to critique.

Yeah, the screen nearly gave me a migraine aura, but that's not the point of this thread...

The grammar issues can be easily fixed, so don't let that get you down. Keep writing, and the grammar issues will get better. Paisley gave you some good advice about tightening your sentence structure. That's a good first step.

I think your story and writing style has loads of potential. Keep at it and don't be discouraged. The framework of the story is fairly strong. Your core characters are there, you just need to expand on them a bit more and make the reader care about them. Also, a little more originality could help. Some of it was too familiar. I agree with some of BK's points along these lines.

One of the things I really admire about people who can write really good detective or mystery novels is their ability to keep things fresh. I mean, how many detective novels have there been over the years; a gazillion? It's hard not to write about stuff you've already read somewhere else. To me, it's similar to sci-fi in that way. Also, noir fiction is even tougher because people will literally nitpick accuracy points around the era you're writing in.

All of this is why I can't write a noir or detective story; not to mention the fact I've never been a detective, been around detectives, or lived in the '40s or '50s. Heck, even the futuristic detective is tough, because to me, it would be hard to top Asimov's Elijah Baley.

Steve

 

[Dr Doran]

Doran,

Blatant spelling or grammatical errors weren't accepted in submitted drafts when I was in high school, much less in my college-level creative writing classes.

I am not trying to be mean but this draft would be returned ungraded by every English teacher I've ever had, throughout my education.

She did not turn it in into a class to a teacher. She is asking her friends and acquaintances on the Lounge to take a glance at it. I AM a teacher. I teach writing for a living at Berkeley while I am a doctoral student there. A top tier school. Often regarded as the best, or one of the best, schools in the USA. Our standards are high. I hold the line against cruddy writing. I have seen bad writing. I have helped people to improve their writing. I am quite qualified to judge. This is not bad writing but is a case of minor grammatical and spelling rushed-ness. My wife writes that way: she busts out a draft and asks me to take a look at it. I don't whine about grammar and spelling, I help her with argument. The grammar and spelling can come later.

There is a big difference between a friend showing me an uncorrected draft and a paper a student is turning in. Nicoletta counts as the former, not the latter. Unless I am mistaken, you are not a writing teacher. I am.

I teach undergraduates how to write at Berkeley, as I noted. One must intersperse negative feedback with positive feedback. Almost no one did that in that thread. And that is just not the way one approaches the craft (and yes, it is a craft) of helping someone learn to write. The writing is the point, and helping her to write. To be dragged through repeated negative comments, exactly the same ones, over and over, is nothing I would want my students to experience.

It is ironic that many the people writing the negative comments disobeyed the first rule of writing: look at your writing from the point of view of your audience. They seek to correct grammar when they have much bigger problems in their own writing. Such as how to make a point properly without aggrandizing oneself and humiliating one's audience ... a bit more important than forgetting some apostrophes, I think.

That is my perspective. I hope you can appreciate it. I have always liked your posts and found them interesting, particularly your marvelous knowledge of the battle at Thermopylai and of ancient history and military history.

And lest I be though to break my own non-aggrandizement rule by pointing out that I am at Berkeley -- sorry, need to establish my credentials.

 

[carebear]

Tim,

You are correct my tone might have been harsh. I just feel it is the responsibility of any writer to correct their work prior to submission to anyone, friend or teacher.

Proofing spelling, punctuation and grammar might be glossed a bit in a forum post tossed off in a minute or so, but, once you have taken the time to write an actual story in a word processing program, taking 15-20 minutes to check capitalization, tense, your/you're, that sort of thing, prior to asking people to read it doesn't seem like too much to ask.

Due to my English and writing education over the years, I expect myself to do that as a basic courtesy to the reader. After all, I'm asking them to go out of their way to read my work and take the time to comment on it. I feel I owe them the minimal effort necessary to make that reading free of simple and avoidable distractions.

If I'm being asked to look at characters and structure, I don't feel like I should be simultaneously suppressing the urge to reach for a red pen.

I applaud people trying to express their creative impulses, I just think there is room for self-discipline and correction in the creative process.

 

[Paisley]

As someone who was ripped a new one today (in part for something I should have done better, but in part for doing my job), I can appreciate this. I'm taking the criticism in a spirit of trying to improve myself. However, the person who delivered the criticism helped set the tone at the place where we both used to work--the same place where I quit because of the negative tone. The suggestions my boss gave me were more helpful.

On another note, I've seen grammar threads in the past where there were errors in the corrections.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

I read it and I liked it. It's sunshine noir. I would like to read another one.

 

[Diamondback]

+1, Doran.

NR, I'm no master literature critic, but once I'm away from these [unintelligible] filters I'll check it out and PM you any suggestions I might have.

Please bear in mind, though, that my specialty is editing, not plot/character--back on the college paper, I was considered an unofficial member of the editorial staff, even though my pay and official role were only those of a lowly reporter.