| User | S.Scott | | Topic | Short Story: Help | | Message | I recently wrote a short story for a contest and would like some feedback; rip it up to shreds, give me comments, critique, whatever. Any help would be great!
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The man wasn’t anything special. I mean, I wouldn’t have noticed him in a crowd… not that he wasn’t special to someone at some point. He just wasn’t noticeable. I guess it was his suit that made him blend in. Yeah, that was it. His suit was gray, not really dark, and not light. Just. Gray. Kind of like clouds, storm clouds. The kind of gray you see in cement. The kind of gray you see everywhere. There wasn’t even a tie or socks or handkerchief to break up the wall of gray. That’s why I didn’t notice him at first. He looked like everything else around him.
Why I saw him suddenly, I don’t know… I suppose I was done with my prayers and was looking for something. I can’t really concentrate on praying for that long, because I get angry easily, and I’ve been told that getting angry at God isn’t the best thing to do. You know, I start out thanking God for things like my family and my new car, and then I start asking for lower gas prices and easier bills and soon I’m asking God why the hell he’s worrying about my problems when he should be worrying about poverty and starvation and those kids in Africa who are dying of AIDs. I stop after that.
The man in the gray suit wasn’t sitting, which was weird, because the church was small… a few wooden pews, a metal crucifix, and some tables. He wasn’t sitting or kneeling at a pew, he was standing at the end of the aisle, near the makeshift pulpit. I guess it would have made more sense if he was looking up, or had his hands extended in praise… some people feel closer to god when they’re closer to the front of the church, at least that’s what my mother told me when I asked why we had to sit at the front on Sunday morning. Never really made sense to me, considering god was supposed to be everywhere, but I think that’s why religion was and is more of something to do than something to experience. To me, anyways.
But the man in the gray suit didn’t look like he was experiencing anything. He wasn’t looking up and his hands weren’t extended (or even closed in prayer) and he didn’t really look like anything. His face was as gray as his suit, I guess, not gray like the color but gray like plain. His hands, they were just limp against his sides. His nose was pointing to the ground, though he wasn’t looking at the ground. He wasn’t really looking at anything at all. His mouth was open slightly.
I hugged him. I don’t know why I did it, really. It’s not something I normally do, you know? I mean, you hear about people doing things, like paying for the person’s coffee behind you at Starbucks or tipping your waiter a lot more than you should. I’ve always heard about those sorts of things, but I never did them. Not that I didn’t not do them intentionally, I just didn’t do them. But my feet were moving and my arms were lifting and I was hugging the man in the gray suit. He made a gray little sound and when I pulled away he just stared with gray eyes. I stared back, realizing I had nothing to do or say because I didn’t really know why I had done it in the first place. The gray man’s shoulder heaved in a small gray sigh and he offered a weak gray smile. Then he left, gray feet shuffling quietly as he passed by the two others in the room. They didn’t notice as he passed. But I didn’t really expect them too, I realized. People don’t notice people wearing gray a lot.
Standing there, I squeezed my eyes shut and added a post script to my prayer; it wasn’t so much as angry any more… just a little bit sad.
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| User | WhatYouWill | 2008-06-20 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | Great story. I like how you reveal the setting gradually, instead of using a set-up paragraph (oh those annoy me.)
One sentence that didn’t ring with me was "His face was as gray as his suit, I guess, not gray like the color but gray like plain." That little clarification made the story sound less developed. A good writer should always try to reveal things in the story, not in a side-note. Something like "His face was as drawn and gray as his suit." would work better for me. Coupling the gray with drawn helps the reader infer what you mean. |
| User | SanctityExposed | 2007-11-21 | | | Subject | Hallo! | | Message | Lovely story, I like the feel of it. Just a few things: Careful of run-on sentences! They’re killer. Also, can’t stress this enough with creative writing...Avoid using parentheses! They make the piece feel technical. I believe the color/word/feeling GRAY is used too much, express it differently, it’ll flow better. The word GRAY gives me the same emotion though, so I know how much you want to enhance it. Try words like: empty, desolate, hollow, etc. Also, elipses, use them only as often as you need to. Commas, colons and dashes are great too! Excellent piece, my fellow writer! |
| User | S.Scott | 2007-11-13 | | | Subject | untitled | | Message | Thanks for the comment. :D Yeah, the gray was supposed to be a parallel for why no one notices him, and how gray is a color that people tend to not notice gray.
Is it too much? |
| User | Zaftigical | 2007-11-12 | | | Subject | .... | | Message | Brilliant. I loved it. :) |
| User | Zaftigical | 2007-11-12 | | | Subject | Again, hi. | | Message | I like how you rant with the grey. But unless there is a significance about the grey, (he blends in to everything maybe a show through of his personality) I would not go on about it |
| User | Zaftigical | 2007-11-12 | | | Subject | Hi | | Message | I’ll help you. Just let me read it. |
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