Help look over my NT story about Donny the Bori?

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

Woooo, finally finished writing my first NT story in literally years. If it gets accepted, it would be my first NT publication on this new account. ^-^

I'd like somebody to help look it over before I submit it, if you guys are willing~ Mostly I'm looking for feedback in these general areas:

- Plot: My feeling is that it's a bit weak, but is there a specific thing you think I could expand on / make more exciting? Is it a rewarding read for you overall, or do you find that it gets boring?
- Dialogue: Does it sound natural?

Also, do you think my treatment of Mary's death was subtle enough, for the NT? Is it overly emotional of a story, or does it feel more like a peaceful, somewhat poignant and hopefully pleasant window into someone's life (which I was hoping to achieve)?

If I made any typos, do let me know as well! ^-^ Thank you~

SPOILER: Click to show

Proud Little Flame

Clink. Clink. Rustle. Clink.

Donny held the puppet gently between his claws and turned it toward the lamplight. The newly-repaired blue Mynci puppet seemed to smile. Its velvet limbs were connected again, its wooden face polished, and its button-eyes replaced. Donny lifted it slowly from the table to make sure its dangling posture looked right. Yup---the little fellow was perfectly balanced. Donny tugged on a string and the puppet waved; another tug, and it bobbed its head.

The aged Bori allowed himself a grin.

He glanced at the red apple clock on his wall. Mary had picked it up at the Igloo Garage Sale seventeen years ago. "Look, look, Donny!" she'd exclaimed, her face still bright from the icy air, "isn't it a bargain? Such a pretty shape---just look at that leaf! Isn't it exquisite?"

"Yes, Mary, exquisite," he'd replied, tasting the crispness of that word on his tongue; but he was gazing at the cloud Eyrie, not at the clock. Even after her face had become familiar to him, after her expressions had mellowed with experience, he still admired the curve of her beak, the quickness of her eyes, the silky turn of her neck. It seemed there were always new moments of beauty to surprise him every time he looked. He didn't protest when she took down his old Sticks N Stones poster. He even hammered a fresh nail into the wall to help position the new clock.

It was at the red apple wall clock he'd stared when she was at the Hatchery, bringing Terry into the world. And it was under the red apple wall clock that Terry had grown, from a puffy-faced baby pecking sulkily at his food, to a toddling young Eyrie just beginning to try his wings.

The red apple wall clock had stopped working the day Mary left. Donny worked patiently on it for hours at a stretch, a "Closed" sign posted on the door of his mechanics shop. Day after day he worked, cutting new gears, fitting them into the clock's exquisite core.

Neighbours and customers dropped by with words, cards, flowers, food; he answered at first, but finally decided that they took too much time away from his work on the clock.

Five-year-old Terry seemed to understand somehow. Once a naughty child always dancing out of Mary's reach, he now mostly played quietly by himself in a corner of Donny's workroom. Sometimes he came over, straining his tiny wings to get onto the bench, where he would peer over Donny's shoulder. "When is Mommy coming back?"

"Daddy is busy, Terry. Go play with that new toy I gave you."

"Where's Mommy?"

"Mommy isn't coming back."

"Why not?"

"Shhhh, go play."

What seemed like a few moments later, Terry would come tugging at his arm again. "I'm hungry," Terry would say, in a child's voice rendered harsh by crying.

Terry's hunger was a problem that Donny could fix; he would get up from his workbench, put together some oatmeal, feed Terry and himself, and go back to the red apple wall clock.

After a week of almost non-stop tinkering, the clock was working again. Donny remembered the swell of emotions he'd experienced, holding the result of his efforts at the end of that week. The clock would continue to tick for many years to come.

Donny placed the Mynci puppet on a side-table, pulled a torn fuzzie bear toward him, and then, remembering how Mary used to chide him to look after himself, got up and made himself a cup of Borovan. He stood by the window, swilling the hot sweet liquid around in the cup. The fragrance caressed his aged body, reached under the ridges on his back, flowed to the ends of his ears and his limbs. Snow was falling over the hills.

In a few hours Terry would be home.

***

"Is Mr. Bear mended now?"---a child's voice from the doorway.

The Bori blinked. For a moment he thought the voice belonged to Terry; then the interior of the Toy Repair Shop came into focus, and he sat up on his workbench. For some reason he had been snoozing face-down on the worktable. No---he must have drifted off for only a second. He wasn't that old. His eyes were as sharp and his claws as sure as ever.

"Is Mr. Bear mended now?" the small Kacheek repeated, bouncing in. A little way behind, her mother and father were stamping through the snow. The mother was carrying their packed lunches and other supplies, and the father was carrying ski equipment.

"Ah, yes, yes, Sylvie," said Donny, fully awake now. He got up with (a barely perceptible) creak and went to his side-table of finished toys. For a second, a wave of panic coursed through his veins as he tried to remember if he'd sewn up the bear before dozing off---but his heart calmed when he saw the familiar white fur poking out from behind the Mynci puppet. "Here you are!" he said, lifting the good-as-new fuzzie bear from the table and putting it into Sylvie's arms.

The Kacheek let out a delighted squeal. Donny chuckled as she spun around and barrelled into her mother's stomach. "Mr. Bear is mended! Mr. Bear is mended!"

"I see that, dear," said the mother, laughing.

The father bowed to Donny, presenting a bag of Neopoints with both hands. The Kacheek family was new in town, recently moved from Shenkuu to enable their daughter to take advanced ski lessons. Well, not that recently. More like three months---but it seemed to Donny that time was moving at strange speeds these days. One moment he'd be back in the days before his son was even born, and another moment he'd be remembering just how many years it'd been since he'd moved to Terror Mountain after his son turned six.

Donny bowed back. "Thank you," he said, accepting the Neopoints.

"Now Mr. Bear can be with Mrs. Bear again!" the child was still hopping at her mother's side.

Donny smiled as he watched them go. The warm weight of children's trust remained a constant in his life, gave him the same feeling of responsibility as he'd felt, years back, walking toward the cabin that he would turn into his Toy Repair Shop. Terry was asleep upon his back, breathing soundly in the way that only a child could.

Sometimes a toy could be fixed; sometimes, it could not. Toy-fixing was a practical matter. Donny didn't trouble himself too much with the why of it. He tried his best with each toy, of course, threading with care between the flaps of torn cloth, teasing a new part into place, frowning with concentration as he brought down the hammer in steady, precise clinks.

But when something was beyond repair, he knew when to put down his tools and say to the customer, "I couldn't fix it."

***

Night was deep around the cabin when Donny finally saw a familiar shape come up the slope.

"Hi, Dad!" Terry boomed in his rich, adolescent voice. "Sorry I'm late. The wind conditions were pretty bad today."

Donny put his arms around Terry's downy neck. "I'm just glad you're back," he said.

"Dad, next week at the Training School, I'm going to be moving up to the Intermediate level. The Techo Master says I need to work on my defence and endurance." Terry placed his schoolbag by the fireplace and settled down to dry his feathers. "He's going to be organizing a field trip to the jungles of Tyrannia, to teach us how to endure. We're going to be working in groups. There's a new kid who just came, a Chomby named Egg---what kind of a name is that?---but he seems nice..."

Donny moved his ears good-humouredly. "And Gina? Are you still friends with her?"

"Yeah. She's going to be in my group, too. Oh, Dad---you didn't have to," Terry protested, as his father put a large bowl of Carnapepper soup into his claws.

"It was a long flight through this snow," Donny said. "You need it, son."

"I'm strong; the Techo Master said so"---but Terry was already guzzling the soup.

Donny grinned. "I have something else for you. Picked it up at the Igloo Garage Sale the other day. Uh." He lifted the Mynci puppet from the table and worked the strings. "Hey there, Terry! Gettin' to be a fine l'il warrior now, aren't ya?"

"Dad!" said Terry, laughing.

"It isn't much," said Donny, "but it looks sorta like the old puppet you used to have. When we lived in Happy Valley."

Terry dangled the puppet over his bowl. "Aaahhh! I'm going to fall in!" Then he laughed embarrassedly and reached over to place the puppet next to his schoolbag. "Dad, I'm not a little kid anymore."

"I know, I know. But you still have to give him a name, right?"

"I guess so. I'll call him Loony and hide him in my dorm-room so none of my friends can see what my loony dad gave to me."

Donny laughed.

The snow was coming down more slowly now. All across the mountain, lights were flickering. From a distance, the light in the Toy Repair Shop was just another one of the stars on earth, another proud little flame, small but sturdy against the darkness.

[Bianca <3]

I read through it quickly and I liked it! I did feel that it ended a bit abruptly though. It was like I was waiting for this big scene at the end that never happened. A confrontation, maybe, or an emotional break down.

Also, the title is an interesting choice, but I'm not sure if it captures the whole story. I really do like it in the final sentence, but I'm not sure of it as a title.

But I really enjoyed all the descriptions and the story of Mary.

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

Ahhhh thank you Bianca! ^-^ I knew there was something missing in the plot but wasn't sure what.

I'll work on adding a scene with some kind of argument between the father and the adolescent son. And then resolve it somehow. ;P


Also, re: the title... the other one I'd thought of using was "A Practical Matter." Neither one seems to fit really well, though. Hmm. I'll think on it a little more.

[Deleted]

Hey there, I thought I’d help out. Keep in mind that this is all just my opinion about what works and what doesn’t—take what you find useful and leave the rest. I can get a little terse in my critique, so I apologize beforehand for that. <_< I’ve been trying to work on being nicer. Also: textwalls. You have been warned.

SPOILER: Click to show

First off, it was a good story! You showed a side of Donny that I hadn’t really considered before, so it was really neat to see your interpretation of him and his personality. All of the little details you put into the piece were wonderful. I can tell you put a lot of effort into making the characters feel like real people, with all of their little quirks and concerns and the subtleties of their dynamics with other people. Donny’s love for his wife and son is quite touching. You do a great job of putting the reader inside Donny’s head and helping them to sympathize with him.

I loved the little cute moments in the story, too, like the little Kacheek kid’s exuberant happiness at having her toy fixed. That was endearingly charming—and the symbolism between her toys and Donny’s life was quite poignant. Donny’s conversation with his son was also very heartwarming, with the playful way he interacts with Terry. It was quite refreshing to see an adolescent and their parent have such a good rapport.

And I found the dialogue very natural, so awesome job with that. It was very easy to hear the characters’ speech in my mind, and nothing felt stilted or off. The conversations were effortless to read, and engaging, so I commend you for that.

While the story was not overly melodramatic, I feel like the emotion was sometimes a little mistimed. For example, I was highly tempted to skip Donny’s inner monologue about how attracted he was to Mary’s appearance, because it tells me nothing useful about the dynamic between them. (It’s also just kinda awkward and sounds like something out of a romance novel.) Likewise, I feel like you go on for slightly too long about the smell of borovan later in the story. It just gets a little too purple prose-y, so look out for description that doesn’t do anything to give the reader more information about a scene or mood but is just there to be flowery and emotive.

As far as the plot itself, I agree with Bianca in that you seem to be building up to a climax that never happens. I think part of this may lie in the fact that you spend so much of the first part of the story portraying Donny’s angst over losing his wife and how he tries to cope, both emotionally and in his occupation. But when Terry gets home and they start talking, you lose that train of thought and the story ends on a different note. While you could go the route of a climactic confrontation or breakdown, if you wanted to keep on the slice-of-life route and not insert much more drama, I think the story would be more cohesive if you simply kept up the themes you presented in the beginning and tied it all together at the end. Keep talking about how Donny feels about his loss and how he relates it to the events of the day, maybe have him or Terry bring it up during their conversation and come to a bit of satisfying closure. When the Kacheek mentions her toys being reunited, that would be an excellent place for some deep reflection on Donny’s part, musings about how he wishes he and Mary could be reunited that easily, etc. Basically, look at the key points in the plot where you can insert some good inner reflection, and make them the linchpins around which the character arc revolves. That’s important in a character-centric piece like this one.

Another thing that didn’t sit well with me is that you repeat the phrase “red apple wall clock” way too often. While I get the importance of the repetition of that item for the sake of the plot, maybe you could shorten it to just “the clock” after its first mention. We’ll still know which clock you’re talking about, and it won’t be such a mental mouthful to have to re-read it in every sentence. (You may also want to mention it one more time near the end as part of the “tying things together” thing, since you impress its importance so much on the reader at the beginning and then drop it entirely.)

I also suggest that you look at all of the passive verbs (ending in “-ing”) and see how many of them you can change to active verbs (ending in “-ed”). That would tighten your prose considerably and would help avoid repetitions of “was”, which tends to weaken prose considerably when overused.

Oh, and parentheses in narrative prose are generally considered unprofessional. While it’s essentially a matter of personal taste for the writer, many readers find them off-putting and disruptive, so you may want to use dashes to separate parenthetical statements from the rest of a sentence, or simply incorporate the statement into the sentence wholesale. In “He got up with (a barely perceptible) creak”, the rhythm and meaning of the sentence would not be altered if you took out the parentheses altogether and were left with “He got up with a barely perceptible creak”.

Re: the death: Generally I think you do a pretty good job with it. I think, though, you might want to make it a little clearer that she’s dead (and not divorced or absent) while still keeping it subtle and tasteful. Even with the foreknowledge that you intended her to be deceased, it read very much to me like she had just walked out of her family's life.

For example, in the sentence “The red apple wall clock had stopped working the day Mary left”, you might want to switch out “left” for “departed”. “Left” makes me think of her packing her bags and walking out the door, and as a first-time reader that would be a mental image that would stay with me throughout the rest of the story even while you’re trying to imply otherwise (especially since your other hints are similarly ambiguous). “Departed”, on the other hand, has funereal connotations with the phrase “dearly departed”—it can be a lot more easily taken to mean death.

Typos:

SPOILER: Click to show

"Look, look, Donny!" she'd exclaimed, her face still bright from the icy air. "Isn't it a bargain? Such a pretty shape--just look at that leaf! Isn't it exquisite?"

(You seem to use three dashes for a long dash, while two is the formatting standard, at least in the Times. You can find all of the instances using your word processor and omit the third dash in order to get them to format correctly.)

"Is Mr. Bear mended now?" A child's voice from the doorway.

"Now Mr. Bear can be with Mrs. Bear again!" The child was still hopping at her mother's side.

(If dialogue is followed by a sentence that does not describe the speaker delivering the dialogue, that sentence is its own separate sentence and thus the first letter must be capitalized.)

Terry was asleep upon his back, breathing soundly in the way that only a child could.

(The timing of this is confusing—I had to re-read it several times to determine you were talking about a past event. Might want to omit it entirely as it adds nothing to the story.)

"I'm strong; the Techo Master said so." Terry was already guzzling the soup.

(Dashes are generally not an accepted way to begin a sentence. A full stop [period] or dash at the end of the preceding sentence gives enough of a sense of immediacy or interruption, but in this case and the other one above, the character is not interrupting themselves speaking, so the dash is also misleading. The paragraph break signaling another character’s speech is enough to indicate an interruption.)

Anyway, I hope that helped. I think it’s a lovely story, and best of luck getting it into the Times!

[Stephanie (swordlilly)]

Thank youuuu ^o^ It means a lot to me that you took the time to write such detailed comments.

Feb 21, 2014 15:24:09 GMT -5 @surfersquid said:

While the story was not overly melodramatic, I feel like the emotion was sometimes a little mistimed. For example, I was highly tempted to skip Donny’s inner monologue about how attracted he was to Mary’s appearance, because it tells me nothing useful about the dynamic between them. (It’s also just kinda awkward and sounds like something out of a romance novel.) Likewise, I feel like you go on for slightly too long about the smell of borovan later in the story. It just gets a little too purple prose-y, so look out for description that doesn’t do anything to give the reader more information about a scene or mood but is just there to be flowery and emotive.

O: You are absolutely right. I knew there was something a bit too overblown about the story, but wasn't sure exactly what. I'll work on trimming those descriptions back.

Feb 21, 2014 15:24:09 GMT -5 @surfersquid said:

As far as the plot itself, I agree with Bianca in that you seem to be building up to a climax that never happens. I think part of this may lie in the fact that you spend so much of the first part of the story portraying Donny’s angst over losing his wife and how he tries to cope, both emotionally and in his occupation. But when Terry gets home and they start talking, you lose that train of thought and the story ends on a different note. While you could go the route of a climactic confrontation or breakdown, if you wanted to keep on the slice-of-life route and not insert much more drama, I think the story would be more cohesive if you simply kept up the themes you presented in the beginning and tied it all together at the end. Keep talking about how Donny feels about his loss and how he relates it to the events of the day, maybe have him or Terry bring it up during their conversation and come to a bit of satisfying closure. When the Kacheek mentions her toys being reunited, that would be an excellent place for some deep reflection on Donny’s part, musings about how he wishes he and Mary could be reunited that easily, etc. Basically, look at the key points in the plot where you can insert some good inner reflection, and make them the linchpins around which the character arc revolves. That’s important in a character-centric piece like this one.

Another thing that didn’t sit well with me is that you repeat the phrase “red apple wall clock” way too often. While I get the importance of the repetition of that item for the sake of the plot, maybe you could shorten it to just “the clock” after its first mention. We’ll still know which clock you’re talking about, and it won’t be such a mental mouthful to have to re-read it in every sentence. (You may also want to mention it one more time near the end as part of the “tying things together” thing, since you impress its importance so much on the reader at the beginning and then drop it entirely.)

This feedback is also super helpful ^o^ I'll definitely add to the middle scene and tie in the image of the clock at the end.

I'm working on a climactic scene now where Donny says, "You're so much like your mother," and the son reacts. It's not exactly an argument, but some of the tensions simmering under the surface are going to bubble up and have a chance to be sorted out.

Thanks for pointing out the little glitches in formatting, also.

I'll aim to submit the polished story tomorrow or Sunday~~~

[Deleted]

Those sound like excellent additions. I wish you the best of luck in getting accepted and hope to see it in the Times soon.