20130603 - andyk - Silence on Second Street (LVSD)

[andyk]

Morning all. Hope you had a good weekend.

 

My submission today is a scifi short story. It flags for all the content tags, but the sex is indirect references and apart from cigarettes the drugs are metaphorical.

 

My special concern with this is one of voice. Where I've tried to portray accents in the dialogue do they work? Is the central character's swearing too much? And as always, any comments you have on any aspect of the story will be appreciated.

 

Thanks.

[Mandamon]

The descriptions are good.  I got a good feeling of setting.  The Scottish(?) accent of the Greykirk natives did throw me a little.  Not sure if it was the cadence, or consistency, or what was wrong.  There's a similar accent in Charles Stross' book, Halting State.  You might want to compare.

 

I didn't have too much trouble with the swearing.  I tend not to like it in writing in general, but this seemed appropriate for the environment you set.

 

For all that this story was very dark and gritty, I liked that it had a "happy" ending.  I was afraid something was going to go wrong for the main character in the end, but was happy to see him get his man.

[Syme]

I like the voice. It seems gruffy and and direct, which works well for the story. The same goes for the swearing, but then I'm less bothered by swearing than 99% of the population, especially in the anglophone world.

 

I have a hard time writing this critique. Though I liked the atmosphere of the story and the prose is good and the characters reasonably well developed for a short story, I never really got into it. For me it's one of those stories that I think I should like, but don't. Maybe it's just that I'm not too fond of the whole hardboiled detective thing. Sorry that I can't be of more help than that.

[Guru Coyote]

I'm just now catching up with RE... 

 

I liked this one. The setting and the atmosphere/tone worked well for me. What I especially enjoyed was the MC having to deal with the situation without having a gun of his own. Also nice was the fact that it appeared that a soldier would as likely be female than male.

I might have liked more of the web of intrigues this city seems to have to show...

 

 

I did have a problem with the accent, but that might simply be because I read via test-to-speech, and the voices usually have issues with non-standard spellings

I think that choice of words and grammar usually works better in protraying dialect/tone than actually trying to portray the sound of the words.

I had slight problems making out who was saying something at a few places, but that might be due to the same problem.

There was one section where I lost focus / got confused: that was when the MC was tracking the murderer through the city. In that part, I lost a good sense of the place and felt lost for a moment.

The only other complaint I might have is that this one seemed a bit brief at times. Not too brief, but I'd have liked more detail here and there.

 

All in all, I think this a good piece.

[andyk]

Thanks folks. I've tried to improve the accents, mostly by toning it down., taking the words and grammar approach.

 

Guru Coyote - thanks for the suggestions on other sections. I submitted the story to a market last week, but if it gets rejected I'll look at fixing those bits before it goes out again.

[Robinski]

Hey, I'm only on the submission list for the first time this Monday, but if you want an opinion on the Scottish accent from a genuine 100% Scottish person who has lived in Glasgow all his life (and has been known to use sweary words on occasion), then I'd be happy to comment, if you want to send me a draft.

[andyk]

Hey, I'm only on the submission list for the first time this Monday, but if you want an opinion on the Scottish accent from a genuine 100% Scottish person who has lived in Glasgow all his life (and has been known to use sweary words on occasion), then I'd be happy to comment, if you want to send me a draft.

 

That would be great, thanks. Despite being English I've only ever made it north of the border once, so my attempt to write Scottish accents is largely based on Garth Ennis comics and episodes of The High Life - I'm under no illusions that that makes my dialogue convincing.

 

I'll see if I can attach the file to private a message.

[Robinski]

Just got around to reading SoSS, thank you for sending it. I enjoyed the story overall, although probably not as much as ‘Beta Three Leader’ to be honest.

 

I thought the Scots accent worked pretty well, although I've suggested a couple of substitutions in the comments that I emailed. I don't think 'fellers' works with Scots, I would go with 'guys'. 'Hen' is a term for a woman, so I assumed that Kennedy was baiting Flynn when she used it.

 

I too liked the fact that, for most of the story, Flynn was unarmed, and that you played that up in places. I liked his hard-bitten attitude, and his swearing, although I thought he lacked control in some instances, which I surprised me a bit for a hard bitten cop, and that he could have been sharper at one of two points. I suppose he was under a lot of stress, but I felt as if this was his normal state, since we had not really seen him in his past.

 

There were one or two aspects that I found puzzling. I didn't see how Flynn could make the assumption about the absence of a physical relationship between McCray and Annie based on the unused condoms that he found in the flat, they might simply not have been using protection. Also, I'm not sure a firearm would have a light on it that would give away to most opponents that it was empty of charge (if the light was not illuminated).

 

The story has a good arc, and a satisfying ending, but perhaps not particularly surprising (not that it has to be, I suppose). I think it can be a problem for 'murder mystery' type plots, you pretty much have to have the villain come from the characters that the reader has met in the course of the story, and there probably isn't much opportunity for misdirection in such a short piece.

 

I think my biggest issue was the narrative style, and the fact that it was not anonymous or 'invisible', but had the same slang / colloquial style as Flynn. I think a plainer and more grammatically correct narrative style would emphasise the energy of the dialogue more, but that's just my opinion.

 

Looking forward to you submission on Monday!

[andyk]

This story got its first rejection this week - broadly positive and encouraging me to keep submitting to that market, so they didn't totally hate it. Off the back of that I've done some more edits - thanks for the feedback Robinski. I have to admit that the 'hen' gender gibe wasn't deliberate - I was trying to use the word in the way people use 'pet' in Yorkshire, clearly misunderstanding its use. Anyway, now to send it back out again.

[Robinski]

Good luck!