Ms. Alice

Just wanted to see what others thought of this

       “Beauty queen of only eighteen... she had some trouble with herself....” Filled the car that cool and dark morning. That song by Maroon 5 was my favorite. But ‘Scar Tissue’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers was by far my favorite song. As I was driving to work, I saw out of the corner of my eye a weird blob in the middle of the road. I slowed down my car and my brain finally processed what the strange blob was. It was a puppy! ‘Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh!!’ Went through my mind. My second thought was 'is it injured?' As I was getting out of my car, I heard it, a quiet squeak, a call for help. I walked towards the squeaky barking. As I am, I see that it’s leg is bent in a way that isn’t normal. I might be a vet but I hate it when an animal is injured. I’m an animal lover and can’t stand to see an animal hurt, it breaks my heart. I race back to my truck and grab a towel from my gym bag and run back to scoop up the fragile creature. It squeaks in protest but you can almost hear the pain. I continue to drive to the clinic I work at and park in my assigned space. As I rush in with the squealing puppy, I notice something. The leg, the one I thought, no SEEN and FELT, broken, looked perfectly fine now. I’ll have to use the CT machine to make sure though. Just in case. 'I was SURE I had seen it broken…. Had I imagined that it was broke? No, I’m certain that it was. I had even felt the bones, despite the puppy’s protests, and they seemed broken to me.’ I was pulled from my thoughts as Alice, my assistant, walked into my office. She was beautiful, way out of my league, and I had the biggest crush on her. “Ms. Garret�"” “I’ve told you many times Alice, that you can call me Rose, but continue please.”     “�"There is a kitten that may need a CT scan, is there a room open, or is someone already in them today?”  I look at my schedule book to see that CT scan room A was booked for the Corgi that had possibly broken  one of its ribs. But CT room B was open. “B is open, here’s the key.” As I handed her the key, her fingers grazed my hand and it felt like my hand was on fire. I pulled my hand back and remember the puppy I had found. “Um, if you don’t mind Alice, will you take this puppy for a scan when you scan the cat?” She smirked and said, “Isn’t that what assistants are for?” I blush a little and said, “Yeah, thanks hun.” I kissed the puppy’s nose to silence it’s protests and handed it to Alice. I concentrated on doing my work, which is a mix of checking-up on all the animals that had surgeries and changing their towels and bandages and stuff, to seeing animals and giving them shots and their regular check-ups, to entering medicines into my computer. It was a lot of work, but I’ve always enjoyed what I do, so it’s not so bad. As I’m finishing off my list of things, I see out of the corner of my eye Alice standing by the door and smirk. She hasn’t noticed I’ve noticed her, so I say. “Need something Ms. Anderson? Or have you come to stare at my better side?” I hear her burst out laughing. “Yeah miss, I wanted to let you know that the puppy is a girl and she doesn’t have a broken foot. In fact, she seems perfectly healthy. I went ahead and gave her some 6-week shots though just in case her previous owner, if she even had one, didn’t give them to her. Since I've had had her though, she hasn’t stopped whining. And I thought maybe you’d be up to drinks or something?” The last part she whispered so I was unsure if I had heard her correctly. “Could you repeat that last part?” I turn around, so I could hear her properly and see a red hue to her face. “I said would you maybe want to go out for drinks or dinner?” Her face was completely red. She really was like me, though not quite as awkward. “Is my assistant really asking me on a date?”

          Her face was priceless, she looked almost as scared that I might reject her than I would feel if this turned out to be a dream. “Of course, dear, I would love to go on a date with you.” I looked calm on the outside but, if I’m completely honest with myself, I wanted to throw up. And it definitely wasn't because I was disgusted by going on a date with her. It was quite the opposite actually. And my heart feels like it’s going to explode. Her face changed from looking like she almost wanted to cry, to looking extremely happy. As I look at Ava, I think about what my mom, who was extremely Christian and, at first, hated anything to do with the LGBT community, but, after years and years of living in the same house as me, she learned to accept me and the community. But right now, as I think of her, it calms me down, knowing that she is watching over me and helping me make the right decisions. I almost cry thinking back to the day the accident happened. I feel the tears well up in my eyes but try to hold them back. The very accident that took the lives of both my Mom and my step dad. Sometimes, though I know I don’t really mean it, I think that maybe, if I had died my mom and dad would still be alive. Sometimes I with they were. Though I know if they were and I would have died in the crash, I wouldn’t be standing here with Ali. “Hey Ali? Did you want to come by my house and help me with this puppy. I still need to come up with a name for it and buy a whole lot of stuff for her.”

Author's Note

Its a bit trashy but it's only the rough draft of it. I decided to post it here to see people's response because it was my English essay.

Reviews

[JayG]

You need to look at this as a reader will. From your viewpoint it works because you have context before you begin reading. But as a reader?

• “Beauty queen of only eighteen... she had some trouble with herself....” Filled the car that cool and dark morning.

Based on the punctuation, the reader begins, thinking that this is someone speaking. They can't hear the tune, and may not know the song. So your reader begins reading and is immediately confused.

As you write, ask yourself if a reader who isn't you will have the context necessary to understand. Think about the effect on a reader, had you begun with, "I reached out and turned on the car's radio." Those nine words place the reader in a car, and give context for that original first line. Think in terms of a self-guiding trail, where the reader must be exactly as well informed, context-wise, as the protagonist. The trick is to tell the reader what they need to know without them realizing they ARE being told, as in the line I inserted, above.

• Filled the car that cool and dark morning.

What purpose do the last five words serve? When you say "dark" it tells the reader nothing they see as useful because it's not something the character is reacting to, it's the narrator is explaining. And the temperature isn't a factor because the character never reacts to it. But, if you include that data, two things happen. First is that you slow the read by placing unnecessary words in the sentence. And if you can say the same thing in fewer words it reads faster and your story moves faster, for more impact. Make sense?

The second thing is that because you did mention those things, specifically, the reader will believe that it matters—and must be remembered because of that—but it doesn't.

• But ‘Scar Tissue’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers was by far my favorite song.

Think about it. I'm a reader, and I came to you for a story. At this point I don't know where and when we are. I don't know what's going on. And I don't know whose skin I wear. So why do I care what this unknown person's favorite song is? Again, I'm reading something that doesn't contribute to the story, the setting, or character.

• As I was driving to work, I saw out of the corner of my eye a weird blob in the middle of the road.

This is you, the narrator, explaining things. But while you can tell the reader how a character speaks a line, you can't tell them how the narrator does. In practical terms, you can hear your own voice, as you read, filled with emotion. The reader? What they "hear" as they read, is the dispassionate voice of an external narrator, modified only by what the punctuation suggests. Have your computer read this aloud and you'll hear how different what the reader gets is from what you intend—and hear as you read.

So how can we fix this: First, remember how I added a line to gently inform the reader that we're hearing music? Suppose we change that introductory sentence to read:

"As I drove to work that morning, wishing my shift didn't begin so early in the morning, and needing some wake-up music, I clicked on the radio."

Now, we've set the scene. It's dark, we're on the way to work, and we're half-awake. And, we didn't learn that from the narrator, because it's what the character is doing in the moment they call "now," for reasons that the reader is aware of. That makes the story far more real than hearing about it from someone not living the story or on the scene.

The second part is a bit harder. This person doesn't see a blob, weird or not (and in any case, how can I know what this unknown person, in an unknown place sees as weird?). That's generic, and tells the reader nothing useful. And if it's seen out of the corner of their eye they've already passed it, given that it's in the middle of the road. If it's there they have to see it when it enters their headlamp beam. So instead of a summation by the offstage narrator, let's present what the protagonist notices and reacts to, as they do.
- - - - -
"Ahead, my headlights picked up something small lying in the center of the road. Perhaps a small animal, the victim of an encounter with a car? Unsure, and curious, I slowed, then cursed. It was a puppy, and it was moving.

A quick check of the mirror showed only empty road, so I pulled to the shoulder and got out of the car."
- - - - - -
See the difference? Instead of that dispassionate outside observer reporting events, the driver is living the story, noticing and reacting, as we do in life. Instead of overview, we're in real-time, in the protagonist's "now." And because we are, that driver is dictating the events as a series of clock ticks. Of equal importance, because we need to take their reaction into account they'll force us to get it right. She would have told you it couldn't be from "the corner of her eye," because you would have been forced to become her, and mentally run her though the steps of noticing and deciding. It's a technique often called, motivation/response units. The protagonist notices, analyzes, decides, and acts, just as we do in life. And to present that, it has to make sense, not just be something we order the character to do. So the sequence in this case is:

• The driver notices something unknown. She analyzes it as probably roadkill. The question mark I used there makes it the driver's reaction, and shows her curiosity. And because she has reason to be, the reader is, too. And that leads to...

• She slows, for a better look. That leads to the realization of what it is, and after a moment, that it still lives. Two more clock ticks. There's another when she reacts with a curse. And that leads to...

• We, of course, would check our mirror before pulling off the road, so she does as a but of scene setting ambiance, and a clock tick. We stop (implied because we exit the car) and the click ticks again as we exit.

Notice that instead of a detailed history lesson, we're living the story, moment-by-moment, in the viewpoint of the protagonist, not a storyteller we can neither see nor hear.

It's not a matter of how well you're writing, or talent. It's that you're writing exactly as you've been taught, and using the nonfiction techniques our teachers give us. And because you are, you're explaining, not storytelling as it's done on the page. As someone nchronicling a series of events—reporting—you mention that the driver parks in a reserved place. But that's visual detail that's irrelevant to the story. And, you explain that she works at the clinic, when we already know she's a vet.

Think of how many reports and essays your teachers had you write, compared to the number of stories (and think of how many of your teachers were able to sell their own fiction). They did that because our teachers give us a set of skills our future employer will need. And employers don't need the skills of the professional fiction writer. They need writing skills that inform. But fiction writers need skills that entertain, which is an emotional, not a factual objective. So of course, with a different set of goals comes a different methodology. And in the end, that's my point. You can't use the book-report writing skills we're given to write fiction. Nor can you use the storytelling skills you use every time someone says, "So how was your weekend," because verbal storytelling is a performance skill, and how you tell the story matters as much as what you say.

The short version: We leave our schooldays exactly as well prepared to write fiction as to remove an appendix. Luckily for our friends, we know better than to practice medicine without further training. But strangely, though we realize we're not ready to write a screenplay, or be a journalist without more, we somehow assume that we have everything we need to write fiction. I certainly did when I began recording my campfire stories.

If only.

So here's the deal: Like everyone else, me included, you assumed that writing-is-writing, and used what you know to record your story. But...want better grades for the fiction you write? Want to write fiction that people will ask for? The answer is simple: Pick up a few of the tricks the pros use. After all, pretty much everything you've read, or had read to you since birth was professionally written and polished. So if you want to write fiction, it makes a lot of sense to pick up those skills, rather than guessing and hoping to accidentally discover everything they've been developing over the years.

I won't kid you. There's a LOT to it. The writing style you learned is author-centric and fact-based. And because it's what's used for reports and essays, when we try to use it for fiction it reads like, well...a report.

Fiction, though, is emotion-based, and character-centric. Instead of explaining the events, we make the reader live them. Think of a horror story. Do you want the author to make you know the protagonist is terrified? Or do you want them to terrorize you, and make you shout, "No! Don't go in there," and end up afraid to turn out the lights?

So here's some suggestions:

First, I'm vain enough to think the writing articles in my blog are pretty good at showing you the issues you need to work on, and the direction you need to go. But in the end, time spent reading a few good books on the tricks of the fiction writing field will do wonders for your writing. The fiction writing section of the library (but not the school library) have the views of successful writers, noteworthy teachers, and publishing pros. Time spent there is golden. My personal suggestion is that you pick up a personal copy of Debra Dixon's, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict. It's a really good introduction into the basics of creating scenes and linking them into an exciting story.

So, is this what you were hoping to read when you posted the story? Hell no! But you did ask, and I thought you might want to know.

So jump in. It's a b***h to master the tricks and make them work as well as the skills you've been practicing since first grade. I won't kid you there. But a lot of it is the kind of thing that makes you say, "Why didn't I see that for myself?"

But no matter what you do, hang in there, and keep on writing.

Jay Greenstein
https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/