Welcome to our Wednesday edition of Would You Read On?.
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This weeks contribution is a fiction title:
This weeks contribution is a fiction title:
Destiny.
It’s all Zeke ever heard from his mother.
She spoke about his destiny. She prayed about his destiny. She never let
him forget his destiny. But, did he really believe in destiny? All it ever got
his mom was an early grave.
Today,
he determined if destiny was his guiding force, then destiny was a mean school-yard bully.
After this morning’s fiasco, he no longer believed…in anything.
Forced
out of his apartment at six-thirty this morning, he had nowhere to go but his
car. Not that it was their fault. The giddy, goofy, oh-so-in-love couple who
could not wait to move into his
apartment had no idea he would be there.
He
had no idea this was coming.
Okay,
to be fair, it was Angela’s apartment. He’d never put his name on the lease,
but he had lived there, with her, for four years. They were married for three.
That
changed today. Their divorce hearing was at nine o’clock. How could he be ready
for this? How does anybody prepare for what was happening today?
Apparently,
Angela knew. She’d already sublet their apartment. Obviously, she was moving
on.
Why
couldn’t he?
His 2001 Suzuki Swift was crammed full of his meager belongings. He worried about the legality of driving with this much stuff in his car. What choice did he have? He could only see out the windshield and driver’s side window. The other windows were blocked by everything he owned. Well everything he could throw in a box, trash bag or laundry basket and cram into his humble hatchback.
Would you read on? Post your comment below
REVEAL: Last weeks contributor was Timothy Fish. You may get to know more about Timothy at his website and on FB. Thank you Timothy for being bold and courageous!
7 comments:
The flow of this story seems like it is going in reverse. It starts by looking back at the day, then jumps to 6:30 AM, then to four years earlier, then to 9:00 AM and by the time we reach the bottom of the page, I'm not sure whether this is before or after the divorce hearing. If I could figure that out and the story stops jumping around, I would continue reading.
I don't think I'd read on. There was a lot of good in this--the oh-so-in-love couple rubbing the narrator raw, the man with nowhere to go and all his belongings in his car...Great conflict.
But I don't think I'd read on, because this sample was a little confusing to me. I think if you cut the mother completely and just had the happy couple showing up at the door, that might be a better place to start.
so far, I'm not in a scene. This opens with the narrator thinking. He thinks about his mother, the happy couple, the ex-wife. He thinks about loading up his car. But we haven't seen anything happening on stage yet and I think most of us are drawn in when we watch characters acting out a story on the stage, rather than when we hear about what happened. A curse of our movie/tv age, I guess.
I like telling, but I like it to be dribbled in between paragraphs of showing.
There is wonderful conflict here, though, and the author's sense of humor shows through, so I think there was a lot to like about the character and his story.
I like the author's voice. The first paragraph actually drew me in and it made me feel for Zeke and the author ties it in nicely with the next sentence equating destiny with a mean school-yard bully. What tripped me up a little was the sentence, "Not that it was their fault" because we hadn't been introduced to anybody yet. I'd read on.
I was a bit confused by this piece. Maybe it's the mention of the mother throwing me off. I think I would have focused on Zeke and Angela and not brought the mother into it.
No, I wouldn't read on, but I'm brutal. If I don't like the story on the first page I rarely read on.
I would have liked to SEE Zeke lying in bed in his apartment, suffering with a headache (or something) and the new renters entering with their key, moving in. If the author had showed this story unravel like a movie where we could see Zeke moving his stuff out and cramming it into his car we would have felt more for his predicament. He could have confronted Angela through dialogue, too. If the author had to speak about destiny the first line could have been, Destiny had a way of taking over my life, chasing me wherever I went. It was probably Mom's curse. Today it woke me up before I had time to get out of bed.
Then go into the story...the new renters walk in with their stuff. etc.
I do like this writer's sense of humor, and he/she has given us some issues to surmount, but...
Here is Zeke with a pile of troubles, from a mom whom he thinks lied to him, to an ex who ripped his home out from under him. But for some reason, I'm not sympathetic with the guy. He's a whiner.
Give me several reasons to like your main character, and I'll get on board and read on. I MUST like the MC in a story to want to help them out of their conflicts.
I'm on the fence. The situation has plenty of tension (though it's of a possibly overused type) and the writing shows promise. There are some rough edges that need to be smoothed—for example, when destiny is compared to a schoolyard bully, my first thought was that was literal and this was a middle-grade.
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