h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: Just for Fun - A38186102
Author: Tibley Bobley - U170471

Another non-spooky story. It's hard to think of something interesting that isn't also unlikely. Is it too silly?

Thank you to anyone who reads it.

I wouldn't describe this as silly at all - bleak is more accurate.

The story is generally well done, as the sense of horror is built up gradually, along with the back story, so by the end we have a sense of completion.

The trouble is that the characters are unsympathetic: Mike with his sexual perversion is balanced by Jane's brutal father, while Jane herself seems quite prepared to carry out her share of the vengeance. I wonder if we need to care more for either Jane or Mike for the story to be satisfying?

I also wonder if there isn't too much fooling around with keys at the beginning. This would be funny in a different context, but the rest of the story is so dark I'm not sure that laughter would be appropriate here.

Thanks mVpoet. That's a relief

They are a grim lot, aren't they? Maybe I could make Jane a bit less jaggy. I'll give it a bit of thought. And the keys too.

I've made a couple of changes now: cut out some of the key activity (at the beginning) and softened Jane quite a lot (in the Jane section).

Mike is a very bad man and I wouldn't want the reader to feel any sympathy for him. He and his mother already waste plenty of sympathy on him and have none for anyone else.

Any better?

I still can't say I like this story much, but I think it's the world you've conjured up that's bothering me, rather than anything in the writing. .

Maybe I've lived a sheltered life. I want to believe that many people are decent, that love and trust count for something, that even politicians do try to do a reasonable job, even if they mess it up.

Sorry mVpoet The trouble is, all the nice things I might write would be deeply boring to read. Maybe that's just me. I'd have to be dying of boredom to pick up a biography. Also, when I asked if it was too silly, I meant the strong and resourceful avenging father. The other part of the story isn't conjured but based on something that happened years ago to someone I know. She was a lot more fragile than the Jane character in this story and visited some sort of therapist for years after the attack. Her dad didn't sort it out for her and neither did the law. Most politicians are probably very fine people. But not all of them.

It's funny. I was avoiding writing about real life for ages because, I suppose I find it at least as uncomfortable as you do. And I block things out if they make me squirm inside. Now I've been and gone and dredged things up. Shouldn't have done it maybe. Ghost and horror stories seemed to me to be a good way to express the horror I feel when I hear or see terrible things, without contaminating myself or anyone else with horrible reality. Perhaps I should stick with the nice safe supernatural.

No comment on how nice and safe the supernatural is.

I think the problem with the story lies not in its idea - which is perfectly fine, as far as I'm concerned, a much better way to get at what I was doing in that ill-fated golem story - but in its mechanics.

The problem is that there is WAY too much backstory being shoe-horned into the narrative flow.

Now, I realise this is technically very difficult. But somehow, we've got to be able to see this without being dragged away from the action.

The first paragraph is great: letting us feel the man's nervousness without knowing why he's nervous...

But then there's all this background. It needs to come out of the dialogue, piece by piece, as the narrative rolls along. (Sacrificing some detail might work.)

This could really go somewhere, excitement-wise.

But it needs control and technique to keep us from thinking 'meanwhile, back at the ranch'.

No moral judgements on the characters from this side: I find them all thoroughly unpleasant. It's the story that matters.

Really? Thank you dmitri

I'd resigned myself to burying this one. Thought it was a dud. I shall do my very best to follow your advice by Wednesday. It'll be a big challenge for me to get the gist of the back-story into dialogue form. You know I shrink from dialogue what with the old tin ear affliction, but I think (well hope is more like it really) I'm getting better.

*[Stands to attention, salutes, pivots on heels and skips away]*

Happy writing.

If this was late homework I would've had to forge a note from my mum Wednesday is about to end and I haven't finished it yet. The back-story has been whittled down a fair bit and rendered into blab, but now it needs pepping up with some action. Real life has got in the way. I'll report back when I've had a chance to do a bit more.

It's got a whole new mid section now. All dialogue and no strolling off into the past. It's still about the same length.

Is it getting there at all

I found myself asking two questions:
Would an ex-SAS officer who's going to kill someone have a long conversation with him first? I don't know.
Would this story merit a longer treatment? The back story is now quite complicated. I want to know how Jane came to be brought to trial. I want to know about Mike's wife, and about his girlfriend.

I can see this told like a detective story, starting with the discovery of Mike hanging and working backwards, to the exposure of the corrupt MP and the treatment meted out to Jane.

It's a thought mVpoet. It could be a longish story. Trouble is, I'm limited as I've mentioned elsewhere. If I can get my pill-addled brain to focus for an hour or two, I'm doing well (for me). I'll have a think about it though. Perhaps I should find a detective story to read to get some idea about how it's done.

Just to clarify, Jane's trial is really ordeal by cross-examination. She's not actually the one on trial but in cases of rape and indecent assault (most of which don't even get to court according to the statistics) a clever defence lawyer can make it look as though the victim was "asking for it" and the attacker was the real victim.

About that "long conversation": you might be right to wonder whether the SAS man would talk to his prisoner or not. I'm not sure either. But the conversation isn't really all that long. It looks long because dialogue is spread all down the page and looks vast. But it's only about 1500 words. My old shorthand teacher could take down words at a speed of over 250 per minute. She could have recorded that lot in 6 minutes. Make it 10 for pauses. And he's fiddling around with ropes and nooses while he's chatting. Do you think it would make it more natural if I could increase the sense of his activity while the two are exchanging words?

Yes, I think if you broke the conversation up with action it might avoid the impression that victim and murderer are just having a chat.

Right-ho

I'll have another furkle around with it on Wednesday.

Thanks mVpoet

That took a long time. Sorry.

The dialogue is now much more interrupted with background activities.

Much more vivid.

Your SAS officer becomes more disturbingly evil with each telling. Vigilantism run amok...judge, jury, and executioner.

Which is why I'd recommend more irony in the last paragraph.

Mike is no longer a threat to anyone...what about his assailant?

Yes, this works better now.

Perhaps Jane's father should go and become a consultant to the Zimbabwe government...

Thank you both

It was supposed to be a one-off crime dmitri, but since you think he'd make a good serial vigilante, I've opened it out for potentially more of the same in the future. There are now three more sentences tagged on to the end of the penultimate paragraph and a slight alteration of the last sentence. Does that have the effect you were after?

I hadn't intended to encourage a crime wave. Now I feel guilty.

But, yes, that is a nice touch.