Good Morning

[devonin]

Re: Good Morning

Except that the message we're left with is "He is scary and people die" and you were going for "Sometimes people are even happy to see him"?! That's not ambiguity, that's not communicating your intent to the reader.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

I know. And as a writer, I'm not going to be there every time to my readers to explain what my motivation is when I write each thing, or forget to add something (even if it's around 2 lines near the end).

As it stands, I'm actually kind of fine with him just representing bad memories. Other people that are in the same line of work could very well represent good memories, as well.

There was a story I read by Stephen King about this guy who would write down symbols, and someone would die. He got paid in cash every week, and eventually he found out his targets were small time dissenters, print journalists for tiny newspapers, and he found out who he worked for - some office, and he wrote all their names down to kill them. I hated the ending. Hated, hated, hated it. It was awful, because it was a story that was so deliciously ambiguous that bringing it to the close it came to killed the rest of the story. It went from "Hm, this is interesting," to, "Oh. Okay."

I read that story after I wrote this one, though.

In any case, content wise (besides the ambiguosity), did you like it?

Also, +1 for getting more replies in a lit thread in 2 days than most get in a week.

[devonin]

Re: Good Morning

Well, if you -forget- to add something, then that's a failure as a writer (I don't mean that like -you- are, just that forgetting things that are necessary for the story means that the story wasn't done properly)

And you said right in your opening few lines that he frightens society. So that would have been at odds with the rest of it if you -had- remembered to include someone not being frightened of his presence.

But then to have your only case example of him doing his job being one that resulted in someone -dying- ostensibly of -fear- at the sight of who he looked like, you lost your chance to not make this character an embodiment of fear/terror right from the outset.

And with your stephen king anecdote, the whole story now just sounds derived...just saying.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

The writing and attempted publication of my story predates his, though. So there's always that.

EDIT: Also, I would think that someone who could metamorphose into any other person given his job requirement would frighten society regardless of whether or not he was a good witch or a bad witch.

Doublay Edit: Actually, the book was published in 2002, but I got it for Christmas 2008.

[devonin]

Re: Good Morning

But if he can do it on command, I'd say that your earlier statement that he is at all a normal person stops being true, and that would completely alter our perceptions of the character -even more- putting us right back into being too open-started.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

He can't really do it on command, he does it as the job requires. It's something involuntary. I'm getting kind of close to just spilling the backstory.

[devonin]

Re: Good Morning

It won't matter.

You didn't include the backstory -in- the story.

Having to explain your story after the person has already read it is like explaining a joke after nobody laughed.

The constructive version of the various posts here goes like this:

Leaving things unanswered only works if you give the reader enough information to feel like their own answer isn't just completely arbitrary. If we're left going "Hmm, I wonder what that was" we'd better have at least enough information to -try- and formulate a -reasonable- conclusion.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

But the point was that no reasonable conclusion was meant to be formed. At all. The back story I came up with was only to satiate the potential need, should the question ever arrive. It has no bearing on the story and was never meant to. The point of the story is about isolation and the past. His job is just a creative means to express this.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

Long story short: Any answer the reader comes up with is meant to be arbitrary because coming up with an answer just isn't what the story is about.

Another thread I just posted, called: So There I Was is about a guy, just fired, trying to get the attention of people on the street so that he can tell a story. You never find out what the story is, and rightly so - STIW is not about the story the guy is trying to tell. By trying to come to a satisfying conclusion, you're just going to mess your own head up, because the story is not about the story that the guy is trying to tell, nor is about the business that The Narrator works for in Good Morning.

[Sol_Solis]

Re: Good Morning

I didn't read the whole thing. Why? Because it moves along with such uninteresting or emotionally not engaging details and ideas. I want relevance, relating with deep emotional details - things that will make it memorable. I want something intellectually deep as well non-emotional things (But not too deep) that offer enough stimulation to keep reading to know how it will unfold. This is my preference and what I think should be littered throughout every story.
Something powerful and moving! Y'know, something that I will look forward to reading as I read it.

[MalReynolds]

Re: Good Morning

It's 3 pages long.

It's less than 2,000 words.

I really don't understand where you're coming from.

[Sol_Solis]

Re: Good Morning

It's 3 pages long.

It's less than 2,000 words.

I really don't understand where you're coming from.

Who is this directed at? Use quotes sir and be more specific!

[dore]

Re: Good Morning

it's probably directed at the only person who posted after he last posted, which happens to be the post directly above his, which happens to be you