"visceral heat?" CHECK "acerbic social commentary?" CHECK "gut twisting intrigue?" CHECK. Not sure how you managed it, but I have sympathy only for Renata in this opener. The whole thing is brilliantly disturbing. More, please.
Thank you, Sharron! I think the most challenging part of writing this (apart from crafting an excellent mystery) will be making sure the characters remain despicable from start to finish. Usually, I'm trying to get you to fall in love with people, not revile them. This whole business is well outside of my comfy zone. I hereby appoint you Empathy Officer for this project. The minute you start to relate to, or feel badly for, someone in this book, I want you to alert me at once!
So, you’ve asked what other works might be of interest relative to what you’re doing, and two come immediately to mind: Don DeLillo’s White Noise (also a pretty decent movie) and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (or you could also say Vineland maybe). Both play with the excessive superficiality of branding and the way individuals subsume themselves within brands. Both are “literary” in ways that I don’t think you aspire to. Both are novels that I just love, so it’s of interest to me that I don’t love your first chapter. I think I’ll share additional observations privately and let you decide whether you want them to be fodder for public discussion. You know I wouldn’t respond at all if I didn’t think you had something interesting going on here ...
Cheers, Tom. I'm impressed you made it through without bailing out! Back channels are open to whatever shady feedback you may have. And remember, this isn't mandatory. If you keep reading and commenting, I'll have to assume it's because you're being entertained. 😉
Nov 15, 2023·edited Nov 15, 2023Liked by Meg Oolders
Okay, obv I'm all the way in on Home Raker. Praise-wise, I think your pacing is a cut above, though in this story I'd say you've slowed things down a beat, which isn't a bad thing. The world you've created feels like a place that simmers, so it makes sense the prose would as well.
The characters are ridiculous, which is great. More please.
Few considerations/thoughts:
1) I'd consider pulling back just a bit on the TM brands. It's a great bit, but early on it risked feeling a touch forced. Not a biggie, just something to think about. If you withhold the TMs a little more, they'll hit harder when they do pop up.
2) Presumably there's much more to come with Sensina, but for a first chapter I would've liked another morsel or two. Not sure how: maybe more than just a business card? Handwriting? A photo? Ooh -- an invoice!
3) I had a hard time figuring out how big the incinerator is. If it's large, wouldn't the outside be reallly hot? I felt like Celeste would've burned her hands, but maybe I read it wrong. Alternatively, you could play that angle up. She harms herself on purpose.
4) Is Clinton already in the office with Tali when she opens the door? I was confused about that part, but could just be me.
5) Similar to Sensina in point 2, I think I needed a little more with respect to Harold's arrival at the end. She seems horny for him, but isn't he like a zombie? Does he look normal and healthy? It's implied he does, but sometimes just stating the obvious for the reader is the right choice (e.g., "He looked brand new, like the first time I mind-fucked him.").
To be clear: all this stuff is minor. I dig what you've started, and think it'll be a lot of fun.
As for comps, read any John le Carre novel. I went on a huge kick with him years ago, which undoubtedly helped me structure the twists and turns in my novel.
My husband agrees more bodies (suspects) need to be introduced - and soon. My early brainstorming has kept the cast small - but that's not going to work if I want to create plenty of false leads along the way. Because Celeste is isolated so much of the time, the people around her will likely appear innocuous and beneath her notice, so I'll have to play with how best to give them entry into the intrigue. Third person POV will assist me with that. Also, I'm fashioning the Hornets as something of a twisted Greek chorus, so they should prove useful in the passing of information.
1) I definitely went overboard with the TMs. 😂Felt that immediately and will scale back. It was a bit in response to your first round of feedback about the "funny" getting lost in the second half. I overcompensated. What I really want to do is push the serious tension longer between jokes, so when "coddle the underperforming salami" shows up, it means something. 🙂
2) Sensina will be huge. I had more ideas for teasing her (and Clinton) into this chapter, but I worried about it running too long. Tricky to balance the "simmer" of Celeste's status quo with a lot of backstory. I expect the opening to change A LOT in revisions, once I see the potential for twists later on - I'll need to back track and plant seeds.
3) The door of the incinerator is 8 inches square - as noted. In my head, I pictured it like a wall safe, and hoped the sheer ridiculousness of a Personal Incinerator existing would be enough to suspend some disbelief about its mechanics. I don't dislike the idea of her letting it almost burn her hands before she lets go. (I already have some phoenix themeology bouncing around in my head) I'll play with that.
4) 5) There's a shift backward in time here. Was that part clear at least? Tense switches from present to past. Celeste's undressed state suggests a different day/time. So, Harold is completely healthy and alive in the moment the chapter leaves you because it's their meet cute - or as I plan to call the next chapter - Meat Cute. Tali is in the office with Clinton, yes. Not answering the door because she's tied up (ahem).
I'm a little nervous about the time jumping, TBH. The next chapter is entirely past tense - but then I'm wondering how long I should stay there. Do I make it easy for the reader and just jump back and forth with each chapter - or do I stretch out their courtship and seed planting a bit before I throw you back to the moment Clinton comes home and they have it out?
These are questions for me to answer, not you. I'm just thinking out loud. 😇
Thanks for the good vibes on this. And for the John le Carre rec! I'll add him to my list.
I read late last night and might have simply missed some obvious things, like the eight-inch description of the incinerator. Numbers are abstractions though and hard to parse for the reader, so I'd wonder if maybe "microwave-sized" or "mailbox-sized" would've made it clearer. But yes, a personal incinerator is great.
Regarding the tense shift, I didn't pick up on that at all. My gut tells me you should avoid that "intra-chapter" but it'd work fine "inter-chapter." Once my reading mind was in present tense that's how I processed the narrative, so when that time jump happened I just missed it. That likely because I'm an idiot, but a consideration nonetheless.
Your feedback is valuable. As I expect only an idiot would rep this book. And a different kind of idiot would buy it. 😂
I plan to read and watch a lot of murder mysteries and see how they play the present/past noise. I think the decision to start with the murder is strong - BUT it's not the only way. I could have started with a love scene between Harold and Celeste. Or a party scene where Celeste is locked in her trophy case while the "help" circulate and the neighborhood elite revel in their hunger games-level garishness.
I think what's going to happen is I'll end up writing individual scenes and then trying to piece them together - which is a shitty way to write a book, I know from firsthand experience - but it might be the best way to shake out characters and find twists. I have so many ideas for twists, but no plan for how to execute them. If I write the reveal scenes early - maybe that will help me piece together the rest of the machine. ¯\(°_o)/¯
I've written two novels with fairly intricate plots, and both times I've had to outline the action in detail. The first time I did everything in advance. The second time I did it on the fly, stopping and outlining when I needed. But it really helps, and it need not be overly complicated.
Just write out a sequence like, A killls B, C investigates the murder, D becomes suspicious of A, C and D investigate, D dies under mysterious circumstances, etc.
Then, when you write, you'll have a target in mind, but you'll still be flexible enough to wing it. That's when the real fun happens.
This is when I wish I had Tony Stark technology, so I could just think in "index cards" and they'd appear on a 3D story map that I could walk around in. Fucking rich people have everything. 😂
Wow, this is a powerful opening to what promises to be a dark, twisty, and scathingly funny ride. I would expect nothing else from you. The portrait you paint of the MC is vividly real in her un-realness. I love the way you describe her putting on her face. The fact that she can't seem to have any release in the way of tears or sex is potent.
There's not much I can give in terms of constructive feedback that Amran did not already cover beautifully. (The TM's note in particular.) So here are some pure opinions based on nothing but my own preferences and what I'm taking away from the text without knowing what your ultimate vision is for the story. So please, completely ignore my thoughts if they're not helpful.
A story like this can play very successfully at the shallow end if that's the goal. You have the chops to propel the plot, create the scenes, and generate laughs. But there's a coldness, a hollowness in these kinds of treatments. I heard Adam Grant's interview with the comedian Jim Gaffigan on his ReThinking podcast, and Gaffigan talks about the "aftertaste" of certain kinds of comedy. He talks about how a comedian can go for certain jokes that make us laugh in the moment, but it's an uncomfortable laugh - a primitive response to stimuli that later leaves us feeling guilty or just empty. Either way, it can be a deterrent for us to want to go back and hear that comedian again.
I don't think he was just referring to darker or blue comedy, but something more subtle. Art has no job or purpose other than expressing an idea that elicits some feeling. As artists, we choose what we set in motion in hopes of getting the response we desire. As a reader, I'm all in on the social commentary and the tear-down of a class of people who live horribly selfish lives, but to stay invested for the long haul, I need to see some of their humanity beneath the veneer. Celeste can be a plastic trophy wife and her senator husband a monstrous leach, but they will have more staying power for me if you tease out a bit more of how they got that way. As a reader, it's hard for me to stay completely invested in characters for whom I cannot develop some glimmer of empathy.
The quality of your writing and the way you pace is exquisite. It's propulsive. I want to read more.
Thank you, Ben! This is tremendous feedback. I'm going to listen to that interview. I adore Jim Gaffigan for one thing.
To your point about the characters having souls, I'm with you 100%. This was really hard for me to write!!! I'm the empathy queen, and I desperately need to care about a character if I'm going to follow them around for 200+ pages. In my earliest draft of this chapter - there were fewer jokes - or if there were jokes, they were that gross - I shouldn't be laughing at this - kind. Which in itself is a commentary on how we judge people and revile them based on our inherent biases. Yes, these people are disgusting. And selfish. And tone-deaf. But they're also miserable and tragic and afraid.
I DO want to find a way to illicit BOTH the reality show dopamine hit that comes from watching wretched people reap what they sow AND the contrasting pang of human sympathy we get when we see the same people suffering real, tangible (relatable) trauma.
I want readers to hate-love everyone in this book. Or love-hate them. Either way, I've got my work cut out for me to be sure. 💜
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts, Ben!! Happy to have you aboard.
I really enjoyed this, and I, like Sharron, did have sympathy for Renata, which I do think is essential for this sort of first person narrative. Not that she is admirable, or that I approve, but that I cared about her, perhaps because in her own way she has shown some concern for others, for example, the maid she has sent home.
And I thought of Pynchon right away, (one of my favorites) even before I saw Tom's comment, so I completely agree with him as an author you could compare yourself too, particularly his early books. I agree with Amran about tm, but mostly because I think you could simply drop the tm indication (since I assume they aren't real) because I, as reader, got the joke right away, and didn't mind you keeping it up. This is where looking at Pynchon who did this is a good model.
As for the flashback, it was jarring because I didn't get what was happening instantly. I would either start with new chapter, or make it shorter and woven in first chapter, since you have also done other short flashback of her and him aready. This are my first responses, will see if anything else comes up in second reading. But great start, I am definitely hooked.
Thank you for these thoughts, Louisa. I'm assuming you mean Celeste when you say Renata. :-) Renata IS the maid which is why I smiled when Sharron suggested she was the only sympathetic character. As I said in my response to Ben, being the person and writer that I am, it would be almost impossible for me to make the protagonist void of redemption. I do plan to have her flashback persona lean a bit more vapid/entitled - so I've chosen to show readers her transformation from the get-go. Still not sure that was the right move, but this is such a wild experiment, so I'm just trying to learn as I go!
Your input on the flashback makes a lot of sense. This is another area I need practice and will most certainly get some help with through reading the work of other authors. I want most of the action of the story to be in the present tense, but the flashbacks are essential to planting the seeds of the mystery. So, ACK! What have I gotten myself into?
I appreciate your feedback so much! I expect I will tinker with this opening chapter a lot as the rest of the story starts to take shape.
es, Celeste (smile.) I always have trouble with flashbacks, in fact, I have spent the past week rewriting once I realized that by putting a chunk of stuff in flashback slowed everything down, so I created a new chapter, put the stuff in real time (I am writing in first person, past tense) but that means I have had to make changes in the 4 chapters that come after this, including ripping out the flashback sections. Y
Well that was absolutely worth the wait!! Every aspect of my life tried to run me down and kill me this week, but as soon as I was able I scrambled back here to read the long-awaited opening chapter and O M G that was just amazing -- hilarious and intriguing, and sometimes disgusting! I love all the brand names and layers and layers of falsity, the bizarre hoard of women who batter her door (and how she gets rid of them), and the promise of the mysterious old high school friend... I couldn't take my eyes away and wouldn't have wanted to if I could. I felt like a shorter flashback to the living Harold Raker some time prior to all the incinerating would have been merited and worth it. You have the sexy-food-stuff towards the start and the full-on backstory at the end, but something in the middle would have been good too. I CAN'T WANT FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!!!!
ACK! Every misguided doubt in my guts tried to get me to abandon this project all week - UNTIL I SAW YOUR COMMENT! Now I don't see how I can put it down. I do know it will be slow going since I've essentially jumped off a cliff into a genre I've never written in with an underdeveloped plot and a few other weak links in tow. But your cheerleading has bolstered my resolve. Hopefully, you won't have to wait too long for chapter 2. 🥂
Just keep having fun with it -- it's the fun that comes through every line that makes all the sensationalism WORK. I mean, if anything, your goal should be to RAISE the level of absurdity, right? :D
Late to the party (forgive me!), but “sodomized to death?” !!!!!!! oh my oh my! What happened to the Meg that told me the short story I recommended was so gross it left bruises on her imagination?
I don’t know if it’s a comp, but it’s a movie that made me what to abandon horror and write mysteries, and that’s the recent ish Jon Hamm “Confess, Fletch” - I haven’t read the books the movie adapts, and the preview doesn’t do the movie justice, it’s funny, about a detective that solves the case because everyone else is just so so so stupid. My description doesn’t do it justice. Spend the bucks and rent it and you’ll see what I mean, it’s a good touchstone for what a good mystery story can be for those of us who think we wouldn’t care to write a mystery story.
As many have said, you have a playful touch with language and it’s clear you’re having fun, which makes your tales fun to read, but you don’t need “disappointing” or “fragile” in the following sentence:
As she waits for her husband’s disappointing entrance, her fragile mind, exhausted by the day’s events, peddles furiously backward.
And I know “show, don’t tell” is trite, is obvious, is annoying, but... when you have the ability to have so much fun in detailing an active HOW disappointing, HOW fragile... well, let us read that.
"visceral heat?" CHECK "acerbic social commentary?" CHECK "gut twisting intrigue?" CHECK. Not sure how you managed it, but I have sympathy only for Renata in this opener. The whole thing is brilliantly disturbing. More, please.
Thank you, Sharron! I think the most challenging part of writing this (apart from crafting an excellent mystery) will be making sure the characters remain despicable from start to finish. Usually, I'm trying to get you to fall in love with people, not revile them. This whole business is well outside of my comfy zone. I hereby appoint you Empathy Officer for this project. The minute you start to relate to, or feel badly for, someone in this book, I want you to alert me at once!
Will do! I have trouble creating bad guys too...
From start to finish?!?!?! 1) why?!?!?! 2) I hope they change your mind the more you write them
You know they will.
So, you’ve asked what other works might be of interest relative to what you’re doing, and two come immediately to mind: Don DeLillo’s White Noise (also a pretty decent movie) and Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow (or you could also say Vineland maybe). Both play with the excessive superficiality of branding and the way individuals subsume themselves within brands. Both are “literary” in ways that I don’t think you aspire to. Both are novels that I just love, so it’s of interest to me that I don’t love your first chapter. I think I’ll share additional observations privately and let you decide whether you want them to be fodder for public discussion. You know I wouldn’t respond at all if I didn’t think you had something interesting going on here ...
Cheers, Tom. I'm impressed you made it through without bailing out! Back channels are open to whatever shady feedback you may have. And remember, this isn't mandatory. If you keep reading and commenting, I'll have to assume it's because you're being entertained. 😉
Okay, obv I'm all the way in on Home Raker. Praise-wise, I think your pacing is a cut above, though in this story I'd say you've slowed things down a beat, which isn't a bad thing. The world you've created feels like a place that simmers, so it makes sense the prose would as well.
The characters are ridiculous, which is great. More please.
Few considerations/thoughts:
1) I'd consider pulling back just a bit on the TM brands. It's a great bit, but early on it risked feeling a touch forced. Not a biggie, just something to think about. If you withhold the TMs a little more, they'll hit harder when they do pop up.
2) Presumably there's much more to come with Sensina, but for a first chapter I would've liked another morsel or two. Not sure how: maybe more than just a business card? Handwriting? A photo? Ooh -- an invoice!
3) I had a hard time figuring out how big the incinerator is. If it's large, wouldn't the outside be reallly hot? I felt like Celeste would've burned her hands, but maybe I read it wrong. Alternatively, you could play that angle up. She harms herself on purpose.
4) Is Clinton already in the office with Tali when she opens the door? I was confused about that part, but could just be me.
5) Similar to Sensina in point 2, I think I needed a little more with respect to Harold's arrival at the end. She seems horny for him, but isn't he like a zombie? Does he look normal and healthy? It's implied he does, but sometimes just stating the obvious for the reader is the right choice (e.g., "He looked brand new, like the first time I mind-fucked him.").
To be clear: all this stuff is minor. I dig what you've started, and think it'll be a lot of fun.
As for comps, read any John le Carre novel. I went on a huge kick with him years ago, which undoubtedly helped me structure the twists and turns in my novel.
Yummy feedback. Thank you!
My husband agrees more bodies (suspects) need to be introduced - and soon. My early brainstorming has kept the cast small - but that's not going to work if I want to create plenty of false leads along the way. Because Celeste is isolated so much of the time, the people around her will likely appear innocuous and beneath her notice, so I'll have to play with how best to give them entry into the intrigue. Third person POV will assist me with that. Also, I'm fashioning the Hornets as something of a twisted Greek chorus, so they should prove useful in the passing of information.
1) I definitely went overboard with the TMs. 😂Felt that immediately and will scale back. It was a bit in response to your first round of feedback about the "funny" getting lost in the second half. I overcompensated. What I really want to do is push the serious tension longer between jokes, so when "coddle the underperforming salami" shows up, it means something. 🙂
2) Sensina will be huge. I had more ideas for teasing her (and Clinton) into this chapter, but I worried about it running too long. Tricky to balance the "simmer" of Celeste's status quo with a lot of backstory. I expect the opening to change A LOT in revisions, once I see the potential for twists later on - I'll need to back track and plant seeds.
3) The door of the incinerator is 8 inches square - as noted. In my head, I pictured it like a wall safe, and hoped the sheer ridiculousness of a Personal Incinerator existing would be enough to suspend some disbelief about its mechanics. I don't dislike the idea of her letting it almost burn her hands before she lets go. (I already have some phoenix themeology bouncing around in my head) I'll play with that.
4) 5) There's a shift backward in time here. Was that part clear at least? Tense switches from present to past. Celeste's undressed state suggests a different day/time. So, Harold is completely healthy and alive in the moment the chapter leaves you because it's their meet cute - or as I plan to call the next chapter - Meat Cute. Tali is in the office with Clinton, yes. Not answering the door because she's tied up (ahem).
I'm a little nervous about the time jumping, TBH. The next chapter is entirely past tense - but then I'm wondering how long I should stay there. Do I make it easy for the reader and just jump back and forth with each chapter - or do I stretch out their courtship and seed planting a bit before I throw you back to the moment Clinton comes home and they have it out?
These are questions for me to answer, not you. I'm just thinking out loud. 😇
Thanks for the good vibes on this. And for the John le Carre rec! I'll add him to my list.
I read late last night and might have simply missed some obvious things, like the eight-inch description of the incinerator. Numbers are abstractions though and hard to parse for the reader, so I'd wonder if maybe "microwave-sized" or "mailbox-sized" would've made it clearer. But yes, a personal incinerator is great.
Regarding the tense shift, I didn't pick up on that at all. My gut tells me you should avoid that "intra-chapter" but it'd work fine "inter-chapter." Once my reading mind was in present tense that's how I processed the narrative, so when that time jump happened I just missed it. That likely because I'm an idiot, but a consideration nonetheless.
Your feedback is valuable. As I expect only an idiot would rep this book. And a different kind of idiot would buy it. 😂
I plan to read and watch a lot of murder mysteries and see how they play the present/past noise. I think the decision to start with the murder is strong - BUT it's not the only way. I could have started with a love scene between Harold and Celeste. Or a party scene where Celeste is locked in her trophy case while the "help" circulate and the neighborhood elite revel in their hunger games-level garishness.
I think what's going to happen is I'll end up writing individual scenes and then trying to piece them together - which is a shitty way to write a book, I know from firsthand experience - but it might be the best way to shake out characters and find twists. I have so many ideas for twists, but no plan for how to execute them. If I write the reveal scenes early - maybe that will help me piece together the rest of the machine. ¯\(°_o)/¯
I've written two novels with fairly intricate plots, and both times I've had to outline the action in detail. The first time I did everything in advance. The second time I did it on the fly, stopping and outlining when I needed. But it really helps, and it need not be overly complicated.
Just write out a sequence like, A killls B, C investigates the murder, D becomes suspicious of A, C and D investigate, D dies under mysterious circumstances, etc.
Then, when you write, you'll have a target in mind, but you'll still be flexible enough to wing it. That's when the real fun happens.
This is when I wish I had Tony Stark technology, so I could just think in "index cards" and they'd appear on a 3D story map that I could walk around in. Fucking rich people have everything. 😂
True. But they're still miserable.
Wow, this is a powerful opening to what promises to be a dark, twisty, and scathingly funny ride. I would expect nothing else from you. The portrait you paint of the MC is vividly real in her un-realness. I love the way you describe her putting on her face. The fact that she can't seem to have any release in the way of tears or sex is potent.
There's not much I can give in terms of constructive feedback that Amran did not already cover beautifully. (The TM's note in particular.) So here are some pure opinions based on nothing but my own preferences and what I'm taking away from the text without knowing what your ultimate vision is for the story. So please, completely ignore my thoughts if they're not helpful.
A story like this can play very successfully at the shallow end if that's the goal. You have the chops to propel the plot, create the scenes, and generate laughs. But there's a coldness, a hollowness in these kinds of treatments. I heard Adam Grant's interview with the comedian Jim Gaffigan on his ReThinking podcast, and Gaffigan talks about the "aftertaste" of certain kinds of comedy. He talks about how a comedian can go for certain jokes that make us laugh in the moment, but it's an uncomfortable laugh - a primitive response to stimuli that later leaves us feeling guilty or just empty. Either way, it can be a deterrent for us to want to go back and hear that comedian again.
I don't think he was just referring to darker or blue comedy, but something more subtle. Art has no job or purpose other than expressing an idea that elicits some feeling. As artists, we choose what we set in motion in hopes of getting the response we desire. As a reader, I'm all in on the social commentary and the tear-down of a class of people who live horribly selfish lives, but to stay invested for the long haul, I need to see some of their humanity beneath the veneer. Celeste can be a plastic trophy wife and her senator husband a monstrous leach, but they will have more staying power for me if you tease out a bit more of how they got that way. As a reader, it's hard for me to stay completely invested in characters for whom I cannot develop some glimmer of empathy.
The quality of your writing and the way you pace is exquisite. It's propulsive. I want to read more.
Thank you, Ben! This is tremendous feedback. I'm going to listen to that interview. I adore Jim Gaffigan for one thing.
To your point about the characters having souls, I'm with you 100%. This was really hard for me to write!!! I'm the empathy queen, and I desperately need to care about a character if I'm going to follow them around for 200+ pages. In my earliest draft of this chapter - there were fewer jokes - or if there were jokes, they were that gross - I shouldn't be laughing at this - kind. Which in itself is a commentary on how we judge people and revile them based on our inherent biases. Yes, these people are disgusting. And selfish. And tone-deaf. But they're also miserable and tragic and afraid.
I DO want to find a way to illicit BOTH the reality show dopamine hit that comes from watching wretched people reap what they sow AND the contrasting pang of human sympathy we get when we see the same people suffering real, tangible (relatable) trauma.
I want readers to hate-love everyone in this book. Or love-hate them. Either way, I've got my work cut out for me to be sure. 💜
Thank you so much for reading and sharing your thoughts, Ben!! Happy to have you aboard.
I really enjoyed this, and I, like Sharron, did have sympathy for Renata, which I do think is essential for this sort of first person narrative. Not that she is admirable, or that I approve, but that I cared about her, perhaps because in her own way she has shown some concern for others, for example, the maid she has sent home.
And I thought of Pynchon right away, (one of my favorites) even before I saw Tom's comment, so I completely agree with him as an author you could compare yourself too, particularly his early books. I agree with Amran about tm, but mostly because I think you could simply drop the tm indication (since I assume they aren't real) because I, as reader, got the joke right away, and didn't mind you keeping it up. This is where looking at Pynchon who did this is a good model.
As for the flashback, it was jarring because I didn't get what was happening instantly. I would either start with new chapter, or make it shorter and woven in first chapter, since you have also done other short flashback of her and him aready. This are my first responses, will see if anything else comes up in second reading. But great start, I am definitely hooked.
Thank you for these thoughts, Louisa. I'm assuming you mean Celeste when you say Renata. :-) Renata IS the maid which is why I smiled when Sharron suggested she was the only sympathetic character. As I said in my response to Ben, being the person and writer that I am, it would be almost impossible for me to make the protagonist void of redemption. I do plan to have her flashback persona lean a bit more vapid/entitled - so I've chosen to show readers her transformation from the get-go. Still not sure that was the right move, but this is such a wild experiment, so I'm just trying to learn as I go!
Your input on the flashback makes a lot of sense. This is another area I need practice and will most certainly get some help with through reading the work of other authors. I want most of the action of the story to be in the present tense, but the flashbacks are essential to planting the seeds of the mystery. So, ACK! What have I gotten myself into?
I appreciate your feedback so much! I expect I will tinker with this opening chapter a lot as the rest of the story starts to take shape.
es, Celeste (smile.) I always have trouble with flashbacks, in fact, I have spent the past week rewriting once I realized that by putting a chunk of stuff in flashback slowed everything down, so I created a new chapter, put the stuff in real time (I am writing in first person, past tense) but that means I have had to make changes in the 4 chapters that come after this, including ripping out the flashback sections. Y
Well that was absolutely worth the wait!! Every aspect of my life tried to run me down and kill me this week, but as soon as I was able I scrambled back here to read the long-awaited opening chapter and O M G that was just amazing -- hilarious and intriguing, and sometimes disgusting! I love all the brand names and layers and layers of falsity, the bizarre hoard of women who batter her door (and how she gets rid of them), and the promise of the mysterious old high school friend... I couldn't take my eyes away and wouldn't have wanted to if I could. I felt like a shorter flashback to the living Harold Raker some time prior to all the incinerating would have been merited and worth it. You have the sexy-food-stuff towards the start and the full-on backstory at the end, but something in the middle would have been good too. I CAN'T WANT FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!!!!
ACK! Every misguided doubt in my guts tried to get me to abandon this project all week - UNTIL I SAW YOUR COMMENT! Now I don't see how I can put it down. I do know it will be slow going since I've essentially jumped off a cliff into a genre I've never written in with an underdeveloped plot and a few other weak links in tow. But your cheerleading has bolstered my resolve. Hopefully, you won't have to wait too long for chapter 2. 🥂
Just keep having fun with it -- it's the fun that comes through every line that makes all the sensationalism WORK. I mean, if anything, your goal should be to RAISE the level of absurdity, right? :D
🥂
Thanks for all the feedback on this, friends. I made a few updates based on your suggestions. Onward to episode two!
Late to the party (forgive me!), but “sodomized to death?” !!!!!!! oh my oh my! What happened to the Meg that told me the short story I recommended was so gross it left bruises on her imagination?
“And she’ll have to ask him if he had anything to do with it.
And she’ll know right away if he’s lying.
Because he’s always lying.”
Ooh. That’s good.
I don’t know if it’s a comp, but it’s a movie that made me what to abandon horror and write mysteries, and that’s the recent ish Jon Hamm “Confess, Fletch” - I haven’t read the books the movie adapts, and the preview doesn’t do the movie justice, it’s funny, about a detective that solves the case because everyone else is just so so so stupid. My description doesn’t do it justice. Spend the bucks and rent it and you’ll see what I mean, it’s a good touchstone for what a good mystery story can be for those of us who think we wouldn’t care to write a mystery story.
As many have said, you have a playful touch with language and it’s clear you’re having fun, which makes your tales fun to read, but you don’t need “disappointing” or “fragile” in the following sentence:
As she waits for her husband’s disappointing entrance, her fragile mind, exhausted by the day’s events, peddles furiously backward.
And I know “show, don’t tell” is trite, is obvious, is annoying, but... when you have the ability to have so much fun in detailing an active HOW disappointing, HOW fragile... well, let us read that.
This is fun! Imagining Homeraker the Movie...