A Splendidly Awful Eye for Detail

FROM SUNNYD

Chapter 1 - Fiery Bluster

“Jeremy! Jeremy! Where are you?” I scream out his name as chunks of the ceiling, engulfed in flames fall all around me. Thick, black smoke fills up the room, as it does my lungs, from floor to ceiling. I can’t see more than a few feet in front of me, and soon even that seems impossible. The smoke stings my eyes and my pupils drown in the tears meant to protect them. I cover my nose and mouth and cough, deep, wet coughs. “Jeremy.” I barely get the word out; I can’t stand the heat from the smoke and flames any more. My suit is charred, and soot covers my outsides and insides. The oxygen has been sucked out of the room and out of my lungs. My vision is blurry, I am light headed and I drop to one knee. I hear Betty bark and her voice reawakens all of my senses for a brief moment, and I use this brief moment to get back onto my feet and I run using up all of my remaining energy, not bothering to look back as I escape the now ablaze Mogul Plaza and into the arms of the waiting paramedics.

I drop to my hands and knees a few feet from the ambulance, coughing up the black soot that now coats the insides of my lungs and stomach. Betty runs to my side and starts to lick my face, cleaning me. She barks happily that I’m not dead. The paramedics wait for my coughing fit to slow down, and then end before they help me up to my feet. “Sir, please come with us, we need to get you some oxygen and tend to your wounds and burns.” The male paramedic says to me. He has shaggy, light brown hair and matching eyes. His skin is oily and he looks tired like he is nearing the end of a very long double shift. His partner is a younger woman, slightly heavy set with short blonde hair, which doesn’t frame her face well at all, and makes her look fatter than she really is. She too looks tired.

They help me to my feet and I stand up slowly, Betty barks at us in encouragement. Just then many things occur in quick succession.

First I am attacked from behind, a police officer hits me in the back with his nightstick and I stumble forwards, regaining my balance by grabbing onto the wheel well of the ambulance. Betty barks and attacks the officer, jumping on him and tackling him to the ground. She rips at his chest with her claws and leaves deep bite marks all over his right shoulder. The portly police officer, with his scant grey hair and deep red mustache lets out a howling scream. “Get it off! Get the bitch off!” He shouts at his fellow officers. The second of the three officers to attack me is an older man, in his mid fifties, but he’s in much better shape. He’s built like a brick wall and turns to help officer being ravaged by Betty. This leaves the third and youngest officer to me. He’s in his mid twenties and has to be fresh out of the academy, we stare into each other’s eyes and into each other’s souls and we see the truth about each other.

I can see that this is not a life that he has chosen for himself. Whether it’s a family tradition or something else is I don’t know, but I know he doesn’t want to be standing here, nightstick in his hand, staring down an enemy he had no choice in making. And in my eyes he sees who I really am. A vengeful man bent on ensuring that all those who oppose me, face my wrath. I see in him, fear, the fear that he will fail, the fear that he will disappoint the fear that he will be the victim on an insurmountable amount of pain. In me he sees a man divided, he sees a man who will bleed himself dry trying to save a city that deserves someone so much better, and he sees The Hand of Good, clenching his fist.

I take in a deep breath, filling my lungs with oxygen, giving my red blood cells the fuel they so desperately need. With one last look, I leap towards the young man, feigning bravery and standing his ground. He reacts and brings his nightstick down on me, in an overarching motion. I lift up my elbow protecting myself; the studs on my elbow pad leave his nightstick pitted. I follow up by dropping to one knee and landing a left hook into his ribs. I feel his ribs crack under the weight and pressure of my fist; he winces in pain, and lets out a low grunt.

“Just hold him off for a few more minutes!” The officer in his fifties says, struggling to get Betty off of his partner. This momentary distraction is all I need to end the fight. I launch myself off the ground and drop a Superman punch on to the young officers’ jaw, shattering it. The officer falls to ground, clutching his face and screaming in pain. The older officer turns to me and sees his mentee lying on the ground, bleeding from his mouth and he turns his attention to me. “Hey, don’t leave me!” The portly officer who is still pinned down by a menacing, growling Betty says, but the older officer just ignores him and slowly walks towards me.

We walk towards each other, one sizing the other up. Incrementally our walk turns into a jog, and then we are sprinting towards each other. Immediately I regret underestimating his old-man strength. He levels me with one solid straight right punch on my nose, I’m lucky it doesn’t break, but I stagger backwards and fall on my ass, bruising my tailbone. Overconfident in his ability to win the fight the officer takes a step towards me. I kip up and kick him in the face, with a spinning back kick. He staggers backwards, but he’s strong and stays on his feet. I follow up with a sidekick to his ribs and the studs on my knee pad punctures his skin and we both see blood start to seep into his dark blue shirt, turning it black.

This just makes him angrier. The old officer, gives me a stern look, like that one of a disappointed father, then grabs me by the throat. It’s very sudden and I don’t react quickly enough. Slowly he begins to choke the life out me; my legs twitch and kick helplessly as I am raised off the ground. I desperately grab at his hand, trying to tear it off, but it’s useless. My vision is starting to go black, and I can’t breathe. Just then I hear a familiar barking that means rescue is on its way. Betty attacks the older officer from behind, lunging at him teeth first. The officer drops me; I fall to the ground on my hands and knees and without a second thought launch myself at him and head butt in the balls. He doubles over and raise up elbow first and cut him under his chin deeply. He falls to the ground, and curls up in the fetal position, clutching his chin with both hands trying to stem the bleeding.

Betty leaps at him, but I grab her by the collar in mid air and direct her towards the Dodge Charger. I unlock the doors, and turn it on with the remote car starter. We run towards it and are chased by what seems like an army of police officers, I open the driver side door and let Betty jump in, she runs in and hops into the backseat I slide into the driver’s seat, jam the key into the ignition, shift it into drive and slam the gas pedal to the floor. I zip around the city, taking alleyways and back roads, driving recklessly and exceeding the speed limit at every turn.

The blaring of the sirens fills the silent, night air. I turn the headlights off and pull into the wooded area surrounding his parent’s old house. I get out of the car and Betty follows me out, I hide the car under a camouflage tarp and head into the house. I rip off the dusty plastic covering an outdated pleather recliner and fall into it. Betty jumps onto my lap, but she doesn’t bark, she knows better than to make a sound while the police are still hot on our trail. I pet her as I rip off my mask and look into her eyes. I see the most ferocious and biggest lapdog that I have ever seen.

“How the hell did we end up here?” I ask Betty as I scratch behind her ears, and she responds with a low volume, inquisitive whine, tilting her head to the right. “****.” I sigh, leaning backwards and letting my head lop over the back of the recliner.

CRITIQUE

You have a splendidly awful eye for detail. I'm sure you weren't aiming for humor, but just those first two paragraphs had me rolling. I vote you never post a piece portraying a male character again unless you first have a heterosexual male friend with plenty of testosterone read it, lol.

Listen, I know this is difficult to hear, but you own a problem I've seen many times, and it's one of the most difficult problems to overcome. You are blind. You are unable to see how what you write is incongruent with the circumstances you describe. You write silly things when you mean to be serious. One thing I've found helps with this problem: reduce the amount of details in your description. You're loaded with way too many unnecessary details. Reduce them, and it typically reduces the incongruence and silliness. Or, you could find a reader who is not blind in this way to read what you write and point out the incongruence and silliness.

Also, I would seriously consider switching to third person past instead of first person present. You need some mental distance between you and your characters. That might help you see problems in your writing. Let me add some specifics, because I know you don’t see what I’m pointing out. Let’s take the first paragraph. I’ll just do a full critique of it sentence by sentence:

1. The first thing I noticed is the term “scream out”. Most people, especially men, don’t “scream out” unless they’re in pain or out of control in some way, like frantic or maniacal. They “shout” or “yell” or “call”. It may sound sexist, but a woman will scream much sooner than a man. The word “scream” indicates something more high-pitched and shrill. Though the scene sounds stressful, this fellow does not appear to be in any great pain or out of control. That “scream out” made me think it was a woman character until the second paragraph when they called her “Sir”, lol. By the way, I harbor a pet peeve about using prepositions with verbs. He can just “scream”, although I’d probably use “shout”. “His name” is unnecessary. I’m pretty sure you wanted to write that the ceiling was engulfed in flames, and flaming chunks of it fell around the character, but instead you wrote that chunks of the ceiling falling around the character were engulfed in flames.

2. Odd I never learned that lungs have a floor and a ceiling in school, lol. And the smoke can just “fill” the room.

3. “In front of me” is unnecessary. Use “but” instead of “and”. Either something is impossible or it isn’t. It only “seems” impossible if there are possible alternatives. I see none.

4. This sentence handed me a chuckle. It reads like tears are somehow attacking his pupils (and no other part of his eyes) and drowning them, glub, glub, lol. But you should know that in this situation, tears are protection for the eyes.

5. There’s really no other way to word this sentence to prevent this man from coughing coughs?

6. New paragraph at “Jeremy.”

7. “Get” is an empty verb. Smoke produces zero heat.

8. So fire consumed his suit entirely, extinguished because there was nothing left to burn, and left charred remains. That would probably hurt considerably, don’t you think? And his insides are exposed so he can see the soot covering them. This fellow may be in worse condition than I thought.

9. “Oxygen” and “air” are not synonymous. Exactly how does a person have the oxygen sucked from their lungs? Wouldn’t that be symptomatic of a corpse?

10. Need a comma after “headed”. Exactly how does he know his vision is blurry when it’s so smoky he can’t see anything?

11. You certainly finish with a flare – a 59-word behemoth. Not a clue who Betty is. At first, her “bark” makes me think she’s a dog, but then her “voice” makes me think she might be just a concerned, frantic woman barking an order for this man to leave the burning building that he can’t really decipher over the roar of the flames. Hmm…the bark “reawakens” all his senses. That means all his senses were asleep at some time, then awakened, then they all fell asleep again and were reawakened. Can you say “narcolepsy”? Apparently, this fellow is located just a few feet from the exit and could leave at any time, and whaddaya know…paramedics right outside the door. Talk about your good luck! And all this time, this fellow’s been inside the Mogul Plaza. Maybe it’s just me, but that name seems to indicate a pretty darn big and ritzy hotel. So this fellow was near the front door of the lobby of that hotel. Have you ever been in the lobby of pretty darn big and ritzy hotel? If not, I think you should visit one and then tell me if any of your description even slightly suggests a pretty darn big and ritzy hotel. And it’s now ablaze. All that happened before…the smoke, the chunks engulfed in flames falling from the ceiling, the charred suit…the hotel wasn’t ablaze then.

See what I mean? And then at the end, this fellow pulls off some kind of mask – he’s some kind of super hero or robber or something. Tell me how the paramedics failed to notice that mask when they want to give him oxygen. How do they not say “What’s with the mask, batman? Let’s get that off.”, or something like that when he’s coughing up his lungs? It’s those kind of things all through the piece that reveal your blindness to detail, your inability to match what you write with the circumstances you create.

For the record, the line below made me roar. What other reaction is appropriate when a guy, gagging and coughing from smoke inhalation and a fairly harrowing fire experience, collapses practically unconscious into the arms of his rescuers and thinks this of his female rescuer:

His partner is a younger woman, slightly heavy set with short blonde hair, which doesn’t frame her face well at all, and makes her look fatter than she really is.

lol, really?

I know how difficult it is to hear such hard things about your writing. No fun at all, but you can't ignore these problems if you want to be a writer. I've learned to laugh at my writing mistakes, but you may be new to tough critiques.

I don't want you to be discouraged. Let me ask you a question: Do you consider yourself an artsy, poetic kind of person? I ask because typically, not always, but typically that's the kind of person who exhibits these incongruence problems. As I said, I've never hit on a sure-fire cure for this problem, but my main advice centers on trying to inject more logic and analysis into your writing process. If you plan, outline, and storyboard your story before actually writing it, that tends to reduce the problem. And when you begin to write the story, initially write it bare-bones, with little or no description in it. Once you've written it bare-bones, THEN add description. While it doesn't eliminate the problem, this process does lessen it considerably. The absolute best way to eliminate the problem is to find someone who recognizes incongruence and let them read your story.

My theory is that most artsy-poetic people exercise high sensitivity to emotion, and they want others to experience the same emotion they feel. Their primary goal in writing is to create some kind of emotion or mood in the reader, and they "forget" the physical realities of their story in favor of the words they use to create that emotion. That's why you lose your way in description. That's my theory anyway, and the process I mentioned above aims to tighten the reins on your description, lessen it, and force you to think more and feel less in writing.

Now if you're like most other artsy-poetic people I've dealt with, you'll say, "I can't write that way! It's too stifling! I need to let my muse speak and let the words flow, and..." etc. lol...to which I say, "Well, it's just a suggestion."