Fran,
You've done a great job with this exercise. Your narrator is right there guiding
us along. As a few people have mentioned, your narrator is using some
great language. I especially liked the image of the word "rapidly dissolving in his mouth, like liquid-filled candy." It's at moments like this that the narrator is working well and evoking a wonderful
mood of fear. (I'll talk more about mood a bit later.) Your narrator,
for the most part, is also close to Gerome and is starting to show
us the world from his perspective. These are things that work about
your narrator.
A few people have mentioned that you could have started
in media res. Dumping us right into the conversation would certainly
have been more dramatic. With a third person, we tend to want to use
exposition and explain, explain, explain, but here's an opportunity
to let the dialogue do more work. Your colleagues made some suggestions
about using more dialogue, which I thought were helpful. You've got
a strong narrator in place, and it wouldn't take much to scale back
the exposition and plug in to the dialogue a bit more.
The tone of your exercise is matter-of-fact and light.
I found myself tickled by the narrator's take on Catherine's accent. "She was not strong on consonant pairs." I wasn't sure if Catherine's distinct way of speaking was an accent or a speech
impediment, so you might want to reveal sooner where she's from and
that she's getting her green card.
Your narrator is strong, and the tone works well. In order
to push this exercise to the next level, you'd have to really consider
what material you're trying to get at. Why is Gerome afraid to break
off things with Catherine? Was he never into her and this was just
a casual thing that got out of hand? Is Catherine in love with him
or is she just trying to get a green card? Answers to all of these
questions will have an impact on the dialogue from the very first line.
You plugged into Gerome's fear, and now you've got to explore what
this is really about. There is something here that speaks to you. Perhaps
you know what it's like to be so concerned about someone else's feelings
that you can't ask for what you want or be honest about what you don't
want. Might this be about a man who's too afraid to speak up and ask
for what he wants, so he ends up with what other people want? I don't
know the answer to this question, but if you want to turn this into
a story you've got to get clear about the material you're trying to get at and the mood you want to evoke. You may have no interest in turning
this into a story, but I want you to be clear about the work you'd
have to do to take it beyond being just an exercise.
Good work!
Jane |
