I liked what you wrote. I think it can be much better.

Notes:

Uneven, wordy, and even though I sympathized with the hero at the end of the story, there wasn't anything in the beginning and middle to draw me to him.

Too much emotional distance in the prose between reader and hero.

The last paragraph weakens the ending. It's too on-the-nose--you're telling me how you're feeling after you've already shown me (which is much stronger) how you're feeling.

Try condensing the neighborhood description down to a sentence or three from several paragraphs. My attention drifted during the beginning and I almost felt I was reading a real estate pitch for the area.

The classmates v. neighborhood friends bit has no payoff, no role in the story, so why is it in the story?

I think you've got a good concept here, it just needs some work, that's all.

@

Gentlemen: Cannot begin to say how glad I am to see this exchange this morning. lostmutt, I'm scrambling to make an appointment but will weigh in this afternoon with feedback. The piece has bones; it can work.

K|W: You have a gift for respectful critique. You make it look easy; we know better. Thank you for pushing TWG's reset button this morning.

"Slap! Thanks, I needed that."

- akabukowski

Yo Mutt - try starting out with the action: shoot the bird, throw some more interaction between the kids, weave in the weather, the location etc., but as supporting background to the event itself. Give it a try.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about - leading with the action - from a new novel I'm workin' on. Another thought: write from the POV of that 12 year old boy. Not a memory of an event, but the event itself. You can position it as a memory later in the story.

So, here's what I mean about leading with the action. Let me know if y'all find it hard to follow. I'm so tired of using quotations, I thought I would give it a go without - you know, McCarthy/Doctorow style...

Bury Me With My La-Z-Boy

Part I - Tee

1

I ain’t dyin’ in this goddamn bed, all propped up with this goddamn needle in my arm these goddamn tubes up my nose, godamnit. It ain’t gonna happen, you’ll see.

The old man had been in Rm. 313 for two weeks already and he gave me the same song and dance every time I went in there to change his pans.

It’s not that I don’t wanna die. Hell, I’m ready. I been ready for years. It’s just that I can’t die like this. It just ain’t goddamn proper. I got to have my chair, you see.

His voice was starting to sound like a spoon caught in a garbage disposal, and it was getting to me.

What if I just unplugged you and walked away? I finally asked him one rainy afternoon.

You could try that but it ain’t gonna work. Besides, they’ll throw your black ass in jail if you pull the plug, which is probably where you belong anyways.

It was getting to the point where jail was sounding not so bad, and I know the nurses and doctors were fed up too. The old man was getting on everybody’s nerves. Every time you walked in the room to check on him you’d swear he was dead – all gray and ashen, a few strands of white hair strewn across his blotchy skull, milky eyes staring off into nowhere, mouth half open in a creepy, toothless grin. But that heart just kept on beating, weaker by the day but still beating sure enough. Just when you thought he was gonna flatline, the old garbage disposal would rev up.

Y’all want me to die, I know it, and I can sympathize, goddamnit. I’m just here takin’ up a perfectly good bed, all set for some old bastard like me to lay down meet his goddamn maker. But not me. I got to have my chair.

Finally one of the doctors broke down and bought the old man a chair from a second hand store – a dark brown leather La-Z-Boy recliner just like the old man described it, complete with cigarette burns in the arms and a slightly crooked footrest. We hauled it out of the back of the doctor’s black Suburban, schlepped it into the service elevator, then slid it down to Rm. 313.

We found your chair, the doctor announced as I slid it into the corner next to his bed, facing the TV on the wall. Then I dialed up the old man’s bed so he could get a good look at it. He lifted his head off the pillow and appraised the chair for what seemed like an hour. I thought it looked pretty good sitting there in the corner, even if it was a little cramped. It lent some warmth to the cold puce walls, and some kind of heft, as if it was waiting for a king to sit down and make some important decrees. I was tempted to give it a try, maybe kick back with the remote and channel surf for a few hours.

Finally the old man spoke. That ain’t it. That ain’t my chair.

I thought the doctor was gonna strangle the old bastard right then and there. His face turned all red and his jaw muscles tensed up, a big vein popped out on his forehead and he clenched his fists. Then he turned on his heel and spun out the door without saying a word.

Good work, you old coot, I said.

Fuck you. That ain’t my chair. I know my chair when I see it. You assholes try and trick me again and I’ll…I’ll…hell, I may just never die. You’ll be stuck with me ‘til kingdom come, goddamit.

Feeling lightheaded, I sat down in the big La-Z-Boy.

Seein’ as it ain’t your chair, I guess you don’t mind if I take a load off for a spell.

Be my guest, but you’re gonna get your lazy black ass fired if you don’t tend to your business.

The old man’s probably right ‘bout that, I was thinkin’, but I was also thinkin’ that if there was one way to be a hero in this situation, it would be to find the old bastard’s chair. Truth was nobody in the hospital knew shit about the old man, but we all figured he came in on one of the buses from NOLA with the rest of the old white folk getting out the way of the big hurricane. I didn’t see too many old black folk on those buses – they just left them down in the ward to learn how to swim, I was guessin’.

Okay. Where’m I ‘sposed to find this chair of yours?

I was feelin’ pretty lazy in that old LA-Z-BOY right ‘bout then, watching the evening sun settle behind the refinery smokestacks, thinkin’ ‘bout my little girl cross town and wondering if she might have something sweet for me when I got off my shift. Then I heard the old garbage disposal.

You know Bayou LaFourche?

I’ve heard of it. Ain’t never been there.

It’s a godforsaken shithole, full gators and cottonmouths, crazy niggers with bones in their noses, tin-roof shacks with chillens nobody know who they belong to.

‘Zat where your chair is?

I ‘spect it’s down there. My kin wouldn’t let me take it with me when they put me in the home, those thankless sons of bitches. I figured they wanted to burn it, once they got rid of me. But they said oh no we’ll have it here for you when you come home. Assholes. They knew I weren’t comin’ home. They wouldn’t let me come back, once they got me in the home. I asked. I pleaded. Why you want your old granpappy in here with all these crazy folks with their teeth all fallen out, messin’ their pants, howlin’ nonsense? They just said okay, we’ll see ya next week. Peckerwoods. So I says then bring me my goddamn chair. At least get me my chair!

Then the old man’s skull plopped down on his pillow and his eyes rolled up in his head, and I thought he had finally worn himself out completely. I see that his heartbeat has just ‘bout stopped, and I get up fast as I could from that big LA-Z-BOY – you know those chairs ain’t built for quick exits – and press the big red button for the nurse to come quick.

@

When I critique a piece, I try to find something you say that demonstrates a point, using your own words to try to explain my reaction to them and presenting a method that might help you rethink your approach. If I didn't think you had a piece that would lead to something stronger around your issue, I wouldn't comment ... so with that as the basis, allow me to say that you have a strong story that needs the proper words to make it sing to the reader. Your ending is the strongest part of the piece but unfortunately, when you paint a series of clouds to get to a ditch, you leave the reader (at least this reader) less than satisfied.

Here is the best quote I could find to make my point:

"When I was in middle school, my family lived in an old but growing subdivision outside of a small college town. The mostly three to four bedroom homes were built on quarter-acre lots, with woods and fields behind them. There were several ponds that dotted the subdivision as well. Our street had no outlet, so it was usually a quiet place to live and play, with a rural feel and sensibility."

Yes, your beginning. Tell me, what does it say to the reader that the reader needs to know? Movies need a pan-in scene to make them work because too many of the people who go to movies have about as much imagination as a blind sloth. You have to show them everything or they will say, I didn't understand the movie!

Stories are different. You can trigger the reader's imagination with a few words and the reader can paint in the details. A movie is to a book like Paint by Numbers is to a Degas portrait of two nudes bathing.

Let's look at what you are trying to say and let me know if I got it wrong. This is a coming of age story using a poignant example of senseless death as the fulcrum around which his decision is made. Wonderful! And I mean that. The best writers do that. Think of stories that carry weight like Steven King's early tale, "Stand by Me" which was made into a movie - a great little piece. Young kids find a body and it sets into motion vast changes in their lives.

Look at your beginning. How does it create the atmosphere that will lead the reader into your story and guide him or her into your lair where you can capture his or her heart? My answer is: It has noting to add to the story, nothing to offer the reader. It is like the grinding sound an old car makes just before it catches and starts. If you could eliminate it, you wouldn't be so anxious to trade in the car as the cold weather approaches.

You know what I thought of when I read your opening? The beginning of Thornton Wilder's "Our Town." He describes in detail all the detail that a surveyor would. But in the play, the town is the star and the narrator is the voice of the town. The musical rendered the fat off and played it like this ... "You will like the folks you meet in our town." Drama and musicals do not share the same audience. One is Degas and the other Paint by ... you get the point.

Where to start? Where to start? He ruminates, he cogitates, he anticipates and finally he master ... s the concept.

Look at the end. Now write a beginning that takes the first step on the road to the end. The best beginnings are written last. When we write, the first thing to land on the paper (or screen) is usually the tail end of the last thing you wrote, the remnants of word salad that you rejected already or the equivalent of the speaker saying, Uhhhm like, er, um. It is detritus.

The horror is that the beginning forces you to continue in the same direction until you exhaust it, so much of the next few paragraphs will fall under the same category.

Here is a brief example from one of my short stories of how I had to change the beginning to fit the end. It is a tale of two women from age 5 through late forties who grow up in a small town. One goes off to college and gets pregnant. The other stays home and lives within herself. I'll skip the 8,000 words that make it up and get to the point. The ending shows that no matter how much things change, nothing important ever changes.

When I first wrote it, I began with an elegiac description of a small town. God, the description was lovely! But, it was bullshit. It had nothing to do with the theme. It was me trying to:

* Paint pretty word pictures

* Figure out what the heck I wanted to say.

The ending had the two women still best friends, having raised the one's son together (no it is not about to gay women).

To paraphrase, the ending noted that even though Curly was now bald, many of the original people died or moved away, the two women had maintained their unique relationship through all of the gossip, desultory comments and pressures and that for them, nothing important had changed.

I went back and cut out the entire pastoral description of corner stores, mailmen who seemed to know what was in each letter, gardeners who knew who did what to whom. I replaced it with:

"Nothing much of importance happens in Breckenridge." The sentence contains four key words that do more for the story than eight paragraphs of lovely descriptors of buildings and the people passing by.

The key word is Breckenridge. Close your eyes and see what the single word invokes. Then read it in context and see how strong a picture you have created for yourself.

Take your story. You made your ending smooth and elegant. Now write a story that leads to the end and focuses on characters not cinderblock, playgrounds and cow turds in the pastures. You have the skill with words but you allowed what came out first to serve as a completed story. The first draft is often only a roadmap. Those who are satisfied with first drafts are legion ... but they will not be read by anyone who wants a good, tight story.

This is a good place to learn. reactions are important. Multiple reactions will give you different perspectives or catch different issues.

Good luck with the next draft. Stories, like beer, get better with each draft until you reach a point at which you can't see the glass any longer. Then you stop. If it is a story, you can still drive home. If it is beer, your best bet is sit on the floor before you fall there.

Lollipops and unicorns.