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As always, read the extract below, decide what you like and what you’d change, then read my thoughts after ‘The Cuts’.
Brother (by Ono)
“You know you had it coming”.
I felt the words leave my lips, but it was as if someone else had said them. Distant. He was still, tied to the steel chair. I thought back to those days before – when we were still kids. He could never sit still, the fucking spaz. And here come the tears, always the tears. They rolled down his face onto his faded jeans.
“You fucking snitch!”
I snapped back to the moment.
“Shut the fuck up, Jack!”
Jack stood to the left of me. I shot him a look.
“You shut the fuck up!” I reiterated.
I lifted my arm, gun in hand. I was shaking, like in the early days. Before all the bullshit. The gun rattled in my hand, quivering like a craving tweaker. Steady now, make it clean. I bit my lip as I put the gun to his temple.
“Please, George, please…”
His plea was short, but I couldn’t help feel that it was convincing. I inched my index finger to the trigger – this was it. Tears now. Not his, mine. I closed my eyes.
“I’m sorry”.
A gentle squeeze.
The deafening sound rang out through the warehouse.
“Had to be done” Jack said half emphatically, half matter-of-factly. I wiped my face with the sleeve of my shirt. “Yeah”. What had once been my best friend, my brother, sat slumped over in the chair. Pieces of him on the floor, a red smear.
“Let’s dump him and get some pancakes, I’m fucking starving” Jack said.
The Cuts
“You know you had it coming”.
Punctuation goes inside the speech marks.
If you’re ever unsure of basic layout, pick up a novel and copy that. You’ll immediately notice indented paragraphs, and punctuation inside speech marks. It’s easy. That’s the beauty of writing fiction – it’s been done before. We have examples.
As first sentence, this gets a C+. It’s simple and comprehensible, which is good. It introduces conflict – great. ‘You know’ feels redundant. ‘you had it coming’ is a bit of a cliché, and a bit vague. But sometimes people talk in clichés.
Trim a couple of words, and this could be a respectable – if not mind-blowing – opening line. Fine. Let’s press on.
I felt the words leave my lips, but it was as if someone else had said them. Distant.
‘I felt the words leave my lips’? Really? They felt the actual words? The narrator felt oscillating air exit his mouth at 343.2 metres per second? (that’s the speed of sound, dawg) Try saying a few words. Do you feel them ‘leaving your lips’? Even when you’re concentrating?
The only phrase I genuinely feel on my lips when I say it is: ‘Mmm… poo.’ Err… not that I say it a lot, you understand. But try it. Go on. ‘Mmm… poo.’ You can feel it leaving your lips, can’t you?
I think it’s more likely that the narrator felt his or her lips move.
I don’t see what ‘distant’ adds to our understanding here. In this context, it’s one of those treacherous ‘insurance’ words – an attempt to step in and explain again, in case your previous sentence didn’t make sense. Cowardice, basically.
Revise this section as something like: ‘My lips moved, but the words were someone else’s.’
He was still, tied to the steel chair.
No need for ‘still’. It describes an absence, which is iffy – you’re asking the reader to imagine the lack of something. I’ve farted on about the myth of silence before, and stillness falls into the same category. Sure, he isn’t moving. He isn’t on fire or secreting gravy either. Why introduce something only to immediately negate it? There’s no such thing as stillness, just ever finer categories of movement which become perceptible.
Not convinced the ‘He was’ formulation serves your interests. As I’ve said before, ‘it is’/’she was’ constructions give a sense of static portraiture. They imply properties rather than objects or actions. This is a scene that’s supposed to be rooted very much in a narrative present (which is a good choice for a stylistic point of view) so better to describe what he’s doing, rather than what he is.
‘tied to the steel chair’ is just an adjectival clause that suffers from the same problem as ‘still’. It’s an old compositional saw, but cut back your adverbs and adjectives (the former more brutally than the latter) and let your nouns and verbs carry the bulk of the semantic freight. Your prose will be peppier and more lucid and your readers will weep brackish tears of relief.
I thought back to those days before – when we were still kids.
So… much… fluff…
This sentence is straight candyfloss. You try to take a bite and it shrivels down to jack shit.
‘I thought back’ – oh come on. This is a modern first-person narrative. You don’t have to frame a topic shift with: ‘My mind became lost in a reverie and wandered back to those days before…’ Just switch to the fucking memory.
‘to those days before’ – as opposed to what? What else does someone ‘think back’ to? The days ahead? Cut this redundant twaddle.
‘when we were still kids’ – what function is ‘still’ performing? Hateful adverbs. Kill them with fire.
So basically this sentence just needs to be a clause modifying the following sentence, i.e. ‘When we were kids…’
He could never sit still, the fucking spaz.
‘fucking spaz’ feels unearned, to me. I know you’re not endorsing the language – the narrator isn’t supposed to be likeable – but it feels like you’re being a bit try-hard for shock value. For my tastes, I’d rather the narrator’s voice be a little more restrained, so the gulf between the tone and what is being described is more shocking.
And here come the tears, always the tears.
A weird tense shift. Suddenly we’re in present tense. Pick a tense and stick with it. I don’t mind this as a sentence, but it doesn’t fit with your style choices for the rest of the piece. Be consistent.
They rolled down his face onto his faded jeans.
Tears ‘rolling down’ a face is a cliché. To be honest I’m not sure what this sentence contributes. We already know he’s crying. ‘faded jeans’ is vague and reveals almost nothing about his character. It’s a super-bland way to end your first paragraph of proper narrative. Maybe choose something more specific, more interesting?
“You fucking snitch!”
Who is saying this?
I mean that both in the sense that, without a dialogue tag, I don’t know which character is speaking, and also in the sense that it adopts the lexical set of a 1930s Chicago mobster roughing the shoeshine boy. It’s also your second f-bomb, and already the word is losing power. Swears are like power pellets in Pac-Man – don’t drop them all at once or their power is wasted.
I snapped back to the moment.
The narrator has just been watching tears drop onto his jeans. In what sense is he or she not in the moment? Or is the narrator already so bored by the story that he or she zoned out for a second?
“Shut the fuck up, Jack!”
Who says this? And to who? You’ve hit your third fuck and if I were your reader this is the point I’d bail. Not because I’d be offended, but because I would been rendered temporarily blind by all the eye rolling this kind of faux-edgy silliness provokes.
Jack stood to the left of me. I shot him a look.
Weird, conspicuous blocking. From these two sentences we’re just about able to deduce that the previous utterances was probably said by the tied-up brother to Jack. I think.
Christ. It feels like gluing together a torn-up letter. And at first you think it’s a real juicy sex note addressed to you but then when you finally assemble it it’s just the minutes from the Leighton Buzzard Neighbourhood Watch meeting.
“You shut the fuck up!” I reiterated.
The unintentional comedy of the tone-switch here is beautiful. A perfect object lesson in why you shouldn’t use overdetermined dialogue tags. I’d love to see a whole scene of this – sub-Tarantino dialogue paired with howlingly tin-eared, clinical tags.
‘I’m gonna carve an asshole in your gut,’ he explained, ‘then I’m gonna piss in it while you bleed out,’ he concluded.
‘Suck my fucking balls!’ I proposed.
‘I’ll feed them into a blender and suck them through a fucking straw,’ came the rejoinder.
Don’t do it. There’s just no excuse ever. Ah! No excuse ever. Don’t let me see this shit again.
I lifted my arm, gun in hand.
So glad you didn’t just say ‘I raised the gun’ or we might have thought the narrator was levitating a pistol through telekinesis.
I was shaking, like in the early days. Before all the bullshit.
If these strokes were any broader they’d be exceeding the page margins and hitting the novels either side. There’s nothing that excites the senses here. It’s all abstract, vague summations. The only ‘bullshit’ in evidence here is your narrator’s constant obfuscating so we still don’t have any sense of what kind of place they’re in, what it sounds and smells like, what time of day it is, the temperature, or indeed anything that might risk transforming this rote, perfunctory death scene into something approaching an experience.
The gun rattled in my hand, quivering like a craving tweaker.
How is the gun rattling? Does it have loose parts? Is this narrator wearing lots of bangles?
‘quivering like a craving tweaker’ – if you can find anyone under retirement age who judges this a piece of convincing street slang, then… well, you get nothing except the brief validation of a demonstrable pillock. Cut this. It’s horrible.
Steady now, make it clean. I bit my lip as I put the gun to his temple.
See, this isn’t too bad. I would suggest swapping the two sentences so the bit of internal monologue closes the paragraph, and I’d like to see something more specific than ‘gun’. What type of pistol is it? (I’m assuming it’s a pistol – you haven’t even specified that) It makes a difference if the narrator is packing a little Walther PP or a police revolver or whatever. And mentioning the type might help convince the reader that you know what you’re talking about, even if you don’t.
His plea was short, but I couldn’t help feel that it was convincing.
This sentence is baffling. No need to say ‘his plea was short’ – we’ve just read it. We’re not idiots.
What an odd second half of the sentence. Why is this a ‘but’ clause? How is the second half negating or undermining the first?
And such a lengthy way of saying ‘convincing’ – ‘I couldn’t help feel that it was’ doesn’t materially add anything to our understanding. ‘His plea was short but convincing’ is fine.
A gentle squeeze.
The deafening sound rang out through the warehouse.
“Had to be done” Jack said half emphatically, half matter-of-factly.
So ‘sound’ is the weak link in those first two sentences. A super-general noun. Tighten it up.
The way you’ve laid this out, it sounds as if Jack speaks immediately. If the report is that loud (and I think it would be) the two survivors are not going to be exchanging words for a good ten seconds. Their ears will be ringing to buggery. I once accidentally fired a double-barrelled shotgun with one of my earplugs still out and it was like being kicked in the side of the head. If he’s firing indoors, even in a big warehouse, that sound is going to be magnified.
Also, ‘half emphatically, half matter-of-factly’ is straight up nonsense juice, Ono. That’s like writing:
‘Sounds really cool,’ Roscoe said half excitedly, half bored out of his fucking mind.
Or
‘In that case, you’d better come with me,’ she said half-silently, half at the top of her lungs.
It doesn’t sound nuanced, it just sounds like you lacked the conviction to make a choice.
Look, this should be a dramatic scene, but you’ve fallen back way too much of cliché and familiar tropes. You make almost no effort to help us picture these characters, to give us a sense of this specific location on this specific day. We get ‘warehouse’, ‘faded jeans’, ‘gun’, and a lot of fucks. And, frankly Ono, two fucks would be more than I give about what happens next.
It’s awesome that you want to create an exciting opening that hits us in the face, mid-scene, at a climactic instant. That’s a great instinct and your desire to immediately engage the reader is laudable. But a tied up guy and a gun aren’t cheat codes that allow you to completely ignore all rules of composition. You need to properly research and imagine this scene, and bring it into sharp focus. At the moment, it’s just a blur.
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