Story: 'My April Contribution.'

[Tallyman]

Tallyman, goodness that was a chilling tale, and brilliantly written. It had exactly the desired effect of making me go back and read the whole thing again. Don't worry, you don't give too much away - you only realise what the clues are after you've seen the end. (Or I did, anyway).

 

Thank you Sauerkraut

[Ron Blanco]

Hi Tallyman,

 

The story will linger with me... now that I get it!!

 

But where to start?

 

At the end I think. I am going to expose my ignorance here, but first time through I didn't get it at all. Second time through I still didn't get it - but started to have suspicions about certain aspects. It was only upon reading the comments of Coyleys and Mantaspook that I saw it in a different light and twigged what the "Frank Girl" thing related to (and that was only because I remembered a particular house I visited in Amsterdam once).

 

It's clear that some people got it straight away. But whilst Coyleys was revelling in your story's hidden delights I was still scratching my head. Partly I think this is due to my inexperience at deciphering short stories, which is something I can learn, but partly it is due to a historical ignorance. For me it definitely needed the place name mentioned in Mantaspook's hidden comments to give me a hope of working it all out. At least it would give me something concrete to investigate. Coyley’s name suggestion for Josef was also necessary for me and even then I only got that reference because a friend of mine has recently had difficulty explaining to people why he’d called his company “Mingulay Technologies”. “It’s spelt differently” – he explains – “it’s a Scottish Island”.

 

Mantaspook says "don’t under-estimate the intelligence of the reader", but it’s difficult to know where to pitch it and without the others’ assistance this story would have gone straight over my head.

 

I’m still wondering if Michael also has a secret significance too. Does he?

 

In terms of ‘working it out’ I'm noticing that some short stories are more akin to cryptic crosswords than novels and to some degree there are clues that you learn to look out for. I suppose I should focus more on moments where my reading jolts and instead of skipping over it I should stop and think “Aha!! Let’s look closer at this bit.” A bit like the ‘Déjà vu’ moment in ‘The Matrix’. In your story I jolted but skipped over this bit:

 

“what we’re doing with animals could save their human lives one day”

 

Referring to “their human lives” rather than “human life” is a bit odd and indicates someone who distinguishes between specific groups of humans. A clue there?

 

I also jolted the first time he referred to Frank as “her”.

 

The biggest jolt came when he referred to the “meagre possessions” of the animals, which became my main link to understanding the type of animals in question.

 

In terms of capturing the character of the man I would stab my finger at the brilliant section where he noticed Frank's mistake and over-reacted, like a mad scientist. I then just had to work out in which way he was mad. I thought that section was really excellent. I’m not sure about the earlier reference to “My Trusty Assistant” though - not sure that fits.

 

I also wonder if your story could benefit from some “I” surgery. I found this myself - when writing first person I kept writing “I did this” and “I did that” which seemed unavoidable at the time but I wonder if it could be smoothed out a little e.g.

 

“I had always wanted to be a Doctor, ever since I can remember”

 

Could be rewritten

 

“It was my ambition from an early age to become a Doctor”

 

You remember you suggested I reduce the number of 'Hi's in my story? Well don’t think of this as tit-for-tat – more like “An I for a Hi”. Oh dear. However, of course you are at liberty to keep all the “I”’s. They make it more staccato, which might suit the story better.

 

Also on a minor point, I thought there were a couple of dialogue bits where you forgot the lessons of last month:

 

“yes” I tell the junior

“you’re tired Frank”, I say

“time for my rounds” I tell the orderly

“yes” I said

 

“you’re rambling now Ron” Tallyman says

 

I hope you don’t mind my rambling, Tallyman. I’ve noticed that you’ve put a lot of thought into giving feedback to others and as we all know, you reap what you sow.

[Tallyman]

Thank you, everyone, for your kind words, comments and feedback. Thanks, Mantaspook, for your praise and constructive criticism, but I doff my cap to Ron Blanco and his most excellent and witty critique.

 

Thank you very much indeed Ron, I am very grateful for the time and trouble you've taken

 

I was originally going to respond to everyone's comments here in the public forum, but then I saw Mantaspook releasing his plot notes for download, and had another idea.

 

Instead of going into detail in the forum (and perhaps spoiling things for anyone who hasn't read the piece yet), I've uploaded my response instead.

 

Following Mantaspook's example, I've also made some comments on the story's background.

 

I'm not sure if other members are interested in this much detail, and discussions about how our stories evolve, so I would be very interested to hear your opinions about that too.

 

Basically: useful, or too much information?

 

Please click HERE for my response.

[Ron Blanco]

I'm not sure if other members are interested in this much detail, and discussions about how our stories evolve, so I would be very interested to hear your opinions about that too.

 

Basically: useful, or too much information?

 

I'm very interested in all those aspects: how others go about their writing; what thoughts are going through the writer's head and what the writer is trying to achieve. So the extra notes that Mantaspook and yourself have posted are very interesting to me.

 

The same applies to the poems actually. I appreciate that poets don't always want to explain every little thing but if they did provide notes it would provide a fascinating insight to readers like myself and sometimes help us to get more out of them, I think.