Talk:Niki No. 41/@comment-28266772-20160822141652

Hey, bad news (if you haven’t been keeping up) is that Whitix hasn’t been super present for the competition. Consequently, the community has moved forward and polls have been opened instead to judge the winner. From there Anarchic Operations offered to review all the stories instead of Whitix, and bad news for you is that he has now asked me to review your story because I offered to help him and there’s like a bajillion other stories he has to review.

So your stuck with me. I tend to break my reviews into mechanical issues, story issues, and plot issues with some further work on themes etc. if they’re present. Also I will try to avoid labouring on points that Mike has already discussed. (e.g. confusing dialogue). A lot of what he says is useful, but I'll try to focus on my own thoughts and feelings.

Let’s get to work then.

1) Mechanical – So obviously there aren’t many mechanical issues. I came across a few and I fixed them right up but other than that there’s no big deal. Most stories submitted to the competition were written to a high standard and yours is no different. This section, consequently, is going to be short. Most of my attention will instead by paid to the style and plot.

2) Style – So I quite liked your style. I didn’t necessarily come to the same conclusions as Mike did with regards to the coke bottle imagery. In fact, I liked that image because while the glass of a coke bottle is static, the motion of one’s eyes as it traces the curve is reminiscent of a swing. I kind of saw what you were going for, and while it kind of stuck out it wasn’t in a bad way (for me at least). I liked it. This is something that I found to be typical of your descriptions of Niki. She felt surprisingly real and I liked the little flourishes and quirks you imbue her with (e.g. the way she holds her shoes in a cluster at her side, or the way she runs down the alley barefoot). These are believable and (Jesus fucking Christ I can’t believe I’m about to use this word) sensual *shudders* descriptions that mirror the narrator’s own sexuality. I imagine that a frustrated middle aged man would pay attention to her hips, her feet and her lips because of his own frustrations. This helps bring the audience into the narrator’s head. It’s a neat touch.

Similarly, the choice to pair this ‘car-advert’ style introduction of Niki’s velvety hair and pouting lips with pus-encrusted eye sockets is noticeable. It foreshadows the themes of exploitation, and lets us know that the beauty of Niki is associated with the darker elements of society. That’s great – and I liked it. But unfortunately I felt as though this high note wasn’t carried forward for the rest of the story. The style seemed to tread water with punchy fight-club-esque ennui and nihilism, but it wasn’t always clear how that would integrate with the rest of the story. And, to be honest, I wasn’t sure if it ever did. I’ll come back to this point in a moment though.

I liked your ability to move the story along quickly. That’s a tough thing to do and yeah, sometimes I could feel you coming along and going “shoo now, onto the next scene” but it always happened just as I was thinking “Gee whiz I wish I could move onto the next scene”. That’s really hard to pull off. You move the story forward at just the right moment and I liked that. It’s especially tough to pull off in a way that feels like the natural extension of someone’s thoughts.

3) Plot – So Mike’s thoughts captured some of my own sentiments on this. Ultimately there’s too many pieces to this story. As I mentioned before the story hits a high note early on with the introduction of Niki, but the style never felt like it worked as well for the rest of it. To cut my rambling short – the story is spread thin. Here are some of your moving parts: The funeral, the horrible daughter, the fat wife, the fat wife’s weight loss, the narrator’s weight gain, the narrator’s smoking, the warehouse as a setting, Niki, Niki’s attacker, Orson, the wife’s brother’s suicide, the wife’s nephew and his little character arc, and finally, the clones.

It’s no wonder that the stylistic approach you’ve taken doesn’t work as well for the rest of the story – it only ever really gets to slow down and indulge itself for Niki. The rest of the time it feels like it’s just struggling to keep up while moving from place to place. While that movement is, itself, done effectively, the overall journey felt watered down. I think this story would have benefited from fewer moving parts. For example, the narrator’s nihilistic ennui can be perfectly captured with an unpleasant overweight wife – I’m not sure it needs a bitchy daughter, a dead brother-in-law and a heartbroken nephew to get lumped on top. A lot of scenes could be eliminated and it would help bring tighten the plot structure.

For the most part I did enjoy the journey. The Walmart, the funeral, the alley, the scene with the nephew, even the bit with the teacher (even if it did make the narrator seem like a colossal arsehole) are all enjoyable scenes. It just felt like they would have benefitted from more time. And yes, I know I just said there’s too much going on in this story, but that’s just the writer’s curse. We all have to make critical decisions about what to keep, and what to spend time on. As it is I think you got the balance wrong, and have put too many parts in and as a result the attention paid to each piece has been diminished.

And here’s the real kicker – the clones. This is where the story goes off the rail. It feels rushed and unpleasant, and not very believable. I don’t know if you wanted this to have a last-minute sci-fi twist but I think it would have worked better as just a drama/comedy/thriller whatever. Or perhaps more work should have been put into establishing the SF idea before revealing the twist. Either way—as it is—it feels unearned. And similarly the happy ending also feels cheap. Are we really supposed to buy that this guy’s mid-life breakdown could be solved with alcohol and sex? Because, if so, it kind of erases any sympathy he had earned in the previous events. It just feels cheap.

In conclusion – there’s a lot of this story to like. If I had to sum up this story’s flaws in one sentence it’d be “it needs to be a novel”. I think every writer has stories like these where they’ve wound up falling splat bang in between too many and too few moving parts, and it can be frustrating. I’d recommend this given the chance simply because it’s worth a read and while the destination is weak, the journey has a lot of fun stops along the way. It was an enjoyable read and I hope you’ve found my feedback useful.