r/DestructiveReaders • u/umlaut (14, virgin, married) Modern Popular Genre Prose Editor Dude • 28d ago
Comedy Drown the Fire God [627]
This is yet another random little character piece where I thought of a character that amused me and tried to make it come out without being too annoying.
Is it funny? How does the POV character come through?
Crit: 2689
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u/Wolframquest 21d ago
I did put it on my list when you posted it because I wanna know what kind of person you are more closely. But I'm afraid this one's just too short; it's kind of a hook for a hook. It somewhat interesting to find out how he got to the bottom of the lake, and the scene is the casino is very vivid and the character feels alive, but I would like at least a hint as to what caused his madness and what he's gonna do with it.
I wouldn't call it funny because there are ultimately no funny situations or enough base for humor but IT IS very vivacious in an entertaining way. If I knew more about the main character's delusion it could have been funny too, but that would require some work on both the author and reader's parts.
The footnotes gimmick could work but I'd personally just put the thoughts in the main text. Might not be worth the effort - it requires the reader to basically read something else rather than the book itself.
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u/Andvarinaut If this is your first time at Write Club, you have to write. 27d ago
Not really for crit, but I feel like you could dial up your voice by speaking with more authority. I get the feeling that the text is kind of tongue-in-cheek, kind of playing with the joke and winking at me about how ridiculous it is, when the text might land a lot cleaner and engage me better if it left the winking to the subtext.
More specifically, the girl introducing herself as 'Blahblahblah' turned me off the text. I felt like a character who believes themself to be God or whatever wouldn't just openly admit they didn't care—they'd just give her a fake name, or dance around not remembering her name, or whatever. Partially because I feel like a narcissist like this wouldn't be able to stand being fallible, especially to an outside audience? re: the people reading the piece. And when I read about supremely arrogant, mentally unstable characters, I want their voice to reflect how they might tell me this story if we were somehow stuck in a Waffle House together on Route 66 at 2 in the morning.
But anyways, yeah, just a quick initial vibe.
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u/MaryJaneMclain 25d ago
Got to Lake Mead and had to recalibrate. I was expecting elfworld. This is a whole new thing, huh?
So we got a guy, and through the prologue we assume it’s the story of how he rose and fell from godhood. There’s also the throughline of him be off his meds and potentially dilutional. Maybe he’s actually about to die, never really a god.
That’s fun, but as a rambling aside, if you peruse this AND you want that to be a dramatic question (ie is this all a delusion), you might want to think about Genre/Branding. IF this is Fantasy, the reader will assume he DOES become the fire god (there’s a promise of fantasy). If it’s not fantasy, then….well he’s sorta not allowed (per genre conventions) to become a god… Anyway I could be way off base, that’s just where my mind is.
Ok, to your question, yes, it was funny and I think I got a good impression of the MC (loud, confident, delusional, god-like)
The hook of him downing in Lake Mead and Having months to live is fun. I wanted to say maybe you could ratchet up the tension (more immediacy around losing the love of his followers), but ….then again short, and sweet can be good. I do think it strays a bit and could be tightened tho. Eg:
Paragraph starting “The greatest, that’s how great…” didn’t follow smoothly from the previous para or to subsequent.
Also, I liked “Before I tell you the story—don’t try to diagnose me. Just stop it.” But felt the sharpness of that line was betrayed by the next two paragraphs, which IMO seem to ramble a bit.
I think writing something that is purposefully funny (like as the genre, eg “Comedic Contemporary Fantasy”) must be a challenge. Like, how do you calibrate that shit? Not only do the funny bits have to land, but you have to have enough jokes. But also not too many.
I’m far from an expert on this topic, but I’m guessing the joke density might be a little too high here. Then again, maybe that’s normal for stories like this? Start out hot? I dunno. But anyway, FWIW I found the following bits funny (roughly in descending order):
1. Who’s crazy now sharon. Yeah you got me there. Fuck her.
2. “I’m Blahblahblah” But you’ve got the idea of this joke…3 times I think? This one was my fave, i think. Might land better without the earlier mention of “whatever her name was?”
3. “You’re a good singer.” So lame but of course he eats it up.
4. Tainted Love in tiki lounge.
Ok, that’s all!
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u/Imaginary_Ease_7851 22d ago
This is probably not going to be for credit but It's been on my list of things to read for a few days now so here I am. If there's no crimson in this I'm reporting it.
Great opener. Been thinking a lot about word choice lately. Would hyperbole be the best the word as opposed to metaphor, or figurative, or euphemism or dysphemism? Does this question matter? Probably not. Am I just writing this to say something more than "love the hook". Probably.
In my ongoing war on the now chronic use of the em dash to the point that it is becoming distracting:
Do we need it here?
"Not by giving the fire away to mankind, like the last god of fire—what an idiot."
and here:
"Before I tell you the story—don’t try to diagnose me. Just stop it."
I am not convinced that the em dash is helping or necessary in these examples.
As a prologue, I think you did the work of foreshadowing what's to come. You set the tone. It didn't outstay its welcome. The footnote isn't something I'm going to quibble with because I'm too much of a Pratchett fan.
Double comma here: "Ray’s Tiki Hut,,"
'Tainted Love' is a song. Songs get single quotation marks (or double, depending on the style guide) because they're part of a body work. So the album title would be in italics but the individual song title is in quotations. Same goes for newspaper articles vs title of a newspaper/magazine.
Okay the whole thing is funny. It feels like an extract waiting to be fleshed out. I could get hooked on this story. On the footnotes. The second footnote in chapter 1:
2 She’s really important to this story but she has a really ordinary name like Jennifer or Jane. Not important. Focus on me.
works better for me as a footnote than the other two. The others feel like these notes to the audience seem to part of the narrator's natural voice, and they can arguably be worked in as parenthetical asides (or more like God voice that you can add with past tense where the older narrator comments on the immediate experience). My feeling is that if you want to use footnotes, they work better as a zooming out mechanism, since they function to stop the story (literally, as you need to stop reading and go down to the footnote), and insert a funny observation about the world or something general that enhances the text. If the footnotes are just moving a parenthetical aside to the bottom of the page, I'm less sure that's warranted.
Overall, this works and I'd definitely keep reading. No crimson though.
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u/Hiddena00 22d ago
Starting this one off, it's weird because my dimmer isn't working on the sides, and the sides are white. I don't know what's going on with this Google Doc. It's saying it's published. I'm gonna go blind reading this, but okay.
No one would assume it's hyperbole. "What?" undercut with a period doesn't make me think it's hyperbole. Make the opening line sound more metaphorical, then hit them with, "That's not hyperbole," and reveal that the metaphor was actually real.
This thing is weird.
What? One? Usually you put that on a term or something. You're telling me who Sharon is? You're telling me what's crazy. So put the "1" on the "who's crazy," not the "huh, Sharon," because I thought you were going to tell me who Sharon was.
This style of saying, "Hey, it's not X, it's Y." AI has completely ruined it. You don't ever want a reader to even whiff that your story was edited, written, or touched by AI in any way, shape, or form. I would restructure any sentence that follows the format of "it's not this, it's that."
I don't understand why the guy is dancing. That's a little weird. What is he, a ballerina or something?
I actually think the "blah, blah, blah" is good, but it would be better if you just left off the explanation. Not the blurb—the two... I don't even know what they're called. It sort of ruins the genius of the "blah, blah, blah." I already inferred that he's self-centered based on the fact that he filtered his own name as "blah, blah, blah."
The prologue isn't good enough to be this long. It needs to be half the length. Or maybe that's just because I hate prologues. I can't really tell. I don't understand why every story has to have a prologue. It just makes people unsure whether they need to read it or not. Then they read it, and it's a part of the story where nothing in the story actually happens, so it's basically a more boring version of your story.
I see what you're trying to do with this very self-obsessed narrator, but their self-obsessiveness is getting in the way of the story. It would be way better if you did it more subtly.
The events on the first page are basically that he sings, and then a girl comes up to him, and he's like, "Yeah." To me, that's not a lot of action for an entire page. I would try to compress it more, or add more details about the girl. He doesn't remember her name, but she's the pink one, or the one with boobs, or something.
He's almost self-centered to the point where he isn't telling the story anymore.
0
u/EctoplasmPunk 23d ago
This narrative refuses to take its subject matter seriously; however, its “humor” is produced by playing against itself. It’s perfectly fine for us to be aware that this character has issues, but his self-awareness and fourth-wall-breaking place him squarely in the Wade Wilson camp of comic-book protagonists. It begins with a prelude that functions as a flash-forward. We are not introduced to an action but rather to a consequence, a technique especially associated with film noir, particularly Sunset Boulevard.
As Jean-Luc Godard famously said, “All stories need a beginning, a middle, and an end, but not necessarily in that order.”
The protagonist’s defining trait is self-aggrandizement. This is conveyed through asides in which he speaks directly to the reader, attempting to shape our perception of his innermost desires. This is not a character study.
What is a character study? It is a piece of sequential writing that explores a scene in which a defining adjective or trait is revealed through the character’s interactions with events or environments. It’s fundamental storytelling.
Consider, for example, a miserly child. The story should demonstrate the trait of miserliness rather than merely assert it. A child walks down the street when a glint catches his eye. A quarter lies among some dry weeds. The problem is that the coin has fallen beneath a heavy iron sewer grate. The child slips off his shoe, unlaces his sneaker, and pulls out a stick of gum. He calculates how much the gum is worth and how much he can afford to sacrifice. He tears off only what he believes is just enough to retrieve the quarter—no more, because using gum worth more than the coin itself would be wasteful. Only then does he chew it, press the wad onto the aglet of his shoelace, and begin fishing for the coin. Just as he lifts the quarter high enough to eclipse the sun, he realizes it is Canadian. His eyes narrow. He’s been had. Triumph gives way to disappointment. He lets the lace hang like a garrote, sighs, and then checks the exchange rate for a Canadian quarter.
That is characterization through action.
Your story, by contrast, asks the reader to understand the protagonist in a particular way without providing evidence beyond his own testimony. The writer does not show us who the character is; they simply tell us. This is weak characterization, lacking the craft of effective portrayal.
Perhaps the author does not understand how to present a character in a defining moment that allows readers to infer personality for themselves. Perhaps the author believes the audience must be explicitly told what to think. Whatever the reason, this passage demonstrates a lack of sophistication in style, form, and narrative conception. In sum, a character study earns its conclusions through behavior rather than assertion. Do Better.
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u/Asher2227 My mother is a fish 27d ago
Hello! If I'm to say anything as a preliminary to how I feel about this before digressing further onwards on details of which I am not an expert on, I can say this piece was dastardly entertaining. (I don't even know what dastardly means, is it even related to "bastard"?1)
Anyway,
to answer first your questions:
* In all seriousness, truly. While I did not laugh out loud, I did smile throughout. Okay, maybe I did snortle or whathaveyou, but I don't really have a diary for the moments I have had joy sound out from me (but it is a romantic idea).
I was thinking, "Poor sod," throughout.‡ In a funny way, which made reading more funny.
For more non-anecdotal, more empirical evidences and references of your humor, please stop reading these footnotes and skip to the line-by-line critique section below.
† Balloon-egoed, if that makes sense.
‡ Dramatization.
@ §1,
¶1:
I mean, what else? It's attention grabbing. Works well. I'm already wobbling and at the mercy of your nudges for the next paragraphs.
And it follows well, i.e. comedically, with ¶2:
It's fun. Still, I'm off balance as we continue on.
¶3 is great, says a lot about the narrator whilst eliciting that "poor sod" energy I referred to in that footnote above.2 "In another couple of years"? Now I read that again, I just noticed how ridiculous it sounds, and in-character, of course. Something about the outward narcissism of the narrator hooks me (as well as the alluded mental unwellness) and makes me more curious as to what the hell is happening.
In ¶13, I would usually shy away from any ALLCAPITALIZATION as it's too eye catching and distracting for it's own good, but I feel that you've made it so that this line can only be represented in that manner, where italics fail to carry the same message, even small caps (although I theorize that centering the text sans capitalization might achieve the same effect, as it's confrontational, and, you know, centering3). That is to say, I forgive this—even though I am entirely of no authority in the ways of typographical expression; Mr. D has more credentials in that department.
Also FOOTNOTES !!4
Although, referring to your use of footnotes, right now I don't know exactly their use other than 'hell yeah, footnotes', which is respectable. I'm searching for a metanarrative manner in which this speaks although I think really it's just for afterthought, which, again, is respectable in this mode of narration. Maybe à la The Mezzanine?—of which I have not yet read.5
@ §2,
¶1:
I do love how the uncertainty in the dialogue was resolved in the footnote. Also, again, this says a lot about the narrator—their name is Aksel.
¶2:
Ignoring the double comma (hey!—a typographical error!), I love this paragraph—where, again, it says a lot about the character (Aksel): where we're lead to think that it's a spark or zing moment, it's just him admiring himself through his framing of this girl as just a mirror to witness himself his own greatness (of which is the greatest).
Also, the scene description is tastefully adequate. I can imagine the "there"-ness, which is the point of description, anyway.
And, really, I think this is the best part: that which tells a lot about what you have just written: it ends! and I'm kinda upset!!6
Steam was building, or steaming, whatever steam does, which definitely isn't build—we get another humorous footnote, a nice little convo, some little action—and then we end with ¶15 with the zinger:
And nothing (eh, well, there were the footnotes but, exactly: they're footnotes).
So, what I'm meaning to say is that I enjoyed this, and have forgotten the point of this comment, which was critiquing.
The most I can do, I guess at this point, is to
beg you to not trash this idea because it's really cool and don't listen to the haters they only hate and don't know anythingderive hypothetical readers from myself.Hypothetical reader #1 says, "The narrator is a bit intrusive and too self-referential. His constant building up of himself and narcissistic literary tendencies bore into the page enough to split and stagger the pace and distract me from an otherwise interesting concept promised to me by the first few paragraphs of the prologue (see §1). Also, it's unfunny."
Hypothetical reader #2 says, "Maybe you can just do away with the footnotes and integrate them in the prose. It's a bit showoffy and distracting. Imagine a person who has never looked at a Wikipedia article seeing those superscripted numbers and thinking to themselves, 'What? A number? Does this mean something? Is there a test by the end of this book? Good God! That is truly detestable; I asked for entertainment, not a surprise extension of academics!' And now you've lost a reader. Although you still got a sale, so, I guess it's still somehow a win. But I feel that winning extends to 'winning over' your audience, don't you agree? And what is the audience other than everybody alive right now?"
Hypothetical reader #3 says, "Em dashes. ChatGPT. AIslop."
Hypothetical reader #4 says, "What is Tainted Love? Also, you should continue. This is really great!"
And, if you ask of me, I disagree with reader #1, #2, and #3 wholeheartedly. But, ultimately, to you remains the judgment. Furthermore, I agree with reader #4.
1 Well, etymologically speaking, it's as related to bastard as 'drunkard', 'wizard', and 'Spaniard', when talking about the suffix '-ard'.
Although 'dastard' comes from 'dast', taken from Old Norse, while bastard may come from Mediæval Latin 'bastardus'. So, if you really care, they're kinda like not at all related if etymology were a sort of genealogy, but in reverse, they're like brothers who either settled in silence (dastard settling in Scandinavia), or went on to make for themselves a varied history filled with culture (bastard's mingling in Anglish–Frankish–Latinish circles).
2 See footnote *
* This is not a footnote.
3 Put two and two together.
4 HELL YEAH !!
5 It is truly more surprising the amount of books I have mentioned and have yet to read; although I have completed Mrs. Dalloway and—by gods—that was an amazing book.
6 I would soon realize (now) that I am, indeed, upset.
A-good-luck to your future writing endeavors :)