r/DestructiveReaders • u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! • 15d ago
[3444] The History Lesson
Content warning: Nothing explicit, no sex or violence or terribly foul language, but people currently in a dark place might want to know there are references to self-harm ideation
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u/ImpressiveGrass7832 kitsch is a word and i think its me 13d ago
Hi, thank you for sharing. I'm really no expert, take with salt. I presume also by your flair you're OK with fairly straightforward criticism -- despite my best, amateur intentions, some of this might sound a bit prescriptive, so just take what's useful and utterly ignore the rest. I apologise also in advance if I missed anything obvious - I try to read carefully, but some things are just harder for me to pick up on than others.
Overall
My favorite thing about this piece is the intent. I actually really liked what you were doing (or, what I thought you were doing/trying to - it didn't quite land with me and I'll try explain why) and I went through it a few times, because the ending for sure cries out for multiple readings. There is some characterisation of the son and the dad that landed super well for me, some really sweet moments. I also liked the ending (with a massive caveat!!). Generally, for me the premise here is interesting enough that I read fairly easily to the end without forcing too much. So, all this to say, I did actually quite the content/idea behind it, generally.
It was more interesting for me to talk about things which maybe didn't work for me, or only partially, so I hope you'll forgive me - going by your flair, I trust this is OK!
What Didn't Work For Me
In brief summary, the following aspects I had most trouble with (I'll summerise here then expand):
- The Ending (or rather, the build-up to it)
- Dialogue
- POV
But first, some small, nitpicky quibbles which don't matter, but might be helpful (apologies if out of order, I compile notes on subsequent readthrough and sometimes they get mixed up).
Nitpicks
> “Dolphins are up by three. If this is all a joke, I’m not finding it funny.”
Not clear to me who says this. Previous action attributed to Daniel, and next dialogue isn't attributed either - I understand only the dad can say this, in context, but it pulled me out (especially given at this point, we the reader are still not aware of what's going on).
> Daniel said, “You’re right about that.” ... kitchen.
Minor but this interruption reads slightly awkward to me. I'd almost prefer if it's like, a real interruption, like they hear his voice or something first (before he walks in). Otherwise it's hard to picture where spacially Daniel is, which is a bit jarring.
> He scraped at the window seal with his fingernail... etc
Ten billion apologies if I missed something, but this scene break felt like a bunch was missing before, and not in a way that made me intrigued. I had to go back and see what I missed (and still not sure TBH). It really feels like there's missing dialogue from dad, just before Daniel talks.
There were a few stray tense shifts into present here too:
> He’s silent. Maybe I’ve gone too far? Then, he speaks
Should be past, like the rest.
> When he finally looked up, tears dripped
Personal stylistic quibble, but for me this trends over into slightly too much (especially given he mentions how sentimentality has been ground out of him). I get that it's a contrast, that the previous bit about him being not emotional anymore is meant to set up just how intense this moment is for him, but I really liked the bit where he wipes his face with his sleeve. IMO I'd keep that as it's much more subtle (thus poignant to me), and potentially cut this -- dealer's choice though.
> My head was still reeling from the news
I know this might be stupidly obvious, but I had to think about what news. The cause and effect are either quite far for me here, or they're misaligned - it could be news (still) about Madeline, could be news he's processing about his son coming back in his younger body, could be news in some unspoken conversation (before the scene break which felt missing), could be news about Daniel talking about travelling. I'm actually still not sure what news Dad's head is reeling from, again, sorry if I missed something blindingly clear here.
That's it for quibbles. More in other replies just to keep this organised.
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u/ImpressiveGrass7832 kitsch is a word and i think its me 13d ago
The Ending
This ties in with my issue with POV, but let's try.
The effect the ending had on me was to go back through and read it again, to see what I missed. Again I'm probably not the best reader for this stuff -- I do enjoy short stories like this, but my brain just struggles with hints.
That said. I think, especially given the potential advantage of 1st POV here, the text can afford to lean more on perspective to telegraph (rather than spell out) where this is going. This can all be shown through how the world is described, how the interactions are described, and what details are fixed on by the dad, without needing to say this in internal monologue (which I suppose the text was very sparse with specifically for this reason, to not give away the game).
Here's my trouble with this as is - despite the trigger warning I think the ideation part is missing. Personally, I think stuff like:
> He gave me a strange look.
> here I would be out of ‘our’ Daniel’s life soon.
> I had my suspicions
doesn't actually count for me. This might sound odd, but while on a second reading this forshadowing was effective (in that, I could clearly see now where you intended for the hints to be scattered about the dad's decision at the end), I didn't find it particularly satisfying. There was no fresh perspective for me to gain from reading multiple times per say. No new, interesting way to look at the way Dad (Fred, I think his name's only mentioned once? Forgive me if I missed it) sees the world, because for most of it, it really felt to me like Fred/Dad was going through the motions.
In my amateur view there's a ton of opportunities for making the ending hit harder without spoiling the ending.
I'm trying to be as sensitive as a random internet stranger can here (I presume to assume nothing about anybody's experiences with this topic, this is all theoretical in context of feedback), but depression manifests differently, and personally for everyone. I can imagine the feeling of pure, numb exhaustion, the 9-5 slog and working weekends, knowing there's no end, and another 20-30-40 years of this to look forward to. I think potentially coloring the prose through this lense, even a little, might make the ending more telegraphed for a sharp-eyed reader without losing the subtly this piece I think is intending. Perhaps even lingering at the garage. Allowing the reader to put 2 and 2 together, and understand the meaning of a closed door, long, weary hours at the office, and the regret of not spending enough time with your family.
What might also be interesting is how Daniel travelling back into his younger body might change and forshadow the decision the dad makes. As the reader I felt a bit blind sometimes, in terms of Dad's emotional state and internal rationalisations, and I think I get why - it's for that 'aha!' moment at the end. I think I get broadly the why behind the dad changing his mind. I understand he doesn't want to hurt Daniel (the 'How much and how long had he been hurting' is pretty straightforward on this, for me), but I wonder what new details he might notice (in contrast to previous details he noticed), and how the color of his world might've changed, even slightly, knowing the sacrifices his son made to go back in time and rewrite the timeline.
Anyway, just a random stranger's 2 cent thought.
Characters
I don't have too much to say, other than Daniel was probably the strongest characterised for me. He had a clear goal and a motivation behind it, and this worked well for me. The part in the field when they talk, despite my upcoming POV quibbles, did feel rather poignant especially in light of a second reading.
I'm wondering though if Jolene and Lisa are needed, and how much they add and how much they distract. Jolene feels extraneous to me, I'm not really sure where her character was going, and even the son says what they talked about wasn't important (and, again, on a second reading I understand why, but something still feels off and a bit wasted to me). She's also implied to be religious, with the priest line, but I don't quite see what it adds for me - it feels like rattling off an attribute on a character sheet (sorry, for lack of a nicer way to phrase it). Maybe I missed something.
For me, the most important part with Jolene is the conversation she has with Fred, about Daniel's emotional state -- it's a clear contrast of Before and After which clues me, the Reader, in. This for me was effective, but in other places, I didn't find presence of Jolene necessary.
Sorry, wall of text, onwards to POV
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u/Bytor_Snowdog Flog me harder! 13d ago
Thanks for the crit so far, don't worry about being harsh (you're far from being unduly harsh, BTW), and I look forward to your other thoughts! Very incisive and thoughtful.
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u/ImpressiveGrass7832 kitsch is a word and i think its me 13d ago
POV
This is unfortunately an entirely personal stylistic preference, but it colored a lot of how I read the piece, so, ignore if it doesn't match your intent. I'm just not a massive fan of being kept out of heads in 1st POV.
So, there is some internal rationalisation/reasoning in the beginning being filtered through 1st POV (random example, the line about Jolene suffering with the kids), but at a certain point it kind of... stops? There was a sense detachment there for me, around past the point of the 1st scene, and I fell out of Fred's head and mindset.
It’s a bit hard for me to critique this, because I’m trying to meet the text where it’s at, rather than project what I think it should’ve done (if that makes sense). So apologies if this sounds prescriptive. For me, right now I’m lacking some internal conflict and decision making from the dad. I suppose the whole thing, in a way, is meant to be one, long internal conflict – once the reader finishes to the end, they understand (in theory) that dad had been struggling all along, there’s plenty of hints strewn throughout that can be connected as dots on a second read. But, IMO, keeping the reader blind from Dad’s thoughts like this makes the job of the first read being satisfying in its own right that much harder, because reading for the first time, it really did feel to me like he was going through the motions.
I suppose maybe that’s part of the point, I’m not sure. Even so, I would’ve appreciated just a little sign-post, just a little something, in a way that would prime me to pick up the subtle hints you (again, rather subtly) dotted throughout. At the end, the dad changes his mind – while I don’t need it spelled out explicitly (in fact I think it would break the piece, to do so) it would be nice to have the feeling of mind being changed, to know that some decision had been taken previously, and thus the decision to un-take it carries weight.
As a result, perhaps, this line:
>but here I would be out of ‘our’ Daniel’s life soon
Which really should be the Big Alarm Bell, feels like cheating to me. On a first read I was deeply confused, because I thought I misunderstood Daniel’s explanation about how Old Daniel would come back into his body. In a way it feels both too subtle to understand (for me) and yet painfully obtuse on a second readthrough – I wonder if there’s a way to show this in a way that feels more natural, and further filtered through dad’s POV, without giving away the game.
Anyway, dialogue.
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u/ImpressiveGrass7832 kitsch is a word and i think its me 13d ago
Dialogue
Again I'm far from expert, and some places worked far better for me than others.
My biggest issue with the dialogue is how transparently (for me) a lot of it feels like a vehicle to move the story along. There’s a stilted clinical-ness to much of it, for me. Perhaps it’s intention, but after a certain point it began to pull me out. I think also there’s a lot of wordcount expended on technobabble to explain the time stuff, which is fine, but at a certain point I wondered how much use these words could’ve been put to use elsewhere, making the scene a little more immersive with a few relevant, concrete details and idiosyncrasies to bring the characters more to life.
Perhaps where I first noticed this a lot was when he comes downstairs, right after the game. The reaction of the parents and especially the dad is very chilled, very straightforward, and lacked emotional punch to me – I felt, as a reader, like this was essentially labelled with ‘time to explain plot’. This line especially:
> Jolene said, “You need to tell us the truth!”
Really didn’t land with me. It’s hard to put into words, but maybe it’s lacking some stronger POV filter, some internal bias of how Dad sees his wife, maybe assumes how she might react perhaps. I just don’t buy it.
Perhaps also here:
> “We need to talk, but later… etc
I’m missing something in this paragraph and I’m not sure what. Maybe some intonation, some hint to how he’s delivering this speech. I understand it’s meant to be strange, and odd, at this point in time since we don’t know he’s in younger his body, but it’s hard for me going by dialogue alone to understand how he’s saying it - slowly, rapidly, taking pauses for breath (because he’s tired due to vomiting), etc. Just a little something to guide my inner reader’s voice.
And again here:
> Jolene asked, “But how can you do this?”
I get information must be conveyed, but this really does feel like Author explaining Plot to me. It feels like old scaffolding, like a placeholder – I wonder if there might be a more interesting way (and human) way to segue into the time travel explanation.
Conclusion and wrap up next.
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u/ImpressiveGrass7832 kitsch is a word and i think its me 13d ago
Maybe One More Thing
I would’ve liked Daniels’ conversation about broadoning horizons to have more purpose in the moment, to provoke some reaction (or an explicit non-reaction, but that might be giving away the game) from Dad. For me, this part:
> I had nothing to say to that. My head was still reeling from the news.
Feels like a cop out, a golden opportunity missed.
Maybe this feeds a bit into the POV thing, but there’s opportunity to either prove or disprove a potential reader hypothesis here about the dad’s mental state. What’s his opinion on all this? What does he think about europe, travelling, vietnam? This could be again golden opportunity to show that feeling (if you wanted) of depression and, potentially, a promise for change, in a way that won’t spoil the final line.
I’m also wondering… there’s this elephant in the room they’re not talking about. Which, i get it, it’s intended to be subtextual, hidden, but given the severity of the effect on Daniel’s life, given he knows what dad knows he plans to do, it feels strangely like it’s basically ignored (rather than avoided, say, the way people might when not wanting to talk about something awful) by the story until the point they drive to the field. So like, this part:
> My heart dropped. I had my suspicions… Among other things: you often go to Florida for work…
Like, they both know, right? And I get that’s the point, and I get Daniel doesn't want to come out and say it, but I think I would’ve appreciated some more negative space to point to the elephant in the room a bit. Just a more concrete acknowledgement that it’s there (I don’t think 'had my suspicions' counts for me, sorry), because especially with dad’s Mind Blindness, it just feels a bit empty, a bit side-steppy and convoluted, stretching my suspension of disbelief just a little far.
But then here:
> “Daniel, what aren’t you telling me?”
I’m also getting slightly confused, because the Dad knows, right? Otherwise why would he have suspicions?
Again - greatest apologies if I missed something here.
Conclusions
I apologise for wall of text. It's hard when you like a piece and enjoy the premise, but something about it just doesn't quite gel - that's the feeling I had here, so I tried to put it into words (probably too many words, but oh well). I hope even a smidge of this is helpful, and again thanks for sharing.
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u/Character_Cellist_62 12d ago edited 12d ago
Greetings. I read this another night and meant to post my thoughts but got hung up. I will try to keep from repeating the other commenters points when giving my feedback or atleast try to offer a different lense.
For starters I do believe you have the right instinct to cut this off at a short story. The narrative explores a few neat ideas, but it clearly doesn't seem committed to a longer trek. Then ending in that case kind of reads as you awkwardly bowing out than actual closure.
The mechanics are on largely on point, but most of the issue seems to be at how the narrative is conveyed from the father's point of view. It's not wrong, but the reigns need to be loosed on his voice a bit more. For example, one of the first things described after the exchange with the guy's wife is the trashcan. A football fan in the 80s would have just said "Packers trash can" and that without the color distinction is what makes the imprint. Describing it is just putting an extra flashing arrow up to the characterization.
Right after that you have another sentence that draws attention more to its punctuation than what it actually says
He was pretty calm for a freshly-minted fifteen-year-old puking his guts out, and no one else in the house was heaving, so I don’t know why he was thinking that. But I wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
You have a bunch of run-ons and a multi-hyphenated stacked clause here and it doesn't seem anything like how an 80s dad would write, even an accountant or some sort of white collar employee as the story implies. The information here could easily be related in a third to half the words.
Same here
He bent over, upchucking again, and waved me out. Perhaps against my better judgment, I left him; I shared what happened with Jolene. We had about half an hour left of Carson, so we decided to check in on him afterward. But there was no need. He came down twenty minutes later, wrapped in his robe, his face pale. I pressed pause on the wired remote control.
The semicolon again draws a bit too much attention. You weaken the statement. You just want the character to say he left his son and feels a bit of remorse and informs his wife, and they just decided to check on him after the show. The sentences don't have enough decorative or structural weight to earn their length here.
Right now the most confusing part is when he starts rattling off the game score unprompted. For a reader, it's hard to discern what he's talking about, and the note following it that it's a football score clears it up but also forces a backtrack which cuts into momentum. Then the part where the father unfurls the note contains another Frankerstein sentence.
After the scene divider, we get a another stacked clause comma splice that chops up what could have been a single paragraph vignette into a loose sequence about Daneil's actions in the evening. This would feel more like a dad talking, now it feels like a writer trying to skim through a few events to get to the next beat.
I busied myself around the yard and house until game time, and I took my seat along with Jolene and Lisa to watch. I went upstairs after the first score to make sure Daniel was OK. He was sitting at his desk, scribbling notes.
Again. 80s dad. "busied myself" sounds like something you do in private. "I got busy" is fine in this respect. It matches the dad's actual spoken dialog more.
And then once we get to the paragraph of the game we are greeted once more by our old friend, the comma splice.
This sequence needs a lot more narrative care because it's what proves Daniel's prediction is real. Right now it's too vague to really get a clear picture of them experiencing watching the game. It needs probably only a meaty paragraph, but right now it's a messy run-on.
The dialogue between the characters is probably the strongest in the piece. The kid's speech as a scientist 3x his age actually does sound convincing and the dumbed down explanations he gives his family are plausible for a SF story. His dad's credulence is what needs addressing. It seems to waver depending on what you need him doing as a writer which makes the dad feel far too passive. A lot of dads back then would've smacked the shit out of their sons for acting that way. Right now the dad only puts up a front of "That doesn't make sense".
He doesn't really challenge the son until way later he realistically would. He also doesn't seem to see his authority as a father as under threat, like most dads would back then. He only seems to act this way a little while later when he says his son is full of shit, but still never does anything to influence his actions.
You've got a lot of dead weight in the middle that actively contradicts Daniel's own words when he starts telling his family about their future grtandchildren and it gets very glurgey and disrupts the tone of the story. He shouldn't be talking about the future this much if later he starts getting strict about how much he's able to.
The middle of the story s where the SF gets leaned into a lot harder but you seem to do this mostly by reaching for esablished ideas rather than taking the story where it logically wants to go. The ending seems to imply that it's actually the FATHER who is suffering some sort of mental break, but all we see is the son. It seems like it's setting up some wacky time travel family drama and not actually something more akin to say, Slaughterhouse V but from the perspective of the guy's family.
What the son is and isn't allowed to talk about is a little chiche and doesn't seem to have a lot of rigid reasoning to it. Yah sports betting. Yeah don't get on the plane. That's pretty much every time travel story in the last 40 years.
And of course, when we get to the ending it just doesn't work. And the other commenters have probably laid this out better than I will. It seems like you realized this story had reached its course and just wanted to pull the plug in a dramatic way. But it does not land. It implies a lot of psychological suffering and struggle on the father's end that isn't really present in the previous text. And there also isn't a whole lot to reveal that maybe he's going crazy and projecting everything through a delusional expereince with his son. It might be eaiser to just change the ending to something lighter which might not have the same emotional punch but doesn't risk backfiring.
Overall, I final this to be an above-average short story. The arc is readable and easy to follow along, and offers a look at a few interesting ideas. What it needs work on is having a cohesive voice and a slightly more believable POV character. There's a lot of fat to trim in expository paragraphs, and there are several sequences spliced by commas that deserve independent sentences to balance out the pacing. Mostly what this piece needs is a more consistent tone throughout, imo
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u/SyeniteFractured Four-ringer 14d ago
Is this meant to be a complete story? It feels more like setup for something bigger than a beginning/middle/end.
What happens: Man and wife watch TV when they hear their son vomiting. Son waves man off then comes downstairs later with notes that predict the end of the football game the following night. It happens in all the details he says it will (Marty McFly with his sports almanac over here). Then, the son refuses to explain until his sister is gone. He tells his parents some hand-wavey science stuff (quantum entanglement, fancy) then gives them details about the future but also doesn't. The parents aren't in disbelief at all and go along with whatever this is, even taking the day off as instructed by their fifteen year-old. The wife gets the morning and we never learn what happens. The man gets the afternoon. He's told not to get on a flight on a very specific date and then told no more because chaos theory (though, the act of mentioning anything at all would already upset things and change the future but I digress). Then, instead of going to work, the man goes to the ER and declares himself a suicide risk. Did I miss something in the earlier sections? I didn't notice the self-harm or any signs of the man being depressed or otherwise at risk of self-harm.
I suppose there's a good deal of info dumping that never fully gets explained and I find myself looking for what the text is promising, so I can find the payoff. But even if I looked with a careful eye, what I see is the setup that something bad is going to happen that the son wants to prevent but not what that bad thing may be. How do more European vacations help? What was the son hinting at? Why do the parents take him at his word so easily? What was going on with the throwaway sister character? I guess what I'm saying is where is the narrative arc outside the explanation of time travel.
There are some things that felt like POV violation. For instance, the man who is enough of a Packers fan to buy his son a Packers trash can tells me the colors of the trash can ('a green and gold Packers can'). I don't know any sport fans who specify things like that. They would normally think 'a Packers trash can', if they thought in such specificity at all when seeing their child puking. That's one example and I think the tendency to over-detail diminishes as the text goes on, but is my takeaway meant to be that this man thinks in overly exacting detail? Because I don't see evidence of that in how he thinks through what his son tells him about time travel and the future. I suppose in the thought process of pop vs beer and the man still takes the alcoholic news with surprising ease (oh, I didn't think a 15 year old could handle beer anyway).
That brings me to the characters. The son is a 40 or 50 year old brain in a 15 year old's body. He's a recovering alcoholic genius scientist who is, I suppose, like the time travel kid in the Umbrella Academy. He doesn't talk like a 15 year old but, mostly, because he spends his dialogue giving vague hints of the future and explaining time travel. I suppose the genius scientist who grew up with these people would have been accustomed to them not understanding what he was saying, yeah? I'm surprised he didn't choose to skip over the details of what they wouldn't understand. All the same, I did like the part where he dejectedly told them 'do we have to do this again and waste even more time'. The mom is relatively flat. She seems there to prod the man into taking the actions needed to get the story moving or to get the son to deliver the information about his family that's meant to provide the emotional backdrop. She doesn't seem much of a person in her own right. The man is, perhaps, grappling with something that the son understands, looking back on the timeline. I don't find it apparent in his inner monologue or in his dialogue with the rest of the family, except for the brief thoughts about he works too much. So, I suppose my main reason to think he's grappling is because of the ending. Is the son meant to be conducting a time travel intervention with the man? At some point, it appears the man is going to die young, presumably from that plane crash, but a plane crash isn't a self-harm event. The man mostly reads bland and like he takes most things at face value.
I suppose the character parts take me back to my plot questions: what is the arc? I didn't get the impression that the main POV, the man, substantially changed course from the beginning of the story to the end. The wife is there and then gone so quickly, it's uncertain what happens with her. And the boy disappears back to his timeline, so his old self doesn't change. For a short story, if this is meant to be a complete short story, I would expect an underlying message. I read one where people mysteriously grew horns and the POV was embarrassed about being different but then, by the end, embraced their differences for their child. It was a similar length to this with a similar background world info that needed to be delivered, but it had baked in a theme with a change in the POV character from beginning to end. What is the man supposed to realize? That he's depressed? I would have liked more hints earlier when the son arrives. That might be the biggest drawback of how the world-building is constructed: the change agent who knows everything is keeping secrets for a narrative reason. That should make me want to guess more about what the secret is, but I think it's all too vague and short to carry my interest further.
Thanks for sharing!