Discussion of "avarice 7" by dogdeity11

* * * SPOILER: ANYONE READING THESE COMMENTS SHOULD STOP NOW UNLESS YOU’VE READ ALL SEVEN CHAPTERS OF AVARICE. * * *

Dog –

Caught your consecutive posts and decided to print out a hard copy so I’d have something to read on the throne. (I suspect you take great joy being read by someone with his pants around his ankles.) Rather than comment on individual chapters, I’ll do one diatribe over the whole shebang.

Saw Memento a couple years ago on video, so I knew the premise. Enjoyed the performances; my only complaint was the lack of motivation. I wondered if that same bummer would resurface in your story. Pleasantly, it did not.

I’ve always enjoyed the way your characters have dimension. They’re sick and depraved, often a despicable subclass of humanity, but they exhibit depth. These are people I’d never want to meet in real life, but I’d love to sit in a diner booth next to them and listen to them talk. Historically, our dialog is sharp, biting, cruel, and yet real. The emotions you provoke are tangible, be they lust, anger, or outright pity. If I’m ever looking to get inside the mind of a loser, I need look no further than one of your creations. They’re brilliant and I admire them.

Avarice is more of an episode in technique. More style than substance, and I grant it leeway accordingly. The structure’s intrinsic necessity to shield plot-altering thoughts and actions until the proper reveals made it hard to sink my teeth into the experience of Ray, Dennis and Anthony. Yeah, they’re all broken people, but they’re far more caricatured than your “normal” offerings.

Ray is, as you eloquently provided, trailer. Horrific background, dreadful circumstances, but it felt glazed to say she stayed with Dennis because she couldn’t find something better. I didn’t feel any desire – even demented – for Anthony. No real remorse or agony for her actions. No deep-set satisfaction in offing Dennis. No sincere greed. She’s not bright in her birdcage, but her utter lack of cleverness with Dennis the abusive **** provided no connection, no motivation to care about her. She’s a stupid ho who sleeps around? ‘Kay. Even now, rethinking her situation, I’m stuck believing she’d look for another John to tell her what to do with the ticket. She completely lacks street savvy. Or original thought. Hard to have a lead who can’t think well for herself.

Dennis is a fat Michael Madsen, no? He’s thoroughly unlikeable, cruel, heartless, and stupid. Which gave me little to latch onto. I usually hate your evil characters because I know folks like that. No, scratch that. I’ve never met your evil breed. But I usually detect some morsels that I know only too well. Loathe-worthy. Dennis is neither sharp, nor blunt. He’s a stench. I want to be apart from him, but he’s mostly a disgusting bother. Wish he stepped up his game with something beyond brutality.

Then there’s Anthony, the saint until the ending. I enjoyed him more as an enigma. That he concocts his plan-a-la-pussy is smart. But he’s far from smart enough to pull it off. I wanted him to be sly, conniving, wolfish. Even if innocent of any real wrongdoing, I wanted more to grasp than a horndog who’d lie for a piece of ****.

That’s the crux of this. Ray’s a piece of ****, Anthony’s a horndog, and Dennis is a bastard. Whereas Alyssa and her next-door-neighbor were masterpieces. Hell, even your old piece about the lottery ticket had fuller characters than this.

As an unusual aside, there were distinct moments I thought you were writing like a woman. Both in thoughts and dialog. Weird.

I think your concept is solid, but the execution is hard to carry out with flimsy palettes like those.

(Man, between this and my rant about “The Other Sock,” nobody’s going to want me to critique their stuff anymore. Heh.)

A huge fan,

Nash

Nash! Thanks so much for taking the time to read and comment brother. I appreciate you laying it all out too, as I depend on this feedback to help me get better. It’s so frustrating to see a chapter read 40 times and commented on twice. SM should somehow make commenting mandatory. Then again, everyone isn’t here to for the same reasons I suppose.
Anyway, as one of my absolute favorite writers, not just on SM, I respect and actually listen to your critiques.
Couple things:
1 – You thinking I was writing like a woman is awesome. If it seemed ‘weird’ to you, then I did my job.
2 – Your perceptions of the characters were dead on. Simply stated, you stated them precisely how I wanted you to. However I take to heart that this was, ‘More style than substance.’ Your absolutely right and it took hearing that in order for me to see it. These characters are one-dimensional. I failed there. I was so concerned with doing a decent ‘memento’ storyline I neglected the emotion. Thanks man.
3 – This was formatted for SM. Which is to say, I neglected things for the sake of expedience. Your typical SM reader has a short attention span. They want in and out. So I clipped my chapters short and kept them to the point. Sacrificed are character development and emotion. No excuses. I aim to develop a method for consolidating these essential aspects while still maintaining plot. That is a goal!
As a fellow writer, I disagree with some of your interpretations. As a fellow writer, I so needed to hear a lot of your interpretations. You helped me tremendously.
4 – I will always want you to critique my stuff. You tell it like you see it. And if anyone has read your work, they will respect how you see it.

Thanks dude!

Ok then, you know the path to every woman’s pussy is paved with dolla bills.

I just want to say that that is a very false statement from that schmuck Abe. Anthony's a schmuck too. Hell, they all are. This is a Schmuckfest, LOL. Anyways, Dog, I agree with Nash, however, sometimes readers just want a quickie - ironic choice of words there. It would have benefitted the story to flesh out the characters more, but I don't think you intended this to read like your typical novel-style piece. I enjoyed this, immensely. Kind of refreshing to get straight to it rather than having a long-winded, descriptive, I-feel-like-I've-known-you-forever run of the mill character assortment. This is more of a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am-I'll-smoke-in-the-car-on-the-way-home kind of approach. Well done friend!

And Nash, if you ever get back to reading this, I just want to say that I value your critiques. You point out areas that need some work and you explain why you felt that way. You have no problem with tellin it like it is and that is great. I am more apt to strive for improvement after a solid bashing from you than I am from the 'Oh this is soooooooo gooooooood' comments. (As I think I just did for this entire lineup.....)

Okay, so foot in mouth, I leave with a final bravo Dog! Suggestion: Maybe a final chapter reading as a newspaper article to clean it all up, perhaps along these lines.....

"Woman Killed In Fatal Car Crash: Victim Or Murder Suspect?'

(Fill in the blank)City Police are investigating the victim of a fatal hit and run earlier this morning on (Blank)Road. (blank) year old Ray (Blank) was killed when blah blah blah..... authorities say she may have been involved in the gruesome double murders of her husband and neighbor.... blah blah blah.....witnesses hint at a possible love triangle.....blah blah blah......

LMMFAO!!!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!! I just happened to click on the wrong area when rating your stuff here and noticed the tags on it! Hilarious and classical DogDeity11! So, on impulse, I went back through each chapter and had a looky-loo at all the tags! Sure enough, you did not let me down. You sure are a piece of work Dog! Thank you for the extra laughs! Fish tacos, dental plans, and big boobs! Ha! What a riot!

Thanks so much rico76girl for taking the time to read and comment! I wish more people would do that here. (I think Nash’s review may have scared people off from commenting, negatively or positively. Which begs the question…are people intimidated by Nash? I hope that’s it and not just that they thought this story was crap!)
***
Anyway, ya know, going back over this story, after not having thought about it for a month or so, I actually like it a lot better now. Oh, there are a few things I would change, (isn’t that always the case), but absolutely nothing to do with the characters.
I definitely didn’t set out to make anybody care about them. Who they truly are is pretty irrelevant. Do I really need to take the time to tell the reader that Ray likes the color orange or that Anthony cheats on his taxes? Who cares? One should be able to see they are morally reprehensible by their actions within the framework of the story. Additional details, as far as I am concerned, only weigh things down. (a fact you sort of pointed out in your comments)
But it certainly doesn’t make them any less real. That fact that some people may not be able to buy into their actions or understand the level of their depravity only tells me that that person really doesn’t know people like this. And while my versions may be cookie cutter and confounding, unfortunately, they are genuine. People really talk like this and they really act like this. A great hunk of our country is in fact populated with these Jerry Springer episodes just waiting to happen.
But this story is about one thing and one thing only, ‘Greed.’ The characters, whom I’m glad you think are schmucks, are nothing more than robots being controlled by greed.
Which is why I personally wanted the story to end, (start), where it does. I figured, if the reader really cares then they can draw their own conclusions. As far as I care…the story itself exists from point A to point B…that is all.
Thanks again for taking the time! I really appreciate it.

LOL, well, now that you said so, I guess Nash may be a bit intimidating. But I actually really like him. He sure can be a real fugger when he wants to but his passion for writing is obvious. Very good at finding errors most would not catch! After a moment of consideration, I find that I don't really care what happens to her, rather that your story captivated me and I would love to see you do the 'reverse-order' style again. Very much a fan Dog!

OK, so I disagree with Nash. I can totally see reading the AP version of this story on my phone while I drink my tea in the AM. And real life people rarely ever have the depth of the literary ones. The action specific style gave me just enough insight into your characters to know that Dennis isn't a wife-beating **** who likes Tucker Carlson and cries during olympic ice dancing. He's just your average, run of the mill, **** with no self-control. And that's OK in a plot driven story. I've met all of these people somewhere, and I can fill in the blanks. Pausing before Ray plunges a knife into Dennis' chest to tell me she prefers moths to butterflies, just slows the action down. And her real-life equivalent probably doesn't notice either lepidoptera when they flit sans glitter into her sphere.

Also, in the spirit of being contrary, I don't agree with rico76sgirl about a wrap up either. Ray will probably hook up with the first dude she sees in a bar and get help claiming the fake ticket. But her story will only end one of two ways (I'm thinking death or prison) and I'm comfortable not knowing the details.

In short, well done, 11. Certainly a well executed experiment in backward, plot driven story telling.

And Nash is more long winded than intimidating, but I can see how the two traits might get confused.

still humping the american dream

I've decided to stop calling you "dog". I like honey's "11" so much better and not only because it was my son's soccer number for most of his life in the game.

So, 11...I'm glad to see that you went back and recanted your agreement with Nash's critique about the characters not having enough depth. I love Nash. I wish he would critique my stuff more often. At the same time, he has some hangups about "depth of character" (usually he's right on those counts) and "motivation" (eh..sometimes he's right). What motivates this character, what motivates that character? In a very long short story, novelette or novel motivation would certainly be desired - make that required. Here, but not only here on SM, it takes too long to develop motivation (I hope Nash reads this and comes back with some examples of how motivation could have better been established in this story...lol).

I grew up around smucks like these until my aunt and uncle adopted me and got me away from the trailer trash and into the religious hypocrit trash. My brother and sister's weren't so lucky. So, I know people like these guys. Whatever strikes their fancy at the moment....money, drugs, sex are sufficient motivation for any and all aberrant behaviour.

I loved how you worked this story backwards. Initially, I thought..."how in the hell do you end a story this way?". I learned by reading your story..;o). Your wordsmithing and dialogue was, as I've commented several times on your work, fabulously done.

One question, one teensy nit in the story: Do boxer's have back pockets?