I wasn’t sure where this belonged - Life or Short Story - but I ended up posting it under Short Story.

Feedback and suggestions would be most welcome; I am specifically interested in feedback on the mix of third person narration / first person thought process. I’m not convinced I am happy with the result - if anyone can offer advice, it would be most appreciated.

Those little mental monologues at 3:00 am are great for all the paranoid (or is it?) existential issues that plague us.  You can drag out any seemingly trivial worry and it becomes an example of the whole human condition.  A classic monologue of that type was in the Britcom “One Foot in the Grave”, in an episode comprised strictly of Victor’s meanderings at home one day and his fear of death (and obsession with the medical encyclopedia).  I think you treated the theme quite well.

I didn’t have any problems understanding which was running thought process and which was narration.  There were a couple spots when I wondered whether the quotes were thought process or actually speaking to herself.  Not that it matters which in the storyline, but… Anyway, I think it’s less strict when there’s only one character.

I haven’t had the pleasure to read this—but you can be certain I will now!

Thank you for the feedback, it is much appreciated. I also wondered whether she was actually speaking or thinking - but overall, I think I left it as is because I know too well that even the character isn’t quite sure of whether she’s speaking or thinking at 3 in the morning. I thought it added to the idea of confusion that she felt. I’m glad it didn’t prevent you from following the story, that was my biggest concern.

Thanks again for the feedback!

Well I’ve tried and tried...but I can’t for the life of me find a transcript of that ‘One Foot in the Grave’ episode (or of any of them for that matter). So the internet has let me down, once again :(

But your mention of it did steer me back to ‘Le malade imaginaire’ by Molière, and I had fun reading it again, so thank you!

I hope you don’t think it’s tacky that I add a comment about your story after we’ve just had this discussion about critiquing. But there was something I’d wanted to add, and didn’t. So...you said the ending is up to the reader. And I disagree with that. I think, as writer - you should be in control of that. That’s not to say I’m right and you aren’t, just my opinion. And not in all cases, just this particular story, I wanted...something more conclusive.

For example, I asked Bill Ectric how do you write those big explosive explosions that happen in movies (it’s a critical scene in a book I wrote). So Bill says - minimalist description, let the readers’ imagination take over. Again, I disagree. I mean, you wouldn’t want the movie explosion to go like this - two guys talking, one says “gee that was a hell of an explosion wasn’t it” and that’s all you see. No fireball, no flaming colors, no stuff flying all apart. It just wouldn’t have the same effect.

Back to your story. I want the author to fill in the blanks, or most of them. Maybe you’ll read this and say “no, I still think it ends the way I want it to.” And that’s fine, just giving you my thoughts; expecting you’ll do the same. And both of us knowing it’s not a personal attack or anything.

Stokey, thank you for your feedback and comments. Indeed, I do not take them as a ‘personal attack’, and I don’t think it’s tacky either I’m glad you decided to post your opinion after all, because it is important to me.

So just curious, before reading my comment, what did you think the ending was? It’s clear to me what I think it is, but that’s because I wrote it. Even though I can imagine other possibilities, which I also like to visit once in a while. This allows me to perceive the story differently depending on my mood, emotional state etc.

I find not all stories work well with this kind of ending, but once in a while I find it fits. And I like to leave some of it up to the reader because I know that not everyone has the same life experiences, knowedge as me etc, which means that depending on what they see in what I wrote, my story may touch something different in everybody.

(as an aside to this, I remember a specific story I was discussing with fellow readers, and realizing at one point that our views of the story, its meaning and its ending were total opposites, yet all of us had thoroughly enjoyed it for different reasons. We had read the same book, but were all talking about a different story)

For example, some people may not like The Night Maintenance of Internal Mechanics simply because they can’t begin to understand what the character is going through. Others may relate to a certain extent, and may not even question the ending - she simply wakes up the next morning, because what she’s going through is purely psychological. Others yet may take the ironic (or by their standards logical) approach to the story and understand that her anxiety has led her to the very thing she feared, or that she had a good reason to be anxious after all and that her heart really did stop.

This being said (I think I needed to write it for myself as much as for anybody else), I can relate to your need to be told what happens. I’ve also felt this when reading other stories that simply did not have enough content or details to trigger my own imagination. Is this what happened with this story? Did you feel as though I didn’t give you enough to ‘see’ the story? Or is it simply that you do not enjoy stories that leave any room for interpretation?

As far as your explosion theory goes, I understand it differently than you do. Because your readers will never in fact see the explosion (they’re reading words, not watching a movie, right?). So you can describe it as best you can, and use as many adjectives as you want, you still rely on their sense of visualization to see it. Whether you’re able to pull it off depends largely on your descriptions and on your characters’ reactions.

So my point is that you need to rely on your reader’s imagination and interpretation regardless—how much of it you leave up to them is what varies.

Sorry if I’m ranting on, but I found your comments very interesting and it made me want to explore my own thoughts in the matter - I thought I might as well share them with you.

I really appreciated you taking the time to tell me what you thought, and don’t worry about whether or not you like my stories, your comments are always welcome

In school, they made us watch a movie called “The Lady and the Tiger” - about a guy who had to choose between two doors and he didn’t know which door had the tiger behind it.  Of course, the whole point of the movie is that they don’t tell you which door he picks.  And I’m only just now realizing that you can impose more meanings on it than the creator of the movie intended - for example, sometimes a person might rather pick the door with the tiger.  Open-to-interpretation pieces fascinate me, but they demand that the reader participate, and that demand seems generally to stop readers from encouraging others to read the piece by praising it.  But those who appreciate the thinking it inspires will encourage others to read it, though perhaps without an outright “It’s excellent!”

On the issue of providing details or letting the reader’s imagination handle it, I wanted to put in my two cents on the difference between video and text.  Don Eminizer tells me that a turning a screenplay into a book might double or triple the number of pages.  I suppose this is mostly because the book can’t provide sound and moving pictures, it can only describe them.  There’s an interpreting brain between the words and what happens in the story.  In a movie, the sights and sounds require no interpretation.

So in a movie, if you’re going to leave something to the imagination, then you don’t put that scene in at all.  But in a book, you can do it just exactly like Stokey’s example of what not to do:

The sides of the building suddenly moved away from each other and the roof popped up into the air, breaking into a million pieces, all lit from below by the huge red fireball growing rapidly beneath them.

It’s nice and descriptive, but it has strung out a millisecond’s worth of experience into several seconds of active interpretation of text.

BOOM!

“Jesus!” cried Rick as he fought for his balance.

I agree with Bill.