Why you don't get published.
Tuesday, November 05, 2013
New Beginning 1016
We haven’t had bread in nearly a week. My thin slice is well past the point of stale, but I savor every dry crumb as I make my way to our spot. There’s not nearly as much violence on our side, but I still tuck the bread up my sleeve when a small group of woman walk past me. Men aren’t the only ones who know how to throw a punch. Besides losing my bread, I don’t want to be late. This is the only part of my day I have to look forward to.
There are only a few guards at the fence tonight. It’s been a while since anyone has caused a scene, so they probably feel safe. From what Patrice said, it was awful for the first few weeks. They needed guards armed with shock sticks to keep people from trying to climb the razor sharp wires. By the time we got out of Quarantine, the worst of it had passed. No one holds on to hope for long inside the PIT.
Why the busiest restaurant in town feels the need to corral its customers like dissenters in a Russian gulag, I don't know. But the ribs are to die for. Bring a hundred-dollar deposit and a survival backpack for the week-long wait. While Quarantine is the pits, after that--it's pork heaven! See you at the PIT!
Opening: Sarah Negovetich.....Continuation: Kregger
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6 comments:
Unchosen continuations:
I keep eyeballing the women on the fringe, daring them to steal my freaking stale crust. All I know is that I'm good and starved, and nearly late in this godforsaken dystopic-prison existence.
God knows after all this anonymous exposition I'll have to cut a bitch just to get fickle readers to turn to page two.
--Veronica Rundell
Except for the man who dresses as a big purple dinosaur. We suspect he eats earthworms and flies. He's so happy all the time and full of energy, and sometimes he lets us rub his belly when he gets down on the grass. He stinks real bad but it's because he never takes off his dinosaur suit. We don't care because it makes our days brighter.
Today we found out our purple dinosaur friend had been forced to get clean. He was bound and taken to the Offices, stripped of his suit, and hosed down. It's the saddest day ever in the PIT.
--CavalierdeNuit
PIT, by the way, is an acronym for personalized intestinal torture. It’s not so much a place as it is a term for a group activity where you’re forced to ingest stuff like scorpions and lye soap, which helps to quell the appetite. I have to admit that it and some of the other goings-on here at Diet Camp do seem a little extreme at times. But on a brighter note, I’ve already lost over 100 lbs. of my 200 lb. starting weight. And still counting! Or, subtracting, rather. Why, at this rate ...
Hey, what are you looking at? Trying to look at the bread up my sleeve, are you? Get away! Get away, damn you! Or I’ll show what I’ve got up my other sleeve, you ...
--James
My sleeve slides off my slimy limb and I try to catch it, but it hits the rotting innards of the peach and I must abandon it. That's the thing about living in a Pit--it looks like there's plenty of food, but even a bug like me doesn't want to mess around too much in a rotting peach. I glance up at the wooden lining of the sky as hollers rise up around me. There's no hope left for this peach, so we're migrating today. But that's okay because another peach has fallen on the other side of the yard. Now, if I can just find Dr. Worm....
--Kayla Rivera
Get rid of "Besides losing my bread,"
It's awkward, and probably mean the opposite of what you intend.
Possible rearrangement of the sentences:
We haven’t had bread in nearly a week. My thin slice is well past the point of stale, but I savor every dry crumb as I make my way to our spot. I don’t want to be late. This is the only part of my day I look forward to.
I tuck the bread up my sleeve when a small group of woman walk past me. Men aren’t the only ones who know how to throw a punch.
There are only a few guards at the fence tonight. It’s been a while since anyone has caused a scene, so they probably feel safe. From what Patrice said, it was awful the first few weeks. They needed guards armed with shock sticks to keep people from trying to climb the razor sharp wires. By the time we got out of Quarantine, the worst of it had passed. No one holds on to hope for long inside the PIT.
This one was one of those where I couldn't wrap my mind around it. Not because it's dystopian, not because of the implied violence, but because it's so familiar. We've seen this in endless stories and films. The guards, fences, food shortages--are all so common to dystopian fiction it's almost like it's some kind of law that authors must follow these rote points.
Why not try to break out of this pattern?
Seems slow as a beginning. Calm before the storm, if you will--start with the storm, perhaps or pick up the pace of this info dump.
Also, I get a lot of exposition but not a lot of emotion, thus it feels like a journal entry, not an active scene. Why are the MC's lips not dry, tongue not sweeping greedily into the dry corners of his/her mouth to savor, stomach not rumbling like the hurricane they just survived...something that gives a sense of the internal conflict?
Can we get a sense of the locale? Is this a cold war camp? Is this Guantanamo?
Can't tell if we have a male/female/child/adult/teen/widow/refugee/prisoner/survivor in two paragraphs, but we get to know a slice of bread intimately...
How can one savor every crumb of bread, whilst--at the same time--stuffing the bread in one's sleeve? Logistically, this seems incongruent. Maybe it's the crust that is being shoved in the sleeve? Otherwise, I'd imagine it had been savored into the MC's belly, not his/her sleeve.
"Spot" is too general. It doesn't tell us if this is the tent, area of the fence, area of the camp, etc, that would allow the reader to latch on to a particular place-within-a-place.
Just some thoughts.
This is impersonal. There's no person to hold my attention or provide a handle to be interested in reading more.
It's flat like "they put the rebels in a prison camp" … Second hand and once removed.
Make it more immediate, something like " I have a slice of bread. That's enough to get me beaten. No one has any extra food since the riots."
I'm more of a reader than a writer and I liked this. I wanted to know what kind of world this related to and what would happen next that the MC was looking forward to.
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