Flowers of Fear. That title got me thinking. I’m going to do this page one critique this week, but before I do I’d like to ask if anyone knows what happened to the Moonies. Remember them in the airports pushing bundles of flowers and flimsy-papered reading material at you with those LSD smiles and vacant, but hyper-alert eyes? You know, I suppose we have lots of cults, but I think the quality of the new ones is not what it used to be. I miss the Hare Krishmas, especially the ones who wore black-framed glasses and all had top-knots, billowy Saffron robes, sandals, and chanted nonsense in herds as they flowed along city streets chanting. Ah, the good old days.
Okay. So here’s the first page selected for me to critique.
FLOWERS OF FEAR
Chapter 1
“Bailey, it’s me, Sarah. I’m alone, let me in.” Hearing Sarah’s voice on the answering machine, I carefully cracked open my front door.
Sarah stood there, glitzy pink cell phone in hand, watching me. She watched me as I slowly opened the door just wide enough to scan my front yard. “There’s no one else around, Bailey. I checked.”
I quickly reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her inside. Slamming the door behind us, I leaned back against it. “No, he’s there. He’s always there. Every time I try to leave the house he’s waiting for me.”
Sarah nodded. “Is everything ready?”
My mouth was drier than Death Valley, and my stomach felt like it was in a bounce house, I was so nervous. I felt more nauseous than when I had stomach flu last season. But I managed to give Sarah a weak grin and say, “Of course! Boy Scouts are always prepared.” We needed to appear normal when we walked outside, so I was trying to lighten the mood. “Let’s go.”
Sarah picked up on what I was trying to do. She picked up one of my duffel bags on the floor and looped it over her shoulder. “Ugh! This is heavy! What are you taking with you, a bunch of rocks?”
“No, just some clothes and books.” I picked up the other duffel and my purse, and walked out the door. I didn’t look back.
I got into my car and Sarah got into hers. The plan was for both of us to drive to Cathy’s Coffee Shop, and then after thirty minutes of sitting and talking together, both of us would go into the restroom. When we emerged, I would look like her and she would look like me. I would then pay for my mocha, get into her car, and drive away.
Somehow, we both managed to act out our parts perfectly. I don’t remember much about what happened during that time, except that time crawled by. Finally, I got into the restroom, and a moment later, Sarah followed. We didn’t speak to each other, just swapped clothes. Both of us looked almost exactly like; shoulder-length strawberry-blond hair, freckles, and blue eyes. If he was there, then hopefully he’d think I was Sarah and she was me.
I started to walk out of the restroom, but then I turned around and gave Sarah a hug. “Thank you, Sarah. But be careful. He’s very dangerous. If something happens then I want you to go straight to Russ.”
We held each other tight for several seconds. Then Sarah let go and stepped back. She swiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Goodbye. You’ll always be my best friend, Bailey.”
I knew if I stayed any longer I’d burst into tears. I turned back towards the door, took a deep breath to steady myself, and stepped out into the café.
HMMMMM.
Frankly, this page one left me drier than Death Valley and my mind felt like a bounce house that had someone named Bailey jumping around in it. A dangerous man is out there lurking, and perhaps the police can’t be reached by pink glitzy phones. The two characters here are similar––no Laurel and Hardy here––and Bailey wants lots of books to take with her while she acts like she’s Sarah. Maybe she should be packing guns, knives or Tactical Battlefield Nukes. Is she going to spend the rest of the book reading, or running and screaming until she screws up her courage and fights back, beating the man with the flowers of fear? Aside from the fact that the author tells too much of the wrong thing too fast, there’s no real reason to read any farther. I do wonder if the evil man lucking will kill Sarah thinking she is Bailey, or when he discovers the deception he kills Sarah, or if he––evil but not particularly observant or bright––is fooled and follows Sarah for the rest of the book thinking she is Bailey. Don’t know. No reason to care. Fear the flowers of fear. Would those be lilies or poppies?
Seriously, and with no meanness in my heart, this one needs work. Unless this is a short/short story, you have more than one page to get the reader involved without laying out your cards with such haste. The reader wants to know where he or she is first, who the characters are second and the stakes third. Takes more than a page. You don’t paint a picture with a four-inch brush. Take me into Bailey’s house and let me feel the tension she is feeling. Fear? Anxiety? Show us. Take page one to set the scene, to introduce Bailey so we start to care about her. Hell, take the first three. We guys and gals come here week after week pounding home the basics, and we really want to help other authors. I’d say if you went through Scott Bell’s blogs you’d have a book of lessons. Same with the others as well as the comments. I feel like one of them old school teachers in a 30’s movie who is convinced he’s wasted his life trying to teach kids something important. Yeah, then they come in as ghosts and tell him how one of his lessons saved millions of lives in combat, although not the ghosts’.
Seriously. Don’t hand in homework that isn’t thought through. Don’t be lazy. Writing is hard work so, if you want to do it right, go do some of it with your thinking cap on straight.
Am I being too hard here?
I like the premise of this, and I think the story has potential, but I agree that there’s a fair amount of clunkiness to the writing. And confusion, which starts with the very first word: Bailey. In my mind, Bailey was a guy (perhaps my own prejudice, since the protagonist of my first published novel was a kid named Nathan Bailey). The duffle bags and the reference to Boy Scouts reinforced that. It’s not till well along that I realized that Bailey was a girl. Next came the fact that Sarah wanted to be let in through the answering machine. I still don’t understand why she didn’t just knock.
In the second paragraph, there’s a time warp issue, where Bailey sees Sarah standing with her cell phone BEFORE she opens the door.
Like Miller, I don’t get why someone on the run for her life would pack, of all things, books. If it fits into the story later, that’s fine; but if the author mentions it this early in the story, we need some context.
The metaphors (Analogies? I always get them confused.) in paragraph 5 fly faster than my Aunt Bertie running from a swarm of bees after she went skinny-dipping in a honey vat. Frankly, the paragraph reads like a parody. Need to be careful about that.
In paragraph eight, I think you squander a lot of drama in the memory lapse. I think you should bring us along on their paranoid journey to the coffee shop. I’d also have had Sarah leave a car there earlier so that the two could have a nice expository moment in the car on the way there. (And why not just switch identities in Bailey’s house?)
Speaking of which, unless the girls are twins, or the stalker is blind, I’m not buying for a minute that they can switch identities and pull it off.
Be really careful about lines like, “You’ll always be my best friend, Bailey.” Beyond being awfully saccarine, I think it’s too on-the-nose. Such moments should be shown, not told.
Finally, to Miller, I always thought the weirdos in the airports were Hare Krishnas. When I was in college at William and Mary, there were a bunch of HKs who used to wear tricorn hats with their robes and hand out flowers to tourists. They expected a donation in return, of course, but they never asked when handing the flower. One day, I was on my bicycle when one of these guys handed be a flower and something like, “Peace to all good wood nymphs.” I thanked him, took the flower and rode off with it. He actually chased me for two blocks, robes flowing, one hand on his hat to keep it from flying off his head, the other clutching the rest of his bouquet. I stopped, handed him his flower back, and told him I thought it was a gift. The kind, peace-loving, sandal-wearing young man told me to F-off. Funny how I can have that effect on people.
John Gilstrap
http://www.johngilstrap.com
The title however is great. In my experience nothing instills fear and even panic in the reading public like flowers. The idea of being slapped with a bouquet of roses… or stabbed with a frozen Bird of Paradise…
I like the image of being stabbed with a bird of paradise, John and I agree with the comments made. I was confused about the Bailey/Sarah characters – could hardly distingush one from the other and the metaphors were over the top for me (and believe me I can be a metaphor junkie myself!). I think the writer needs to step back and build real tension and malice here – so we as readers are invested in the set up.
I agree with everything said so far, but I do see promise. The one thing this does reasonably well is establish some mystery: Who is the stalker and why is he stalking Bailey? I also like the plot of having the girls switch places, but this only works if they look extremely alike. People differ more than just in their faces and body shape. People in the same family “walk” the same way. So perhaps the girls could practice being each other in the bathroom / Bailey’s house? And let them make mistakes to add realism.
So…Bailey is male e.g. “Boy Scouts are always prepared” in paragraph 5. Wait! No, Bailey is female e.g. “I picked up the other duffel and my purse” in paragraph 7. Could Bailey be a hermaphrodite? A wannabe? Some kind of cross-gender ‘it’? Please clarify. (Of course Bailey is a “she” but it really does throw the reader to mention Boy Scouts and use a last name for the character which is typically guy-ish. Some hint of Bailey’s gender should be in the first paragraph. Perhaps Bailey could mention that Sarah is one of her girlfriends? They played softball together in middle school? She was wearing that new shade of lipstick that Bailey almost bought in Wal-Mart last week? Anything that will nail down her gender as long as it’s right at the start.)
How does the author rectify “I quickly reached out, grabbed her arm, and pulled her inside” in paragraph 3 with “We needed to appear normal when we walked outside” in paragraph 5? People who are in the mindset of needing to appear normal don’t yank people inside their homes. The mindset of a person in Bailey’s position with a stalker and having decided on a course of action would be consistent.
“The plan was for both of us to drive to Cathy’s Coffee Shop, and then after thirty minutes of sitting and talking together, both of us would go into the restroom. When we emerged, I would look like her and she would look like me. [Good telling. Now end the paragraph.] Somehow, we both managed to act out our parts perfectly. [OK, this is telling but at least this sounds done.] I don’t remember much about what happened during that time, except that time crawled by. [What? More details about the thing I thought was finished?!] Finally, I got into the restroom, and a moment later, Sarah followed. [Now I get specifics?!]” Either tell or show. Pick one and keep it in chronological order, please. Don’t use a word like “Finally” unless you’re really, finally done.
I can’t add anything to the critique comments – they are all spot on.
I wonder about the Krishnas myself. A good friend of mine from high school took off the day after graduation and was never seen again. Word finally filtered back to his parents that he’d joined the Krishnas. I always thought of him when I saw the HK at airports and public squares.
One day on the DC mall many (many) years ago, I heard chanting and stopped to see. A Krishna group was clapping, chanting and dancing, pulling in civilians to join the dance. I let myself be pulled in and it was a delightful experience. I can see how this would appeal to some (like my friend Bob). The illusion of peace and happiness has power.
I left the dance. I still wonder if my friend did.
Terri
I just want to say that I’d definitely keep reading this story. I guess the things you criticized make it mysterious. I think there might actually be a reason for it all. I suspected from the title that the stalker might be a sentient, killer flower or something, but that’s probably just my craziness. Anyway, I like this, and this writer should keep writing. =)
Just tumbled onto the siterecently. Enjoying it and the excellent observations and suggestions.
Comment to John regarding if ‘too hard’. Perhaps not but a term frequently used in critique that I feel is unproductive and harsh is “lazy”. To suggest the writer is lazy is personally perjorative and not useful. What does it mean? I’ve seen and heard it tossed about with some frequency ostensibly as the basis for a number of deficiencies in craft. Would like to hear it less. Make any sense. Or am I just being “stupid” 🙂