Edit: what would you do?--Part 1

I want to try something new. An extended edit of a long sample (the equivalent of the first 10 pages of Mike’s novel) that you take part in. Here’s the plan:

1. I post the entire sample.
2. You read it and think about what—if anything--needs to happen to it.You email me with your ideas, with your critique of this sample from both the writing and storytelling points of view.
3. Next post, I’ll post some of the input I receive (if I get any—please join in the fun) and add my thoughts.
4. In the post after that I’ll do some line editing and, if called for, restructuring.

So c’mon, put on your editorial/critiquer hat, read through this, and share your ideas with me. Here goes…

A crisp, bitter, winter wind knifed between the buildings of downtown Seattle, slashing like transparent rapids through the alleys and streets, seeping into the cracks around doors and windows, and stealing under people’s coats and hats as nature sought to balance hot and cold.

Darren McAllister’s stiffening body lay face-up in a green, rusted-metal Dumpster, half-hidden by discarded pizza boxes and a bulging black plastic trash bag. A dervish wind whipped pages of a copy of Woman’s Day back and forth, slapping his face. The coroner would identify the small, black-rimmed hole behind his left ear as the cause of death, placing the time of his final heartbeat at around 3:00 A.M. on Sunday, February 3rd, 1973.

Under the slate-grey tent that blankets Seattle winters, the downtown stirred with the reluctance of a Monday morning. Delivery trucks rumbled along the streets, spewing black clouds of diesel soot that were hammered to the pavement by the rain. Cars, bumper-to-bumper like a circus train, moved between stoplights, their drivers on autopilot, gulping coffee, eating donuts, shaving, or applying makeup as they cleared the mental cobwebs and prepared for another workweek. Metro busses rumbled to the curb, their doors opening to vomit passengers onto the sidewalks, to scatter like cockroaches as they bolted for the cover of buildings.

Behind the buildings, workers scurried from backdoors to alley Dumpsters, emptying trash bags. Smokers, exiled from smoking inside, huddled against the brick walls for a quick cigarette, cupping their reddened hands against the bone-chilling wind that menaced the precious flame, and threatening to deny them a nicotine fix.

Two street people, one white and one Native American, slogged down the alley with the same, thoughtless, machine-like precision of the employed, enduring a string of days where one is the same as the next. An hour earlier they had been summarily dismissed from the Mission where they had spent the night, suffering the ministry of God in exchange for a warm place to sleep.

Their experienced eyes scanned the alley, looking for a charitably unlocked garbage bin that held the promise of breakfast, knowing that the colder weather preserved the previous nights discards, a small but important advantage in the winter. They waved to the familiar faces of the workers in the doorways.

Most of Seattle’s employed moved with their heads bowed, as much to avoid eye contact with the homeless men and the inevitable plea for a handout, as to guard against the bite of the wind and rain. Only a few gave the two men an almost dismissive wave, but none of them reached for spare change.

The two men, accepting that they were invisible, ignored the rain and water puddles as they dredged through the dumpsters looking for anything that could be eaten, traded, or sold for food and drink.

The Native American, the taller of the two at nearly six feet, had long black hair, a round, pockmarked face, a wisp of a mustache, and coal-black, moist eyes that looked as though they would begin shedding tears at any moment.

Wearing a dirty, olive-drab coat, baggy jeans, and an old pair of jump boots, he shuffled up to Darren’s green steel tomb. Leaning against the cold, wet rim, he raised the lid, letting it bang against the brick building, his nose alert for the odor of fresh food. Some of the businesses chained the lids of their Dumpsters, but not this one. He gazed into Darrin’s opaque, lifeless eyes, rubbed his own eyes, and looked again.

“Holy shit, Custer! Look here!”

Custer interrupted his own search, a look of irritation on his face. With collar length grey hair that started halfway back on his head, a scraggly beard, and a bulbous red nose from a lifetime of alcohol abuse, he was easily six inches shorter than Bull.

Custer moved indifferently to his friends dumpster, mumbling, “Jesus Christ! A man can’t even find his damn breakfast without being disturbed? Why the hell do I hang out with a damn renegade, anyway?”

The Indian ignored the comment.

Grabbing the cold edge of the green box, his dirty, calloused fingers protruding from fingerless gloves, Custer looked inside. “Just some white guy, Bull. He’s sleepin’ on top all the good stuff.” He lurched away in the general direction of the next dumpster, laughing and mumbling incoherently.

“This fucker is dead, Custer! His eyes is open, but he ain’t breathing.”

Bull watched the raindrops fill Darren’s sightless eyes, and then spill down his ashen cheeks. Bull might have still been a little buzzed from the previous night’s drinking, but he knew a dead man when he saw one. It wasn’t that uncommon when you lived on the street. Some got knifed, some shot, and some just died during the night.

“The man just drunk, Bull.”

Custer again made the trek over to Bull’s dumpster, making no attempt to disguise his irritation, and gazed into the milky, sightless eyes.

“Son-of-a-bitch, Bull, you may be right. Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“We gotta tell somebody, Custer. Can’t let him just lay here like this?”

“You crazy, Bull? The man gonna think we killed this asshole. Always do. Lock our butts up. Don’t want to see us around, anyway. Always lookin’ for a fuckin’ excuse. Come on!”

Custer started walking away with a real purpose, now. “Bull, let’s go!”

Bull stood still, weaving unsteadily like a stalk of wheat in the wind, and staring down into Darren’s face. Some ancient instinct, that he didn’t quite understand, stirred within him like a ghost from the past. It was pulling at him to do the right thing by this dead man.

He began to chant, “Naked you came from Earth the Mother . . .” but, he couldn’t remember the rest of the prayer he’d learned as a child on the reservation.

Bull moved in the opposite direction that Custer had gone. The rain drummed steadily on his head, his waist-long hair glistening as he plodded down the alley. The raindrops repelled down the ebony strands of hair to collect at the ends like liquid diamonds before submitting to the pull of gravity. “Gotta tell someone.” He spotted a cop car and waved it down.

. . .

At just over a year old, I had no idea how my father’s murder would forever alter my life. Hell, I never knew the man.

After I was taken by the state from my alcoholic mother, I apparently lived with my aunt for a time, who then passed me off to my grandmother; my father’s mother. My first memories are of living with my grandmother, and her live-in partner, Sledge.

Grandma was a diminutive woman, five-feet tall, and weighing no more than ninety pounds. At age seventy-two, she had a mop of pure white hair, and a face that reflected both the hard times, and the joy she found in life no matter her situation.

It was a soft, pleasant face, with laugh lines framing her mouth that grew even deeper when she laughed, pushing her cheeks up to accentuate the crows feet at the outer corners of eyes the color of a Persian blue sky reflected in a pool of spring water. It was exactly the kind of face you wanted in your grandmother.

Sledge could best be described as a thick man. At five-eight, and around 190 pounds, he was built like stevedore. His hair, having receded halfway toward the back on his head save a small tuft that hung tenaciously to life just above his forehead, had originally been red, but was now grey with only his eyebrows giving away the original color. His broad hands terminated in stubby fingers attached to calloused palms, and his muscled forearms were like a real-life Popeye. He didn’t talk much, preferring to keep within his mind, perhaps somewhere in the past. He put the fear of God in most men, but he was always gentle with me. The only person who seemed able to back him down was Grandma.

I would learn, years later, that Sledge earned his name while working as a roustabout in the circus where, as legend had it, he sent some man to his final reward using a sledge hammer. Exactly what this unfortunate man might have done to earn such a violent end remains a mystery.

I would also learn, again later in my life, that my father, Darren McAllister, had been a small-time crook, gambler, and occasional drug dealer, losing his life after he swindled some L.A. Mexicans. At least, that was the conclusion of the cops. While I was probably fortunate not to have had his influence during my formative years, there has always been a part of me that wanted to know the man, if for no other reason than to determine how much of my personality was genetic.

Over time, in addition to the knowledge of my fathers’ demise in downtown Seattle, I would learn of my mother’s drinking, late night carousing, and her abandonment of me and my siblings, my sister Susan, the oldest of three children, and Darrin Jr. a year older than I.

After having Child Services declare her unfit, she had tried to place us with relatives, succeeding only in getting my aunt to take me. My siblings were placed in foster homes, and it would be many years before I would reunite with them. My mother died when, apparently drunk, she walked in front of a car on Aurora Avenue.

What I did know was that I was happy living with my grandmother, Minnie, and the man called Sledge, in our tiny house in the South Park neighborhood of Seattle. My happiness would end abruptly on a Saturday in September, just past my fifth birthday.

I sensed something was wrong the day my life changed. The night before, after going to bed, I heard Grandma and Sledge arguing in the kitchen. That wasn’t so unusual. What was different was that they seemed to be arguing about me. I wasn’t able to catch all that was said, but I heard my name mentioned several times. I tried to recall if I had done anything that made me the subject of their dispute, but nothing came to mind.

Sledge wasn’t around when I got up on Saturday morning. I hated it when he was gone, especially on a Saturday. That meant no fishing in Lake Washington, a pretty reliable weekly ritual that I looked forward to all week. Sometimes he would take off for the weekend, but he would always tell me on Friday that we weren’t going fishing. This week he had said nothing to me.

I had my morning bowl of oatmeal and raisins with cream and sugar, a slice of cinnamon toast, and a glass of milk, as Grandma puttered around the kitchen, nervously glancing out the window. I watched her warily as I punched the raisins down into the oatmeal, watching the milk back flow into the depression in the gruel.

After breakfast, I went outside to play with my cars in the warm September sunshine. The leaves were starting to turn as hints of red, yellow and orange colored the edges. A gentle breeze slipped through the trees, rustling the foliage, send a few of them floating to the ground. I abandoned my cars to catch them before they landed.

Returning to my cars, I staged a high-speed chase between the police car and the crooks. The crooks crashed into the large magnolia tree in the side yard and were busted by the cops. I was the cop.

After the big chase, I lay down on my back and studied the puffs of clouds in the sky, watching them morph into cats, dogs, cars, and trees. A seagull floated overhead, and high above him an eagle circled slowly. The tension of the morning, and the night before, was lost in the imagination of my five-year-old mind.

“Cam? Come in for lunch.”

I reluctantly surrendered my daydreaming for food.

After a lunch of macaroni and cheese, rye bread with butter, and a glass of milk, I returned to the yard to play. I was planning my next adventure when the sound of an engine brought my head up. I watched a car move slowly down the road in front of the house.

The green station wagon, with all the windows down, rolled slowly to a stop in front of the house. I sprinted to the back door, dashing through the kitchen and into the living room as the screen door slammed behind me. I cringed at the sound, but Grandma didn’t rebuke me as she usually did. I took up my favorite observation post in the wooden rocking chair by the front window. This was where I could watch the goings on of my world. I rocked vigorously as I looked through the window.

We didn’t get many visitors at our house. Grandma kept to herself, not inviting close friendships, and Sledge had run off several door-to-door salesmen; the grapevine warning others of his dislike for their profession.

Grandma fidgeted, wiping the yellow vinyl kitchen counter again and again with her apron. I rocked faster, the old rocker squeaking in protest.

A small man, balding in front, got out of the driver’s seat, the hair on the back half of his head sticking out at odd angles made me think of a cartoon character. He wore brown work pants, brown oxfords, and a plaid, short-sleeved shirt.

Walking toward the house with his head down and shoulders hunched, he stopped, placed one foot on the first step, looked up at the house, and then at a piece of paper he had taken from his shirt pocket. He returned the note to his pocket, his lips moving as if talking to someone, then he continued up the steps.

I knew that this man was somehow connected to what was wrong with Grandma and Sledge. I gripped the rocker arms tighter as the man knocked at the front door. I watched him reach up, trying to smooth the bristle of hair on the back of his head. I wanted to run away, although I didn’t know from what, or to where.

Grandma let him in and offered him a seat. I moved as far back in my chair as I could.

The two of them sat on the couch, talking in hushed voices, occasionally glancing over at me, the man smiling at me, and Grandma looking sad. I didn't like this man. I didn’t yet have a template for judging people, but the warning flags of fear were fully deployed in my mind. This man was trouble.

Okay, now’s the time to go through it once more, and then let me know what, if anything, you think needs to be done. Remember that the author will be reading these posts. I will post responses with first names only, as is my usual practice.

RR

Free edit in exchange for posting permission. You send a sample that you have questions about and of which you'd like an edit. I won't post it without your permission.

Tip Jar: visitors have asked for a way to lay a dime or two on me and, I'll confess, it would be helpful. So if you want to chip in, click here. And many thanks.

© 2005 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[John]

To the writer of this piece: Sorry to be so blunt--keep in mind, it's only my opinion. Now for the bloodletting.

I feel the story should start with the second paragraph--the body in the dumpster--and then go directly to the opening paragraph after the first break, the one that ends with, " . . . Hell, I never knew the man."

After a BRIEF narrative summary (I like the part where the boy is playing cops and robbers with the cars; it gives a little insight), go directly to the green station wagon and continue with the next seven paragraphs.

This is the story. Virtually everything else should be cut. Way too much narrative discription and summary to hold my attention--there's really nothing going on. If this is a novel, there's time for backstroy devices later on, once the reader is hooked. As for the city discriptions and the scene with the street people discovering the body--are they needed at all? Are they crucial to the stroy? This early on, and without coming from any particular POV, it's like interjecting non-fiction commentary that serves only to disrupt the momentum.

[Pat Loomis]

With all due respect, to the writer of this piece, and without any bloodletting, I agree that this opening chapter of the novel contains too much narrative and far too much description, in particular. I think the writer has a gift where description is concerned, but it needs to be kept under control. In my humble opinion, description should give the reader enough information without overwhelming him, which *some* of this description does. We don't need to know all of the detail he uses in the beginning. We want to know what the story is about and no matter how wonderfully he describes the chill morning and the people in it, it's too much.

The same thing is true when he switches to first person. Again, tightening up all the little details would help immensely. Yes, it's true that some details can provide insight into the character, but I'm afraid he's gone way overboard here. I would also challenge him to choose the best adjective he can and discard all others; he's using too many.

I think there is a wonderful story here and that the writer has some fine storytelling skills. At present, though, the chapter needs to be honed down and sharpened in its focus because the beauty of this tale is being lost in too much verbiage.

As always, my opinion, and it's up to the writer to decide what stays and what goes.

[James C. Hess]

I'm going to have beg off this time when it comes to editing because I am in the throes of a writing competition: I'm the big dog judge in the final stage of judging, and the competition closes to submissions in three days, and it looks like the number of submissions received will set a new record.

But let me just say this, based on readings I have done previously, both in competitions and workshops: If you don't hook my attention and hold it in the first twenty-five to fifty words you probably won't.