Author Topic: PC076: The Small Door  (Read 12418 times)

Dave

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Reply #25 on: December 07, 2009, 01:08:38 AM
Good so far... where's the rest of it?

Since when does the definition of a "story" not include RESOLUTION?

Grr.

-Dave (aka Nev the Deranged)


Heradel

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Reply #26 on: December 07, 2009, 03:13:37 AM
Good so far... where's the rest of it?

Since when does the definition of a "story" not include RESOLUTION?

Grr.

The Sopranos?

Really though, a long time. I'd argue that Love's Labour's Lost doesn't really have a resolution.

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Jagash

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Reply #27 on: December 07, 2009, 12:16:17 PM
This piece frustrated me despite the generally good writing.  My key complaint is that half the story is built explaining how Macy is sick and thinning while the other half is describing the small door which "only Macy might be able to squeeze through".   They explicitly mention that it might be possible for Macy to use the door, but when the subject is mentioned, our protagonist doesn't even fight the statement to the contrary.    Doesn't even try.

Either don't put the gun on the mantelpiece, or let the bloody thing go off.

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Scattercat

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Reply #28 on: December 07, 2009, 08:03:00 PM
Either don't put the gun on the mantelpiece, or let the bloody thing go off.

Or show the reader a character picking the gun up, considering it, putting it back, starting to leave, stopping, and turning to look again at that gun, just resting quietly on its mantelpiece as the lights go down...



mbrennan

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Reply #29 on: December 23, 2009, 05:49:23 AM
(Can you tell I'm catching up Podcastle?  It's the one virtue of long plane flights.)

As with "Superhero Girl," this one disappointed me because the fantasy component was so understated as to be almost nonexistent.  It really didn't show up until the last few minutes of this story, after more than half an hour of essentially mundane narrative.  Well-done mundane narrative, mind you; my one technical complaint about it is that there was a stretch where it seemed like one sentence about the weirdo, three paragraphs about the sister's illness, repeat pattern.  A bit too skewed of a balance for me, but fortunately it righted itself after a while.

In the end, though . . . the end didn't do it for me.  As someone else said in this comment thread, you could remove the overtly magical element from those last couple of minutes and be left with 99% the same story.  The rest of it is only "fantastical" in the way that (when I was a kid) From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler was fantastical*.  Imaginative, yes; what I'm looking for in a fantasy story, no.


*So this is where I hope memory serves me correctly, and there isn't any actual fantasy in From the Mixed-Up Files.  Because otherwise I've just undermined my own point . . . .