Not Quite Right features discussions that are unfiltered and uncensored,
and may include themes that are inappropriate for younger listeners.
Also, I swear a lot something doesn't seem
quite right.
Welcome to not quite right.
My name's Ed and I'm Amanda.
This is daredevil #3 for the April round.
So as a reminder, the April round had three prompts.
The word prompt seal, the action prompt of wiping out,
and the anti prompt of break the rule, Kill Your Darlings.
As a reminder, our daredevils are entrants who have
volunteered for the privilege of being absolutely pummelling on the podcast.
As we read this story, share our thoughts and hopefully learn
something together.
And this is a newbie this time.
Yeah.
And we're not quite sure how to say your name.
It's in here as Monom slash Keroche.
You've left us a voice message in which you refer to yourself as Kuroche.
So we'll call you Kuroche for this episode.
So welcome.
It's your first time here, so enjoy.
Sit back and hopefully you got your glass of wine or whatever it is that you use to
numb the pain.
Maybe some earplugs.
Yeah, that might help.
So here he is, leaking compartments by monem slash
karosh.
Jacob sat in his room, staring at the small bucket on his desk,
collecting drips from the ceiling, the pling of each drop hanging in the
stale air.
Around the bucket, small neat stacks of books and notebooks
formed a kind of fortress, each pile perfectly measured.
Only two things matched the buckets worn out presence.
The first was a dusty picture frame on the bookshelf, a photo of Mum,
a faint crack slicing across its glass.
The second was Jacob himself.
At a glance his all black clothes seemed formal,
but a closer look showed threadbare patches and loose threads.
His eyes weren't faring much better.
Jacob patiently counted under his breath.
555656 pling.
Scowling, he raised his head and grumbled half a
second faster than 52 minutes ago.
Seriously.
Jacob's head snapped towards his bedroom door,
where his older brother Connor stood, incredulous.
Go away Connor, I don't have time for another pun.
Connor stepped inside with a theatrical wave.
Come on man, the ceiling slash ceiling joke was
perfect.
You just have no taste.
Jacob turned back to the ripples in the bucket.
Go find tasteful people then.
Connor plopped onto Jacob's bed, legs kicking over the side.
We're family, idiot.
I promised mum I'd have your back pling.
Jacob stiffened, but said nothing.
After a beat, Connor's voice softened.
You realise you're messing up your own schedule, right?
It's been 2 hours, you're supposed to be studying.
Jacob sighed, tilting his head toward him.
Hour 53.
He corrected dryly.
Now, what's your advice, oh wise one?
Work on your bed, Sleeping only, floor games only.
Dining table, eating only.
Connor groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose.
Chair without the desk.
Parts of a whole got to be together.
My desk, EW.
Connor let out a short bit of laugh.
Library.
Jacob shrugged.
Would throw off the timing Cling.
Connor shot to his feet, frustration flashing across his face.
It can't mess it up worse than two hours of this sitting in your own head doing
nothing.
Jacob didn't flinch.
Chaos propagates through compromise.
Long term damage.
Connor stared at him like he was speaking another language.
If you're done.
Jacob said, pointing lazily at the door.
It's where you came in, no?
Connor grabbed Jacob's chair and spun him around, locking eyes.
Thanks to this crap you're nicking any chance of having a real life?
Jacob leaned in, forehead brushing Connors.
I have order, I have control.
Connor's voice dropped gravelly.
What about meaning Jacob got any of that?
Jacob's mouth tightened.
His eyes flicked just briefly toward the cracked photo on the shelf.
What are you getting at?
Stop ************ me and answer.
The room felt small, claustrophobic.
Jacob whispered.
I'm happy, Connor, why would I need meaning?
Connor's jaw tightened.
Because Mum would have wanted it for you.
Jacob's breath hitched, his chest tightening.
She's dead.
Cling Jacob shoved Connor away, blinking hard.
A suffocating silence entrenched itself.
Cling Jacob grabbed his jacket.
He left the room a little before schedule.
Thank you, Karosh, for sharing your story with us.
And Karosh has left us a message as well, so we'll listen to that now.
Hello, Ed and Amanda, it's me, Roche, calling in from California.
I hope you guys are doing well.
So this comp was a bit of a fever dream for me.
I had to write the story in less than 10 hours because I had an exam before it.
I had an exam after it.
I had a paper due in the middle of it.
It was kind of insane, but I mean, you could probably tell just from the
fact that I actually forgot to replace the pun placeholder in the story.
Anyway, that aside, there's one thing that I've realised has
gone over a lot of heads when I ask others.
Kind of give me feedback on my work.
And it's that compartmentalising is a symptom of some mental health distress
where when people instead of trying to actually process their emotions,
separate them, like they separate their grief from
themselves and Oh no, that that's something else.
They just kind of separate entirely.
And that can bleed into real life where where they just compartmentalise their
life entirely.
So I hope that makes the story make a bit more sense and also I wanted to get some
feedback and some tips on how to make my stories feel more independent.
I always feel like my short stories are just not contained in themselves.
They should be longer.
Thank you.
Yeah, so interesting perspective there.
I think the time constraint thing, we can all identify with that.
I think we've all written stories for comps that have been very last minute.
And yeah, I think it's always better to submit than
it is to DNF percent.
And I love that about flash fiction, that you can actually create a whole
piece and okay, like maybe you could keep editing or
change things and of course it's always going to be improved.
Well, not always, but most of the time it's going to be
improved by more work.
Yeah, but you've got a fully fleshed out story
here, and I think that's really cool.
And the other comments as well around the compartmentalisation,
I think they do provide a lot of context for this story and what he was trying to
achieve.
Yeah.
And it wasn't evident to me from the story itself.
So it's interesting to get that extra insight, I guess,
as to what you were going for.
Yeah.
And I think definitely the isolation aspect of things comes through, you know,
dealing with trauma, dealing with the difficult situation and
isolating yourself, maybe leaning heavily into routine and
patterns and that kind of thing.
That can be a response that some people have so soothing.
Yeah.
So that came through.
But that compartmentalisation context definitely helps.
I also think that it's interesting that you said you wrote this in between a
bunch of exams and, and the character here is studying for
exams as well.
So definitely writing what you know there.
Yeah.
And the thought process of the character being like,
you should be studying right now.
You're wasting your time.
Hopefully that's not like a reflection of your own thoughts.
I think it might be alright, but let's get into the story.
So this is now the third Daredevil in a row that has begun the story with a
character name.
Yeah, that's the first word.
Yeah.
First word for all three so far.
People are really listening to you, though.
Oh, and look, I'll say again what I said during SJ
Snyder's episode, which is that I still believe that naming
your character is very important.
I don't necessarily think it needs to be the first word.
I'm not saying it shouldn't hear.
This is just a more general comment that I guess it's not all about the name.
I know we emphasise that, but it's more about introducing your
character in a way that helps us identify who they are and know a little bit more
about them.
And a name is one way to do that.
So I do actually appreciate that context setting of of the names here.
It's not necessary.
Like you can find other ways to introduce a character,
but I think it's a pretty efficient way most of the time.
I think what it could come down to as well.
Like this story opens with Jacob sat in his room.
That's a much better opening than he sat in his room because the first question
that you get is who is he?
Yes, And you need to answer that straight away.
You can answer it without spending any more words.
Exactly.
All right.
So Jacob sat in his room, staring at the small bucket on his desk
collecting drips from the ceiling, the pling of each drop hanging in the
stale air.
So great scene setting.
First up, we know where we are, we know who our character is.
And there's also all of this other sensory detail and introducing that pling,
which is a feature throughout the story.
So yeah, establishing that motif that is going to
be repetitive throughout the story.
And I really liked that.
I I thought that pling really worked nicely.
It's, it keeps a certain beat to the story,
like a pattern, but also, as you say, it's a sensory detail,
like we're hearing that sound and that sort of echoey sound,
which I think fits the mood of the IECE as well.
O Then we go on around the bucket.
Small, neat stacks of books and notebooks formed
a kind of fortress, each pile perfectly measured.
So I would say, I guess we're going to start with the
first challenge there, which is that I think that's a little bit
telling.
We say each pile perfectly measured.
Yeah.
You know, that's an important detail.
It's certainly something that's establishing information about this
character that I think needs to be there.
But I think there's a way that you could show that in a more sensory sort of way
and depict that scene without necessarily spelling it out.
And it's not essential, like you've conveyed the necessary
information there.
But I don't know, I think there's a way of maybe just
evoking that a little bit more.
So you're calling out specific details as important here, like the books, piles,
perfectly measured worn out bucket, the dusty picture frame on the shelf with
the faint crack slicing, and then going into detail about Jacob's
appearance there.
I feel like all of that does contribute to the picture that we have of Jacob,
but I think it'll be more effective to get straight into the action of the scene
and have those details come through in the action and when they're relevant.
Something about just calling out a picture frame on the bookshelf as being
meaningful upfront is a bit telling.
Just saying he's in A room.
The meaningful thing in the room is that picture of his mother.
Yeah.
That picture should come up in the action, in the plot of the story,
either through the interaction with his brother, maybe someone,
which it does later.
Yeah.
And I think it's more effective done that way.
Like it comes into the action, his brother sort of glances at it or what
have you.
And.
And that implies something.
I mean, it is telling like only two things match
the buckets worn out.
Like you're telling us how to feel about that sort of stuff.
I guess it's difficult because we're sort of challenging on a bit of a higher order
skill here, because I don't think there's anything
necessarily wrong with what's being described here.
It's like taking it to that next level.
So yes, these details are relevant.
The information about the books being neatly stacked,
like that's telling us a little bit about his character and what he's struggling
with at the moment, The detail of his clothing being a bit
worn out.
These things are sort of, they are painting a picture and I think
that that's part of it.
But as you say, it's not just about like listing things
in the room.
We've got to bring them into the story.
And after that sort of initial paragraph, it starts to feel like too much,
like it has to sort of flow into the story and,
and the action sort of has to start happening.
And you can bring those details into the action.
You can talk about his clothes.
Yeah, as he moves around the room or his
brother can make a comment about his clothes, for example.
And there are ways to bring those details in that make it feel like the story's
moving along.
Yeah.
And not to, like, harp on about this because it is,
as you say, it's a higher order thing and it's fairly
minor.
But I think what this is is an attempt at showing, not telling.
Right.
So instead of saying he's feeling this way,
Karosh is kind of describing the appearance of the room and the things in
that room exactly, which is great.
Yeah, which is great.
But also it is showing us in a kind of telling way, if that makes sense.
Like, it's telling that you're showing us this
particular thing.
Oh, my God, this is so hard.
It's so hard because I think we all struggle with this.
And this is the thing about show don't tell that on its face it seems like it
should be very obvious.
Yeah.
And it's almost insulting.
I've had this said to me, you know, in critique, like, oh, show, don't tell.
And you're like, I know that, like, come on, like,
don't mansplain it to me or whatever.
But it actually is many, many things wrapped up into one.
And so it's not just like a yes or no kind of situation.
There are different ways of coming at it.
And I think you're right.
I think it's an attempt to do that.
But at the same time, it's not quite, yeah,
connecting in this particular instance.
Yeah.
OK.
So let's move on.
Then we have Jacob patiently counting under his breath,
555650 set and then the pling again.
So reintroducing that motif of the pling and also introducing us to this idea of
counting and the fact that he's leaning into the routine and the predictability
of the situation.
Maybe, you know, that's something that struck me reading
the story, this predictability as a bit of a,
a crutch or something that can be depended on while he's going through this
trauma.
And we don't know what trauma that is.
We know about the picture of his mum that's been called out as implied as an
important factor in this story.
And look, again, like, you know, we're saying that these details are
important.
They are.
Because I think just showing that picture of the mum was enough to make me
understand that maybe mum's not around anymore.
And that's great.
That's great subtextual detail.
So we've just challenged it.
But at the same time, like it needs to be there.
It does.
Yeah, I agree.
Just jumping back just quickly.
There's a line here I just wanted to ask about.
It's the comparison of his clothes and so on to the bucket.
And it says his eyes weren't faring much better.
Yeah.
And I didn't understand what that meant exactly.
So we've got a closer look, showed that the clothes were threadbare
patches and loose threads.
His eyes weren't faring much better.
MMM.
Like your eyes can't be threadbare and patchy in that way.
So I feel like that line, it's like an incomplete.
Yeah, it's an incomplete thought.
So I just think, you know, that would be something I'd go back and
just tweak a little.
MMM.
So now comes the pun placeholder.
So Karosh said, oh, yeah, I think you could tell I was writing this
in a rush because I left a a pun placeholder and never went back.
And so this is the ceiling, ceiling joke, right?
But I didn't see that as a placeholder.
I didn't actually.
But I actually noted this too, because reading through this, I was like,
oh, would have been better if we were told
that pun.
Yeah, I assumed he was referencing, like, an earlier instruction they had.
So yeah, it works.
It makes sense.
Like it logically makes sense that he could have made a joke earlier in the day.
Yeah.
But yeah, you're right.
Like it sort of feels like unfair that we didn't get the joke.
Was it funny, like, or not like, how do we feel about it?
But, you know, I don't think it it broke the story by
any means, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.
Yeah.
So we have Connor coming into the room and, you know,
we know that they're brothers.
It's very, it's very efficiently introduced that
that's his brother.
And the rest of the story is, I guess, mostly dialogue between these two.
I guess one nitpick that I have is just at times it was a little bit difficult to
know who's speaking at every moment.
Sometimes I was reading through this thinking actually, hang on,
is that Connor or is that his brother?
Yeah.
And I think it's, it's not evident when you're listening to
this story, but a very quick and easy way to fix that
in a couple of instances is just a line break issue.
So we've got some line breaks between dialogue and action beats.
Now, typically, and this is a matter of style,
but I would say typically, I would suggest a line of dialogue can be
paired with the action beat of the character who says the line of dialogue.
I think that's pretty, pretty accepted practise, right?
And basically the line break comes when you change the actor,
when you change the person doing the action or in or saying the line,
right is another type of action.
So if Jacob is saying something and then doing something,
those two things should go together on the same line,
and then you can do a line break and that will be more evident to a reader coming
to the page.
It won't impact the audio, though, which if you are reading in a single
voice as you did just now, it may still be confusing who's speaking.
So yeah, I mean, Sarah asked in her Daredevil episode
about dialogue tags, and maybe a couple more dialogue tags
would have helped here, or action beats, like being paired more directly with the
lines.
So through this dialogue as well, we kind of start to get the picture of
what's going on because I guess we're not really sure.
We say that he's in his room, we know that he's got issues,
we know that he's maybe detached from reality a little bit.
He's counting things.
But it's not until Connor comes in and says you realise you're messing up your
own schedule.
It's been 2 hours, you're supposed to be studying.
You kind of get the context of who he is.
He's he's a student, he's wasting his time here.
And we work out that it's because of his mother.
So I like the back and forth between the brothers though.
Like I think it's good.
I think it's mostly like believable dialogue.
You know, you get that sense of brothers getting
frustrated with each other, which is good.
It brings that conflict in.
There were maybe a couple of lines that didn't ring quite as true to me, like,
and this is the kind of thing that's difficult because you're trying to convey
information, but I think you should always prioritise
like the realism of it in in a story like this anyway.
So for example, when Connor says we're family idiot, yeah,
it's it, you know, it's a little simple thing,
but would you say to your brother, we're family?
Like, I don't know that that really rang true
to me.
Like, it's arguable, I guess.
Like other people might have a different opinion,
but I think you've just got to be really careful to keep that dialogue believable.
Like, what would brothers really be saying to
each other?
And then later, a bit later now Jacob replies to his
brother saying chaos propagates through compromise.
And that's that's quite a sentence, right?
And maybe that's this character, although that voice hasn't been evident
up to that point.
It sounds like he's quoting something.
And maybe that is a quote that I'm not familiar with.
But it did feel a little kind of.
A bit awkward and maybe not realistic to me as something that two brothers who are
having a fight would just say to each other.
But, you know, like, that's debatable.
These are your characters.
You can make them say whatever you like.
But I guess from my perspective, you just got to be careful to make sure
that that's ringing true.
That may be coming from Croatia's physics exam studying, like,
waves propagating through.
Yeah, maybe or something.
Yeah.
The other thing I just call out in this section, this exchange,
which I didn't quite get when I read this story,
and I think it makes more sense now that we have Croatia's insight into what this
story is about.
But work on your bed, sleeping only, floor games only.
This is the compartmentalization part of it.
Like, the floor is for games, the dining table is for eating,
the bed is for sleeping.
I didn't quite get what that was all meaning the first time I read it.
Well, I think that's establishing this
character as someone who needs order.
And it's like, I can't just go and do my study somewhere
else because I do my study here at my desk.
And those places are for other things.
So I think that might be establishing a character who's inflexible and who,
you know, struggles to do things differently,
you know, when presented with something unexpected
or unpredictable, like a leaking roof.
Yeah.
And Courage describes it as being a grief response.
Right, That compartmentalisation.
So I didn't quite put those pieces together.
No.
Well, I understand compartmentalising a little
bit differently.
I understand that as, like, you're talking physically, right.
And I'm not sure that that's exactly what he was trying to convey here,
but let's imagine that that was part of it.
Well, it's putting things in a box, right.
But if we're talking about compartmentalising an emotion,
it's very much about about like putting it away in a box and not dealing with it
kind of thing.
And like separating it from yourself as that's not something I'm feeling or
whatever.
That's just over here.
Like that's how I understand it.
Yeah.
Or it can be something that you only deal with in certain contexts.
For example, people compartmentalise work and home
life.
Like when you're at home you don't talk about work,
you don't deal with work things when you're at work the other way around.
So that's one way of doing it.
So that's why I figured the compartmentalisation is like,
you only ate at the at the dining room table.
You don't do anything else, the dining room tables for eating as a
reflection of the way that he's compartmentalising his grief in other
ways.
So I'm just Googling it now just to help us understand it.
Compartmentalisation is a form of psychological defence mechanism in which
thoughts and feelings that seem to conflict are kept separated or isolated
from each other in the mind.
So those with post traumatic stress disorder may use compartmentalisation to
separate positive and negative self aspects.
I guess with that, you know definition of
compartmentalisation and completely understand that.
Agree that's the same, same as my understanding of it.
But I'm not sure in what way he is compartmentalising his grief.
His grief.
It's clear he's not dealing with it directly.
He's experiencing grief and he's focused on a drip in the ceiling is the
implication while he's on the floor.
Now's my time for grief and when I finish this,
it's going to be time for something else.
And he's spending too much time now in his grief.
And that's why his brothers come in and like, Hey, you know, what are you doing?
You should be doing something else.
And he's like, no, it's grief time.
No, I don't think so.
I think it's the opposite, right?
Like he's counting the drips because it that's what he's focusing on.
He's focusing on that because he can't deal with the fact that he's experiencing
grief.
I guess what makes me think this apart from the,
the context is the ending where it's he left the room a little before schedule,
implying that there is a schedule that he's in there for a certain amount of
time doing this thing.
And then there's the next stage where he's out and what his brother's managed
to to do is get him out of his room a bit earlier.
I just perceived that as him being more flexible.
I mean, I guess the fact that we are disagreeing
on this and not really kind of getting to the bottom of it is a problem with this
story.
Like, it needs a little bit more clarity there
of what he's doing, what Jacob's doing, what his brother is dealing with.
I think all of the clues are there, but we're not really seeing the whole
picture.
Yeah, there's a, the dots aren't quite connected for us.
I guess it's a case of not understanding the characters motivations.
Like, we don't have a scene goal for him
necessarily.
It seems like his scene goal is to study.
Yeah, but also not because he leaves the room
at the end.
And is his brother trying to snap him out of his grief or is he trying to help him
study like those?
That's not really quite clear.
We can sort of guess what he might be doing,
but it's not evident what each of their motivations are within this scene,
what each of them want.
The conflict is clear that he's in the room not achieving anything,
and the brother's getting frustrated with him.
But we're not really sure why he's frustrated.
Like, what doesn't matter to him.
He wants his brother to have meaning in his life,
but it's not clear why leaving his room would give him meaning.
I guess is the ending a resolution or not?
We don't really know.
Like, has he managed to encourage him out of
his room ahead of schedule, try to?
Is that a step to breaking whatever cycle he's in of, you know,
watching the plinks fall kind of thing?
Or is that just what it says that he's gotten out a little bit before schedule
and he's just going to return to it?
So the things that we do know, like his brother obviously wants to break
him out of this habit, but we're not entirely sure what Jacob
really is dealing with in this situation, how he's dealing with the grief and what
that cycle looks like.
I think I think a lot of it is clear, but I guess the that compartmentalization
and how that affects his whole state of mind is a little bit unclear.
I'm not sure.
Look, I know a lot of this is coming from
Croatia's voicemail kind of explaining that compartmentalization,
which is I said at the outset, I wouldn't necessarily have gotten that
as like the key take away theme.
Yeah.
But I think even with that input, we still are a little bit unclear about
the characters when the story ends, like they didn't get what they wanted,
but to what extent.
And I think that's the challenge because I think sometimes as right as we have
these ideas that inspire us and that send us down a path of writing a story.
And then maybe the story takes on its own life.
You know, the characters start to say and do things
that may or may not be revealing any, any of that meaning to the reader.
It's like a, it's your inspiration, but it's not necessarily a fully formed
thought around that.
And so you're exploring this idea, and the story does explore that idea,
but doesn't necessarily reach a certain conclusion about that idea.
Yeah.
And it doesn't necessarily need to, but I think emotionally it needs to reach
a conclusion.
Yeah.
And so I'd, I'd say, you know, taking this scene in its totality,
have a think about what that emotion is that you're trying to leave the reader
with.
Like, why have you selected this scene, this interaction between Jacob and his
brother, to be the highlight scene of the
relationship?
You know, so at the end of it, there should be some sort of change.
There should be some sort of revelation.
We don't see a whole lot of development.
We see the interaction end, and they kind of go their separate ways.
And this could have been, you know, imagining these two characters as real
people.
This may have happened 100 times before in the same way.
Why this one?
What happens here that is a little bit different or special?
Well, I think like, we reach that emotional pitch of him
yelling, she's dead.
Yeah, right.
So we we've gotten under his skin enough to get him to yell that.
And then shortly afterwards, he kind of shoves his way out of the room
and we see that he's leaving earlier than expected.
And we imagine that that's progress of some kind.
Yeah.
But the reaction of she's dead and him storming out of the room doesn't feel
like a natural conclusion to that conversation.
His brother's saying you need go get a life, and he's like, well, mum's dead.
Yeah.
I just want to think about perspective for a second, right?
Because we've got this kind of an objective narrator.
I think it would be interesting to choose the brother because like,
the brother is the one who has the scene goal.
I guess the brother is the one who's coming into it with an aim to change
something.
Yeah, I think the key in this scene to
establishing an emotional connection for the reader and delivering an emotional
impact might be to tell the story from the perspective of the character who
wants to achieve that outcome.
I mean, what you've picked up on there is that
Connor is the protagonist of this story.
Like, he's the one with the agency, he's the one with the single.
He's the one who wants to make something happen.
But our focus is on not on the change agent, but on the subject of that.
And so, yeah, I think you're right.
I think maybe this is actually Connor's story, not Jacob's story,
even though Jacob is the one who is experiencing this issue.
But, you know, they're experiencing it together.
We don't know much about Connor's view of things apart from that he feels like he
has responsibility for his brother and getting him out there into the world.
No, you're right.
I think that would be interesting.
It's always hard to hear that kind of feedback, though,
of like big stuff like that.
Like or just completely change who your main character is.
I'm not sure that it's necessarily a big change in a short story like this.
You can just tweak and you still have all the main elements there.
Yeah, I don't think it necessarily is.
And in fact, it adds a little bit more, I don't know, intentions.
So for example, when you open up on what is essentially
like this shot of Jacob in his room just lying there,
having that told from the perspective of the brother who's opening the door,
looking at him and saying like the squalor he's in frames that context a
little bit better.
So it's not just, and I think going back to how we started
talking about this, like from an omniscient narrators
perspective, just mentioning the picture, hmm, seems a bit odd.
Like why are you calling that out?
It's a bit telling, however, if that came from Connor opening the door,
seeing his brother, glancing up at the photo of his mum.
That's a strong connection.
Yeah.
You know, that's a more powerful connection to draw.
And just from a very basic structural point of view, if you were to do that.
I think this is important and it's something most people do instinctively.
But sometimes, occasionally, we can veer off course a little bit with
this.
But whoever your protagonist is, they should be the first character that
you mentioned, probably usually, and reason being,
because that's a cue to the reader that this is the person who is our main
character, who we are focusing on.
If they're the first one that you mention or if it's clear that what's being viewed
in that scene at that time is from the perspective of that person.
So yeah, you could just switch it up to being
Connor's perspective at that outset, much more clearly mentioning him first,
but then moving straight into what he's looking at, I suppose.
I think what you've got here that is really good,
that works well is this is a really emotional scene.
Like, it's already got so much emotional energy,
the fact that, you know, the loss of a parent dealing with that
deep trauma, and you've established this idea of
compartmentalization, this recurring theme of the drops coming
through the ceiling is keeping time around this grief.
And I think it's a really powerful idea.
That's a compelling idea.
So I think, like, the core of this story, the emotional core really is there.
Yeah.
It is super relatable.
And Karosh was aiming to kind of reflect this experience of grief,
and I think he's done that really well.
Yeah.
You know, I've experienced grief.
I've lost a parent.
And it does mess with your head.
And it does sort of flow into other aspects of your life.
And, you know, different people handle things
differently.
And when you've got siblings, of course, like,
siblings can handle things very differently.
And so you can see here, there's that conflict.
But there is also heart there, you know, the brothers not coming in with bad
intentions.
You know, he wants to help his brother.
He sees that as his duty and I think that's really sweet.
I also really like that counting device.
We've seen that in some of the other stories.
So the counting of the seconds and the the plink.
We've already mentioned that plink, that repetitive nature of that,
that sensory detail is really nice.
And that hollow sound of it really fits the mood and the tone of this piece.
But the counting of the seconds as well, again, really fits that tone.
Like we're talking about that life's short and reflecting on that as well,
but also zeroing in on that detail of, like, how many seconds.
Like, I think that's really powerful in flash
fiction.
And we do see that sometimes.
And I think it works really well.
I think it keeps the pace going.
It keeps like a tempo to the story, and in this case,
a tempo that matches the mood of the story as well.
Yeah, it keeps the pace, but it also gets us kind of inside his
head.
And it's expressing that craving of order that he feels in that situation.
So, yeah, a lot of positives here in the story.
What I would have liked to see to kind of elevate it.
I mean, we've kind of expressed some points
around perspective and helping us understand a little bit what each
character wants out of the scene.
And we speak a lot about the ending and kind of sticking the landing on stories.
So we end the story with a pling.
Pling Jacob, Chef Connor away, blinking hard, suffocating.
Silence entrenched itself.
Pling Jacob grabs his jacket.
He left the room a little before schedule.
So just kind of giving that ending a bit more emotional resonance.
And that comes back to the question of like, what is the scene expressing?
What emotion do you want to actually leave us with?
Yeah.
Like, is it relief that the brother has.
Yeah, moved on a little bit, or is it further frustration?
Like he's kind of sort of shoved past him and rejected what he said?
It wouldn't take much to connect those dots.
Yeah.
So we feel the frustration.
We feel the confrontation that's just taking place.
Obviously, it was very emotionally charged.
There's a, you know, she's dead kind of moment, But yeah,
what's the emotional payload there of that scene?
So I mentioned this in the previous Daredevil episode that sometimes I make a
comment on a story that I'm reading and say it's just a conversation.
Yeah, this is a story that I would make that
comment for.
And the reason I say that is because it's two people talking, which is great.
We do have that conflict there.
We do have the exchange between the two brothers, but we don't have really,
again that rising and falling action that we talked about previously.
In this case, we have some rising tension.
We have that moment of she's dead, but it's not sort of really flowing from
a plot perspective, like from one thing to the next.
It's just kind of this heightened moment of tension,
but it doesn't sort of trigger a big change in the characters.
It feels very much like status quo.
OK, he's left a little bit before schedule,
but he hasn't really changed his perspective.
Like he's still arguing with his brother.
Yeah, I don't think we're far from that.
I think Gorosh has said that this was written like in a bit of a hurry.
I will say that ending felt a little bit rushed.
But I I just want to come back to his question that he asked about his stories
feeling self contained.
And he feels like sometimes it's part of a longer piece.
So what are your thoughts on that?
I can definitely see where he's coming from here.
And, you know, talking about that ending feeling a
little bit unresolved.
It feels like there is a continuation, and I think I said earlier, like,
why this scene above any other scene that these two brothers may have interacted
together with?
It feels like part of a longer conversation and a longer effort to kind
of get Jacob out of this funk that he's in.
So yeah, I can see that as being something that's
on Croatia's mind.
So I think the key there to overcoming that is like having change take place.
Yeah.
So I would just say on that, choosing A pivotal moment, right.
So I think what this story does well is it chooses a scene.
And we say often that a piece of flash fiction of 500 words is usually 1 scene.
Yeah.
And Karosh has chosen 1 scene and kept it fully self contained from that
perspective.
So I think that's a big tick.
I think what you've indicated there is that this particular scene doesn't feel
pivotal.
It doesn't feel like a big change has occurred.
And so it's about choosing the scene where something pivotal happens or you've
got the scene, make something pivotal happen.
You can do that.
You have the power to make that happen within the scene.
So why this moment?
Well, this moment, because something different happens this
time, and I guess we didn't get that sense of
something different happening.
So all you would need to do is either a choose a moment in your mind for these
brothers where he really finally does get through to his brother and something
changes dramatically, or their relationship shifts dramatically
or whatever it might be, or insert that into this scene.
OK, so let's talk about the prompts.
Yeah.
So the word prompt was seal, and it was used here in the context of
that seal ceiling joke, which we now know is a placeholder.
So we didn't actually get to hear that pun.
So we can kind of put the pieces together.
Yeah, I thought that was fun.
I liked that as a usage, and it was a unique usage.
Like no one else did that.
So yeah, that's cool.
That's true.
And the action this round was wiping out, and in this case it was Jacob wiping out
his life prospects.
And this was one story where the words wiping out weren't expressly used.
And I think that's a good choice because I think they would have felt forced in
this story.
Karosh took the opportunity of putting that in the brief explanation field.
I think that worked here.
And it is evident, like, you can see that we can see that that
action is taking place without necessarily needing that to be spelled
out in the words wiping out.
So good choice there.
And I think this is one of those stories that leans heavily into this don't Kill
Your Darlings idea.
And in this case, Jacob, it's according to Croatia's own brief
explanation here that Jacob is refusing to move past his mother's death.
So not accepting the fact of her passing, not killing her emotionally in his mind,
which I think is a powerful idea.
You know, it's a compelling take on this idea of
not killing your darlings, not letting them die in your mind.
Yeah.
Not letting them go.
Yeah, I think that's true.
I feel like we've been so mean, like you've come in guns blazing,
like ready to get roasted.
And I applaud you for that.
And we've been pretty harsh.
But look, this was a lovely piece of storytelling.
We did get that emotional heart.
And in fact, my original comments on this story were
that the dialogue keeps it voicy and moving and there's heart there.
That was my note to self.
And there really was heart there.
And I think that's so crucial.
We can talk about the words, but what are we really trying to do when
we write a story?
And that is to like express ourselves.
And I think you've done that.
I think maybe, you know, your idea of wanting to share this idea
of compartmentalization.
OK, maybe we didn't intellectually grasp that
from this story so clearly, but we were getting that feeling.
And I think that's the main thing, right?
Like that's the thing we're really trying to achieve.
So I think that was well done.
Yeah.
And I had that in my notes as well, that this is a clearly a very emotional
situation.
And that emotion comes through in the storytelling.
You have those sensory details, you have those motifs that work very well,
and you can definitely feel that emotion coming through.
So thank you Karosh for sharing your story with us and we hope that this has
been interesting informative growth and not too distressing for you.
And you might have to compartmentalise your feelings on what we've had to say.
Alright, well, thank you.
And we will be back in another week with our 4th Daredevil for this round.
And until then, right on, right on.
We hope you enjoyed this special Daredevil episode of Not Quite Right.
If you have thoughts on this story, follow us on social media and join the
conversation.
And if you'd like to participate in the next round of the competition,
head over to ourwebsite@notquiteright.com.
That's WRITE something doesn't seem quite right.
You can't mess it up worse than two hours of this sitting on your own head.
Doing nothing sitting in your own head.
Talk about head hopping.
OK, it can't mess it up worse than two hours
of this sitting on your own.
****.
I've got something on my mind.
Oh God.