[2534] Devote Yourself Completely

[deleted]

This is my first post and my intention is to try to be helpful although I should say that I have no formally acquired knowledge of either criticism or story structure, these are evaluations made based on my personal view of literature as it’s formed over the years, take my comments as you will. Also I apologise if I have failed to grasp something I should reasonably have been able to. I'm also late to the show as it it's my first time and it took me a while to order my thoughts.

What I liked
My favourite thing about the piece is the bit in the first paragraph where the imagined man amidst the apocalypse observes through the haze of the past and potentially the physical haze of his personal present that there is a certain symmetry to the historical exchanges of power and life. Although I don’t personally share the character's appreciation for this type of ‘balance’ I appreciate the imagery of that sentence.
I also enjoyed the notion that God and religion imparts a virility to society, I think the links between secularism, science and sterility are obvious and I enjoy the implied juxtaposition here. Not that it’s a personal view of mine.
Flow of information
I found the logical progression of much of the piece hard to follow but I reread carefully to try to piece together where the threads begin and end and have come to the conclusion that the reason I found it difficult to follow is that you seem to introduce multiple threads of information with little relevance to each other or the overarching progression of Hajal’s situation. I think this is linked to the various elements and evocations of the piece doing little to make other elements stronger or increase the impact of any particular passage. I think there should be a synchronicity that emerges when threads of information relate to each other or inform each other. Hajal’s personal history as you describe could inform the particular way in which he reacts to his outing and subsequent court martial for instance.
‘No small talk, no getting to know me first, no puff, his only clients must be some true bums. I don’t say this as a philistine but as a once briefly failed life insurance…’ I can’t understand how the recounting of his past as an insurance salesman has relevance to the way the agent broaches the subject of Hajal’s court martial. In fact I found this confusing as I initially thought the ‘this’ in the second sentence was referring to the contents of the first. I think this serves as an example of why you should think carefully about what information you deliver to the reader, where it is and in what order.
Prose
I think in terms of prose you should try to be more precise with your word choice, more concise in your mode of expression and more varied in sentence structure/length/rhythm. E.g. ‘child-like basin of intense emotions’, it seems strange to me to consider the figurative basin as child-like, I think it makes more sense to refer to the emotions the basin contains as child-like: ‘basin of intense, child-like emotions’.

‘In my office I sprawled out its folded pages, it’s dimensions slightly oversized for the edges of my meagre bureau.’- While it may be technically possible to sprawl within a small space I find the evocations of crampedness and meagreness at odds with the action of sprawling.

Another obvious place to look is in repeated words, they’re there and it’s obvious why it should be avoided. I think tautologies and reiterations in general are a bad idea, I can’t remember specifically where but I believe those exist in the piece.

Plot
On the plot front it seems somewhat absurd to try to assess it as nothing really develops and resolves in the piece. The only thing in the piece that seems to resemble a set up followed by a resolution is Hajal in the bathroom stall alerting the corporals with his laughter and the resulting court martial. One thing I will say is that the suggested posting of Hajal in Saint-Denis to carry out ?covert? work for the government transmits the feeling of possibilities and future intrigue.

Clearly I’m looking at the start of a story and the plot or arc has yet to take shape, however, I think that it’s possible you could have done more work on this front in the same word count. If you don't have much of an idea I think you should get some of one as I think it will help these early pages take shape.

The main character
The sardonic overtones of Hajal’s monologues suggest to me a cynicism I feel is at odds with the intense political motivations he has (has had? Has he lost them?), having said that the only thing it seems to me he really believes in is power and it’s ability to action change. He seems to have intense reactions to the military precessions (is he wetting himself or ejaculating?) but it doesn’t seem to me that any representation of ideology is present accept raw power and maybe sexuality (does the character mix up his love of power with sex?). The mocking qualty of his monologues also makes him seems snobby and annoying to me which is okay provided it’s the intention.

I personally find Hajal’s suggestion that the working class Corporals are genetically predisposed to servitude somewhat troublesome, if the character is supposed to have some sketchy views that’s fine but it’s not something that makes me like him if that’s the objective.
I think Hajal’s lack of reaction to being discovered and court martialed is somewhat strange but is Hajal a genuinely apathetic individual or are we observing a defence mechanism in action or is it something you overlooked?

I think more clarity on his philosophical disposition and more concision in how the nature of that disposition is delivered would serve to make him more likeable.

Summary
I think this does need a lot of cleaning up, there are many awkwardnesses as I see them that could be removed and result in an easier read and potentially easier analysis on your part.
A lack of concision combined with a lack of a clear idea about precisely what you want to deliver to the reader results in a confusing read without a clear purpose.

I think you need to think carefully about what aspects of the character’s philosophical outlook are immediately pertinent to what you are trying to accomplish in your story, be clear on what themes you are trying to evoke and emphasise, what information you’re trying to deliver. Think very carefully about what it is pertinent to tell the reader in general, I think you should have a clear feeling if not an idea of what you are trying to evoke in a given passage or paragraph. Perhaps thinking about the long term arc of the story will help the beginning and the piece in general to take shape.

I think it’s important to remember that like with any other discipline writing is a skill and fostering the skill is more important than the fate of any individual piece, I hope this could be at least a little helpful and I wish you the best of luck in your future endeavors!!

I havent had time to read it all but I genuinely thought the intro was written by someone along the lines of Heller or Vonnegut. I love the bit about the newspaper and Paris burning. Well done.

GENERAL REMARKS

My initial impression of this piece of writing is that it doesn't have a proper identity and that it is very, very rough. There is way too much monologing and stream-of-consciousness stuff. Paragraphs are way too long and there is almost nothing happening in the story in 2500 words, which is alarming.

You should try to develop a concrete problem, an inciting incident, or simply tell a compelling story, not throw a bunch of idle thoughts of the narrator onto the page coupled with a retelling of their whole life history in a single page.

MECHANICS

The open paragraph was quite strong. I am not a philosophically inclined person but it generally flowed well. A few things came to mind. In the first sentence, you can remove the 'I could tell' and it should flow better. The second sentence about sprawling the paper on the table feels like an orphaned sentence because it doesn't fit with everything else that is being told in the first paragraph. I think you can just remove it. As someone who read some Wikipedia pages in my spare time, I understood the reference to Byzantine Empire. However, I didn't really understand how the recession of Britain's post-war economy has anything to compare to the Byzantine Empire, assuming you mean post world war 2? The Byzantine Empire declined over a thousand years, how do we compare that to a few decades?

The second paragraph was confusing. I was expecting to see something like more of an explanation of why the narrator would few the burning of Paris like how it was described in paragraph one. Instead, I got a bit of random internal monologue.

The third paragraph is better but the last sentence killed it for me. The narrator is in charge of the training of new recruits, okay. What does that have to do with 'coincidental informal meetings between corporals at bathroom stalls and during smoke breaks'? I don't understand that line.

The fourth paragraph, describing the narrator as falling into a frenzy of laughter didn't land for me. It didn't feel earned. I had to read like 4 sentences down to get the punchline of a joke that wasn't that funny to begin with.

In the fifth paragraph, there is quite a jarring tone shift from the first three paragraphs. The reader started with a lot of serious introspection and intelligence, and then we were thrown a lot of mocking lines and supposed laughter. Very jarring.

SETTING/STAGING

I would say that there is a distinct lack of setting/staging. Where the narrator is has almost no impact on anything happening. Perhaps it would be better to start the story in that bathroom stall where the character overhears accusations against him. You brought up a few descriptions of the character's office being sparse but it felt pointless. Perhaps incorporate that more into the storytelling. Perhaps he has a book about byzantine history. Perhaps he has a painting of Paris. You included a mention a painting of Napoleon Crossing the Alps but that fell completely flat. I had no idea what that had anything to do with the story being told. That painting evokes heroism, leadership, war, propaganda. Perhaps you can weave those things into the character of the narrator and tell the story of his background through the painting or what kind of officer he is in the military.

CHARACTER

There is utterly too much monologing and very little happening in the story. You should try to present some more interesting side characters. perhaps, the corporals that suspected the narrator of being gay was a friend. Perhaps the investigator of the court-martial is someone the narrator knows. Perhaps, the investigator knows the narrator and has a shared past. Many possibilities.

HEART

You had some nice potential for themes and messages. However, none of it seemed to land. You mentioned Paris burning but none of the character's backstory hit home for me about that message. It was all bit disjointed. You also attempted to have an opinion about the military but it was very confusing. You look down on the enlisted men and at the same time, you seem to look down the upper ranks too. If you don't like the military, why is the character in the military? You also seem to want to speak about homosexuality to some degree but it is also unclear. Should gays be in the military? Is that the proposed question? I don't know.

PLOT

I really can't speak to plot as the story lacked plot.

PACING

Pacing was overall okay. Except for the one thousand words regurgitation of the character's life story in the middle of everything. That seriously threw off the whole pacing of the chapter. If you just took all of that out, it would instantly be a lot better.

CLOSING COMMENT

I may have been overly harsh and I apologize. I feel that your chapter has a lot of interesting ideas thrown together but it is wholly incomplete. It needs a lot more work. There is a great difference between simply writing 2k words about what the character is thinking about versus telling a story.

Try to tell a story, with people, dialogue, things happening, instead of trying to write down everything the narrator could possibly be thinking about at every moment.

Have I gone insane or has this been posted before?