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Feedback on scene change
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The final paragraph is both versions set a very different groundwork. One where Mel refuses to say goodbye and almost seems defiant in this choice. The other, where she is battling with deep feeling of guilt. I think the original ends stronger than the edit, but it all depends on where the story takes it. In the edit he payoff could come later.
"The volume on Mel’s world was always too high; lights too bright, sounds too loud, fabric too scratchy, and on the list went."
"and on the list went," breaks the flow in his paragraph for me. Though I think the start of the sentence is great and informative, I feel like the last part throws me off a cliff. It's like a sustain where I am waiting for some payoff but don't get it.
"Outside, Benji wielded his pick striking the earth again and again..."
In this paragraph talks about the garbage smell, then the smell of death hidden under it. To me, the garbage seems a bit out of place. Maybe it would be better for a smell like garbage to come in through the window, and then flip it on its head and reveal that it is not garbage at all, but the smell of decay.
The smell settles in the room. I think you can work with that. In a way, the smell that lingers is a nagging presence of the situation settling into her mind.
I think the edit was worth it. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks. Some great points. Time to tinker a little more, the fun part.-PJ
Joe thanks for setting this up.
I'm editing my novel, and I'm trying something a little different with the first section. I'm hoping you guys will read both drafts and give me some feed back.
Thanks PJ
Original:
Mel stood in the doorway off the back of the house watching her twin brother, Benji. He stabbed at the heavy clay soil creating an ugly red gash in the backyard. Mel forced herself to walk out the door to the porch railing. Her fingers began to work at the weathered wood pulling away long strips of yellowed paint. She glanced up again at Benji squinting her eyes against the harsh glare from the afternoon sun. Cupping her hands around her eyes like a visor, she imagined looking through a telescope distancing herself from the scene playing out before her.
Benji leaned on the handle of the shovel as he wiped the sweat from his face using the soiled bottom of his shirt. It left streaks of red across his forehead and cheeks, a warrior ready for battle. His chest heaved in and out as he stabbed at the clay again. Mel remembered how hard it was to dig a grave; she had helped Benji and her ailing father dig a similar hole for their mother less than a week ago. The grave was still a fresh wound not yet scabbed over, and it would soon be accompanied by her father’s. Her body ached with the memory, and she rubbed at the phantom pain in her arms.
Looking away from Benji, Mel spied the red and black checked blanket shrouding her dead father. It was tattered from Benji’s effort to drag him out there, but the wear was from years of use. Her dad draped it around her on camping trips keeping her warm on cold mornings. Now, the blanket wrapped the cold body of her father unable to warm him.
Friendships were hard for Mel, so she counted on her father. She idolized him. He understood her like no one else. This burial mocked the most important person in her life. He deserved a hero’s funeral, not a hole in the backyard like a family pet.
The pain seared through Mel taking her breath away, and the sharp edges of grief stabbed at her. She grasped the railing for balance digging her fingers into the soft wood. Her gaze wandered farther beyond her dead father, and her eyes came to rest on the ruins of an old play set. He built it for the twins when they were three. The beams weathered and faded to a soft pale gray like bones by the relentless Georgia summers. Mel closed her eyes; she pictured her father pushing her swing as she begged him to send her higher and higher. The seats were bright yellow then like the sun, not faded a jaundiced yellow like the cheeks of her father as they are now.
Mel widened her field of view to include the other houses edging up to their own. The Conner’s house was behind them, and she recalled their dog howling outside all through the night disturbing her sleep. It was absent and had been for weeks she now realized. She almost missed the baleful sound.
Mel wondered about the two homes on either side. One belonged to a large Asian family, and she hadn’t known them well. They kept to themselves. The other belonged to Mark and Casey. They were young, both still in elementary school. She hadn’t seen or heard anyone in either of the homes in at least a week, and she assumed the worst. They were probably dead.
She missed the sound of the shovel scraping at the dirt, and Mel turned back to find her brother. The sun was behind him reducing him to a silhouette, his expression unreadable. Mel knew he was angry by the set of his shoulders. He wanted her to help with the burial, and he had pleaded with her earlier in the day.
He climbed out of the hole, and swiveled the body, lowering it into the grave. He could barely move, and he rested on the lip catching his breath. From the back pocket of his sweat soaked shorts, he pulled a scrap of paper. Mel didn’t hear the words; she blocked out Benji’s childish attempts to memorialize her father. She wished she could give Benji an anesthetic. It would be better to feel nothing.
Sobs burned their way up her throat trying to escape, but she refused to give them their due. Instead, she turned her back on her brother, quitting the harsh glare of the sun. Benji paused for a moment in his eulogy, the only indication he noticed her abandonment.
Her shame was complete. She should have helped Benji. She should have said good bye with him. Mel stopped briefly in the open door and closed her eyes wishing her father farewell. Good bye, Daddy. Love you more than the stars. She could almost hear his answering reply.
Edit:
The volume on Mel’s world was always too high; lights too bright, sounds too loud, fabric too scratchy, and on the list went. Sensation and noise drowned out her thoughts and emotions. Every day was a struggle, but today was the worst of her thirteen years.
The scraping of metal outside Mel’s window had gone on the entire morning. Grunts preceded each scrape or thud. It was Benji, her live-wire of a twin, shoveling the clay laden soil in the backyard.
Mel bent lower to her desk and concentrated on the quality of the lines she sketched across her page. She planned to draw her free hand, a simple task she mastered when she was seven. Drawing quieted her mind helping her control the sensations washing over her. But the scraping, it clawed at her and demanded her attention. She gave up on her original plan and drew lines, row after row of lines. They were pitiful, broken and uneven.
The slap of the shovel paused, and Mel prayed it was over. But no, the sound changed from the high pitched scraping of the shovel to a hollowed out thud. Benji switched to the mattock and pounded it into the dense clay. Hard impacts slapped into the ground and reverberated through Mel.
She scrunched her eyes tight and covered her ears. The strikes of the mattock ricocheted in her brain bouncing around striking her nerve endings. Her mind rebelled and her hands shook. There was no escape. The cacophony stripped away her calm.
Mel opened her eyes, and the lines on the page in front her were angry and jagged. She crumpled the page in her fist and threw it across the room.
Outside, Benji wielded his pick striking the earth again and again; the rhythm pulsed in her mind, a driving beat kicking her heart into overdrive. A slight breeze wafted the odor of garbage into her room. It punched her in the nose, and under the stink of the garbage lurked a more menacing smell, the stench of death. The odors wound their way around her and settled in the room.
Mel leapt from her chair and rushed to the open window. She slammed it shut, but not fast enough. Not before a snapshot seared into her brain. Benji stood in a yawning red pit swallowing him up; his arm frozen over his head before he struck the ground with the mattock. A buzzard perched on a tree drawn by the stench; its massive wings wrapped around its misshapen body. She didn’t want to see anymore, but the image was a red hot brand refusing to go away. Next to the hole rested the shrouded body of her father, and behind him the matching grave of her mother still fresh and raw.
Benji banged on the side of the house, yelling for Mel. “Mel! Hey, Mel! I saw you!” He banged his fists under her window.
Mel sunk to the floor below her window clutching her head in her hands. Sweat soaked her body and pooled in the crevices of her joints. Shut up Benji, go away.
“Dad deserves more from you! I know you hear me!” His fists rained punches on the wall. The floor shook under her.
The barrage of pounding ceased, and Benji added in a calmer voice, “Mel, please. Come say goodbye. One day you’ll wish you had. You won’t have another chance.”
Silence, blessed silence. Mel removed her hands and opened her eyes. The adrenaline rush from her anxiety left her shaking. Benji was right; she should say goodbye. She should help to bury their father, but it was all wrong. The ugly grave in the backyard wasn’t good enough for him. No words would be good enough for him. He shouldn’t be dead. Tears leaked out of her eyes and she scrubbed at her face trying to erase them. She wouldn’t cry because she feared she would never stop.
Even through the closed window, the scrape and slap of the shovel reached her ear. Mel grabbed her pillow and wrapped it over her head burying her face in the carpet. She accepted a new life, one without her father; but she wouldn’t say goodbye. Benji could have his burial, but she refused to be part of it.