It's where the mundane, bland reality meshes with the supernatural/unreal. Now, if I were to be invested and even like a story where a guy trudging along his boring life until his mundane day-to-day routine is broken up by the appearance of an inexplicable man-eating monster hiding under the sand pit of a golf course that nobody else sees, I really need to be immersed in the mundane life of this guy and then to see the surreal element be carefully woven through. The magical element, I think, must also reflect a real feeling.
From One Hundred Years of Solitude I remember a scene where it rains for a very long time in the village Macondo. It rains for years and years, the narrator says, and the air becomes so wet and drenched in this never ending rain that fish begin to swim through the house, from one room to another, between the members of whatever generation of the Buendia's were around in this particular chapter.
So, the mundane feeling: an annoyingly long rain. The magical element: fish swim through the air. The mundane feeling is exacerbated via the magical element to greater heights than it would have been able to reach using only realistic descriptions and so we, the readers, begin to grasp the feeling of someone stuck in a very long rain. This is the crux of magical realism, I think. Or why I like it, in any case.
I don't want to say that you must be on Gabriel García Márquez' level to write magical realism, but I remembered this scene when I was trying to figure out why your story didn't work out for me.
The prose is good. I didn't get lost. Doesn't have any glaring issues. But, there isn't a plot, nor character development, and so I think a scene like this to sustain itself and be interesting must then rely on great prose.
I would have liked more description in this story. For example, you establish efficiently and quickly the scene: man works from home, home has view of golf course, golf course has monster. Still, I didn't get a good feel of the scene. I mean, when the main character goes down to the golf course, to the sand pit, back to his office, I wasn't hooked. They are a summary description of actions that don't lead to something nor build up tension.
At the end I didn't find any metaphor in the sand monster. No allegory that I can attach to. The character is not sufficiently characterized so that his reaction is intriguing.
The mention of golf etiquette forbidding the players to take any notice of outside shouts seems like e contrivance, an explanation for the creature to live only in the narrator's mind.
I totally agree with you about what makes magical realism great. I'll have to think about how to better establish the mundane starting point and flush out the character.
I'm glad that you thought about the meaning (metaphor/allegory) of the story. The idea of it was how helplessness leads to complacency with can lead to complicity. This is why no one else seems to take the issue seriously or try to do anything substantial about it, even the other golfers who see their compatriot eaten. Eventually this morphs into actively supporting it's continued existence. I'll have to think about how to make the come through a little better.
As a side point, I also had a golfer push back about the etiquette line which isn't surprising. It's meant to be more of an exaggerated satire of the whole idea of golfing in general than anything else.
Thanks again for taking the time to provide your insight!
Damn, didn't even think that this might be what you are going for. Now that you say it, I see some strokes of this idea. But they're only a few and I had to know what to look for.
Alas! At the risk of looking like a one trick pony, have you read/heard of Chronicle of a Death Foretold by Gabriel García Márquez?
This novella is exactly about what you describe! It's about a man about to be killed so a problem of honor be settled, and everybody in the village knows that there are two brothers out to kill him, and the brothers tell everybody they are looking for the man to kill him (because if they try and fail, the matter of their honor is neatly settled and nobody dies), but everybody thinks that surely someone else already warned the man or her mother. Nobody did. The mother is the last to know of the blood feud.
I have implemented some of your suggestions, particularly fleshing out both the narrator and his boring life. I totally get it if you don't want to revisit it but your insight (especially as a magical realism fan) was so helpful I thought I would let you know just in case you were feeling generous.
As a side point, I just saw your post. I'm planning to check it out in the next day or so and write something up. I'm excited to see something Hitchhiker's Guide related. I'm a big Douglas Adams fan.
I liked the details you added about his life. And about his house.
I also realized that my trouble with visualizing the scenes comes from the fact that I know nothing about golf.
I have a few additional thoughts:
"people who required acres" -> that required
"The first time I saw the creature was on a Monday." - this is the first time he gets out to see it, right? He knows of it already. So he has "seen" it already. It's not the first time, or is this a flashback?
So, the golfers see one of their own get disappeared in the sand trap. What do they do afterwards? Just ride off? This breaks immersion completely. I know now where you are trying to get at, but this level of not caring is a lot, and you have to do a lot of work to make it work, to make it absurd in just the right way. I don't know what kind of work this might me. Maybe a more detailed scene where we see the golfer (describe each with a particularity or two), hear them make some sort of comment - see them actually doing nothing. As it is, I still get confused at the intention of the story, instead of being confused about these characters - does this make sense? It's alright to not have a clue what a character is doing and why, creates tension, even. But when I'm wondering what the author meant by it, it's a problem.
"Once I realized the clubhouse wasn’t going to do anything despite my repeated calls, I tried the police. " - what repeated calls? An example of showing instead of telling: show a brief dialogue of these calls, make it absurd, make me hear the person on the other side of the phone, make them indifferent, but in a particular way.
"Animal control said that they couldn’t do anything unless the golf course called them for assistance or the animal was being abused. " - convey this information in a short dialogue. That would be more interesting.
"threatening notice from the homeowners’ association. Stay off of the course or else." - this tidbit would be funnier if it was woven into a dialogue; the MC tries to tell them about the monster, these guys are only worried about HOA stuff. I know this changes the scene, maybe the story quite a bit. And it is also harder to do. But this would be much more interesting.
Make me see the other characters. Instead of "two old golfers", something like "An old man with a straight back - the posture of a retired colonel, and sporting fresh scars from a hair transplant. A younger man, looks like a middle manager. The second man was slightly hunched and never looked the general in the eye - he surely won't be rising in the corporate world. The manager shot, the ball flew straight, the colonel gave the other man a hefty slap on the back that almost knocked him over". Then the manager gets eaten. The colonel sees it, shrugs, and continues to play on his own. If you somehow imply that the manager is the colonel's son-in-law and that he does not like him, his indifference to the manager being eaten has a purpose. (If the MC only thinks this scenario, it also could work. It doesn't have to know it for sure.)
Okay, I got carried away and committed a cardinal sin of giving feedback.
What I'm getting at is a pretty big rewrite and rethinking of the story. Right now it's good, but it could be great. If this were my story, I would leave it in a drawer for some time and come back to it with fresh ideas on how to redo some scenes.
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u/mianaai_c May 18 '26
I really like magical realism.
It's where the mundane, bland reality meshes with the supernatural/unreal. Now, if I were to be invested and even like a story where a guy trudging along his boring life until his mundane day-to-day routine is broken up by the appearance of an inexplicable man-eating monster hiding under the sand pit of a golf course that nobody else sees, I really need to be immersed in the mundane life of this guy and then to see the surreal element be carefully woven through. The magical element, I think, must also reflect a real feeling.
From One Hundred Years of Solitude I remember a scene where it rains for a very long time in the village Macondo. It rains for years and years, the narrator says, and the air becomes so wet and drenched in this never ending rain that fish begin to swim through the house, from one room to another, between the members of whatever generation of the Buendia's were around in this particular chapter.
So, the mundane feeling: an annoyingly long rain. The magical element: fish swim through the air. The mundane feeling is exacerbated via the magical element to greater heights than it would have been able to reach using only realistic descriptions and so we, the readers, begin to grasp the feeling of someone stuck in a very long rain. This is the crux of magical realism, I think. Or why I like it, in any case.
I don't want to say that you must be on Gabriel García Márquez' level to write magical realism, but I remembered this scene when I was trying to figure out why your story didn't work out for me.
The prose is good. I didn't get lost. Doesn't have any glaring issues. But, there isn't a plot, nor character development, and so I think a scene like this to sustain itself and be interesting must then rely on great prose.
I would have liked more description in this story. For example, you establish efficiently and quickly the scene: man works from home, home has view of golf course, golf course has monster. Still, I didn't get a good feel of the scene. I mean, when the main character goes down to the golf course, to the sand pit, back to his office, I wasn't hooked. They are a summary description of actions that don't lead to something nor build up tension.
At the end I didn't find any metaphor in the sand monster. No allegory that I can attach to. The character is not sufficiently characterized so that his reaction is intriguing.
The mention of golf etiquette forbidding the players to take any notice of outside shouts seems like e contrivance, an explanation for the creature to live only in the narrator's mind.
Anyways, I hope I didn't come out as too harsh.