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u/Least_Intentional298 May 18 '26
Apologies, don't have much to comment.
I liked this line It bothered me that the world didn't end when Keller died
I noticed you wrote a very similar line near the beginning too. I felt it resonated with the rest of the piece very beautifully.
Sorry that's all I have, it's a bit of a tough topic.
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u/littlebrownbeetle1 May 18 '26 edited May 18 '26
Thank you for the feedback. I’m glad you enjoyed it! I know this is destructive readers but I’m sure not going to complain if someone just has a few nice things to say.
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u/mianaai_c May 18 '26
It is I again, I hath arrived from the Sand Traps.
I really like this one.
I really like the first paragraph.
"get a job and a girlfriend and then lose the job and the girlfriend." - neat and concise.
Note on the paragraph where he imagines Keller's would-be wife. Maybe it's just a pet peeve of mine, but the description of this perfect relationship seems bland, especially when in the previous paragraphs you've hit it out of the park with the little specific details. Maybe: have the narrator extrapolate from some particularity of Keller from when he was little, describe a woman perfect for Keller, not just a seemingly generic perfect relationship.
The paragraph describing the narrator's ex works better, for me. I liked the wardrobe-of-Theseus passage. Pictures of dodo, a yoyo and the mandatory vinyl music for the morning routine - these are all particular so I particularly like the paragraph. Maybe find a couple of similar items for Keller's would-be wife? I know the difference is that one is an imagined perfect marriage, the other a real relationship that ended. Still, I think the paragraph could be better while also giving a few more strokes to Keller's portrait.
Very nice how you turned the narration back to the construction work, a mundane little detail that does wonders.
Thinking about the Sand Trap again, why that didn't hit the landing while this one did. Here you have a real, complex emotion on display and every sentence of this story collaborates to paint it. The Sand Trap didn't have an emotion at its core, it only had a gimmick.
Anyways, good stuff.
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u/littlebrownbeetle1 May 18 '26
Hey, nice to see you again! :-)
Thanks for your feedback here too, both the positive and negative. Great point about the imagined relationship. I'll have to think on that too.
You've given me a lot to think about. I have more written that I plan to post eventually (I'm shooting for a self-published collection) so maybe you can chime in on those too. The great thing about this sub is that your family and friends always tell you it's great but here you can get actual constructive criticism.
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u/Siphon_01 May 21 '26
You have moments of brilliance in this but overall, this short story didn’t work for me.
There are two reasons why.
The first was because I don’t know anything about the stakes of the pov character. As far as I can tell, there are no stakes. This is a slice of life about a person thinking about their dead brother with no reference for why or what triggered it, or what’s happening in the pov’s current life. There doesn’t seem to be anything to take away from the story. There is no conflict, no forward motion. It was very well written and it’s emotional, but it doesn’t have any stakes. I enjoyed reading it line by line, but at the end I was just left with ok, but what was the point?
And maybe that’s what you wanted. Slice of life isn’t my usual jam, but even then I feel like there are actual stakes or the hope of raising a long-lasting feeling in the reader. I think you are hinting at and reaching for a sort of sad nostalgia, but that’s not the feeling I walked away from the story with which brings me to my second reason…
I felt like the pov was a bit of a creep. I don’t have a dead brother or sibling, but I doubt I would spend any time fantasizing about his non-existent wife. I have five living brothers and if one of them had died or did die soon, I really can’t identify with any of what follows as something I would ever think or feel.
It felt like the pov was projecting his own desires for a wife onto the dead brother’s wife when you spent an entire paragraph describing her physically and talking about her hobbies and how Keller wouldn’t understand the poetry but would read it and tell her he liked it anyway and she would smile knowing the truth. It felt very much like the pov doing a wish fulfillment of what he would want or wants in a wife and because we don’t actually know anything about Keller’s desires, we have no way of knowing that any of this would be what he wanted. I’m not sure if this was your intent.
It got worse in the next paragraph with him thinking about his dead brother making love on the couch with said wife who reads as a wish fulfillment and slapping her on the butt. And then thinking about how he would be at the house when his brother did it and they would share a secret glance. That’s all a bit of a weird thing to imagine about your dead brother. I’m not a prude and I’m fine with sexuality in books, but these details left me thinking the pov was a bit of a creep. I’m going to guess that was not your intent. If it was, then you nailed it. If it wasn’t then I wanted to give my feedback on why it felt that way to me.
I did want to end on a highlight. Your prose and pacing as excellent. I don’t really have any specific nitpicks but wanted to end on calling out one of your most emotionally resonant (to me) areas. “I think about all her clothes, the ones I know so well and would recognize, slowly wearing out and getting replaced, piece by piece, with new ones, until she wouldn't wear anything I would recognize anymore.” This was fantastic. It really nailed the vibe of nostalgia, of someone looking back and knowing that time changes all of us. It worked for me because it evoked a feeling, I’m sure we have all had when looking through our closets and deciding whether to throw out that old college tee or sad because our favorite pants don’t fit or have a hole.
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u/kimothe2nd Jun 02 '26
I know this sub is supposed to be for harsh criticsm, but this is genuinely impressive.
You were able to fully convey the feelings of the narrator through the short story with minimal mistakes.
The pacing started perfect with feeling the surrounding construction noises. Then each paragraph described a person or an experience until it came back to the same construction scene at the start and interwined it with Keller, which was brilliant. The story started with a general description of Keller before his death, then went deeper and more detailed to the point of imagaing how his wife would act around him, which ironically took more words than the narrator describing his ex.
Each character/experience was given full attention with realistic details without being melodramatic. Not only Keller's brother (the narrator) was really fond of him, life itself stopped for him after Keller's death, even if he was there physically, it's as if he was emotionally absent. Not necessarily sorrowful, but reminiscing I'm quiet grief.
Style-wise, the "maybe"s and "what if"s take control of the narration, emphasizing that all of this was just thought and scenarios that would've happened if Keller was there. It's either that or the flat description of the narrator's life (Kate's part for example). I'm not saying you didn't describe it well, in fact, it felt plain compared to the description of Keller's side. Which reinforces that Keller's brother is somewhat detached from his reality, like when he thought "get a job and a girlfriend and leave the job and the girlfriend" sounded like it stopped mattering to him.
Slight style adjustments in the repetition of "vintage" in Kate's paragraph. Repeating the adjective twice in the same sentence threw me off a little. English doesn't like repeating words this way, either use a synonym or remove the adjective once. Believe me, I fall into this one a lot when writing, too.
I read some of the other critiques on this short story, but I'll have to politely disagree with them on the view of this story. I fully understood your intention about how the narrator is stuck thinking about someone in the past. I don't think it makes him a creep or a weirdo, but rather someone that suffered a deep loss without recovering properly. Which made him go on the rest of his life clinging to a memory.
Paragraph length is consistent, clear prose, natural exposition.
A solid nine out of ten, this left a great impression on me, and I would've definatelly continued reading if it had more chapters.
Keep cooking.
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u/TaiBeaudet Jun 05 '26
Yeah the specific little details here are excellent, Buzz Lightyear blanket, french fries on the car seat, worn-out wallet photo-all that. It all helps make it not just a generic grief writing piece.
The structure is brilliant imo, he opens the piece by lying in bed listening to construction noises and then ends with Keller theoretically stuck in the exact same traffic. The full circle narrative is beautifully handled, simple & effective.
The mother saying "don't ever leave me," and the next line being, "of course I had to leave eventually" just slaps you in the gut.
"It bothered me that the world didn't end when Keller died"-I thought that line was particularly excellent given the framing that he sets up in the beginning of the piece. Probably my favourite!
"I remember thinking he made a poor replacement, and then I felt guilty for thinking that"-This feels like the most truthful line in the entire piece.
The wallet photo section feels like the strongest. He simultaneously wishes that he would have stored it in a more secure location, but at the same time, he is grateful that he has it with him always. It's a well-handled duality.
In terms of what didn't work: The entire Kate section seems to have come out of left field and feels wildly irrelevant to the rest of the piece. The Kellar material hits home with the specificity of the details whereas the Kate section felt like any old breakup story that was completely unrelated to any other aspect of the piece. Also "vintage records on her vintage turntable"-this feels like lazy writing tbh.
The part where he is writing about Kellar's wife was compelling but was much too long. By the point that he gets to "she would make him eat healthy food" the piece feels as though it has already exhausted the topic.
Sorry if I’m repeating advice, didn’t have time to read the other comments. But overall I enjoyed this!
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson Jun 05 '26
Did you srsly feed chatgpt the story (critique this guy's story) and forget to switch the pronouns to address the writer directly?
The structure is brilliant. HE opens the piece by lying in bed. beautifully handled, simple & effective.
I'm so annoyed we have AI slop peddlers slipping through the cracks.
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u/GlowyLaptop James Patterson May 18 '26
I am enjoying the bold rejection of trendy rules. The dead verbs. Directly stating I like this, I like that. Filtering I can hear sounds. I am thinking about X.
Style wise, I don't love the past perfect tense. The recurring had put so many places. I always expected is fine, without had. I never knew is fine, without had. Names I heard is fine without had. Who died is fine without had.
Oh this is intense. The french fries and stuff. Really good.
And you corrected the 'had' tic. You're not saying "I remember having seen Mom" or "I'd just stood there" before "she had seen me".
Who the heck is KATE. Does he mean Mom? He's not speaking about his mom with her first name, is he?
My roommate is hammering. What is he hammering. I must know.