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Jeff Whatshisname's picture

Monkey Business

By Jeff Whatshisname in Teleport Us

How It Rates

Once you have read this story, please make sure you rate it by clicking the thumbs above. Then take a few minutes to give the author a helpful critique! We're all here for fun but let's try to help each other too.

Description

A man loses everything in a library after investigating a strange sound in the basement.

Comments

Wendy Hammer's picture
Wendy Hammer from Indiana is reading One Night in Sixes February 27, 2013 - 7:13pm

I have to say that this made me laugh.  Much of it was really clever, really skewed, and delightfully....wrong.  The, ahem, payoff in the basement was certainly unexpected. I really liked the asides about freshman commitment and the whole section about how a mechanical engineer should be moved to go study something metallic. I liked that mix of dry and absurd.

I didn't care for the heavy reliance on the onomatopoeia.  Your descriptions are stronger than the sound effects, in my opinion. If you save one or two and use them judiciously, you'll achieve a stronger effect overall. 

Ultimately, I gave it a thumbs down because I didn't really think it fit the assignment, so to speak.  While not ideal, this just didn't speak of dystopia to me. Messed up, for sure, but not the kind of ideas I would associate with the form. It could be that with a little tweaking that part would be clarified. 

It looks as if you had fun with this, whatever the outcome. 

Jeff Whatshisname's picture
Jeff Whatshisname from San Francisco is reading Oliver Twist March 7, 2013 - 10:36am

Thanks, I really appreciate your feedback.

Looking into the piece again, I see what you mean about the onomatopoeia. It is distracting overall.

Thanks again!

scifiwriterguy's picture
scifiwriterguy from Chicago, IL is reading Iscariot by Tosca Lee February 28, 2013 - 6:14am

Sorry Jeff, this didn't really work for me. It fails to meet the criteria of the contest for one. Second, while you have a little bit of humor in there, the story doesn't really move. [spoiler alert] Once we get beyond the fact that mechanical monkeys shoot porn in the library subbasement, there's nothing left of the story, and it takes us far too long to get there. I found the story tiresome to be honest.

Jeff Whatshisname's picture
Jeff Whatshisname from San Francisco is reading Oliver Twist March 8, 2013 - 6:54pm

thanks for the comment. your "tiresome" comment really struck a nerve and made me look at the story again. this really was just a silly exercise to sse what would happen with Litreactor. and you have some good insight into the exercise.

thanks.

Ethan Cooper's picture
Ethan Cooper from Longview, TX is reading The Kill Room, Heart-Shaped Box, Dr. Sleep March 7, 2013 - 10:45pm

Some stories you know what you're getting into right away.

Not this one! Wowsers.

This story is easy to read, so kudos there. I think it takes a little too long to get to the basement, but that's pretty easy to fix.

My only real problem is that you don't really do anything with your unique idea. You get us to the basement, reveal your secret, and then....Mark leaves. The End. If you think about it, there's no reason Mark needs to be in this story at all, since he doesn't do anything except discover what is going on. There's no consequences to his life. What's going on in the basement needs to affect his life. Having an end that meshed with your conflict would justify what you showed us in the basement. As written, it seems like a joke where the punchline comes several minutes before the end of the joke.

Fix the end. Make it mean something, and you're onto something here.

Jeff Whatshisname's picture
Jeff Whatshisname from San Francisco is reading Oliver Twist March 11, 2013 - 6:13pm

Thanks for the comments!

 

I like what you said about make it mean something. That's a good ideology.

ArlaneEnalra's picture
ArlaneEnalra from Texas is reading Right now I'm editing . . .. March 7, 2013 - 10:52pm

Ok .... Ok .... that was bizarre to say the least.  Once I made it past the opening scene in the library, I'm sure a look of mildly shocked confusion never left my face.  Did I mention bizarre?  I can see this happening as some sort of strange dream brought on by too much caffeine and studying metallurgy.  Unfortunately, that doesn't quite meet up with the challenges criteria.  (Dystopia/Utopia?)

Still, I think you could turn this into an interesting story that reads much smoother with a few more editing cycles.  Good Luck and Keep at it!

Jeff Whatshisname's picture
Jeff Whatshisname from San Francisco is reading Oliver Twist March 11, 2013 - 6:18pm

Thanks! That's essentially what I was going for... :)

Adam Jenkins's picture
Adam Jenkins from Bracknell, England is reading RCX Magazine (Issue 1 coming soon) March 11, 2013 - 6:56am

I couldn't help but read this with a big grin on my face, it's a hugely fun read.  Sure there are issues here - the onomatopoeia, it doesn't fit the contest guidelines, the lack of overall story - but I honestly couldn't care less about that simply because it made me smile.  I particularly liked the line - "He wasn’t certain if his inability to look away made him a really good engineering student or just into bestiality". 

Jeff Whatshisname's picture
Jeff Whatshisname from San Francisco is reading Oliver Twist March 11, 2013 - 6:21pm

That is awesome. I'm glad it brought a smile to your face.

I knew when I submitted it I was fudging the contest rules more than a bit, but I wanted to see if a silly story might be interesting to people.

Working on connecting my ridiculous ideas to actual story lines!