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Dino Parenti's picture

A Scoop for the Ages

By Dino Parenti in Scare Us

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Description

An investigative reporter finds more than he bargained for while investigating a mysterious woman and her child.

Comments

Emma C's picture
Class Facilitator
Emma C from Los Angeles is reading Black Spire by Delilah Dawson July 30, 2012 - 7:03pm

Love the style; I wasn't convinced at first when I saw the underlined headers, but once I got going, and especially once I found out the character is an investigative journalist, it made sense. I like the conversational quality here, even though it's a written account. It works. 

You slowly drop details rather than dumping it all at once, which I appreciate as a reader. 

I shit in an orange Home Depot bucket. I will never be able to look at mine in the same way again.

I would say it does meander a bit and, as it goes on, you lose the character's sense of urgency. Then again, he's been locked there for three weeks so he's had a lot of time to write. I felt it was a bit longer than it needed to be.

Again because this was a handwritten account I would expect the dialogue to be shorter, more paraphrased. Particularly on page 13 when JD's telling the story. I don't find it believable that the narrator wrote down what he said, verbatim.

I was left curious about why it was such a good thing to her that George was a native, and why that made things different in the end. A little more clarity on the infant sacrifices would have been nice, too: are they for Levi? For something else? I was left curious why Levi needed them when he also had an array of adult victims and squirrels, too.

Overall I thought it was creative and spooky, and the ending was a double shock that I couldn't have anticipated.  

 
Dino Parenti's picture
Dino Parenti from Los Angeles is reading Everything He Gets His Hands On July 31, 2012 - 11:07am

Emma,

I really appreciate all these notes. I knew as I was writing it I might be missing some crucial information because I basically wrote it in two sittings, but I wasn't aware it was this much!

Yes, I do worry that it's a bit of a slow build, especially early. It was always in the back of my mind that he would be less panicked since he's already been down there 3 months. I'll try to be clearer on the rewrite as what's stimulating him to write this in the first place.

As for remembering all the dialogue, I totally forgot to include a moment early on when discussing his past work as a reporter that he always had a good memory and never even used a recorder on interviews--something his colleagues found odd. i actually wrote this on the margins of my noetbook, but just never went back to it.

Ditto with the importance of him being from there. Cybill is suppose to tell him in her last scene with him in the basement that Levi was conceived by a native, and it's her thinking that only another similarly conceived child could maybe defeat him one day. As for the importance of the babies, J.D. was supposed to tell him that, though Levi could sustain enough with adults and animals, it's the infants that allow to thrive--to see and experience people, places and times in ways no one ever has. This is what truly motivates George not to fight leaving anymore. Looking back at it now, I'm shocked I left this all out, but thank you again for reminding me.

--Dino

PS: Sorry to ruin your images of Home Depot buckets:) I saw a homeless guy using one just for that purpose, and the image stuck.

Jane Wiseman's picture
Jane Wiseman from living outside of Albuquerque/in Minneapolis is reading Look to Windward by Iain M. Banks August 3, 2012 - 5:54am

Very creepy story. At times I got a bit lost as it moved back and forth in time, but I pretty much kept up. The ending surprised me. I was prepared for a titanic battle at the end, witch vs monster, but it was a bit anticlimactic since it happened offstage. 

Dino Parenti's picture
Dino Parenti from Los Angeles is reading Everything He Gets His Hands On August 3, 2012 - 11:01am

Thanks, Jane--appreciate the feedback. One of my concerns in writing it (I've addressed it since on a personal rewrite--I hope!) were the differing timelines and whether or not it was clear what was happening when. I still think I'm only maintaining a vague notion of it, which I'm leaving to the fact that the main character has been down there long enough that he's even messing up his tenses and continuity. As for the witch vs. monster thing, I entertained the notion of her delivering the baby in front of him, but then the monster would have to kill it in front of him (and the reader) after it's born, and I figured best keep that off-screen and let your imagination do the damage.

Jeff's picture
Jeff from Florida is reading Another Side of Bob Dylan by Victor Maymudes August 10, 2012 - 8:26am

Dino,

What a wild rubik's cube of a tale this is.

George Weems is  presumably a prisoner and yet the tone of his account is gonzo. The fact that his notebooks end up in a future US government X-File, adds another layer of mystery to the story within a story. Was JD, before his abosorption, a CIA operative, meant to support the embedded Weems? What explains the 647 other notebooks?

Weem's voice carried the story well -- at once urbane and profane. Well done. Levi delivers one droll surprise after another. And the witch -- Cybill -- is a quaint piece of work. On some level this is a love story with her as the single mom, Weem's as her suitor and Levi as the proverbial kid from hell.  Let me say right here that the scene where she cooks him dinner blew me away. Four fully cooked baby rabbits? Wow, that is so Grimm-like. And the oblique way you described the sex. It was horribly funny.

Cybill's powers are limited -- there's never overt magic -- and I think that was wise in that it made her more authentic than if she'd been casting spells left and right. Yet, I too, felt a little shortchanged by how easily she was defeated by Levi. By the same token, it's quite a moment when directly after that event, Levi confronts Weems and speaks for the first time. Still, I think the story would benefit if you found a way to strengthen Cybill without diminishing the horrific punch of Levi.  

 

Dino Parenti's picture
Dino Parenti from Los Angeles is reading Everything He Gets His Hands On August 11, 2012 - 11:15am

Thanks for the notes, Jeff. You're right about Cybill's death--it could be more than it is. The thing with her is that she's not really a witch; the people in the neighborhood just think she is and have labeled her as such. More importantly, because she gave birth to this creature of Levi, she thinks she also has the power to create something to defeat it. Making her die rather unspectacularly and easily made sense to me therefore as I wrote it, but maybe it needs more expansion?

Perhaps also I need to be clearer on the J.D. character, as someone else I let read it pointed out. Like you, he assumed J.D. was something of a kindred-spirit/undercover type working with Weems, when in actuality, Levi is J.D.. Being something of a shape-shifter, he assumed the guise of this homeless kid, J.D. in order to find out what, if anything, Weems knows about him or his mother. Again, something I should clarify a little more.

Thanks for the thumbs-up on the dinner scene. I hoped it was just off-putting enough without being revolting.

Jonathan Riley's picture
Jonathan Riley from Memphis, Tennessee is reading Flashover by Gordon Highland September 1, 2012 - 5:49pm

I'll start what was clear to me and what wasn't.  Unlike Jane, i didn't get lost in the flashbacks. I think the headers worked great in two ways. The first way (what you said) for him to keep track of his thoughts and sequence of events. But also to indicate to the reader that you are about to flash back or jump forward. For me, this was very well executed.

Also, to disagree with Jeff a bit: Once you had the big reveal at the end, I was pretty certain that Cybil wasn't a witch and that Levi and J.D. were one in the same. I read it like this: Once Levi "absorbs" someone he can become that someone in a phisical presence. So i take it that J.D. at one point was his own person. I wasn't sure at what point in the story J.D. was absorbed. I thought maybe his first appearence was real. I only realize now from your explination that the real J.D. never existed for Weems.

One problem i have with the story is, that it isn't quite clear to me why exactly Cybil stays arround. I guess it's for self preservation. He would hunt her down and kill her. I was also unclear what the newborns' purposes were. Also was she wrong to assume she could create a "remedy" maybe an angelic antithesis to her demonic Levi. That would have been a very exciting and interesting twist if the newborne was more powerful. It could go two ways. It could be more evil than levi destroy him and take over. Or it could be all good and all mighty and kill Levi, and during the battle taking out Weems and Cybil to Liberate the town. The way you wrote it is very good too. She was wrong. It was just a baby. I'd like there to be more in the story of what she expected from the newborn.

I think you did a great job painting a picture and setting a scene. The story as a whole was vividly disturbing and i like that. I also like your explinations in these comments so i hope to see those explained better in the text of your story. Sorry I'm just now getting around to reading. I know it doesn''t count now but i went ahead and clicked the thumbs up anyway. Good story Dino,

--Jonathan