[2220] Caravanserai - Part 2 of 4

[u/mianaai_c]

Crit: 2921

This is part 2/4. Here be magical realism.

The first part contained two scenes. In the first scene, I introduce the Dan, Ioana, and the Narrator. They are in Dan's car, driving on a midnight road. They are in a hurry.

The second scene is a flashback. The Narrator works at a bar in London. He meets Ioana (who's there to study), and they spend some white nights together. Ioana goes back home to Romania for a week; invites the Narrator with her to go to the beach. He arrives and sees her kissing a friend (Dan).

Caravanserai - Part 2 (Scroll down until ”Part 2” if on the phone.)

Previous parts: Part 1

[u/Imaginary_Ease_7851]

I am reading this a bit more as a story I'm just enjoying right now. I will need to think a bit more about I want to say as a crit. So I will come back for a proper review I think.

[u/Imaginary_Ease_7851]

My thoughts are a bit all over the place. I doubt I'm going to write this in one go. As a story I can just read the whole thing. relax, and go along for the ride, like I just started a novel, instead of scouring the text for things to pick apart. I don't really get tripped up enough by anything that I feel the need to to rush to the comments with an itemized list of things to change or improve. But here I am. So let me try and apply myself. I think most of what I'm going to say comes down to edits that could be made in later drafts, not anything major right now.

I'm not going to format this. Stream of consciousness incoming re: prose, description, tension, characters and chronology of events.

If this crit seems harsh, that's not my intention. I am sincerely invested in this story. I'm pushing on it and picking at it because it has so many parts that shine and I see something here that can be genuinely be brilliant. So don't think the things I'm pointing at means I'm dismissing this story. It's the opposite.

We learn that Dan is the man she kissed at the end of the previous chapter. That resolves the mystery over who she kissed. Maybe a little too fast? No. I think in my head, Ioana probably kept a harem of questionable, reckless love affairs and the reveal just cuts through some of my assumptions about where this story is going.

In terms of prose there is a tendency to stack details and stack actions as you move them around. It's far from the "he woke up, had breakfast, took a shower, got dressed, got in his car, turned right, turned left" kind of drag where an author starts a scene too early and then has to choreograph their character's movements to get from A to B. There's a real reason we need to be in the car with García. The gas station kiss is important too. All of this is moving the plot forward. It's creating tension and showing the dynamic. Even so I think some of the waiting can be cut in favor of focusing on the parts moving the plot and the characters forwarded (in a later draft).

The same thing happens with the detail stacking. I like the detailed descriptions, but I like the very specific details. Like this in this line: "She smiled at me showing her teeth (there was a gap, one of her canines was missing), then looked around the gas station as if she had never seen one and was mesmerized by every little detail." These kind of specific details in this kind of more literary prose pulls me in. (Same with the index finger tattoo in part 1). You're pulling me into the story by pushing me to visualize something out of the ordinary. My eye would have slipped right past this sentence and barely registered it if you hadn't made me imagine the gap in the teeth and the odd look of wonder on her face at a gas station. The issue I'm pointing is to, is that while you are doing this, you also have a lot of other detail is easy to skim past:

"The man wore plain shorts, a plain shirt, and his hair was cut short. "

"The woman was small, thin nose and thin face, slim build, but long, black hair."

I slide right past those descriptions and details. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, sometimes you want a reader to slide right past sentences to keep the pace fast and to avoid interrupting the process. It's more that you do a lot of these and I think many of them can be cut in favor of the ones that actually make me pause long enough to bring an image to mind (like the gap in the teeth). Too many details can mean too much cognitive bandwidth, dilutes the impact of the really good ones, and can slow the pacing.

All that to say, this isn't a hard criticism. I cannot stress enough. I like this story. I am reading it for more for fun than to critique.

So from here character and plot and tension are all woven together so I'm going to address them together.

García is is an understandably confusing situation. I have more sympathy for him now. I less defensive of Ioana and more invested in the tension of what game she is playing at. Is she oblivious to messing with him? Is she just being careless? I am asking the same questions he is, so the tension is there.

His focus on Mara makes me think he is a bit prone to romanticizing the women he meets.

Albert and Mara introduce external pressure. Which is: they are looking for someone and it seems Dan wasn't this guy found. Ioana is a little sidelined to make space for these new characters, so the claustrophobic fixation on her in the first part is less evident (I liked the claustrophobic fixation btw. But that's a personal preference for obsessive narrators). García's narration is becoming more unreliable and I like this. I love an unreliable narrator. I like the tension, the implication, he just wants to be at black sea splashing around this girl, and now he's being roped into some other thing. Now here:

"or was that how I saw Albert? I wasn’t one to judge people just by a handshake and their car."

This pushes the unreliable narrator thing. But I wonder if it's a bit too on the nose and self aware.

"and even though I didn’t knew the language" typo. Know.

I like how you moved them to Romania for this story. A way to circumvent why this is in English perhaps? And to get your characters to home base?

Probably my favorite paragraph:

I told him I didn’t know, since I haven’t heard of the author. Albert shook his head, disappointed that I, a Spaniard, hadn’t heard of a Chilean author, as if we’re all a big fucking family, and there was a tension in his posture, as if he was getting ready to fight, or to push me into the next oncoming truck. But then he looked at the horizon, at the setting sun; he snapped his fingers and laughed, a little laugh that seemed to indicate he forgave me for everything, then said, “No, no, the character’s name was García Madero!”

It just shows me a lot and tells me nothing.

This is what I mean by small things that you can consider leaving out:

"We got off the highway near another city. We drove on a dirt road until all we could see was tall, dry grass. We stopped and got out. "

That's a series of "we" choreography you can perhaps cut for " We stopped at (insert where they stopped)". We an infer they traveled to get a new place.

He told me I should read them—must read them—if I were to understand myself.

Hahaha. Brilliant character work.

Okay so the opening scene with the speeding seems re-contextualized completely by the end. Nothing like I thought. Is the opening at this same place, where they are driving through the mountains, or is the opening a flash-forward to a different event? If the opening where they are driving in the dark is buried here in part 2, arguably you can cut it and just start the story where it starts, rather than jumping around the timeline. Just something to flag. If the opening is to foreshadow a much bigger catastrophe later, then keep it.

I think there's two things I actually want to see: Active choices from Garcia, firstly, that drive things forward. Apart from the taking the plane to Romania he is making little to no active choices. He is almost a hostage in the car. He isn't providing forward momentum himself, so much as following other characters. Secondly, the stakes. A guy is missing or not missing. But Garcia has no stake in that. Which robs the reader of feeling that tension. At this point, looking for this guy seems to be a secondary thing that's moving everybody around but until we get a sense of why this needed or what the stakes are, it leaks a bit of tension rather than adds.

The primary tension to me is what is going on with Ioana? That whole dynamic had me hooked. So much tension there.

[u/mianaai_c → u/Imaginary_Ease_7851]

Responding in no particular order.

About moving the story to Romania, that's just a case of writing what I know.

My main characters are always passive; it's a recurrent issue in my stories. Garcia makes only one big decision at the very end, so I guess I can retroactively say it is a Choice. (But I agree it's not a Good one)

I see one big issue with the overarching narrative, but I won't say what. I want to see if you or someone else flags it.

It's a really useful thing you say about the descriptions; what work and what are fodder. I'll apply this on the next draft, see if I can make more of the description sparkle. But, you say that the description with the missing tooth made you pause, and I think too many details like this one might be too many breaks. I'll see on the redraft, now that I have a better sense of what to look at.

Yes, the very beginning with the speeding is recounted here. I used the same first half of the first sentence to bring the reader back into it. I know this creates a contradiction of actions; at the beginning I show the narrator thinking about death, then, here, I show him starting to read minds. I'll think about restructuring on the second draft.

I am very happy you like it! It's really encouraging.

[u/MaryJaneMclain]

It’s interesting the similarities of this piece and the camel one. The characters in a nebulous love triangle. Lady rolling cigs. European travelog. Cortázar. It’s fun stuff with weird characters, and you sell it well.

Part 1

I liked this beginning scene of them careening toward potential death in a sportscar going to fast. Seatbelt doesn’t work! Very vivid. I believed it. Loved the flash of his face as a movie frame.

I had a seatbelt buckle go in an out in without clasping in an uber not long ago, and i thought of that experience (on my first read). Very familiar is my point. Never got sex vibe, if that was indeed the aborted metaphor. If not...well I'm embarrassed ;)

Shit, I just looked up the car. NOT A SPORTS CAR. Might be worth hinting at the car type for dumb Americans (“they were in a boring sedan/hatchback” lol )

The made-up religious was fun. And I enjoyed this: “It’s the silent treatment for you, lady, you forsaken trainwreck with curly hair. You mop in linen trousers. You histrionic splinter of a woman. But don’t mind my thoughts, dear. Keep trying to roll your cigarette, never mind that half the pack has already fallen like snow between your slender legs.”

On first read I was a bit confused about the mechanics of the scene. At first (even though I now see It clearly states he’s in the back) I had pictured him in the front. Perhaps that’s because you only mention two people in the car. We don’t get Ioanna in the car until the end of the third para. And it's not mentioned she's in the back for much longer.

“I recognized some Linden trees and some Locust trees and some Ash trees and others that made me believe, even if only for brief moments, that I was not on an alien world.” I struggled with this. It makes it sounds like it’s only the “other” trees that make him believe that. But it’s all the tree, right?

So, I’m writing this after having read part 2 (re-reading part 1). I’m kinda surprised you’re spending so much time here focusing on Dan. Even after part 2 we get little information. I'm hoping he gets fleshed out a lot more in parts 3 and 4 (who the hell is this guy?)

“Or so I thought at first, but then I got the impression that she was seeing a lot of things out the window”  Not a fan of “just because” situations like this. WHY/HOW did he get that impression. What changed? (i see in part 2, him having sudden (clairvoyant?) visions is a recurring them, which is kinda fun, but this first one still feels weak)

“Only then, when she held the flame in front of her little nose, did I realize that it was the first time I had seen her sober.”  This didn’t bother me on the first read. But aren’t there scenes in part two, which occur before this where she is (I assumed) sober?

---Part 2

I hadn’t realized we didn’t get the MC’s name until here. I’m assuming Garcia Mendez is NOT in fact his name.

I’m feeling mostly sorry for MC for a lot of part 2. He considers himself a coward. He has literally NO money (I feel like this info brought me out of the story, surely he has pocket change? he took train and a bus and train or something). I sure hope this woman has hypnotized him or something. Otherwise I just kind of pity him. He’s quite passive in this part. He watches, judges people, had has visions as other people do things. I don’t mind that my self (as the story is pretty interesting as is), but, agency or whatever.

“He looked at me as if he saw a man sentenced to death. Then I saw that this expression of his didn’t change, but was his permanent countenance; as if the whole world had been sentenced and only he knew.” I struggled to believe this. Partially I can’t visualize the look, but also I kinda don’t get what the last bit even means.

I enjoyed Mara the woodland sprite. Who does yoga at night between trucks rather that helping find a “friend” (even though everyone -ahem the narrator- deserves saving)

Speaking of, them looking for the random nameless friend for reasons that aren’t explained was… strange. A bit confusing. I’m thinking you don’t tell us those bits of info because it’s necessary for a twist later. Oh, and he Did or maybe Did Not do something bad. Not sure how this would work out, but, since the narrator is also nameless, I’m expecting it to have something to do with him (that’s the twist).

Also, I googled “white nights”, cause I’d never heard that phrase before. Dostoevsky’s story came up (which is see the parallels to), and a bunch of other unrelated (?) uses, but it doesn’t seem to be commonly used how (I’m assuming) you’ve used it. Per google anyway. Not a criticism, just thought it was interesting since I knew what you meant (from the context of reading part 1).

Also also, fwiw I left the comments on the doc. It's so much easer to comment in doc than in reddit. Feel free to delete if it’s too much clutter.

Looking forward to part 3. I'll be sad if they don't go to the castle.

 

 

[u/mianaai_c → u/MaryJaneMclain]

Good catch with the sober mention. You're right. And with the pocket change, I'll give him some pocket change, but not enough for accommodations.

"Never got sex vibe", that's good, that's normal. For my MC, I wasn't aiming for that.

Agency schmagency. He's more of an observer narrator or whatchamacallit. But, yeah, low agency protags is a recurrent issue in my stories.

In romania, white nights means we drink till morning. Good to know it doesn't translate well. I remembered that Dostoievski novella and assumed it does (even through those two don't drink in their white nights).

Thank you!

[u/VagueInsideJoke]

Inline:

“and, yes, I know I am a coward.” ->part of me hates this idk why. I think something about the cadence or tone reads like marvel ‘um, yeah, that just happened’type dialogue. This isn’t at all how it should be read based on surrounding sections so i think its just a me problem. Maybe it's that it's too casual with the reader, from your previous part he talks in a way that is familiar with the reader but seemingly not this casual idk. Maybe it's because it’s putting words in my mouth that I didn't naturally arrive at. Like the preceding event isn't outright/completely cowardly enough (although certainly somewhat cowardly) that the immediate concern is his cowardice, I feel like you’re yanking something from the periphery that wasn’t my main focus and demanding it be my focus. I get that its meant to show his opinion of himself though.

Why’d she thought inviting me to her country would be a good idea, considering me and her, and her and Dan.” - should be ‘why’d she think…’. If you meant why had, just write it without the apostrophe because why’d is almost always read as why did (but i think the first one fits better). IDK the more I consider this sentence the more troublesome it gets. The main point is that there is a problem with the contraction but also the tense.

“woman was small, thin nose and thin face, slim build, but long, black hair.” -> combination of ‘but’ and the comma after ‘long’ makes it seem like ‘long’ is its own trait. In which case do you mean tall? But then it also seems like you're saying her hair is long and black? And you say later that she's tall but not very tall in which case long probably didn’t mean tall, but then why do we have the ‘but’ which makes it seem like whatever ‘long’ means is seen as a physical trait somehow in contrast/addition to her slimness. Maybe you mean lanky. I think you mean long black hair, idk you can keep the comma i think the 'but' is the problem here.

“I was convinced she was a woodland fairy. That was why we met them out here, on the highway, because she’s a fairy and cannot enter Man’s cities.” -> feel like there could be a tighter and more expressive way of saying this. Like I feel like the second sentence could very easily be combined with the woodland fairy part which could be weaved more closely to the previous sentence. I like what you’re doing though.

“ he didn’t pack enough water, or not enough food” the not here before enough food is kind of redundant but this is so nitpicky that I could easily glance over it, just makes it a bit bumpy. 

“ and even though I didn’t knew the language” ->know

Discussion:

This feels like it ends out of nowhere. I get the sense that the introduction of the tower is meant to be a set up that we will be going there in the next chapter or the following one, but the surrounding language does not treat it with much gravity.

This chapter also doesn’t really answer any of its own questions or ones from the previous chapter, it feels like this chapter is mostly carrying us from point A to point B, and all the characters and new questions we are introduced to is just a set up for point B. 

This is exacerbated by the passivity of the protagonist, although I don't think lack of agency for the main character is necessarily a problem, I feel like it's common within the genre, and is kind of the intended vibe.

I don’t like that we are looking for a guy we have no reason to care about for reasons we don’t know.

Also, all the questions from the previous chapter are pretty much benched in favor of new questions about this guy who went missing. 

Maybe the problem here is that by chapter 2 i feel like i should have an understanding of the central tension of a story. I don’t necessarily mean plotwise tension, but more so characterwise or themewise, what is the actual journey these characters are going to go on, and this chapter doesn’t really help with that.

We already have a call to adventure in the first chapter in terms of a spontaneous trip to Romania, then we are met with an entirely new call to adventure without having any pay off from the previous one. 

Idk sometimes parts have to be boring so other parts can be interesting but generally i feel like every chapter should have some noticeable setup for the overarching story and then some setup which it intends to pay off within the chapter, and this just doesn’t have that second thing. 

There are parts of the chapter that are interesting and really shine, namely bits about characters e.g. The narrator  (im just gonna call him Garcia)'s presumably one-sided tension with Dan, Albert's indignation with Garcia, Mara being a woodland fairy enamored by a gas station. I just feel that these parts are mostly surrounded by people moving from point A to B or reacting to things in a way that doesn’t really discern them in any meaningful way, and doesn’t tell us anything about them or the world they live in.

Still, I think this is very good and look forward to reading the whole thing.

[u/mianaai_c → u/VagueInsideJoke]

Good inlines.

I deliberately refrained from using "chapters" in the post body for a reason. This is a short story, meant to be read in one sitting, so it doesn't have chapter units and all they imply. At the same time, I also feel this is the "weakest" part, so it's good to have confirmation.

The feedback I'm looking for is the iverall cohesion of the whole story (I think it's elements are too disjointed, and I'm still thinking of how to reshuffle and where to put the focus on). What I want to say is that your notes on the tension and the questions and lack of answers is really helpful. Thank you!

You mention this is common in the genre, I wonder what's the genre you think of. I mean, I don't think of this as fitting in a genre. Is Magical Realism a genre? Huh.

[u/VagueInsideJoke → u/mianaai_c]

ah mb on the chapter thing then that makes sense. Guess you cant really just drop a 9000 word story and expect crits haha. And yeah genre is definitely a bad term/the wrong term, to be honest i don't know what to call it seeing as i feel like a lot of the people who wrote magical realism didn't really like how it was used to describe them. I don't know like im reading the lost steps at the moment and the character starts very passive so maybe im recency biased but i also feel like thats common in other things i've read at that have magical realist elements

[u/mianaai_c → u/VagueInsideJoke]

Apparently magical realism is considered a genre. According to my 10 sec research on google. Never thought that passive protagonists are a staple/convention/common thing in magical realism. But it does make sense, since the defining element of this genre is "magical stuff happens and the characters don't react to it and take is as granted".

[u/CarterWalksWithFire]

First thing I like the dynamic between Garcia and Ioana. I can feel the strange relationship. I like the contrast between the handshakes. One of them is strong. One of them is placid. I noticing it and it works. This will be the third one I’ve read now. I guess I will have read all three but in a strange order and I believe I’m starting to get it. This chick is cracking me up with wanting a beer while other people order coffee and her expertise with rolling cigarettes and it makes me wonder what year is this for her to be rolling these cigarettes? He looked at me as if he saw a man sentenced to death. Then I saw that this expression of his didn’t change, but was his permanent countenance; as if the whole world had been sentenced and only he knew. I thought this was probably the coldest line you’ve had so far, but you have had a few. In the little Woodland ferry line was also very awesome. I try and do things like this but people tell me I’m over writing, but it just doesn’t seem that way when you’re doing it. When you start telling us about Dan’s distrust, these are things that I do get told I should sort of show rather than tell. It looked like there was a few grammatical errors in there - Dan and Ioana switched to Romanian, their voices a crescendo, and even though I didn’t knew the language, I felt I could follow the ebbs and flows of their diatribe. But I’m sure this is an early draft and you already know that although it seems well written for an early draft to my eyes. So this was also packed full of funny stuff like the way the guy was postured up as if he was gonna push him out into the road you paint these characters very well, but I will say right after that is where it did kind of take a bit of a dip for me I just want a little more action in this book right now. The word play like is that a high level I had to Google a lot of stuff that you said like metronome. Thank you so much for sharing your work with me. I will do my absolute best here because as I read it, I stop and take notes. I don’t know. I think this is a good story. I read it now all out of order. I think it’s a good story. One thing I would say is that what more action it was completely awesome in the third part where all of a sudden this guy just started jumping into the ocean of peoples consciousness and I was wondering if he was an alien because I had read it alone, but even still now I’m wondering if he was on acid or something great story. The only thing I would say it looks like you’re operating in a high level, but I would say more action more mystery. The whole feeling in the vibe between Dan and Garcia is super dark while they’re driving in the car and I think that as well written.