Broadigy

The prose sat in front of him, unmoving - not in the sense of its physical state, of course, but rather unmoving in its style, its function - its ability. It sat, staring at the ceiling just like Derrick stared at it, contemplating what a bow had to do with the curve of someone’s hips, and why the author had chosen to use that analogy to describe a cereal bowl on a hot Sunday morning. That’s how the prose read, after all - that’s what it was saying. 

“I think this part, with the bowl, is fantastic.” A member of the workshop stated.

The room agreed. 

“It’s very deep.”

“Where’d you come up with that analogy? It’s so unique!”

The author blushed from across the room, and opened their mouth as if to say something. The professor of the class shushed him as the praise continued, each of the fifteen other participants providing adoration in various colors and participles. The author was beaming in their five minutes of fame while Derrick watched, waited, scanning over the page with a keen pencil and a sharper knife.

Your phrasing here needs work. I don’t understand what you’re saying.

The main character doesn’t have any flaws. 

‘Dad’ doesn’t do anything but throw hate at his son. Why hasn’t the son run away yet? Why is he even in this house, if he has such an understanding best friend? 

The way you describe this bowl makes no sense, and it’s too wordy. Why are you describing a cereal bowl like this when you said your story wanted to focus on your characters’ relationship with their father? What does cereal even have to do with the- 

“Alright. Everyone’s said their positive reflections on the story, now let’s hear some critiques. What could Arty have done better, here?” 

Derrick’s hand fired into the air. Arty’s face flinched. The room tried its best to stifle a groan.

The professor wrinkled his brow, looked around the room, and nodded to Derrick. Arty tried not to make eye contact as his fellow student shuffled through his copy of the manuscript, turning to page one. 

He cleared his throat.

“First off, while I like the way you’re trying to portray a dynamic relationship between Bart’s dad and his friends, I don’t think that you actually sell why Bart would stay there in the first place. If his dad’s that horrible, why would he stay in the house? He has nothing there, as you so eloquently put it several times. So why stay in such an abusive relationship? Furthermore, I don’t think it makes sense that Bart hasn’t done anything at all to show that he’s in such an abusive relationship - shouldn’t he have more trauma? Show some actual changes from his poor past?” 

One of the other students raised their hand. “I think that’s because Bart’s such a strong character. Even though he spent his life in such extremely poor conditions, he’s still just as strong as he was as a kid.” 

Another nodded. “Yeah, he goes into detail as to why that is.” 

“But that’s not how real life works.” Derrick stood up, scowling. “An eight-year-old kid doesn’t have the mental stamina of a fifty year old, there’s no way in hell he wouldn’t be affected in some way by that abuse.” 

“But it’s not real life.” The first classmate responded with their own scowl. “It’s a work of fiction, Derrick. You don’t have to replicate everything from real life.”

“But you have to replicate something. You get a single ‘gimme’, and that’s it - there’s nothing else when it comes to storytelling. Your ‘gimme’, Arty, was the fact that Bart is living with his dad to begin with - everything else doesn’t add up, and it boots me out of your story.” 

The classroom went silent for a few moments. Arty was gripping his manuscript between two sets of talons, tightening the paper between his fingertips. His neighbors were patting him on the back, and one of them muttered “It’s alright, Arty, he just doesn’t get it.” 

Go ahead and undermine my critique. Go right on ahead, Lewis. That won’t make his prose get any better. That’ll keep him average, just above your own writing. Derrick lowered his papers and took a seat. His gaze didn’t stop stabbing towards Arty’s, who was doing his best to dodge every strike.

The professor looked Derrick over, as if contemplating the wrinkles on an orange, and frowned at his student. “That’s good feedback, Derrick...now, would anyone else like to chime in with some critiques?”

Tiffany, a girl with wide-rimmed glasses and cheeks shot upright. “I think that his dad’s fine, but I wish that Bart did something to really stick it to his dad, though - I wanted to see him get his comeuppance.” 

The circle of desks rippled with approval, firing their sentiments throughout the classroom. Derrick watched as they managed to circle-jerk themselves into a tight knot of platitudes and pleasantries, struggling to not flip any of them off. 

Nothing quite like watching your critiques get shredded in a public forum. Fantastic, really - this is supposed to be a second or third draft, something meaningful. Something different. But it’s just recycled, lazy, and tropey. The same thing you hear from a self-empowering, twelve-year-old YA novel. 

In the end, the class seemed to settle on a solid 7 or 8 out of 10 for Arty’s story. The general consensus was ‘Good, but the dad needs more comeuppance’. 

“Good, class.” The professor collected the students’ papers and critiques, thumbing through each entry with a lazy eye. “And good job, Arty. Yours was one of the best stories we’ve workshopped thus far.” 

Arty beamed at the middle-aged author as the whole class applauded and congratulated him. 

All except for Derrick. His middle finger twitched under the desk, flicking into the underside of his table. The buzz of nerves made him smile a bit, rueful and sad. 

This was supposed to be a bachelor's degree in creative writing. This was the quality of storytelling and critique he had dreamed about his whole life. Nothing but a bunch of idiots who can’t see past their own trope-ridden hypocrisy.

- - - - -

ClackityClackClackClackCLACK. Keys flew, illuminated by a bright, glaring glow. A word processor was open, sporting a grand total of 2,234 words. The clock in the right hand corner of the screen read 12:15am - Thursday night, two weeks after Arty’s workshop. 

Derrick was writing his third draft, and it was going well. Well enough. For a first draft. The third first draft, to be precise. Of a book he’d been writing since the beginning of the semester. 

His eye twitched. “The rolling stones rolled onto Devvy’s back.” He read aloud, clacking away at the sentence. “The collapsing stones rolled onto Devvy’s back.”

ClackClackCLACKCLACK. 

“The rolling stones collapsed onto Devvy’s back.” 

CLACK. CLACK. CLACK.

“The stones rolled onto Devvy’s back, collapsing against his-“ SLAM. “Dammit! Screw you!” A chair shot back, ejecting its inhabitant into the air, wireless keyboard in hand. Derrick’s hands gripped it, squeezed it, flexed it just hard enough to-

He stopped. Set the keyboard down. Breathed in. Brought his hands to his temples. Squeezed. Tried to squish his screaming critic into a dead critic. His muse cheered him on from the tablet’s screen, tossing boulders, pebbles, and little sharp bits of shale at his screaming scribe, who protested in loud, logical bleats of reason and comparison. The muse didn’t listen. Derrick tried to follow suit. His temples squeezed, circled, and stopped, lowering to his sides and staying there. He sighed. 

“I should just cut it, shouldn’t I?” 

His scribe nodded, adjusting its glasses and reading from a long list of logical deductions. They didn’t just extend to the single sentence he had been working on, they covered the entirety of the last three hundred words. No, five hundred. Six. 

As the scribe kept reading, Derrick realized that it was much more than just seven hundred words. It was more than half of what he had just spent the last six hours trying to write - his third first draft was a nightmare of contradiction, bad prose, and poor grammar. 

His attention turned to his muse, who stared back at him from the screen, indignant. The muse pulled out his highlighter, started to point at all of the cool ideas he had just written out, all of the little turns of phrase he had come up with in the past two or three hours, the things he had thought were fantastic additions, colorful and unique ways to explain things. 

The scribe pointed out just how pointless and wordy each of them were. The muse argued back about how there had to be emphasis on something, and how much emphasis those phrases added. The scribe replied with a calm analysis of each word, each unneeded character that detracted from its significance. The muse grit its teeth and threw some more gravel at its evil twin. 

Derrick sat and thought about each point. Then began to press the DELETE button. 

Clack, clack, clack, clackClackClackClackCLACKCLACKCLACK...

Draft four, here I come. Luckily, I only have to submit this tomorrow, so here’s to hoping it’s comprehensible. Yay.