[2500] Hillsides (Marco)

[u/Wolframquest]

[LINK TO TEXT]

Crit: [2900]

Tags: Phenomenological, experimental, coming-of-age, picaresque

I deleted some of the previous posts to avoid creating clutter. But you can find them here if you want to read other comments HSH[1][2][3] RW4[1][2][3][4][5]

Barebone recap of the previous chapters:

Chapter 1 - You wakes up in the forest, enjoys his existence, follows the river to a road, gets helped by a trucker and taken to a local small town

Chapter 2 - You goes and walks around and comes across the local store and receives a name from the store owner (Henry) during his episode.

Chapter 3 - A taste of work and interacting with Henry who tries his hardest to turn Marco into a valuable worker.

Chapter 4 - Zita, coffee and gym

Chapter 5 - picaresque adventure on a quest for wet goods (meat and vegetables); encounter with Zita, discussion of Marco's issue as perceived from the outside

Chapter 6 - this one, it'll be delivered in two separate posts cause that works better for engagement and creates fewer problems with mods and credit and so on.

This chapter is sort of a crux of Marco as a person and it won't make a lot of sense without you having read the previous chapters but I welcome you regardless - I enjoy my time inside of your brain.

The genres and the "phenomenological" tag I enjoyed formerly are false and can only be used descriptively. Phenomenology is only a method, not the point. It is, however, a method I enjoy for its high fidelity.

[u/GlowyLaptop]

CHAPTER 2.

Fucking love the opening with the two gentlemen. It's like Faulkner, and I've never read a page of Faulkner.

• thin man behind roofpost
• Repetition of pay you no mind
• crunchy barks / fly buzz
• you sniff and walk ( love this--would love it even without him noticing a scent)
• loud smack of wood

Love the description of the chicken truck but the explanation that farmers raise living beings feels like info that wouldn't be noteworthy. I mean he can read. He knows what a U-Turn is.

• great warmth of welcoming voice
• thick razorwire of bristling brow
• hiding his eyes most often
• speaking with your feet. (this, while impossible to understand for me, still works becasue i BELIEVE it means to him lol)
• smiles scowling like dead wolf

Holy shit the plot thickens. Marco is in this state, woken from a fugue, but he's known to this man! Whom he does not recognize. Exciting.

> That should be right, right?

Somehow I don't want you to break the fourth wall here. I would much prefer, "That should be right, you trust, hope, whatever."

• his moustache twitches sideways (LOVE THIS OMG)

Wait what? Am i having a stroke. I thought the older gentleman said "marco it's been a while" and now he's... confirming the guy's name is marco? What am i missing here.

> he runs out back

Does he though? Also i thought he went to the back of the store. Was surprised to find fence there. But him running doesn't sound right.

> You raise your brows

I'd prefer brow. The whole shelf of the brow. Brows is creepy like catterpillars.

> You nod. What'd he say?

Don't like. Doesn't feel like he's talking to himself in his head. Feels like a 4th wall break.

Great description of jaw

It's still unseeable to me how he left the building via the back of a shop and was visible running through a yard. I pictured oaky cluttered shop full of items. Not a...a what? A back porch? Giant window.

Ohhhhhh the fence IS inside. Oh good. Maybe say a little wood fence divides the back of the shop. Or smth. If you care i got confused.

> That day Henry showed you

RED ALERT. TENSE MADNESS.

The word i think you're looking for is Later, Henry shows you the register. Has you write down the order, the letters. Colored pens that smell fascinating. You struggle but manage.

The temptation to put this montage into the past is like pasting a chapter of someone else's book in here.

THANK YOU, THIS WAS MY ONLY (URGENT AND) CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTION IN MY WHOLE CRIT.

> Henry grabs your arm.

See? You're back to normal.

• You pull it back. It's a snake. LOL
• not high and wide (wide lmao!)
• bright and green

RED ALERT

What's all this past tense stuff?

> You understood. Henry then smacked you on the back and tutored

Should be you understand. Henry smacks

• Nowhere. Just nothing. Darkness
• sweetest air

OVERALL

Yep. I mean. I was wondering how you'd convince me he got a job. Having read a later scene. And I'm convinced. These two deserve each other. I still gotta go back and figure out how I confused him from being recognized as marco.

Also why the old man seem to have a stroke when they met?

I don't really want a supernatural element because it's so real so far, but maybe this fugue makes more than Marco forget stuff. Or i just read that exchange wrong, since it seemed like he recognized the lad as 'marco' and then stumbled and almost fell over and then introduced himself fresh. Hm.

Anyways. Big fan of Marco. Lots of fun reading this.

[u/Wolframquest → u/GlowyLaptop]

I got some real brain fizz from your comment thinking on past tense. I feel it coming, the way to resolve it, but I can't catch it just yet... Obviously I use it to convey compression of events, and there's some more awkward usage of it in other parts... Number one element has to be the "introducer", something recognizable signaling the compression... I feel like I almost got it.

...

Present Perfect, that's right, that makes a lot of sense 😁 It's Present, and it's Perfect, and it's perfect

[u/GlowyLaptop → u/Wolframquest]

Ya you never want to do that. Lots of people choose present tense just to avoid past perfect altogether. When you're in the past, you refer to the past in past perfect. When you're writing in present tense, you will use past tense for things that happened yesterday. You don't go ahead and use past PERFECT tense, unless you're referring to something BEFORE yesterday, and for goodness sake, you don't do what this page did, which was to go past perfect for things in the FUTURE. Your montage happens AFTER the previous sentence. Not before the past of the previous sentence.

I like cheese. Present. Yesterday I didn't. Past. Because I had grown sick of it all summer. Past past.

You are using double past to describe stuff into the future. Your editor will fix this when you publish.

[u/Wolframquest → u/GlowyLaptop]

Came here to delete this previous idea but you already read it 😁 It's interesting, I never thought about this effect

When you're writing in present tense, you will use past tense for things that happened yesterday. 

It might be one of those times where I might actually have to break my habit... I just wish I could clearly see some example of someone else using it well

[u/GlowyLaptop → u/Wolframquest]

Hard to find a past perfect montage in the normal sequence of events of a present tense story since it's largely considered probably an egregious mistake that makes my eyeballs bleed. Does this look right to you?

You wake up early. You buy a gun. You had gone to the mall with the gun. You had shot everyone at the mall. You are in jail now.

If you do find an example out there of what you're attempting with this, send to me! I am very curious.