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This is a piece i was working on some time ago. I didn't quite get where i wanted to go with it: i feel like i was trying to accomplish too many things without achieving any of them eloquently. But hell, perhaps feedback from others will be more acute analysis than tackling it myself.
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Oh my god. That's a fucking guillotine.
"Here," she said from behind her face mask, a low, monotonous, sex-less, voice. A drone, working the conveyer belt in a surgical factory. I, the next doll in line, features set to be altered and modified. Her latex covered hands reached towards my hesitant ones, two grey spheres of malleable foam rubber dropping from her fingertips, like what you would imagine to be the inside of a memoryfoam™ mattress.
A frown slowly crawls across my face as i realize she's given me stress balls.
The room was dark and encroaching. The other inhabitants busy preparing their work stations, the doctor attending his stainless steel instrument tray. My blindfold had just been removed, the dimmed lights and staunch sterility now leaving me both suffocated and parched. An ominous steel table rests to my left, ominous if for no other reason than that it was not the bed that i had expected, that the one bastion of comfort that i could expect in this faceless intimidating encounter was in fact just as stark and cowing. shitfuck... i should have taken that Ativan.
Line Worker 1 gestures and asks me to mount the operating table. Legs up. Higher please.
My shirt abandons its attempts to fend-off the invading cold of the steel beneath my back. Concern now legitimately dances on the peripherals of my consciousness as i look from side to side. surely I should have a pillow? what if my head moves.... I squeeze the stress balls. I'm glad she gave me two.
"Now just relax," the master tinkerer soothes to me, the same kind of inflection in the tone of his voice that you'd hear a shrink giving the kid who's just thrown a temper-tantrum. "You're doing just fine. Just, relax."
A set of latex digits creep down either side of my head to my temples, applying slight pressure, keeping my head still. The Doctor, I think the name was Lin, passes his too, latex hand, in front of my right eye, grabbing hold of my lower lid.
"This may feel a bit funny, but you'll get used to it in just a few moments." A metal clamp pulls taught on my eyelid, stretching it downwards. He pulls on the upper eyelid, and soon it too is in the grasp of what I imagine to look like a clothes-peg, but wider and shorter instead of narrower and taller; like one of those plastic sealers used for chip bags; and made of metal.
"Now you're about to see five lights. One red in the middle, inside four green. Stare at the red light until I tell you otherwise." Dr.Lin's voice is soothing; steering the Pasodoble clear of center stage.
The first set of eyedrops gush across my unprotected eye ball. I can't feel them. The freezing must have kicked in. "...and these ones are just to keep your eye clean and sterile..." my vision becomes blurred, engorging the red light to ten times its previous size. I'm in control again, panic restrained. The light show is fascinating. Everything is going to plan. Nothing to worry about.
"Now, I'm going to place something over your eye, and you're going to experience a slight tugging. This is normal, just keep looking at the red light as best you can," Dr.Lin dictates slowly and surely. It's been in a few moments since the last eyedrop, and my vision starts to clear again, the red light shrinking to its legitimate size. A white contraption crosses over my vision. It slowly descends toward my face...
I want to scream. The matador is in full frantic gambol; the bull is nigh, nostrils flaring. Oh my god. That's a fucking guillotine. I crush the stress balls. I can't breathe.
The tugging at my eye is overwhelming my ability to keep it straight, a fish trying to swim away from the line attached to the hook lodged in its mouth. I can't keep the red light in focus at all. Oh my god. Oh my god. The red light eventually swings back into place. I can feel pressure on my eye. "Ok, now, keep your eye as still as you can. This might feel a bit foreign, but everything is just, fine". Again, he pauses after 'just'. And how can I keep my eye locked on the red light with this device prodding my eyeball out of it's socket?
I feel a stabbing in my eye as the guillotine, sounding more like an electric can opener, quickly slices open three fourths of my cornea. The muleta is lifted, the bull about to plow into me and i'm about to scream. But the pain disappears as quickly as it came. Holy fuck the freezing isn't working yet. Holy fuck. Oh my god.
"Ok, you're doing just great. The cornea has been opened and I'm going to lift back the flap. When i do this, you will lose your vision and everything will go dark. This is normal, just keep looking at where you think the red light should be. You're doing fine." The stag is coming around again, cinched malehood deepening his stride, lowering his horns. I can't do this. My thoughts scratch like a boy in the throes of puberty.
I see what looks to be a large object pass in front of my distorted vision, and as the object reverses direction, my sight explodes. The red light that had decupled from the eyedrops now centuples, 100 times the size it was a moment before, taking up almost all of my vision!
And then, without respite, it got dimmer, and dimmer, and went black.
I can't see. I can't see. A snarl releases from the bull's maw. This is terror. Where's the red light! Oh my god am I moving my eye? Fuck just don't move your eye. Focus. The red light should be right there. Fuck. Oh my god.
The red light comes back into focus.
And breathe. And again. Release the stress balls. Okaaay...
Should I tell them that my freezing hasn't kicked in yet...? "Ok, now keep your eye still, stare at the red light". I continue to gaze into the light. Maybe that was normal? Did they say it would feel like pinching...? "You're doing great, just keep it there". Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE.
I open my mouth to howl my crisis when the smell of burning flesh assaults my nostrils. The laser had already been cast... I didn't feel it... The freezing kicked in. The matador stands, his disputant trailing with torero in tow.
I release the stress balls for the final time as Dr.Lin flips forward the cornea and uses what i think of as eye-glue to seal it shut. Eye drops continue to be dispensed. The next ten minutes pass by with soothing assurances from Dr.Lin of a job well done. Adrenaline leaves my system. I become almost giddy.
It's time to do my second eye. I'm actually excited. That was intense. I get to do it again. Some people call me crazy.
Size 15 font from 20 feet away.
 
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Great story.
Remind's me of the the guillotine scene in Tim and Eric Awesome Show Great Job Chrimbus Special's "A Chrimbus Carol" starring Carol and Mr. Henderson.
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Whoa, that was awesome. I'm going to bed right now, but this story was about eye surgery, right? Lasik or something? I'm totally fried, but I think I at least understood the premise and/or backdrop...
This is good writing! I think it turned out quite well, though I agree that some elements (e.g. the metaphorical bullfighting...I presume?) might not have been as completely developed as they could have been, though.
Don't want to sound pedantic, as you're literarily much more proficient than I am...just some constructive criticism from a sleepy dude on his phone.
Edit: terrible, terrible swype
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So, what kind of eye surgery was this? I don't think it's Lasik because there's no mentioning of lasers. Only a knifes, represented by the guillotine.
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yeah, the bullfighting was supposed to represent my fear/anxiety - the turbulent conflict in my mind to remain in control.
i drop the first reference to this very nonchalantly: Concern now legitimately dances on the peripherals of my consciousness as i look from side to side. I next refer/transition to the Pasodoble - the music played during (and dancestyle that represents) bullfighting.
After that it's just awkward. /wrists
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On December 24 2010 17:44 terranissharin wrote:
So, what kind of eye surgery was this? I don't think it's Lasik because there's no mentioning of lasers. Only a knifes, represented by the guillotine.
It was Lasik. I mention the laser 5th paragraph from the bottom.
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Did u mean Ativan? (lorazepam)
Also , i didn't understand what the freezing meant until like 3/4 of the way through, and im still not exactly sure what it is , the eye drops freeze them?
Either way i liked the story but was completely in the dark about the whole process. Like i feel when you wrote "Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE." i should've felt something stronger. Instead i was just scratching my head, i mean it clearly implies something bad from the way you wrote and emphasized it, but i just had no clue what lasering an unfrozen eye would do.
Also, we're guardian buddies! :D
Your story reminds me of "anesthetic awareness" that some people experience.
Basically you are awake and aware, but paralyzed, during something like open heart surgery.
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thanks for the feedback 
massive fail on my part.
edit - yeah, they were anesthetic eye drops.
And yeah, with Lasik, they melt your eye to correct your vision - it's not something you'd want done without anesthesia. 
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Hyrule18920 Posts
Shit like this is why I want to get lasik...but not go through it.
BLEGH
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This sounds like something I would never want to do and something that I really want to do at the same time. It sounds like an amazing experience to be able to witness your own surgery in such an unusual away.
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On December 24 2010 22:13 tofucake wrote:
Shit like this is why I want to get lasik...but not go through it.
BLEGH
SAME HERE URGH
I'm nearsighted to -0.8xx (not sure about designation, but it's an eight, and it's very bad.
@OP: hey, it wasn't bad at all! I thought it was really interesting, exciting, and informative! Keep it up :>
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Thank GOD my eyes are in good shape, eye surgery (as well as pretty much all surgery, and basically anything that involves cutting, burning, etc. etc.) scares the living hell out of me. I had a pretty good idea of what the Guillotine was supposed to be once I figured out it was eye surgery... I saw something on TV about how the surgery worked, so I've actually seen it done.. Made me never want to have bad eyesight...
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On December 25 2010 06:02 Bobbias wrote:
Thank GOD my eyes are in good shape, eye surgery (as well as pretty much all surgery, and basically anything that involves cutting, burning, etc. etc.) scares the living hell out of me. I had a pretty good idea of what the Guillotine was supposed to be once I figured out it was eye surgery... I saw something on TV about how the surgery worked, so I've actually seen it done.. Made me never want to have bad eyesight...
forever myopic T___T
...unless I get guillotined.
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Aside from the experience, can anyone give me some editting/critique? Certain passages don't transition well to others, what i feel results in this experience:
Either way i liked the story but was completely in the dark about the whole process. Like i feel when you wrote "Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE." i should've felt something stronger.
Did you guys find this the case as well? How do i go about filling the reader with more information, without losing momentum or giving away the surgery too early?
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One thing you might want to consider is basing your short story on a central theme, instead of (as I think you mentioned in the OP) going for too many things at once.
That way, you can specifically build up a certain idea. Because you feel that the effect that should have arisen from the fear (of pain from the "guillotine") wasn't particularly strong, that might have been something to which you should have given more thought/focus, e.g. accentuate the fact that the eye freeze would prevent pain, and that the laser is some ominous, awful device...? I'm not sure.
I thought that your trying to not hand us that fact that the surgery shall occur was a smooth move, and that you don't really need to tell us flat-out; if someone didn't understand what was really happening by the end, it's supposed to be the writer's fault, etc., but I think the reader should be able to discern your point in this passage...you don't really need to change that.
Most people don't actually know how lasik works in the first place, so subtly giving us more information might be counterproductive in that it might cause sensory overload in people who aren't going to understand what you're talking about unless you hand it over on a silver platter.
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Perhaps this has more of a literary/experimental bent and so my advice is not useful, but typically starting a story with unattributed dialogue is a bad idea. It disorients the reader and makes them ask very basic questions like who and why from the start. Then if they don't get the who and why immediately in the following three lines, they just give up. A big no-no in commercial writing.
The second paragraph is present tense while the first para is past. Tense change that quickly is another big no-no.
Third para, the adj encroaching seems a bit odd. How does a room encroach? The grammar is a little wonky as well. You have a complete sentence followed by two fragments connected by a comma splice. It might work with a colon and connecting the two sentence fragments with a preposition. Such as: The room was dark and encroaching: the other inhabitants busy preparing their work stations while the doctor attended to his stainless steel instrument tray. In general, it is a bit stilted though. Even if grammatically correct, syntax is a concern. Use of ellipses is generally frowned upon in publishing as well.
At this point, I stopped reading because there were too many editor signals telling me not to continue.
In general, I felt the premise, the character, and his conflict or at least immediate problem was not introduced fast enough. There is only a vague sense of danger coming from being in an operating room, but I don't get any sense of actual character, and it's laden with physical descriptions and a lot of "writerly" words. By writerly I mean words that are meant to impress the reader by their existence but not form any actual emotional connection.
Para 1 starts to establish a scene and movement, para 2 is more emotional/character description, but then para 3 really starts to lay it on thick. There are metaphors stacked on metaphors, sentence fragments with periods used as punch lines, word echoes, and alliterations. The sheer saturation of literary devices renders them meaningless as they're lost in the mass of other ones fighting for attention on the page. Instead of it contributing and enhancing the reading experience, it makes me think about the writer instead of the character in the story. I start to feel like I'm reading writing, not an account of events.
I feel there is a LOT of words being used to bloat and over-describe a single not hard to understand experience. While this type of endeavor can be very interesting in its own way, kind of like Raymond Carver's "Cathedral" it also needs to bring something new to the table. What new way is this story looking at surgery and the apprehension surrounding it? What quirky off-the-wall interpretation of human emotions is on display?
And if you don't want it to be an intellectual voyage, if you want it to be totally visceral, then perhaps poetry would be a better avenue to explore this topic eloquently. Poetry lends itself well to short-form communication of emotions and physical sensations without a need for narrative, plot structure, or character development. As a short story though, I find this one lacking a bit in the necessary dramatic structure. And advance apologies if my critique comes off as harsh. I've always tended to be a nothing but the truth type of workshopper.
That being said, writing has no right answers nor any defined goals. I, personally, just tend to write from a "what's commercially viable and has mainstream appeal" type of sensibility.
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On December 25 2010 06:33 Mora wrote:Aside from the experience, can anyone give me some editting/critique? Certain passages don't transition well to others, what i feel results in this experience: Show nested quote +Either way i liked the story but was completely in the dark about the whole process. Like i feel when you wrote "Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE." i should've felt something stronger. Did you guys find this the case as well? How do i go about filling the reader with more information, without losing momentum or giving away the surgery too early?
Also, again this is only in general, but I have to say that the literary community tends to frown on "aha!" plot structures. As in, plot structures where the dramatic tension is derived from the writer withholding knowledge from the reader. While there are some fantastic stories out there with big reveal plot structures, they tend to guide amateur writers away from those types of stories because they're so easily botched. It takes a very skillful writer to make a plot like that work and not lose its appeal on the re-read.
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On December 25 2010 14:53 StorkHwaiting wrote:Show nested quote +On December 25 2010 06:33 Mora wrote:Aside from the experience, can anyone give me some editting/critique? Certain passages don't transition well to others, what i feel results in this experience: Either way i liked the story but was completely in the dark about the whole process. Like i feel when you wrote "Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE." i should've felt something stronger. Did you guys find this the case as well? How do i go about filling the reader with more information, without losing momentum or giving away the surgery too early? Also, again this is only in general, but I have to say that the literary community tends to frown on "aha!" plot structures. As in, plot structures where the dramatic tension is derived from the writer withholding knowledge from the reader. While there are some fantastic stories out there with big reveal plot structures, they tend to guide amateur writers away from those types of stories because they're so easily botched. It takes a very skillful writer to make a plot like that work and not lose its appeal on the re-read.
Aside from "don't write this way", do you have any critique that i could apply to this piece? I know you write a fair bit yourself, perhaps you could give me some direction?
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On December 25 2010 16:25 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On December 25 2010 14:53 StorkHwaiting wrote:On December 25 2010 06:33 Mora wrote:Aside from the experience, can anyone give me some editting/critique? Certain passages don't transition well to others, what i feel results in this experience: Either way i liked the story but was completely in the dark about the whole process. Like i feel when you wrote "Oh my god... They're going to laser my UNFROZEN EYE." i should've felt something stronger. Did you guys find this the case as well? How do i go about filling the reader with more information, without losing momentum or giving away the surgery too early? Also, again this is only in general, but I have to say that the literary community tends to frown on "aha!" plot structures. As in, plot structures where the dramatic tension is derived from the writer withholding knowledge from the reader. While there are some fantastic stories out there with big reveal plot structures, they tend to guide amateur writers away from those types of stories because they're so easily botched. It takes a very skillful writer to make a plot like that work and not lose its appeal on the re-read. Aside from "don't write this way", do you have any critique that i could apply to this piece? I know you write a fair bit yourself, perhaps you could give me some direction?
It's difficult because there are no right answers in writing, and your piece is mostly style without a lot of narrative structure or plot arc to work with. If you had a stronger sense of narrative, theme, or plot, I could maybe try to offer some tips on how to communicate that to the reader.
As I'm reading it now though, this is a piece meant to communicate the fear you felt while at LASIK. I think you had a lot of details supporting that idea and developed pretty clearly to the reader that you did not have a good time at the doctor's. Beyond that though, I need to know more about what you're trying to get done in this piece to offer any critique.
I get a tiny sense at the end that your character went through some type of growth when the last line talks about getting excited. But if so, the story's very oddly proportioned to have 95% of the word count used to describe the protag's fear and only the very last line saying he's excited. And not even really an elaboration or development of that, it's just outright stated. Then followed by a punchline: "Some people call me crazy." Followed by another punchline: Size 15 etc. So I guess my critique would be that I think the narrative structure needs work. The crux of the story's character change/development should not be a punchline at the end where the character's rationale is just outright stated. It should be some type of fleshed out arc with thoughts/development/background, something! Some type of meaningful content to show why we should care and why the protag cares other than the obvious well because it's his eyes, duh, type of thing. Otherwise, it feels like I could have read "I was scared, and it was traumatic/surreal, but I think it was worth it because now I can see better," and gotten the same effect.
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great. that was helpful.
Thanks Stork
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EPT
