Thank you for your comments and critique. I appreciate your imput.
Short Story / Mr. Delmar pays a visit
When I was much younger, my family would take a trip, as most people do, at some point during summer vacation. We would load up the car and leave out from our home in Chicago and drive, stopping occasionally, to visit our relatives in Union City, Tenn. On one occasion, my uncle’s family were building a new home and were staying at a smaller house that was formerly owned by the Delmar family. The current owner was friends with my aunt. She offered the house to them temporary for their use, since the land the new house was being built on was right next door.
Since the house was small, my mother wanted to stay at a hotel, but my uncle wouldn’t hear of it. So the five of us and the six of them, all stayed there. The kids were all happy to sleep together on a pallet on the floor in the living room. My mother and dad stayed in one bedroom and my aunt and uncle stayed in the other. As the night went on we all, after much giggling, stories and fun, went to sleep.
Around two am my father and mother were in the other room sleeping. My dad said that he felt cold hands on him and asked my mother to keep her cold hands to herself. (If you ever felt my mom’s hands, you would also have jumped to the same conclusion!) Mom just grunted. This happened a second time with my mom turning over toward the wall and responding the same, with a grunt. The third time it happened, my dad woke up and looked at my mother. He found her asleep and snoring. He turned over with his back to my mother and saw a man at the bed side. He was tall with a brown suit, hat and shoes. He wore cufflinks with the initials, J.D.. My father didn’t know who he was or what he wanted and became alarmed. At the sight of his fear, the man turned and walked out of the bedroom. My dad in boxers and a T-shirt followed him to be sure he didn’t bother us in the living room. As he rounded the corner, the man stopped at the front door and looked back at my dad. Then, he turned and walked through the door of the house. Of course my dad was temporarily shocked but came around and ran to the door flinging it opened just in time to see a light moving across the street and disappear. He went back to bed, but he didn’t go back to sleep.
The next morning at breakfast, my day told the story of his night visitor. The kids just laughed while my aunt and uncle faces became suddenly pale. We ate and enjoyed each others company. The kids excused ourselves to go out and play. The ladies, went to the kitchen to wash dishes and clean up after our meal. My uncle wanted my dad to go into town with him and of course, he agreed. Nothing was ever said as to why, but as kids, all we wanted to do was play. We would be going with our mom’s there later in the day.
When my uncles pick-up truck turned the corner, he pulled up to the court house square. If your from a small southern town, you know that all the older gentlemen, after breakfast, congregate on the courthouse benches to chew tobacco, whittle and people watch. They talk of old times, stories and people past. This morning was no different. My dad and uncle approached the courthouse and my dad was introduced to the group of men sitting under the biggest shade tree on the square. After some witty banter, my uncle asked my dad to recount the previous nights events. Of course, always eager to hear a new story, the men turned their attention toward my dad.
My father recited the story to the men verbatim, as he had recounted it to us earlier in the day. After he was done the men just looked at my father like he was crazy. Then, one of them slapped his knee and stated,
“Well, that’s Delmar for ya.”
All the men began to laugh. Having broken the silence another man spoke up.
“He probably wanted to know who the stranger was in his house!”
My father was confused and asked who Delmar was. One of the men stopped whittling and looked at my uncle.
“You mean you haven’t told him who old Delmar is?”
My uncle just shook his head and said,
“I didn’t think he would believe me, so I brought him here so one of you could do the honors.”
My dad looked from one to another and finally said in exasperation,
“Will someone please tell me who this Delmar guy is!”
One of the older men just smiled and said,
“You mean was.”
“What?”, my dad was really confused.
The same man looked directly into my fathers eyes and repeated the same thing.
“You mean was.”, Mr Woodridge stated.” Jacob Delmar passed away about a month ago. All of us went to his funeral.”
The pallor now began to cross my dad’s face. Mr Woodridge continued.
“About a month ago, Jacob Delmar died. He was laid to rest in his best suit, his brown suit.
Complete with hat down to his shoes. He was wearing those monogram cuff links you described. He was buried in the Delmar family cemetery, right across the street from his house.”
Needless to say, we spent the remainder of our vacation sleeping at the local hotel!
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kaptainkranium reviewed Version 2 -
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pell39 reviewed Version 2 -
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I do like the easy pace of your piece but it felt like it took a long time to get to the actual story. The business and imagery of the first few pages is a nice way of setting the tone but it became too long and began to feel like a grocery list.
I like the little girl telling the story but I didn’t realize it was a girl for 3 or 4 pages and it did make a difference in how I heard the story simply because she narrates most of it. You might try to find a way to introduce this fact earlier. (Forgive me if I simply missed it)
I kind of slipped into the feeling that the whole thing would be a narrative so it was a bit odd to suddenly see dialogue 7 pages in. Since you are incorporating it, you might consider dialogue in the section where dad tells his dream, it seems to be crying out for it.
I’m not sure that there’s a real hook (for lack of a better term) in the story. It’s a ghost in a house but nothing really happens except that they go to a hotel. There’s not a lot of emotional connection and there’s no tension we never feel for the little girl of family (danger, fear, anxiety) and we don’t know the old man or the circumstances around his death or his reason for being there so…
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Seunbabs reviewed Version 2 -
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A nice story, the type I would probably use to teach later primary and early secondary school kids. Most of the characterisation is effective, except perhaps for Bobby Lee, a little 2-dimensional.
Corrections.
Page 1: Conjoling – did you mean Cajoling?
Page 2: Go figure – needs a full stop.
Page 3: Cousin Debbie – the 12 isn’t in brackets, but you put some everyone else’s age.
Page 5: “two AM” – lower case or numbers.
Page 7: “white mans… black mans” – possessive apostrophe: white man’s
Overall enjoyed it.
TabulaLife reviewed Version 2 -
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Well written. Your ability to take the reader there is very nice. Serves almost as a possibility for a real life event. Based on something in your life, perhaps? I see this as possibly being able to be published. The first person narrative style is also a nice added touch.
Context reviewed Version 2 -
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I think that you have written a good story, but it still needs some work.
I liked that you used the first person, and that the story had a nice arc including a beginning/middle/end. I really liked the interaction with the old men in front of the courthouse – I thought that you captured their dialect and pattern of speaking well.
I felt that the story would have been more captivating if you had used the present tense.
You added a lot of extra information that wasn’t necessary – like why you remembered the names of the old men, or the bit about the appliances in the kitchen.
Also, because you talked about the Delmar house early in the story, I assumed that the father would know the history of the house. You might want to reconsider when/how you introduce the Delmar name.
With a little work this piece could be great.
Shroomsville reviewed Version 2 -
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I like the detail of your descriptions, but I’m afraid that you tend to get caught up in describing insignificant events – the car-packing process, for one. Also, especially for a rewrite, this story is rife with errors in spelling, grammar and sentence structure.
More to the point – you’re billing this as a short story, and I don’t really detect a story to speak of. A family packs up and goes on holiday, daddy sees a ghost… and? There is no impact to this story. Everyone’s heard something like it. Find a way to work some kind of twist into it, extend the story, and cut out the irrelevant detail to get it back to readable length.
Peace.
Tinamoore753 reviewed Version 2 -
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I noticed a few missing words, but overall I liked the story. I was a little disappointed in the end. I think you could go with it more. There is a lot of room for more action. The kids could go on a treasure hunt and find the money or the ghost could return the next night with a message. just a few suggestions.
I really liked the way your dialogue made it easy to tell that Bobby Lee was a black man from the south. good job.
Keep up the good work if you rewrite or add more I would love to read it.
Snurtz reviewed Version 2 -
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“When I was all of eight, I remember fondly our vacations my family took every year to my uncle Bobby’s house.” This sentence makes no sense. How can someone remember doing something every year, but yet you’re only talking about when she was eight? And it starts out strangely… Shouldn’t it be something more like, “I remember fondly the annual vacations my family took to my uncle Bobby’s house,” or something like that? I don’t know, my version looks awkward to me, too.
The story is pretty interesting, but there’s just not enough detail! And when your character’s dad is telling the story, you should have quotes from him instead of summarizing the event, since it is an important part of your story. You don’t want to gloss that over.
And, please—watch your grammar and spelling! There are several mistakes in here. Watch the your and you’res! They’re very important!
And you kind of cut it off at the end. It didn’t really seem like an ending… is it finished, or not?
Jessica42 reviewed Version 2 -
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This is a good story. is it true? It sounds like something that could be. The parts in the beginning about the dogs and packing were nice details, but they were not entirely relevant, so I would consider spending a little less time on those and more time on the ghost story of the father’s, or shorten the thing, because it is a tad bit tedious reading through the whole thing. This is a nice, amusing story. Just needs a tad bit of work.
I am very sorry to say this, but your grammar, at least in this is horrible. Here are some suggestions-
Tenn., write out tennessee
Sugar our dog and Tinkerbell the cat would all squeeze into my dads- dad’s- sugar, our dog, Tinkerbell, the cat
my cousin Debbie 12- cousin Debbie, who was tweleve years old.
My cousins Mickey (10), Allen(9) and Tammy(6) would play- my younger cousins, Mickey,...
You capitalize random words like Us and Bacon in the middle of sentences
Instead of always saying “My mom” “My aunt” it is better to say “Mom” and “Aunt Marylou”
You seem to have troubles with possessives. my dads, etc should be my dad’s
If your from a small southern town, you know that all the older gentlemen, after breakfast, congregate on the courthouse- try not to directly address the reader, insead try “It was one of those small souther towens were all of the old men conregate at the courthouse.
Most of your senetences are either compounds or have apoistives. Try to throw in some shorter senteces to vary the sentence structure.
Harvest reviewed Version 2 -
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This all sounds very nice. It has potential, but it’s not a story. Maybe you needed to write all of this to get your characters down. However, there is absolutely no conflict here. for the first six or seven pages you describe all the nice things of a family road trip. That’s nice and we all like that. But I don’t want to read about it if nothing happens. There has to be conflict from the beginning.
Another thing, is that mostly you told the story and you didn’t show. There were very few scenes here. Everything important of a story has to be in scene. The part when they visited the old men was good. I could see them with their tobacco dripping down their chin. You need to do more of that everywhere else.
I suggest you start the story when the dad tells his dream to the family. That’s when the conflict begins. and don’t let him go to the holiday inn… make him stay and want the money that’s hidden in the house. Make him obsess over it, fight with his wife. Remember you have to have conflict, conflict, conflict. The story can go anywhere as long as it’s compelling.
Having said that, here are some technical mistakes that we all do, and I speak for myself to:
all of eight- first sentence. This language is not used. Say what you want to say clearly.
Ill. to Union City ,Tenn., – write out the names.
we would be marched – avoid passive voice. you use a lot of passive voice i.e. “we would…”
dads – posesive Dad’s
Mary and my cousin Debbie 12 were – write out numbers
We stopped talking to find out what else could have possibly topped his previous statement. He went on to say that when he opened the door- delete filters. “He went on to say.” just make it “He opened the door and said, ...”
If your from – If you’re from…
twins if it weren’t for the fact that one was black and the other white – exageration. This undermines the story and makes the reader doubt the authority of the writer.
I hope this helps you.
E
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