Criticism or compliment?

Why would she ask that?  What did she mean?

So, it was Thursday, and writer’s group day again (my favourite day of the week). Our group is thriving – so much that we’ve now had to close off the membership list.  Once a month we read our themed pieces to the group, originally for feedback, but with all our keen writers, it is an increasingly cursory process.

The week’s theme was Summer Menu.  I read a strange little piece I’d concocted, in which I red-herringed the reader merrily through a scene, then kicked them with a cunning reveal right at the end.  The protagonist, it turns out, is not who the reader thinks he is, and a chilly shadow falls over the previously sunny story line.  As reveals go, it was pretty smooth, and it got a spectacular response.

A wave of exclamations rippled around the table, a good sign that the ending had its desired effect.  A couple of people complimented me on deploying the creepiness factor so well.  And then one lady piped up, “Is this part of a novel you’re writing?”

This threw me, and before I could formulate a counter-question it was time to move on.  And I’ve been stewing it over ever since.  Why would she ask that?  What did she mean? 

Was it a compliment?  Like, “Wow, that scene was so well constructed with exactly the right amount of subtext about the world outside the room, that it could have been a novel excerpt.”  Or was it a veiled criticism?  Like, “I didn’t really get the point of it, and I haven’t read a short story that takes place within a single scene, and I couldn’t recognise a beginning, middle and an ending, so clearly it has to be a fragment of a larger work because it doesn’t hang together by itself. “  

Compliment or criticism?  This is one of those times when I wish for a more detailed feedback mechanism.

I made some very deliberate choices about the structure of the piece.  I placed it entirely within a single scene, because I wanted to flesh it out rather than just narrate through a string of events.  I habitually write characters within a very interior frame, without embedding them into their physical surrounds.  This is disaster-territory for novel writing, where it’s important to show, not tell.  So I’ve been consciously working on creating settings, and moving the plot along in concrete, external ways. 

Everything in the story is there for a reason (something that I’ve been learning since coming very late but passionately to JK Rowling), but there’s no hurry to get there.  I would rather you know that my protagonist wears a cream silk cravat and has long fingers, than tell you that he was impeccably dressed or tall.  If I write enough of these sorts of scenes, it should (in theory, anyway) build the kind of skills that I need to write a first novel that is worth reading.

In the end, I guess it doesn’t matter whether the story was criticised as a short piece.  Regardless of why the question was asked, it was a good sign that I’m developing the kind of tone and pacing that is suitable for longer works. 

One step closer to denouement.