200 Words - Round Four
And now for 200 Words from someone who has been waiting very patiently.
The plates are so white they’re almost blue. Miranda pulls one after another until she counts eight. The chairs seem too far apart (her grandmother added the center leaf). It’s been an hour since she saw him see her. Against her will, her heart strains to beat loudly enough for him to hear. Closing her eyes as if to shut off the rhythmic hammering of her pulse, she feels for the cold tines of a fork and places it underneath a scalloped rim.
Her saliva turns metallic and she hates her own guts for desiring her father’s love. She pulls eight glasses out of the cupboard and places them on the center of the cloth-covered table. The last two glasses have a hint of dusty dullness. Detecting his gaze, she thinks he is looking. She refuses to look up. Her skin feels like it will slip off her bones and she remembers she is 34 years old. But he is looking.
For a few nights after his phone calls, she dreams vivid fantasies and nightmares. As time passes between their encounters, his calls become less frequent. She rarely returns the messages.
The present tense is not something I’m used to, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing if you can pull it off without stumbling, confusing the reader, or sounding awkward.
Another warning about this to be careful with your tense; even present tense stories can have past tense words in there. Your last paragraph sounds like it should be in past tense. Without having more to read, though, I can’t know if this is the case or if you’ve simply jumped from dinner to a few nights later.(Which I hope you haven’t because you’ve given the reader no warning at all.)
“Miranda pulls one after another until she counts eight.? – This is missing something like “out of the cupboard? or “off the shelf?. Without it, she’s simply pulling plates, which sounds like she could be out doing clay pigeons with someone.
The first four sentences read too choppy and cold to me. Vary your sentence length unless you’re aiming to make the reader uncomfortable. Even then, you risk losing your readers.
You are certainly hitting a “disturbing? note with this beginning. The reader doesn’t know exactly what kind of love the main character desires of her father and becomes hooked into finding out despite not wanting to. Try being a bit smoother with your sentences and expand more on the physical. Is she sweating under his gaze? Feeling cold? Blushing?
Would I keep reading? Revised, yes. I want to know what’s going on.
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