Here it is. Let me know what you think.
I don't like using the terminology "ex" but my teacher wanted us to establish the relationship right up front and that was the only way I could do it and not go over my word count.
“What are you doing here?” Victoria asked. All of her muscles tightened in fear when she looked at her ex. She refused to acknowledge him by name.
“Come on, Vicky,” he said. “Let me in.” He slipped his hand around the partially open door.
“My name is Victoria.” Each word sprung from her lips like bullets. She resisted the urge to slam the door on his hand and hurt him like he’d hurt her. How dare he come here? She thought. How dare he show his face after what he’s done?
“Whatever.” He rolled his eyes and tried to push the door open farther.
Victoria placed her foot against the base of the door. He stepped away.
“I’ve always called you Vicky.” He said as he ran his fingers through his blonde hair.
Freshly highlighted, no doubt, she thought.
“My name is Victoria, not Vicky,” she said. “You didn’t answer my question. Why are you here?” She didn’t look in his eyes.
“Uh...your hair looks kinda wet.” He avoided her question again. “Did you just get out of the shower?”
“Chad!” His name escaped her lips before she could think. Victoria covered her mouth and looked up. His green-gray eyes held her captive just like before.
He smiled with those perfectly formed lips. “I knew I could get you to say my name.” He leaned back and stuck his hands in the pocket of his jeans.
He thinks I’m going to let him in, thought Victoria. That’ll never happen. She’d slam the door in his face if he so much as stepped towards it. She looked at the full glass pane. An image of shattered glass and his face beneath the shards flashed before her. Why can’t he just leave before I start acting like him? she thought.
He smacked his lips. “Nice place you’ve got here. Why haven’t I seen it before?”
Anger seethed within Victoria like the copper pot she just put on the stove.
“I work here,” she said barely keeping the lid on the pot. “You’d better leave before I call the police.”
He laughed and fingered the fringe of that red and blue-checkered shirt he always wore.
Victoria slammed the door and twisted the gold-colored lock. She saw his mouth drop open as he stepped toward the door. Victoria grabbed her phone from the table behind her. When she looked up, he was gone.
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2 comments:
Overall, I think this is extremely successful as a scene of conflict. Even though it's short, it's effective - I got a sense of simmering danger and "wrongness" right off the bat.
I do have a question/comment - regarding dialogue formatting. (I hope I can phrase this right, because I don't know if there are any technical writing terms to use to explain it.) It seems like the dialogue usually unfolds like this:
"Dialogue." Character emotes/performs action.
Specific examples:
Come on, Vicky,” he said. “Let me in.” He slipped his hand around the partially open door.
“Uh...your hair looks kinda wet.” He avoided her question again. “Did you just get out of the shower?”
I wonder if a few more like this would give a little more variety:
“I work here,” she said, barely keeping the lid on the pot. “You’d better leave before I call the police.”
I guess what I'm missing has to do with the dialogue tags, or whatever they're called - I know they get monotonous sometimes, but I think using a tag + a description like the one above makes things flow more. All the current dialogue is very staccato.
On the other hand (and here I go playing devil's advocate against myself), the staccato nature of the dialogue may be a conscious stylistic decision on your part, a necessity due to your word count limit, or both, in which case I think one could make a compelling argument for it.
So those are just my completely untrained thoughts - I do think you've done a good job here, so take all this with a grain of salt!
Thanks. Yeah. I know what you mean. I had certain qualifications that I had to meet and one of those was using a few action phrases such as that in place of dialoge. I think I lean more towards the actions stuff too...definitely something I need to look at.
I need to work on weaving that in.
I got a B- on this one (two/thirds of a letter grade better so we'll see how it goes...I didn't do punctuation on a couple of the dialogue points)
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