Short Story: Hitchhiker In The Storm by Johnathan Snyder

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Lester Curtis
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Re: Short Story: Hitchhiker In The Storm by Johnathan Snyder

Post by Lester Curtis »

Jonathan,

I kind of like this story; it's just a snapshot of an unplanned encounter and an act of kindness, but with unspoken hints of larger things.

I found some problems with it, though. The one that bothered me the most was the somewhat heavy-handed message about tolerance. Your narrator says:
... I'm not going to preach to you about how mankind is cruel to each other, we need to get a long, etcetera.
but you, as the author, have just done exactly that. As a remedy, I'd suggest deleting that paragraph, or at least most of the first half of it. Your narrator's actions have done the talking, as his following statement shows, and the reader understands that without further reinforcement.

Overall, I had a problem with setting, particularly the weather, since you called attention to it. Your narrator mentions a bad storm, but all I find about rain is the water on the road, and later, the mention of the alien sitting on a bucket in the rain.

Now I'm going to back up and address the other problems from the top.

In the second paragraph, you seem to suggest that the car's headlights are inadequate to navigate by without the help of moonlight.

Some problems in the third paragraph:

I've never read a description of anyone's heart (any human's, anyway) "trilling." You might consider a different word.

The narrator feels the urge to speed past the alien, but "inexplicably" slows down. This suggests some outside influence. Instead, I'd suggest a little internal reflection on the part of the narrator; have him argue with himself and maybe call himself names for taking a risk.

"... for all tense and purpose ..." should be "for all intents and purposes," but I don't think it's even needed in that sentence.

"... stared in to those black glassy almost shaped ..." should be "into those ... almond-shaped." At this point, I'm wondering if you may have neglected to disable the auto-complete and auto-correct functions on your college typewriter. Further, staring into someone's eyes and being struck by an emotion suggests to me that the emotion is one being felt by the other individual and perceived in him by the one doing the staring. I hope I've stated that clearly.

Two paragraphs on, we have the alien getting in the car, but the last sentence suggests that it's the driver fumbling with the seatbelt, not the passenger.
For being kind? What did that mean? I pretty much had thrown caution to the wind ...
A bit of illogic here; the implication being that kindness has something like a causal connection with caution or its absence.

He drops the alien off, and the saucer "... gave off a very faint blue glow that was not very noticeable." Redundant descriptions of the glow.

In the final scene, you have what seems to be a continuity fault wrapped in a plot hole: the narrator got delivered to his own house without giving his exact address. His transition seems to have taken a good number of hours, since he arrived at dawn, but—I'm guessing here—departed sometime in the evening while the stores were open. And, since the aliens are able to do tricks like that, why was that particular one stranded by the roadside?

Hope this helps.
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Re: Short Story: Hitchhiker In The Storm by Johnathan Snyder

Post by Megawatts »

I love this type of story with good natured humor in it. My critiques would be very close with Lester's so I'll just say read Lester's.

Nice try!!
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