The School Bus

[DesDownunder]

I am seeking opinions on the following excerpt from a much longer multi-part story, that I seem to have been writing forever.

In the meantime I have personally changed a lot and look at this work with some hesitation.

This section is a bridge between a lengthy opening chapter and events that will develop later.

As such, it stands alone quite well as a description of the lead character's bus ride to school. In terms of the overall plot this section is simply additional confimation of the young man's horny attitude to life experiences.

None of the people on the bus feature prominently in the main story and this is the only time we see them, except one.

I am asking for opinions on all aspects of the writing. -style -tense choice is deliberate, but what do you think about it -grammar etc., anything you loathe or like. Picking it to pieces will probably be more helpful than praise, but I can cope with that too.

You hate it? Please say so by all means, but why. You won't hurt my feelings. Please note it has not been edited other than my own attempts.

Your help and thoughts will be of great assistance.

Thanks in advance.

The School Bus

An excerpt from an unfinished novel, by DesDownunder

Ah! Here comes the bus at last. I wonder, who is on it today? The bus screeches to a halt and the door swings aside. The driver looks at me accusingly. It's like he knows I am going to look at his other passengers with wicked thoughts in my mind.

The bus gives me a chance to study...the boys, not to mention all the young college dudes. Sometimes I can see the shape of things to come as their pants ride up their thighs. Jeans are really good for that, especially if they aren?t wearing any underwear. Damn it, I?ll have to stand. All the seats are taken. I?ll have to look from up here.

Oh yeah! In the third seat by the window is that cute redhead with the pale skin and upturned nose. I wonder if the shape of his nose reflects the curve of his dick. He has the most ginormous bulge. I like to stare at it and imagine that I can make him hard by thought alone. I?m sure I made him scratch it once.

Behind him is Rocky, the Italian with the brooding Latin good looks and olive skin. His wavy black hair swept up at the sides with the front hanging over the centre of his forehead, pointing to the bridge of his straight nose, and then fanning back like the plume on a centurion?s helmet. His blue eyes sit shadowed in their dark sockets decorated by the long curling eyelashes seemingly begging me to stare. His lips curl as they meet at the sides of his mouth, surrounded by the sheen of his skin in the shadow of his unshaven stubble.

I walk on down the aisle looking to the left, then to the right. Every seat occupied by steaming liquid testosterone in the shape of a youth.

The bus lurches as the driver speeds up and then breaks for a red light. I'm thrown off balance and almost fall to the floor, bending at the knees in time to save myself.

As I look up I see them, towering above, beyond my ability, but to stare.

At the back of the bus is the full width bench seat, usually reserved for immortal dudes. Today is no different.

Four of the gods of youth sit next to each other but not daring to touch, like ancient statues of a long lost civilisation. They are called the ?athletists? of the school. Elite athletes, excused from the demands of sex education classes so that they can concentrate on developing their athletic bodies. Their academic skills are not supposed to be the highest, but they are valued for their sporting prowess. They do not seem to be that dull to me. Perhaps they lose the ability to think in their later years. They work very hard and long hours to develop their bodies. Their young bulging muscles make me ache all over. My mind wonders over each of them in turn.

In the back corner black satin skin stretches across the natural muscles of a young African descendant, complete with large soulful eyes atop a broad inclining nose. He has inherited the rich full lips that should be in all our genes.

Next to him is the tall very, very blonde Swedish exchange student with his flawless tan and his Nordic ice grey eyes. I wonder if they turn blue in a cloudless sky.

Alongside him is the elliptical eyed enigma from the Orient. His name is Ty. He?s dressed for his martial arts class. I wonder what he wears to bed? I wonder about his dreams. I would really like to find out what Ty can do.

The final deity in the other corner of the back seat is our resident surfer student from Australia. He?s a curly light brown lion haired life saver from Nimbin. It doesn?t matter what he wears you can always see the outline of his equipment and I just wish he would use it to save my life. He is my God of the oceans, my Son of Neptune. Sigh!

Everywhere I look I see blue jeans and grey trousers tucked up around a bulge. Muscles seeking escape from sleeves of small shirts and thighs from thin white shorts. Some material stretched tight, some folded and flowing, all wrapped around the most precious of cargoes. All concealed from the eye but not the imagination.

Yeah, catching the bus is so rewarding; like window shopping on wheels,

The bus swivels around a corner and we all lean into the turn. Crazy driver must get his kicks from trying to get us to fall, but I hold my view of the gods and they keep me upright.

Uh Oh. Ty is sitting in the centre of the back seat and he is staring back at me. He?s spread his legs apart and put his hands in front of the folds of his pants. His fingers are moving around in a circle at the base of his fly. He?s fingering the flap and his mouth is smiling, or is he smirking?at me. His other hand is miming a slitting of his throat and then points to me. He?s caught me checking him out. I?m dead.

The bus has stopped. I?ve got to get off before him. The doors hiss open and I run through the bus. I?m running as fast as I can but I?m not moving. Shit! Mr. Oriental muscle has me by the collar on the central steps of the bus.

?What you looking at pretty boy?? Ty asks. ?Like what you see??

?I?m sorry, I was just ??

?Save it.? He says. ?Save it till lunch-time and meet me behind the Gym.?

Is that sesame oil I smell in his shiny black hair?

He let?s go of my collar and walks off quickly before anybody else could even guess what happened.

What was that all about? I look at the back of my lunch date as he hurries away, but then he stops, turns his head, and his high cheekbone muscles flex, as he winks at me. Could he be...interested in me? Wow. He must have sneaked into the sex education classes.

?Move it.? says a little kid getting off the bus. Where did he come from?

The kids are getting off the bus walking to the entrance of the school.

I am surrounded by tens, no, hundreds of male students all making their way to their first classes. Stopping at the top of the steps, I survey the scene of passing beauty as my fellow scholars pass by into the halls of education. So many boys. So much potential. So little time. The muskiness of maturing masculinity wafts into the air.

I live for the smell of school in the morning. Smells like lust.

[Bruin Fisher]

Phew. Hose me down, someone.

You've chosen a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, writing in first person and present tense. Which is unusual and interesting and not wrong, certainly, but I wonder if you can keep it up for a longer work without it grating. Perhaps you can. If anyone can, you can. So I reserve judgement on that!

You've got some lovely turns of phrase - for example 'Every seat occupied by steaming liquid testosterone in the shape of a youth' and 'The muskiness of maturing masculinity wafts into the air'.

A couple of mistakes - 'making there way' should be making their way? And 'My mind wonders over each of them in turn' should probably be 'My mind wanders over each...?' I wasn't looking for typos so there may be others.

I like this a great deal as a character development passage - it tells us so much about the character's personality and what fills his mind. And where he keeps his mind...

So, in my view it's great writing and I'd love to read the whole story. Please??!

[DesDownunder]

Phew. Hose me down, someone.

Well I think I was hoping for that response originally.

You've chosen a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, writing in first person and present tense. Which is unusual and interesting and not wrong, certainly, but I wonder if you can keep it up for a longer work without it grating. Perhaps you can. If anyone can, you can. So I reserve judgement on that!

Thanks for the compliment Bruin. I guess part of this exercise is to see if it becomes grating. I find myself wandering in and out of it not working 100%, yet the work is intended to utilise this tense as part of its effect. It ain't easy.

You've got some lovely turns of phrase - for example 'Every seat occupied by steaming liquid testosterone in the shape of a youth' and 'The muskiness of maturing masculinity wafts into the air'.

Thanks for that. Again I was looking to see if such phrases worked for others.

A couple of mistakes - 'making there way' should be making their way? And 'My mind wonders over each of them in turn' should probably be 'My mind wanders over each...?' I wasn't looking for typos so there may be others.

I've corrected there to their. Thank you. I do know the difference, but the in the passion of writing I missed it.

As for wanders, I deliberately chose wonders to see what the effect would be. We are so used to the phrase where a mind wanders, I was interested to see if I dared alter it to a mind wonders.

I like this a great deal as a character development passage - it tells us so much about the character's personality and what fills his mind. And where he keeps his mind...

That is what I was wanting for the reader to know; that the character is obssessed with...

So, in my view it's great writing and I'd love to read the whole story. Please??!

Well it is not completed, Chapter one is probably in need of revision. This section is the start of chapter 2. Chapter 3 is not written. chapter4 is well underway, 5 has much to do, while 6 is fragmented into sections. I do have an ending done though, but it is still fermenting too.

The possibility of further chapters between these is quite on the cards too.

It is a complicated and difficult story, which I do want to be easily read for the reader, but one that makes him feel as well as think.

I am still learning too. So it may be a while yet.

Thanks Bruin. I'll be interested to hear what others say.

[Cole Parker]

You're really asking for it when you say you don't mind being torn apart. I will give you my impressions of it below. In yellow. But first, let me say, when I read something like this, I put myself into the scene; I imagine most readers do that. But what that means is, anything that doesn't ring true takes me out of the scene, so those have to be eliminated. The more I can relate to what I'm reading, the more I get into it, so that, to me, is very important.

I am seeking opinions on the following excerpt from a much longer multi-part story, that I seem to have been writing forever.

In the meantime I have personally changed a lot and look at this work with some hesitation.

This section is a bridge between a lengthy opening chapter and events that will develop later.

As such, it stands alone quite well as a description of the lead character's bus ride to school. In terms of the overall plot this section is simply additional confimation of the young man's horny attitude to life experiences.

None of the people on the bus feature prominently in the main story and this is the only time we see them, except one.

I am asking for opinions on all aspects of the writing. -style -tense choice is deliberate, but what do you think about it -grammar etc., anything you loathe or like. Picking it to pieces will probably be more helpful than praise, but I can cope with that too.

You hate it? Please say so by all means, but why. You won't hurt my feelings. Please note it has not been edited other than my own attempts.

Your help and thoughts will be of great assistance.

Thanks in advance.

The School Bus

An excerpt from an unfinished novel, by DesDownunderconfirmation

Ah! Here comes the bus at last. I wonder, who is on it today? The bus screeches to a halt and the door swings aside.(Here is my first problem. The bus screeching to a halt indicates it was coming up to the stop very fast, and I've never seen a school bus do that. There are kids there! So I'd create a different picture to increase verisimilitude.) The driver looks at me accusingly. It's like he knows I am going to look at his other passengers with wicked thoughts in my mind. Why would he think that, of all things? Again, this lacks credence. You could fix it by changing it to: The driver looks at me accusingly. I'm sure he doesn't, but his eyes make me think he knows what wicked thoughts will be in my mind as I look at his other passengers.

The bus gives me a chance to study...the boys,(why the ellipsis? It would be better to leave it out as it's distracting) not to mention all the young college dudes. Sometimes I can see the shape of things to come as their pants ride up their thighs. Jeans are really good for that, especially if they aren?t wearing any underwear. Damn it, I?ll have to stand. All the seats are taken. I?ll have to look from up here.,(I'm not sure what that last sentence means. Look down from a high vantage point, or up from the front of the bus?)

Oh yeah! In the third seat by the window is that cute redhead with the pale skin and upturned nose. I wonder if the shape of his nose reflects the curve of his dick. He has the most ginormous bulge. I like to stare at it and imagine that I can make him hard by thought alone. I?m sure I made him scratch it once.

Behind him is Rocky, the Italian with the brooding Latin good looks and olive skin. His wavy black hair swept up at the sides with the front hanging over the centre of his forehead, pointing to the bridge of his straight nose, and then fanning back like the plume on a centurion?s helmet. ,(This isn't a complete sentence)His blue eyes sit shadowed in their dark sockets decorated by the long curling eyelashes seemingly begging me to stare. His lips curl as they meet at the sides of his mouth, surrounded by the sheen of his skin in the shadow of his unshaven stubble.(For my taste, there's too much in this sentence. You're describing what his lips are doing, where they are, what's around them and what the skin is like close by, as well as the fact he almost needs to shave. It's very difficult to concentrate on all that, or even to picture it in your head, and that, after all, is what you want the reader to do. The other factor that comes into play is, if this is a kid, he wouldn't use language like this, or have these pictorial metaphors to draw from. I'd simplify it a bit)

I walk on down the aisle looking to the left, then to the right. Every seat occupied by steaming liquid testosterone in the shape of a youth. (This again isn't a complete sentence. You need a verb. I have another objection, but it may not apply where you're writing this. Here, it's illegal for a school bus to drive without every kid seated. It's terribly unsafe. There might be places where a kid could stand, but walking down the aisle as the bus is moving has to be verboten everywhere)

The bus lurches as the driver speeds up and then breaks(brakes) for a red light. I'm thrown off balance and almost fall to the floor, bending at the knees in time to save myself. (From the next sentence, I realize he's now on his knees on the bus floor. From this sentence, I wouldn't know that. Can you make this clearer?)

As I look up I see them, towering above, beyond my ability, but to stare. (Lose the thrid comma)

At the back of the bus is the full width bench seat, usually reserved for immortal dudes. Today is no different.

Four of the gods of youth sit next to each other but not daring to touch, like ancient statues of a long lost civilization.(The way this is written, it suggests ancient statues didn't dare touch. It can be corrected by rearranging the phrases: Like ancient statues of a long lost civilization, four of the gods of youth sit next to easch other, close together but not daring to touch.) They are called the ?athletists? of the school. Elite athletes, excused from the demands of sex education classes so that they can concentrate on developing their athletic bodies. (Not a complete sentence)Their academic skills are not supposed to be the highest, but they are valued for their sporting prowess. They do not seem to be that dull to me. Perhaps they lose (How about: Perhaps they will lose....)the ability to think in their later years. They work very hard and long hours(It's usually written: very long and hard hours) to develop their bodies. Their young bulging muscles make me ache all over. My mind wonders (?)over each of them in turn.

In the back corner black satin skin stretches across the natural muscles of a young African descendant, complete with large soulful eyes atop a broad inclining nose.(This is OK with me, but technically, as the subject of the sentence is satin skin, not a young descendant, then you're saying here the skin is complete with eyes. It could be better written) He has inherited the rich full lips that should be in all our genes.

Next to him is the tall very, very blonde (blond)Swedish exchange student with his flawless tan and his Nordic ice grey eyes. I wonder if they turn blue in a cloudless sky.

Alongside him is the elliptical eyed enigma from the Orient. His name is Ty. He?s dressed for his martial arts class. I wonder what he wears to bed? I wonder about his dreams. I would really like to find out what Ty can do.(Nothing wrong with that, but on reading it, I wonder why it's written that way. Don't you really want to know something else? Like, what does Ty want, does he like boys, what does he look like naked, something like that? What does he do seems, well, awkward. And it distracts me from picturing Ty.)

The final deity in the other corner of the back seat is our resident surfer student from Australia. He?s a curly light brown lion haired life saver from Nimbin. It doesn?t matter what he wears(,) you can always see the outline of his equipment and I just wish he would use it to save my life. He is my God of the oceans, my Son of Neptune. Sigh! (How old is the narrator? Again, is this age-appropriate?)

Everywhere I look I see blue jeans and grey trousers tucked (tucked seems to be something that's done deliberately. Would 'pulled' or 'bunched' or 'twisted' work better?)up around a bulge. Muscles seeking escape from sleeves of small shirts and thighs from thin white shorts. Some material stretched tight, some folded and flowing, all wrapped around the most precious of cargoes. All concealed from the eye but not the imagination. (Good imagery here. Appropriate use of sentence fragments)

Yeah, catching the bus is so rewarding; like window shopping on wheels, (This is OK only if the words left off after 'wheels,' make it an independent clause. However, it isn't catching the bus that makes this possible, it's riding on or taking the bus that does that.)

The bus swivels around a corner and we all lean into the turn. Crazy driver must get his kicks from trying to get us to fall, but I hold my view of the gods and they keep me upright.

Uh Oh(oh). Ty is sitting in the centre of the back seat and he is staring back at me. He?s spread his legs apart and put his hands in front of the folds of his pants. His fingers are moving around in a circle at the base of his fly. He?s fingering the flap and his mouth is smiling, or is he smirking?at me.(need a question mark) His other hand is miming a slitting of his throat and then points to me. He?s caught me checking him out. I?m dead.

The bus has stopped. I?ve got to get off before him(You'd maintain a more dangerous and threatened feel by changing the 'him' to 'he does.'). The doors hiss open and I run through the bus. I?m running as fast as I can but I?m not moving. Shit! Mr. Oriental muscle has me by the collar on the central steps of the bus.

?What you looking at(,) pretty boy?? Ty asks. ?Like what you see??

?I?m sorry, I was just ??

?Save it.? He says. (How about: "Save it," he says.)?Save it till lunch-time and meet me behind the Gym.? (gym)

Is that sesame oil I smell in his shiny black hair?

He let?s(lets) go of my collar and walks off quickly before anybody else could(anybody can - 'else' means someone already has seen, and could is the wrong tense) even guess what (what's)happened.

What was that all about? I look at the back of my lunch date as he hurries away, but then he stops, turns his head, and his high cheekbone muscles flex, (no comma)as he winks at me. Could he be...interested in me? Wow. He must have sneaked into the sex education classes.

?Move it.(,)? says a little kid getting off the bus. Where did he come from?

The kids are getting off the bus walking to the entrance of the school.

I am surrounded by tens, no, hundreds of male students all making their way to their first classes. Stopping at the top of the steps, I survey the scene of passing beauty as my fellow scholars pass by into the halls of education. So many boys. So much potential. So little time. The muskiness of maturing masculinity wafts into the air.

I live for the smell of school in the morning. Smells like lust.

I like the tense and the feel it brings. You might rethink the somewhat overwrought language the kid thinks in, unless you're going to carry this throughout the story. Most kids don't think like this, but it's the unique that makes a story interesting; you have to be careful not to over do it, however.

C

[DesDownunder]

You're really asking for it when you say you don't mind being torn apart. I will give you my impressions of it below. In yellow. But first, let me say, when I read something like this, I put myself into the scene; I imagine most readers do that. But what that means is, anything that doesn't ring true takes me out of the scene, so those have to be eliminated. The more I can relate to what I'm reading, the more I get into it, so that, to me, is very important.

Such an honor to have your attack Cole.

The School Bus

An excerpt from an unfinished novel, by DesDownunderconfirmation

Ah! Here comes the bus at last. I wonder, who is on it today? The bus screeches to a halt and the door swings aside.(Here is my first problem. The bus screeching to a halt indicates it was coming up to the stop very fast, and I've never seen a school bus do that. There are kids there! So I'd create a different picture to increase verisimilitude.)

School Buses do that all the time here in Australia and in Hollywood movies. So th screeching stays

The driver looks at me accusingly. It's like he knows I am going to look at his other passengers with wicked thoughts in my mind. Why would he think that, of all things? Again, this lacks credence. You could fix it by changing it to: The driver looks at me accusingly. I'm sure he doesn't, but his eyes make me think he knows what wicked thoughts will be in my mind as I look at his other passengers.

It should be obvious the boy is doing what you suggest in your rewrite, which over explains it for me.

The bus gives me a chance to study...the boys,(why the ellipsis? It would be better to leave it out as it's distracting)

I'll reword that to The bus gives me a chance to study; study all the boys,

not to mention all the young college dudes. Sometimes I can see the shape of things to come as their pants ride up their thighs. Jeans are really good for that, especially if they aren?t wearing any underwear. Damn it, I?ll have to stand. All the seats are taken. I?ll have to look from up here.,(I'm not sure what that last sentence means. Look down from a high vantage point, or up from the front of the bus?)

It seems obvious to me if he says he standing then he is higher than the seated boys he is looking at.

Oh yeah! In the third seat by the window is that cute redhead with the pale skin and upturned nose. I wonder if the shape of his nose reflects the curve of his dick. He has the most ginormous bulge. I like to stare at it and imagine that I can make him hard by thought alone. I?m sure I made him scratch it once.

Behind him is Rocky, the Italian with the brooding Latin good looks and olive skin. His wavy black hair is swept up at the sides with the front hanging over the centre of his forehead, pointing to the bridge of his straight nose, and then fanning back like the plume on a centurion?s helmet. ,

(This isn't a complete sentence) Iv'e inserted the missing verb.

His blue eyes sit shadowed in their dark sockets decorated by the long curling eyelashes seemingly begging me to stare. His lips curl as they meet at the sides of his mouth, surrounded by the sheen of his skin in the shadow of his unshaven stubble. (For my taste, there's too much in this sentence. You're describing what his lips are doing, where they are, what's around them and what the skin is like close by, as well as the fact he almost needs to shave. It's very difficult to concentrate on all that, or even to picture it in your head, and that, after all, is what you want the reader to do. The other factor that comes into play is, if this is a kid, he wouldn't use language like this, or have these pictorial metaphors to draw from. I'd simplify it a bit)

Ah that's the kind of comment I want to find out. But I would disagree on the language point. Most of the description comes from an essay I wrote at 16. (Except for the stubble.)

I walk on down the aisle looking to the left, then to the right. Every seat occupied by steaming liquid testosterone in the shape of a youth.

(This again isn't a complete sentence. You need a verb. I have another objection, but it may not apply where you're writing this. Here, it's illegal for a school bus to drive without every kid seated. It's terribly unsafe. There might be places where a kid could stand, but walking down the aisle as the bus is moving has to be verboten everywhere)

Again we are dealing with thoughts that I haven't translated into the grammatically correct written form.

Nope, in Australia anyone can move around in a bus and choose to stand or sit. Walking down the aisle was encouraged by the driver to allow more passengers to get on at the next stop. I certainly see actors moving around in buses in the movies, so if they can do it, I don't see the problem.

The bus lurches as the driver speeds up and then breaks(brakes) for a red light. I'm thrown off balance and almost fall to the floor, bending at the knees in time to save myself.

(From the next sentence, I realize he's now on his knees on the bus floor. From this sentence, I wouldn't know that. Can you make this clearer?)

If you haven't stood on a moving bus and bent your knees to avoid falling then you wouldn't understand his half-squatting position. So that needs restructuring.

As I look up I see them, towering above, beyond my ability, but to stare. (Lose the thrid comma)

At the back of the bus is the full width bench seat, usually reserved for immortal dudes. Today is no different.

Four of the gods of youth sit next to each other but not daring to touch, like ancient statues of a long lost civilization. (The way this is written, it suggests ancient statues didn't dare touch. It can be corrected by rearranging the phrases: Like ancient statues of a long lost civilization, four of the gods of youth sit next to easch other, close together but not daring to touch.)

Yes, both the statues and the youths don't dare touch.

They are called the ?athletists? of the school. Elite athletes, excused from the demands of sex education classes so that they can concentrate on developing their athletic bodies. (Not a complete sentence)

Thought process needs better translation again.

Their academic skills are not supposed to be the highest, but they are valued for their sporting prowess. They do not seem to be that dull to me. Perhaps they lose (How about: Perhaps they will lose....)

I must be dense I don't see the need for will.

the ability to think in their later years. They work very hard and long hours(It's usually written: very long and hard hours) to develop their bodies. Their young bulging muscles make me ache all over. My mind wonders (?)

See my answer on wonders in my reply to Bruin.

over each of them in turn.

In the back corner black satin skin stretches across the natural muscles of a young African descendant, complete with large soulful eyes atop a broad inclining nose. (This is OK with me, but technically, as the subject of the sentence is satin skin, not a young descendant, then you're saying here the skin is complete with eyes. It could be better written)

Yes it could be rearranged.

He has inherited the rich full lips that should be in all our genes.

Next to him is the tall very, very blonde (blond)Swedish exchange student with his flawless tan and his Nordic ice grey eyes. I wonder if they turn blue in a cloudless sky.

Alongside him is the elliptical eyed enigma from the Orient. His name is Ty. He?s dressed for his martial arts class. I wonder what he wears to bed? I wonder about his dreams. I would really like to find out what Ty can do. (Nothing wrong with that, but on reading it, I wonder why it's written that way. Don't you really want to know something else? Like, what does Ty want, does he like boys, what does he look like naked, something like that? What does he do seems, well, awkward. And it distracts me from picturing Ty.)

Sorry but you missed the play on words: Ty can dois a pun for Taekwondo. Actually though, the desire for nudity itself is not the prime drive for the teen, it is the exterior that is driving him to erotic frenzy. He doesn't care if they are gay or not he is simply moved by their physical attractiveness. He is also at the age where he is just beginning to learn think of the other person's wants. The bus journey is just a prelude to these things. He is immature enough to be concerned with what the other guy can do for him, rather than what he can do for them. That comes later, so to speak.

The final deity in the other corner of the back seat is our resident surfer student from Australia. He?s a curly light brown lion haired life saver from Nimbin. It doesn?t matter what he wears(,) you can always see the outline of his equipment and I just wish he would use it to save my life. He is my God of the oceans, my Son of Neptune. Sigh! (How old is the narrator? Again, is this age-appropriate?)

Certainly was appropriate when I went to highschool. I fantasised about who boys I thought looked like mythological heroes.

Everywhere I look I see blue jeans and grey trousers tucked (tucked seems to be something that's done deliberately. Would 'pulled' or 'bunched' or 'twisted' work better?)

Thanks, yes bunched works a lot better.

up around a bulge. Muscles seeking escape from sleeves of small shirts and thighs from thin white shorts. Some material stretched tight, some folded and flowing, all wrapped around the most precious of cargoes. All concealed from the eye but not the imagination. (Good imagery here. Appropriate use of sentence fragments)

Yeah, catching the bus is so rewarding; like window shopping on wheels, (This is OK only if the words left off after 'wheels,' make it an independent clause. However, it isn't catching the bus that makes this possible, it's riding on or taking the bus that does that.)

The comma after wheels should have been a full stop. The use of catching a bus is commonly used as interchangeable with riding a bus, in Australia. So that explains that. Your suggestion is makes it more universal. Thanks.

The bus swivels around a corner and we all lean into the turn. Crazy driver must get his kicks from trying to get us to fall, but I hold my view of the gods and they keep me upright.

Uh Oh(oh). Ty is sitting in the centre of the back seat and he is staring back at me. He?s spread his legs apart and put his hands in front of the folds of his pants. His fingers are moving around in a circle at the base of his fly. He?s fingering the flap and his mouth is smiling, or is he smirking?at me.(need a question mark) His other hand is miming a slitting of his throat and then points to me. He?s caught me checking him out. I?m dead.

The bus has stopped. I?ve got to get off before him(You'd maintain a more dangerous and threatened feel by changing the 'him' to 'he does.'). The doors hiss open and I run through the bus. I?m running as fast as I can but I?m not moving. Shit! Mr. Oriental muscle has me by the collar on the central steps of the bus.

?What you looking at(,) pretty boy?? Ty asks. ?Like what you see??

?I?m sorry, I was just ??

?Save it.? He says. (How about: "Save it," he says.)?Save it till lunch-time and meet me behind the Gym.? (gym)

Is that sesame oil I smell in his shiny black hair?

Yes to the grammar editing above.

He let?s(lets) go of my collar and walks off quickly before anybody else could(anybody can - 'else' means someone already has seen, and could is the wrong tense) even guess what (what's)happened.

I don't know that I agree, and this is one I expected to discuss. The change in tense is deliberate because Ty has finished holding him.

The else refers to others not TY or himself. Best to reconstruct altogether then, I think.

What was that all about? I look at the back of my lunch date as he hurries away, but then he stops, turns his head, and his high cheekbone muscles flex, (no comma)as he winks at me. Could he be...interested in me? Wow. He must have sneaked into the sex education classes.

?Move it.(,)? says a little kid getting off the bus. Where did he come from?

The kids are getting off the bus walking to the entrance of the school.

I am surrounded by tens, no, hundreds of male students all making their way to their first classes. Stopping at the top of the steps, I survey the scene of passing beauty as my fellow scholars pass by into the halls of education. So many boys. So much potential. So little time. The muskiness of maturing masculinity wafts into the air.

I live for the smell of school in the morning. Smells like lust.

I like the tense and the feel it brings. You might rethink the somewhat overwrought language the kid thinks in, unless you're going to carry this throughout the story. Most kids don't think like this, but it's the unique that makes a story interesting; you have to be careful not to over do it, however.

C

Yes Cole, the over the top language is a deliberate choice and a constant. It is aimed at being a kind of poetic prose, which is so frowned upon in this day and age. Far from declining, the language increases in poetic form as the story progresses. So by design it gets overdone. I disagree that teens don't think in these terms. In my experience they did and still do, though often very badly.

Thanks Cole, you have revealed several problems that I wanted to find. I think the style may be different to what you like though.

The damn Australian English language habit of missing commonly understood words (in speech) is a constant annoyance. We hear differently to most of the rest of the world and in a way that consistently inhibits our writing. It is a kind of shorthand equivalent to the fact that we tend to talk without moving our lips. The schools here teach, the less words the better. Even being aware of it doesn't seem to make me immune to doing it, too.

Part of this exercise was also to help me understand how I have changed in my writing since I wrote the above way back in 2003/4.

This probably explains why I am able to examine it openly without feeling like you have killed my first born.

I suspected I hadn't done a good enough job.

So your editing and suggestions have been really helpful. I will need to digest them and see where I go with it.

Anyone else for a comment?

[Cole Parker]

I could argue a number of the rebuttals you made, but doing so makes me sound defensive, which I don't want to do, and obviously the final choice is always yours.

The point needs to be made, however, that different writers have different ways of doing things. It's one of the reasons I employ several editors. They all see different things, all react differently to various things in my writing, all suggest different fixes. Then I get to pick and choose, rather like you're doing here. Your choices are different from mine, yet we can both write credible stories. That's the way writing seems to work, and why it has so much energy, variety and appeal.

We read stories much differently from how we edit them. Things I pick you when editing I'd frequently simply skim over when reading. So all the mistakes you leave in probably won't bother anyone.

C

[DesDownunder]

I could argue a number of the rebuttals you made, but doing so makes me sound defensive, which I don't want to do, and obviously the final choice is always yours.

The point needs to be made, however, that different writers have different ways of doing things. It's one of the reasons I employ several editors. They all see different things, all react differently to various things in my writing, all suggest different fixes. Then I get to pick and choose, rather like you're doing here. Your choices are different from mine, yet we can both write credible stories. That's the way writing seems to work, and why it has so much energy, variety and appeal.

We read stories much differently from how we edit them. Things I pick you when editing I'd frequently simply skim over when reading. So all the mistakes you leave in probably won't bother anyone.

C

I just checked with the admin and he said that sounding defensive is okay. He said he does it all the time.

On mistakes, surely if I choose to leave them, then they are validated as new writing techniques, like a computer program's undocumented features which happen to work to advantage, except in my story's case, they are actually selected document features.

Of course we can always discuss in private, too.

[Graeme]

I'll start by saying that I agree with the concern about maintaining the style throughout an entire novel. It's an unusual style, which means that inconsistencies will stand out more to the readers.

One thing that jarred me in the opening section was :

Oh yeah! In the third seat by the window is that cute redhead with the pale skin and upturned nose. I wonder if the shape of his nose reflects the curve of his dick. He has the most ginormous bulge. I like to stare at it and imagine that I can make him hard by thought alone. I?m sure I made him scratch it once.

The highlighted sentence is so short that it made me stop. There are a number of other places where you've done this, but most of the sentences are longer and so when I hit these shorter sentences they seem flat.

Otherwise, I thought it was very promising. I think you should keep going so we can all find out if the narrator goes behind the gym at lunchtime....

One last thing:

?Save it.? He says. ?Save it till lunch-time and meet me behind the Gym.?

It should be:

?Save it,? he says. ?Save it till lunch-time and meet me behind the Gym.?

A minor technical point

[aj]

Nice little piece of writing, des. The one thing that really sticks out for me ( ) has already been commented on by a couple other reviewers: one of the hardest things about writing in the voice of a child (this kid is what? 14 or so?) is to make one's voice not be over-knowlegeable, by which I mean to write from a child's perspective, not that of an adult trying to talk or think like a kid. It is very, very difficult to set aside the cultural education that we've gained since hitting adulthood and write the way that a kid thinks...and I'm not sure that this is a convincing example of that.

Besides, if this kid was perving on the boys on the bus like he's described as doing, he'd be developing his own set of problems and need to do a little bit of stretegic concealment. It's been a long time since I was that age, but I can clearly recall that certain parts of my anatomy had the most distressing tendency to 'stand up and be counted' when I had even the most remotely sexual thoughts.

Having said that, I would like to point out what i liked about this piece as well: the tense and pov work for me, at least in this short context, because they play into one of the things that I care most about in fiction writing, the sense of immediacy that it conveys. The other thing I like about this is that it creates a scene of rich sensuality and no one takes their clothes off, unlike 98% of the rest of the fiction out there on the net.

cheers!

aj

[Bruin Fisher]

The highlighted sentence is so short that it made me stop.

Graeme - brought up short by a 'ginormous bulge'!

[DesDownunder]

What an interesting and diverse group we all are. Thanks to each and everyone of you for all the comments.

The idea in asking for opinions on the bus excerpt was to help shed light on what I was finding to be a very dark road.

I needed some feedback and what you have all provided has helped tremendously.

I am not sure where this leaves me at the moment.

There are several areas where I am worried about the writing.

I think I can say that the excerpt is not as independent from the main plot as I had first thought.

I should have given more details about the bus itself and the age of the character.

This has been misleading for you and I apologize for that.

I am not at all convinced about the voice of the character being too advanced for his years (17).

To a degree I understand that he should be representative of his age group, particularly in dialogue. Yet by virtue of him being written in first person, present tense, I feel it can be justified that both the author's and the reader's inner voices, can to some extent influence the -stream of consciousness- to utilise a somewhat more expanded mental lexicon.

This is particularly so when it is remembered that the poetic language is deliberately used to convey the main character's essence of thoughts, rather than access his mental processes, which are derivative, and not necessarily mature at all. This was meant to be something of a reversal of the usual poetry of an image being rendered by more mundane everyday language.

If I were writing for children, then yes the language should be that of the age of the character, but here, the stream of consciousness is intended to be both descriptive and observing of a developing maturity without restriction for author, character and reader.

Already, I find I don't like having to discuss the above points so deeply. Makes me seem like an intellectual wanker, and I can assure you all that I rarely think while wanking. I certainly don't ask the reader for this kind of analysis of the writing which should lend it self to be a pleasant read, if not a stimulating experience.

However I felt I owed you all at least some explanation of where I was going with this. I never thought the idea would be easy.

You may all feel I am insane, (you won't be the first), but your remarks have been most helpful in awakening me to several issues to which I need to pay much more attention than I previously was aware, or even considered.

Whether I can pursue the idea is something that time will resolve.

I can reveal however that the meeting behind the gym is both rewarding for the participants as well as instigating a new reason for leaving school early. I now have over 30,000 words written on this story, including research and outlines, and it is by no means finished.

It is not possible to post this chapter by chapter as several times I have had to go back and make things fit the later plot developments, minor though they may seem. It has to be finished before I can release one more word. Don't hold you breath.

Thanks again everyone.

I say no more.

[Cole Parker]

What an interesting and diverse group we all are. Thanks to each and everyone of you for all the comments.

The idea in asking for opinions on the bus excerpt was to help shed light on what I was finding to be a very dark road.

I needed some feedback and what you have all provided has helped tremendously.

I am not sure where this leaves me at the moment.

There are several areas where I am worried about the writing.

I think I can say that the excerpt is not as independent from the main plot as I had first thought.

I should have given more details about the bus itself and the age of the character.

This has been misleading for you and I apologize for that.

I am not at all convinced about the voice of the character being too advanced for his years (17).

To a degree I understand that he should be representative of his age group, particularly in dialogue. Yet by virtue of him being written in first person, present tense, I feel it can be justified that both the author's and the reader's inner voices, can to some extent influence the -stream of consciousness- to utilise a somewhat more expanded mental lexicon. That makes a considerable difference, him being 17. However, in my mind, the thoughts of you character would have worked even if he'd been as young as 13. Some precocious kids of that age have huge language skills. They tend to be dreamers who read all the time and don't have well-practiced social skills. So as far as the language of his thoughts, any age past 12 would have worked. My only hope was that you would continue with him thinking in that style throughout the story, not that his thought were age-inappropriate.

This is particularly so when it is remembered that the poetic language is deliberately used to convey the main character's essence of thoughts, rather than access his mental processes, which are derivative, and not necessarily mature at all. This was meant to be something of a reversal of the usual poetry of an image being rendered by more mundane everyday language.

If I were writing for children, then yes the language should be that of the age of the character, but here, the stream of consciousness is intended to be both descriptive and observing of a developing maturity without restriction for author, character and reader.

Already, I find I don't like having to discuss the above points so deeply. Makes me seem like an intellectual wanker, and I can assure you all that I rarely think while wanking. I certainly don't ask the reader for this kind of analysis of the writing which should lend it self to be a pleasant read, if not a stimulating experience. However I felt I owed you all at least some explanation of where I was going with this. I never thought the idea would be easy.

I can relate to that, Des. Very well indeed. I have a lot of thought behind what goes on paper, but it's not for the reader to dwell on. You want him to see what's written, and figure out, or not figure out, what's behind it for himself. I understand it feels a little too exposed this way. You were brave to do this.

You may all feel I am insane, (you won't be the first), but your remarks have been most helpful in awakening me to several issues to which I need to pay much more attention than I previously was aware, or even considered.

Whether I can pursue the idea is something that time will resolve.

I can reveal however that the meeting behind the gym is both rewarding for the participants as well as instigating a new reason for leaving school early. I now have over 30,000 words written on this story, including research and outlines, and it is by no means finished.

It is not possible to post this chapter by chapter as several times I have had to go back and make things fit the later plot developments, minor though they may seem. It has to be finished before I can release one more word. Don't hold you breath.

Thanks again everyone.

I say no more.

I hope we do get to see it in its entirety some day. I already feel it'll be worth waiting for.

C