The Driving School - Chapter 1

[sujane]

I have attempted writing stories before, mostly short stories. This the start of my latest and I think this group could be helpful with some critique. Don't worry, I'm not fragile. I honestly want to know if this seems interesting and readable. It is very much autobiographical and therefore a true story. But I wrote it in 3rd person (? is that right) and changed names etc. I read somewhere that writers often begin their careers using autobiographical material and once that is out of the way, they may go on to write true fiction. Every time I think about writing, I do seem to go in that direction - think that's true?

I see this story as a kind of "Catch-22" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in which one or two people are relatively sane in an insane situation.

The Driving School

Chapter 1

It has been housed in a small decrepit strip mall on a busy street for twenty-five years. God knows how many young new drivers have walked through its’ doors. Some of them are actually second-generation customers. Its hard to imagine why; the appearance of the place does not inspire a feeling of quality education. Don’t they wonder why it doesn’t look any different than when they were here many years ago?

Of course, the owner, fifty-year old Johnny Cruikshank, is surprised and adopts a slightly hurt expression when anyone suggests that the place could use some sprucing up, or that he might consider a moving to a newer building with a better image.

“Are you kidding? This location is great, been here for years, everyone knows it. Besides, where am I going to find another space for a thousand bucks a month? Anyway, I put in new flooring and painted it eight years ago!”

The front office area is cramped and cluttered with three desks, several reception chairs, filing cabinet and various other pieces of office equipment. In the winter, a good space heater is needed; there are no air vents for the furnace up front. In the summer, a very small air-conditioner and a large fan labor to take just take the edge off the oven-like heat of the south-facing space.

Behind it, there is a larger room, equally unattractive, which is used as both a classroom and another office space. The occupant of the desk there is forced to vacate it whenever a class is held. Thirty chairs are stacked on top of each other against the wall when not in use. Classes are frequently interrupted by the whirring of the photocopier/printer and the staff walking in to pick up their work. There is one tiny bathroom at the back of the room. On occasion, especially after a day of class, it backs up and floods the floor.

Through the back door and another cramped storage room, three more staff work in a separate trailer parked in the back lot. A persistent bad moldy smell pervades the trailer, barely masked by air fresheners. Similar to the front office, it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter, except when the propane heater ramps up with the noise of an airplane engine and blasts warm air out, quickly over-heating the two-room crowded office.

Several shredding wires and cables snake on the ground outside from the mail building to the trailer, connecting the two, creating a tripping hazard for the workers who run back and forth many times during the day.

This is where Jane Taggart works. And is slowly becoming unhinged.

It isn’t just the physical working conditions. The driving school was a den of dysfunctional personalities, the like of which Jane had never seen before.

Jane wasn’t young. She wasn’t inexperienced. She was forty-eight, twice-married, intelligent and rational. She had worked for difficult people before. But this was a freaking entire collection of difficult, disordered people.

It became apparent very quickly when she started a year ago.

She was first contacted by an email from Johnny Cruikshank in response to her posting a resume on a job website. He referred to himself as Dr. Cruikshank and asked her to come in for an interview, which she accepted. Unfortunately, he didn’t mention that the company had a separate “boardroom” space in another part of the city, which is where he was at the time of the interview. Jane showed up at the driving school and asked for “Dr. Cruikshank”. This immediately prompted a couple of the staff to snigger and one to say, “Oh, Doctor Cruikshank. Are you Jane? Didn’t he tell you to meet him at the boardroom?”

“Boardroom? No, where is that?”

“Nevermind, I’ll call him and tell him you are here instead.”

A half-hour later, during which Jane had a chance to sit and take in the unimpressive surroundings, Johnny arrived and led her into the back room where they sat on two of the stacked chairs. Johnny Cruikshank was a short, balding man of about Jane’s age. He wasn’t unattractive, but he had a kind of “baby” face and pale blue eyes that seemed to have no eyelashes.

“Sorry about that – I thought I had asked you to meet me at the boardroom”, he started out.

“No, but that’s okay”, Jane politely responded.

“Well, let me tell you a little about our company and then you can tell me about yourself”.

The interview continued, and soon Jane noticed that Johnny had an odd behaviour of not quite looking her in the eye. It was unsettling. It seemed like he was looking at her face just below her eyes. Was it because he was a short man? Jane did her best to try to catch his eyes more directly when she spoke to him, but she couldn’t.

“Well, Jane, I’m satisfied that you are very suitable for this position. All that is left to do now is for you to meet my wife, Mary. I know she will really like you. She runs the car division and you would be working for her. You can discuss the matter of the pay rate with her.”

Jane’s heart sank. Oh, no, not another family-run business. She stood and shook his hand, feeling internally doubtful but she decided to accept the meeting with Mary the next day. She had worked in family-run businesses before, and it had never been a good experience. In fact, the last one was so bad that she had left one day without notice after three months – the woman she had worked directly under, the wife, had been verbally abusive and had a violent temper which was tolerated by her husband and her father who both worked in the company. In fact, they had appeared to be afraid of her. Jane had realized that there was no alternative, no “higher” authority in the company that she could complain to, and she would either have to take it or leave it. She left it. So, alarm bells were already ringing about this job.

The next day, she met Mary.

[Barbara Branden]

Sujane: "Don't worry, I'm not fragile." Of course you are, just like every other writer in the world.

You write well and clearly, and I think you're off to a good start. You very ably create an ominous feelinng through your description of the office and the trailer, but you overdo the description. The reader gets bogged down in unnecessary details; we don't need to know nearly that many physical details.

What I've read makes me interested in reading more, which is a crucial test of a story's beginning.

A question: Why name your character after such a well known Ayn Rand character?

Barbara

[sujane]

Thank you for your comments Barbara. I'm pleased that YOU would say you'd want to read more. I appreciate the constructive criticism about too many details, I will review that. About the name - I just couldn't resist trying it out in my first draft, but I won't use it in the final. Ms. Rand DOES have a huge influence on me, as she has on so many others - we all have to resist the temptation to emulate her in our writings and be original, I know that.

[Kevin Haggerty]

Good morning Sujane,

You're right on track. The best writing always starts with autobiography, anyway. Don't let anyone tell you different. We can dress it up with research and fanciful anecdotes but we always come back to imagining ourselves even in the most far-flung situations and ask, "what would I do if..." Furthurmore, I have found that the more we personalize our writing, the more specific and often even peculiar we are in our choices, the better our chance of striking a universal human chord.

You've got a good start with "The Driving School," you have a firm grasp of the situation. I think it may be a bit too, well, objective? People are social creatures, we like to hear about other people mainly, what they think and feel. You've created an authoritative map of the story, now you have to inhabit it. Even though you've chosen a third person perspective, you need to center the story on the people in it.

For instance, you describe the office in great detail right away and only much later introduce your main character and describe her first experience of the office with this: "A half-hour later, during which Jane had a chance to sit and take in the unimpressive surroundings..." If you let Jane's first taking in of her surroundings coincide with the reader's, you not only avoid having to make bland summary comments like this but you allow us to see the office as if through Jane's eyes.

That "half-hour" really struck me as I read the line. What did Jane think about during that half-hour? Was she bored out of her mind? Was the thinking about her children? What is she expecting? Does she realize that other folks in the office are laughing at her? Etc.

Even in a third person narrative it's a good idea to stay as close to the human awarenesses within the story as we can to keep the reader grounded in the action. Barbara's complaint that the description is overdone seems to me more to do with its placement in such an abstract, impersonal context before we've gotten to know anyone really. The first question a reader wants to know is not "what?" but "why?" Why are we here? Why this particular umimpressive office? The answer lies in the characters.

I hope that's helpful. Best of luck with your story.

-Kevin

Edited October 20, 2006 by Kevin Haggerty

[sujane]

Thanks Kevin - I really appreciate your feedback. I will review with a fresh eye, do some re-writing, and re-post.

[Laure]

Hi Sujane, your Chapter 1 really drew my interest and made me want to read more. I agree with the other criticisms so far, though.

I want to know why Jane is there! Gosh, why did she even linger long enough to do the interview? I hope your story will show us the answer, and that even though it was an awful job, it was an improvement over whatever came before in Jane's life. Will you have future installments for us?

I have thought about writing a slightly-fictionalized autobiographical story as well. I've got some wonderful stranger-than-fiction anecdotes from my days as a front desk clerk at a Best Western!

Can anyone shed some light on the legal issues involved? I mean, you often see disclaimers about "any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental." Well, what if it's not coincidental at all? Can you just change people's names?

P.S. I also have one little grammar lesson for you. I only bring this up because it is my number one pet peeve, and it's such a simple thing:

"Its" is a possessive pronoun, like "his", so it never needs an apostrophe. So, "walked through its’ doors" should be "walked through its doors".

"It's" is always and only a contraction for "it is" or "it has". So, "Its hard to imagine why" should be "It's hard to imagine why".

"Its'" is never used.

[sujane]

Thanks Laure! It has been a while since I've taken any education in grammar, but English was my strongest subject and I share your pet peeve on grammar and spelling! You've given me incentive to keep going on this - yes, you WILL find out why Jane took this job!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Sujane,

You are off to a nice start and I heartily agree with all the comments so far. I do have a few suggestions, but they are more for a rewrite stage, so I will sit on them for now. The reason is that I have found that too much focus on certain details stifles the initial "blof," when the ideas all come pouring out of me in on whack. (Of course, I am referring to one sitting, not a whole work.) There are many things you can work out during the rewrites.

And if you ever find a manner of writing without the need to rewrite, please let me know! I hate to rewrite my stuff, but we all have to do it.

There is one detail I suggest you do think about during this stage. People are aware that you are writing a "Catch-22" or "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" because you told them that in an introductory note. I didn't get that impression from the story itself - and I stood back from it for a bit to see if my impression was correct. I saw you emphasize certain aspects in your introductory description to maybe foreshadow raggedy and probably morally compromised situations, but I didn't get a feel yet that the over-riding drive of the main character was to find a sane (rational?) place to live and work in life - or something of that nature. As you are working in the present tense, this is something you can say from hindsight ("It has always been my bad luck to find the weirdos" - that kind of line), but not something you can foreshadow directly ("Little did she know what was in store for her" - that kind of line). It needs to be present along with what the character sees and thinks and evaluates ("Here's that damned thing again" - that kind of line, which you are already doing with the family business thing).

You did do a good job of letting us inside the main character's head once she came on the scene. That is a very strong technique and not everyone does it well. All I can say about this is: MORE!

I would like to make a small nudge of a suggestion. Keep your character's frustrated desire(s) in mind when you write. I don't mean put a reference to the desire(s) in everything. Just put it in the back of your mind and make sure it is there when you write. I am sure that with this nice start you made, you, better than anyone, will know where and how to make this evident.

Michael

[Reidy]

I admire the way you combine physical description with emotional scene-setting, getting across the layout of the place and its down-at-heels, hopeless atmosphere with the same details, though I agree with Barbara that you don't need so many.

The opening sentence made me wonder what "it" is until you told us several paragraphs later. Maybe I should have figured this out from the title, but I didn't, and maybe other readers won't either. If Cruikshank's Driving School is the name of the business, that's what the sentence should say. "Strip mall" has shabby connotations already, so you don't need to say that it's small and decrepit: "Cruikshank's Driving School had been in a strip mall on a busy street for twenty-five years." We know it's a dump.

Another editorial point is about verb tenses. You use the present to describe the place and switch somewhat jarringly to the past when Jane enters. It would read more smoothly if you put it all in the past.

Count me as another who wants to know what happens next.

Peter

[Barbara Branden]

Sujane, I have one final suggestion. Consider our suggestions as you read them -- but when you go back to work, forget them all. Trying to handle many suggestions from different perspectives can make you crazy. Just reread your material and see what you think needs work. If some suggestions have stuck in your subconscious, fine; if not, not. It's a bit early in your story to do a detailed editing; when you have a bigger hunk, you'll be better able to judge and edit.

Barbara

[sujane]

Thanks Michael. I have been reading all of your work here and enjoy it - I'm glad to get your comments.

The focus isn't that Jane is primarily seeking a healthy, sane place to work (although she hopes so - who wouldn't), but that she does keep finding herself in unhealthy, insane places. The question is why? But, more than that, the story is about THIS particular insane place and Jane's experiences in it. There will be many very odd characters brought out as the story goes along, as well as one or two normal, rational people that will contrast with the insanity. Jane will use this experience to question herself and the reasons why she's there and why she stays, and then how & when she finally leaves.

[sujane]

Thanks Peter. I'm really encouraged by all the responses. I was trying to start it in present tense and then flashback to Jane's start at the job. In the beginning, she has been there one year. But I guess I can achieve the same thing AND use the past tense like this: Cruikshank's Driving School had been....