Lilac and Strawberries

[Verthanthi]

I think it is clear from reading the rest that he didn't know her. Understandably, the characters still need to deal with this fact, but I think because Daniel IS so passive that it would perhaps be better if she just introduced herself.

[assagai]

[SIZE=3][FONT=arial][COLOR=red][B]I like the writing so far TK. It peaks the interest and I get the feeling the plot will thicken as time goes on.

[Troll King]

Okay, I'm ready to share the next bit of the story. It's still, of course, a work in progress. I'm not sure about the pacing of the dialogue. Certain things are brought up here, but remember too that a lot of stuff will have to wait until later to be explained. This part continues where the first part left off. There were also some changes to the initial passage, but I'm not going to update them here, so bear with me if parts don't seem to gel with what I had posted earlier.

_________________________________

“Do I know you?”

She stared at him as though she didn’t understand the question, shifting her
gaze back and forth between Daniel’s eyes. Then something seemed to click
and her eyes slammed shut in understanding.

“Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot.” She extended her hand, a thin silver bracelet clinking
on her slender wrist. “Hi, I’m Claire.”

He shook her hand timidly, suddenly aware of the dark stains on his
knuckles, evidence of extended periods of time spent writing in pencil. “Dan.
Er, Daniel.”

“Can I call you Danny? Great. Sorry about that. I’ve seen you around so
often I forgot we haven’t been introduced.”

“You’ve… seen me around?”

“All the time. My friends and I come here often to study and I usually see
you sitting by yourself buried in your notebook. My friends didn’t come out
tonight so it’s just me, and I figured there’s no sense in both of us sitting
alone.”

“No, I… I guess not, but…” He left it hanging, thinking over her logic for a
moment.

“So you’re a writer?” she asked, not noticing Daniel’s hesitation.

“I’d like to think I am.” Dan sipped from his coffee, drawing strength in the
caffeine.

“Ever been published?”

“I mostly freelance, writing short stories for magazines. I’ve been working on a
novel too but it hasn’t been picked up yet.”

“How much does that pay?” she asked, but interrupted before Daniel could
answer. “Oops, I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”

Daniel smiled. That was always the first thing they ask. “Freelancing is nice, but
not very steady. I edit copy for a corporate website to pay the bills, but if
I could write for a living, I would.” Even
without the aid of caffeine, words seem to come easier for Daniel when he
talked about writing.

“I wish I could be creative like that. Can I read something else you’ve written?”
she asked, flipping through pages of Daniel’s rough handwriting.

“I’d rather you didn’t do that,” he said, reaching out for his notebook. “That
book’s just full of notes and unfinished pieces. Most of it is rather private.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be so- Hey, what’s this?”

Claire had flipped to a page with a short paragraph on the top half and a roughly
penciled drawing of an old man. She turned the leaf over and revealed a
similar portrait, this time of a young woman. Claire looked up the counter of
the Tim Horton’s and recognized a woman working the register as the
woman in the drawing. Claire turned her head back and forth between the
woman and the portrait for comparison. The only thing the drawing missed was
the Tim Horton’s visor.

“You can draw too, I see.”

Daniel blushed slightly, feeling less comfortable about displaying his
sketches than he was with his writing. “A little bit. It’s something I do when
I’m stuck sometimes. It helps me think. Actually, what you’re looking at are
some character sketches.”

“Character sketches?”

“Yeah, it’s an exercise one of my old writing teachers taught me. You go to a
place with a lot of people, like this Tim Horton’s. You pick someone and write a
short description and create a fictional character based on that real life model.
I find this helps me describe realistic characters. Take this one for example.
She’s based on the girl behind the counter over there, the one changing
the coffee filters. Her real name’s Toni and she may appear to be a
mild-mannered coffee server, but in my notes, she became Maria Giacona, a
rookie cop whose investigation into a routine domestic dispute lead to the
largest ecstasy bust in Canada. She took a bullet in the shoulder in the
process though, but she still has no trouble reaching the last chocolate chip
muffin on that top shelf.”

“I’m glad she had a good recovery,” she said lightly.

“Well, it wasn’t a quick one. All of that happened in the beginning of the story.
Maria had to shoot the guy who shot her. He was the first person she ever
had to kill in the line of duty. She had a hard time coming to terms with that.
The story was about how she healed those wounds.”

Claire didn’t seem to know what to say about that. Instead, she returned her
attention to Daniel’s sketches. Dozens of faces stared at her from the pages of
the spiral-bound notebook. They were male faces and female faces, young and
old, sober and giddy, sincere and ironic. While each face was distinct, they all
had one quality in common: they all had a story to share.

“Do you have one of yourself?”

“Of me?”

"Yeah. You’ve got a lot of interesting people in here, but I’m sure you
probably have some characters based on yourself.” She turned her head to
look him straight in the eye. “I’d like to read more about you.”

Daniel flustered under her gaze. “I… don’t really base any characters on me.”
“Why not?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I just don’t find myself interesting enough. Nothing
exciting ever happens to me.”

“Not yet at least,” she said, with a slight tilt of her head. Again, Daniel could not
return her gaze. He drained the rest of his coffee and instead focused his eyes
on the bottom of the cup.

“What about me? I come here pretty often. Is there another me I should
know about?”

The slow blush that had been building in Daniel’s cheeks ripened at the question.
Before he could answer however, he was interrupted by a cell phone ring
tone playing Blondie’s “Heart of Glass”.

"Oh, that's me. I'd better take this." Claire stood from the table, fishing a
phone from her pockets. "Excuse me for a second."

“I’m… going to get some more coffee. Can I get you anything?”

“Oh, a medium coffee would be great.”

“Double-double?”

“Yes, thanks.” She flashed him another quick smile before turning her attention
to her phone and greeted the caller.

[Troll King]

What, nobody has anything to say, or did this just get overlooked as it got pushed down the list by other topics?

Sorry for the bump, but I'd really like some input in this.

[Facetious]

It's kind of hard to give advice on such a short fragment of writing, considering the plot obviously has miles to go before you're done. Anyway, I like the way the dialogue is written, but some of the other stuff seems a little wordy and distracting to me, eg: "Dan sipped from his coffee, drawing strength in the
caffeine." That makes it sound like the caffeine is somehow extremely important to what is going on. Everyone knows what it's like to drink coffee. It's kind of like you're writing your coffee-shop scene like it's an action novel.

Similarly, I'd take the word "slammed" out of the phrase "her eyes slammed shut in understanding". I think it's interesting to note that often people close their eyes when they initially understand something, but the word "slammed" seems a bit extreme. I don't really know what else to say about it other than to nitpick about stuff like that. Is this the kind of critique you're looking for, or something else?

edit: The problem is that there's other stuff that I might ask about, but since I don't know how the story is going to pan out, it's impossible to tell if those things might end up helping the story in the long run...

[wadi]

She's obviously a psycho escaped from the local mental institution (silver bracelet's the tip off!). The overly friendly and attentive manners, and the pathological lying. would be due to the drugs she's on.I can see the ending with him showing up the next few days and not seeing her, when he asks Toni about her, Toni tells him she had broken out from the ward down the street, and that they'd pciked her up at closing time.. Classic creep fiction, very cool.

Or however you choose to go with it.

The writing seems ok (still not too much to go on), but if you're going for short story format I'd personally like a little more description of their surroundings. Not everyone's been in a Tim Horton's :P. Basically, you need to make it clear this place is more fast food than coffee shop. Again, if this is short story format, I'd like a little more description of their actions. You've got sight down, but you've neglected smell, touch, tast and sound. Is he sweating, what perfume is she wearing (almost assumed she is from the lip gloss). I'd like to know exaclty how nevous he is. He's clumsy, but is he gawky? etc. Good skeleton, just needs fleshing out. Careful about writing about your own character's writing though, great way to get branded as egotistical or pretentious.

[aussie]

I like it I can't really say much about it though because there isn't enough Maybe when you get more I'll be able to tell you what I think, but I really like it so far.