# Winston - 950 words



## mandax (Aug 19, 2010)

This is the first part of a weird short story I'm working on.  I'd appreciate any comments/critiques you may have.

*WARNING:* This post contains strong profanity.


Cody could tell that Professor Palmer was about to give in—she tilted her head and kept flicking the end of her pen against the podium, pring, pring, pring.

	“Tell me, Cody,” she said, pacing from the classroom door to the large windows overlooking the plaza, “why do you keep calling yourself Winston?”

	“It’s my given name,” Cody said.  He sat in his desk, gazing up at her.

	“Not according to your records.”

	“Then my records must be incorrect.”

	Professor Palmer sighed, glancing around the room at her computer mechanics and theory class and then staring at Cody again.  “All right, if I call you Winston, will you shut the hell up about the whole thing?”	

	“Yes, professor,” Cody said, pressing his lips into a line, struggling not to smile.

	“How exceptionally reasonable of you,” Professor Palmer said, rolling her eyes and tucking a piece of hair back into her messy bun.  “As you all might’ve heard, the Quiksand virus wrecked the school website, so we lost lesson plans, textbooks, and pretty much any hope of accomplishing a damn thing today.”  A few students smirked and whispered to each other.  She talked over them.  “So you’re all going to leave class, go home, and write a paper explaining how the Quiksand works and estimate how much it’s damaged so far.  You can also predict what major site it’ll target next for extra credit.  Class dismissed.” 

	Cody found Kent in the hallway. 

	“What is this shit about your name being Winston?” Kent asked as they both walked out of the building and into a wide courtyard, heading for the parking lot.  “I thought you were just messing with her, but you’ve done this for days, man.”

	“I’m changing my name,” Cody said.  “There’s no way I’m going to get into Penultimate with a name like that.  Cody sounds like I’m a 7-year-old aspiring to be a pro-skateboarder.  Winston sounds like I want to get shit done.”

	He could imagine his resume with the name “Winston Worthington” bolded and typed in Helvetica at the top, heading a list of undeniably worthy accomplishments, including having invented a new phone application called Periodic Scanner, which, when you put your phone's imaging device up to any object, will name every element that composes the object.  Kent thought it was a ridiculous idea, but Cody knew the admissions committee would eat it up.

	“You can’t just change your name,” Kent said.

	“I’ve already got friends and professors calling me Winston, and my mom’s tempted to start calling me Winnie.  She’ll cave any day now.”

	“What about your birth certificate?  ID?”

	“I’m working on it,” Cody said, spotting his red Porsche in the corner of the lot.  He’d been thinking about this since middle school, knowing even then that his name would hold him back.  He’d been lucky with grad—at least the acceptance rate was 25%—but Penultimate posed a challenge, especially since he was choosing the field of engineering, a very competitive track.

	“Jesus, stop being Captain Cryptic,” Kent said.  “Just tell me.”

	“Well, I was putting money aside to pay for an official name change, but I ended up spending it all.”

	“On what?”

	But Cody ignored the question.  “So I’m going to try and do it under the table.  I know some people.”

	“Who?”

	“Doesn’t matter.”

	“Fucking Christ, Cody.”

	“It’s too expensive to do it right, anyway.  Fuck them and their permanent price gauging,” he said, noticing a crowd of people flooding out of the classroom building.

	“Looks like political theory got out early, too,” Kent said.

	“She better hurry up,” Cody said, sliding off the car.  “I need to get the results of my computer scan.  Oh, there she is.”

	“Where?”

	“Right there,” he said, pointing to a girl on the other side of the lot, walking in their direction, “in the green hoodie.”

	“That’s not her, man.  That’s Olivia.”

	“No way.”

	“Yes way.”

	“No fucking way.”

	“Dude, that’s Olivia.”

	“I’ve known Becky since undergrad.  That’s her.”

	She pulled down her hoodie, allowing straight blonde hair to fall to her back.

	“Yep, that’s her,” Cody insisted.  But when she was less than fifty feet away, he knew he was wrong.

	“Olivia,” Kent said, grinning.  “How nice to see you.”

	“Shove off, Kent,” she snapped, glaring as she passed by them.

	Cody stared after her.  There’s no way he’d gotten it wrong.  He’d been friends with Becky all four years of undergrad and had been in love with her for the year and a half they’d been in grad.  He definitely knew what she looked like.  But sure enough, there she was coming toward them, the real Becky, Olivia’s clone.

	“Can you believe it?” Becky said while the three of them hopped in Cody’s car.  “That bitch got AcneZap! done.”

	“So?” Kent asked from the front seat, looking back at Becky, “she’s hot now.”

	“She looks just like you,” Cody added.

	“Um, last time I checked, I wasn’t a wildebeest,” Becky said.  Cody caught her eye in the rearview mirror, but she looked away.

	“Becky, she really does look like you,” Kent said.  “Her skin made her the leper.  Now she’s your duplicate.”

	“Bullshit,” Becky said.  “She’s had like, fifteen procedures.”  She started counting on her fingers.  “Nose, breasts, thighs, eyes, toes, and now skin.  I’ve only done eyes and boobs.  We’re hardly equal.”

	Cody thought she should put that on her resume.  _On average, I’ve had four fewer procedures than most women looking to enter the engineering field.  I’m a natural beauty with qualified brains._

	“Change of subject,” Becky said suddenly.  “Where are we headed?”

	“My house,” Cody said.  “The results will be ready.”

	“What, of your pregnancy test?” Kent asked.

	“Fuck you.”


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## Bruno Spatola (Aug 19, 2010)

Extreme profanity? I was expecting a couple of C bombs and a dozen more F bombs 

There's nothing really to point out here. It's written well and it's hard to criticize what's written well, but I'll give it a whirl.

-- I don't like 66% of the characters... I like Kent. I don't know if this is intentional, but everyone who has spoken seems pretty superficial, vain, rude, arrogant and selfish. I think I need to like at least one of them to relate to anything, or was that the whole point? Maybe you've written this with all of that in mind. If so, I like it then. 

-- I get the feeling Cody wants to change his name to Winston for something much more sinister. Again I don't know if that's intentional, but it adds an odd note of mystery, which I like. I feel like Kent, I'm not quite sure what Cody means all of the time. You definately need the character Kent, without him I feel it would be a tad too narcissistic, so it's good he's there. They are well developed even if I don't like some of them.

-- There wasn't much in the way of plot. It felt more like a character building exercise. If it's the beginning, then that makes sense and I'll shut the smurf up 

-- I also got the feeling Cody was responsible for the Quiksand virus. Is he an amateur hacker or something? That could be really interesting, but why would a school keep all of the time-tables and textbooks on a website, having no back up plan in case something like this happened? I really doubt everything would just grind to a halt, unless it's "The Future" and everything is digital...I don't know, even then there would be some sort of procedure or protocol to carry out, keeping everything on track.

So yeah I can barely criticize it, I love your style.


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## mandax (Aug 19, 2010)

Thanks for the post, Bruno.    Yeah, I put extreme profanity so no one could say I didn't warn them.  People are easily offended these days, haha.  Anyway, my goal for this is for it to be some sort of dystopic-y short story, so the fact that you don't like any of the characters is what I intended.  And I, in fact, like Kent the most because his character will end up being the most redeemable, so I'm glad that you don't hate him.  And it does take place in the future when most things are online, but I know what you mean about backing up.  I was trying to think of how a virus could manage to destroy back-up files, but I'm not computer savvy, so I just tried to work around it.

Your comment about plot and your suspicions that Cody is up to something (like causing the virus or something else unnamed) is probably because you're right, not too much is going on here, so I'm going to try and make this less of a characters-in-their-environment scene and more of a something-is-actually-happening scene.  I kind of got lost while just trying to make sure the world was being described properly.  I've never attempted a dystopic short story before, and it's proving to be difficult!

I really appreciate the comments.  I'll get working on this.


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## caelum (Aug 19, 2010)

Hey, mandax,

Liked your story.  I get the vibe of a group of students who are up to something, and not something necessarily good.   Your grammar looks spot on, hardly hiccuped once for me.  The characters were pretty snarky, which made it a little hard for me to connect with and like them.

The guy's quest to change his name cracked me up.  But Winston?  Is he associating it with powerful figures like Winston Churchill?  Alongside Worthington, it's a little alliterationy, which may not come off as powerful.

I'd word this bit differently.


> Professor Palmer sighed, glancing around the room at her computer mechanics and theory class and then staring at Cody again.





> Professor Palmer sighed, glancing around the room at her computer mechanics and theory class, before staring at Cody again.


I'd completely surround the "like" with commas.  Makes it stand out more.


> “She’s had like, fifteen procedures.”





> “She’s had, like, fifteen procedures.”


Hope this is helpful.   And the Winnie part resonated with me.  I've got a leprechaun character named Wynock who sometimes gets called Winnie.


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## mgencleyn (Aug 19, 2010)

I envy characters this convincing. Your post is short, so I can't judge plot, but I do like what you have.

So:

_Cody could tell that Professor Palmer was about to give in—she tilted  her head and kept flicking the end of her pen against the podium, pring,  pring, pring.

	“Tell me, Cody,” she said, pacing from the classroom door to the large  windows overlooking the plaza, “why do you keep calling yourself  Winston?”_ 

Here, she "kept flicking the end of her pen against the podium" - And very next sentence she's pacing. See the peculiarity here?

But that's the only nit I got caught up on. It's a treat to see characters and dialog this vivid.


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## mandax (Aug 20, 2010)

Thank you both very much for responding.  Caelum, I see what you mean about the alliteration, and I agree: I'll definitely change the last name.  And I'll fix those nits, thanks.  Mgencleyn, thanks for the kind words.  I see how those beginning lines are disjointed, and I'll fix it to "...as she began pacing."  Thanks again.


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## garza (Aug 20, 2010)

Disclaimer - I do not make my living writing fiction as some here do, but only non-fiction, so my comments are the comments of a reader, not a professional writer of fiction.

A few nits to pick.

'Cody could tell that Professor Palmer was about to give in by the way she tilted her head and kept flicking the end of her pen against the lectern, pring, pring, pring.' In reading the sentence the first time I thought Cody was a girl and it was she who tilted her head. A podium is what you stand on. A lectern is what you stand behind. 

'...pacing from the front of the classroom to the large windows...' We need to move Ms Prof away from the lectern. 

'...permanent price gouging...'

'...sliding off the car...' (?) When did he get on the car? If it's a 356 he's allowed to lean against it, briefly, but if it's a 911 he should have more respect.


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## Fox80 (Aug 20, 2010)

Not bad! But if you want to see what extreme profanity is, read one of my stories


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## mandax (Aug 20, 2010)

Thanks for those catches, garza.  I had a line about how they sit on the hood of the car, but I must've taken it out.  Glad you caught that.  And yeah, these guys don't have much respect. 

Ha, everyone keeps mentioning the profanity thing.  I guess I've been around a lot of overly sensitive people lately; my perception of what's offensive to the masses is skewed.


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## mgencleyn (Aug 20, 2010)

Hmm. I thought the language was on target for an academic setting.


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## mandax (Aug 21, 2010)

Oh, mgencleyn, I think they're referring to how I put "strong/extreme profanity" as a disclaimer.  They're saying the language isn't strong enough to match that description, hahaha.  But I'm glad you think the level of language I chose was appropriate.  I didn't want to go overboard with it, but I still thought that cursing that much was accurate for their age and their personalities.


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## Bruno Spatola (Aug 22, 2010)

Sorry I know I already commented on this Mandax, but did _1984 _by _George Orwell _have some influence on this? It's just Cody wants to change his name to Winston, and you said it would be dystopic-y...is that a fair comment or not? I'm just really curious


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## mandax (Aug 23, 2010)

Hm, it's interesting you should ask that.  I didn't choose "Winston" because of 1984, or at least not consciously.  1984 _is_ my favorite book, though, and it's what really got me into dystopian literature, so I wouldn't be surprised if on some level it's played a huge role in a lot of my writing, most especially this one.  I'm glad you pointed that out ... I'm intrigued now, ha.


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