Response: "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men"

Response to “Brief Interviews with Hideous Men #40”

Great opening. Very succinct (four words total if count “it’s” as two). It’s small but I also liked the sub-heading (the interview number, city, date, etc.). It made it feel like some kind of file. The other small detail I liked was the author’s decision to use a capital “Q” to stand in for the questions by the interviewer. It’s enough to remind us that it’s an interview and the discussion is being led, but it doesn’t pull focus from the speaker by adding another character to dissect.
The author’s done also done a great job giving the character a very distinctive voice. While I’m reading it I can see a person in my mind’s eye saying the words and posturing, and shifting and hear him change his inflections, etc. All this without making the piece cumbersome or incoherent or confusing. I can read through it, picturing the speaker, while also getting a good image of the story he’s telling, all without having to go back over what I’ve read to try and sort out what he’s said.
That’s also impressive considering that the words themselves on the page aren’t all that organized. Each question is it’s own paragraph. Some running just a sentence, others spanning more than a page. Obviously, the writer’s trying to convey the freewheeling nature of the speaker, and also that the writing is spoken and not an organized narrative. It does just that, and it also nudges you to read it faster, as your eye wants to get to some kind of place marker to anchor it on the page.
This makes a great study for writing dialogue and characterization.