The sun is not a spectacular star. It dwells on the fringes of an undistinguished arm of the galaxy, quietly anonymous among siblings uncounted. But in her own precincts sol rules with absolute authority. Within lightyears in all directions, none escape her grasp. From the least grain of dust, to the giant gas planets, from comets on their eccentric journeys, to the infinite loneliness of isolated protons, all drift and whirl in the gravitational vortex, riding the tides in stately procession. For the sun's every vassal in her currents is captive, with each path revealed to those who can read them. Say just this: where a thing is; where it is headed; and how fast it travels. In that instant is its entire destiny charted, as it drifts heedless onward, like a cork bobbing on the flood.
-------------------------

Does that inspire any desire to read on? Or no.

PS: I am not really a junior member. I fouled up the registration protocol (I guess).

[This message has been edited by glogpro (edited September 19, 2003).]
 

Good
- writing is clear and easy to read

The questions
- did you know that your first 2 lines sounds like the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
- why is this star so important?

Areas for improvement
- I would not try to sound like Adams. His books were too good and I wouldn't want to try to follow him. Personal preference here...
- Your sun sounds more like a black hole to me.
- I would be more interested in the story if something interesting happened at this point. A sun is not generally interesting in and of itself.
 

Here's how I see it.

You are telling us some information that is {or should be} common knowledge, along with a few things that are not strictly accurate, but seem more poetic). The manner in which you relay this raises my expectations that "something interesting" is about to happen, and that the action will hinge on the immutable laws of gravitation, inertia, and momentum. The implicit promise of future action does intrigue me.

Also, you are establishing a "narrator character" (possibly closely based on yourself as the author--or not) as the predominant figure overshadowing the story we are about (one hopes) to be told. Here I will second my contraversion of the comparison to Adams and say that this is something good that Adams does with his Guide stories, making the Guide itself a prominant narrator of the story (although the intent is primarily to provide humorous hyperbole in a pecuiliarly dry...back to my comments). I would also continue reading to learn more about the narrator you've created here.

I don't know what you mean by "getting the story any forwarder", but I hope that you don't mean that you will break either of the promises that you've made in the above passage. If you keep your promises, this is a very workable (and I would say better than usual) opening. It promises that something interesting will happen (and hints what it might be), and it promises that we will see this interesting event from an interesting point of view. That would be enough to keep me reading (till you betray my faith, you treasonous dog!!!)

P.S. "Junior" just means "new here".
 

I had not really considered the idea of a significant role for the disembodied voice of some narrator, ala hitchhikers guide. I'll have to think about that.

Which brings me to that other comment. I think I know what passage of HGG is being referred to: it says something like "far out a [something] branch of [something] galaxy is an unregarded star ...". The main thrust of the passage is to give Earth its rightful significance in the cosmos, which is to say, negligible (although a later edition, I understand, updated that to *mostly* negligible). And my prolog has a different thrust entirely -- to highlight the idea that everything that happens nearby is governed by gravity, and in particular, by the effect of the sun. Still, the similarlity of the opening two lines is perhaps a bit too close for comfort. Anyone care to comment on that?

 

Don't worry about it.

As for not using the narrator you've created with this opening...don't make that mistake. The distinctive, semi-lyrical voice that you use here is at least half of what is drawing your reader into the story, and I expect...well, demand that you reveal more about this narrator in the course of the narrative.

Here things get tricky, because you're thinking of using a prologue. We've had discussions about this before, and what everyone agrees with is that it is difficult to use a prologue to good effect. Some argue that it is simply impossible, that prologues are simply bad by nature, but I believe that the problem is that a prologue is a complex and poorly understood literary form.

See, in a prologue you frequently have a POV, narrator, or so forth that doesn't explicitly appear elsewhere in the narration. But that doesn't mean the POV of the prologue isn't part of the rest of the story. If the prologue is from the POV of a person existing prior to the events in the main body of the text, then that character's influence on the entire milieu of the book should be very strong--the book is at some level about the future created by that character.

If the prologue is written from the POV of a narrator character existing after the events of the story, then the relationship is reversed--the events of the story must create the narrator introduced in the prologue. The book is about the origin of the narrator character.

Sometimes the prologue is written from the POV of an important character in the book that we only ever see from the outside during the rest of the story, sometimes the prologue is a document created, discovered, or even destroyed at a critical point in the story, thus affecting the outcome, sometimes it could be intimately related to the story in some way that I have not here listed.

But the POV introduced in the prologue must be critically important to the rest of the story, either participant or witness, origin or destination, good or evil, light or darkness...back up and ignore those last couple of pairs.

This is the problem with prologues that don't work--they try to lure you into the story with a POV that is utterly unrelated to the events of the story itself (or worse). When the prologue is over, all the promises made about revealing more about the character--whether portrayed directly or simply implied as a narrator--are dashed and the story turns out to be only about the events, now divorced from the context of meaning that first aroused our interest in them.

Humans don't feel sympathy for things unless they concieve of them as humans (anthropomorphism). Events, in and of themselves, divorced from details of who is affected by (or has effected) them, are just things (hey, so am I--this isn't a criticism).

Never divorce the events of your story from the characters for whom you have brought the reader to feel sympathy.
 

Anyway, Survivor reports the consensus as being that prologues rarely or never work. Are there counter opinions? Can anyone recall instances where a prologue made an impression, or worked particularly well? Does anyone else besides me feel attracted to the idea of using this device?
 

I recently learned something about short story writing that I found interesting. It was at the boot camp, and it totally changed how I wrote short stories. A hook is not exactly what you are going for, though you want to draw the reader in. More accurately, you want to begin the short story (or a novel, for that matter) in a place that properly sets up the ending.

Moreover, there is a "free paragraph" in short stories. This does not have to be told in the same voice as the rest of the story, nor does it truly have to begin anything. It sets the scene, which iss precisely what has been done here. glogpro, you are able to post 13 lines and I only count 8. Can you post the next paragraph so we can see where the story is truly going, or is there little point?

Of course after your free paragraph you better set up some conflict quickly. We won't wait around forever for a punchline
 

The example which comes to my mind is "Dragonflight" by Anne McCaffrey. The prologue is called "Introduction" - it is short (one page), sweet, and to the point, and I think gives you exactly what you need to get into the book. It is not the only time she writes an introduction - she rewrites similar information in introductions for some later books in the Pern series, but this one came first. Could you read the book without it and figure out what is going on? Of course, and some people probably skip intros or prologues. However, she is giving you information and an understanding her main characters don't have, but is important later on, which is also part of why I think it is necessary. I think it adds a feeling of excitement to the story as it progresses and the main characters make discoveries or work to face challenges.

You would not want to just write a prologue to give a history lesson that could just be explained as you read the actual story. You don't want to bore the reader right away!

I recently just went back to write a whole new beginning for a story. I decided the story as it was going did not grab you or get you in right away. I did not create an intro or prologue - I wrote a new chapter to immediately show the reader what is at stake - where the threat/bad guy/thing-which-will-be-an-issue for-my-mc show up. All the reader will need to know of the world will happen as the story goes, as the mc thinks, as the mc acts upon (or is acted upon by) her world. It's action, not history, but in a way it does introduce the main issue.

Do what you think works, then get others to read it - maybe one group gets the prologue and one does not, and see what they think.
 

But I actually took the original post out of context as an illustration of the idea I was trying to describe, which I think you have tagged a free paragraph

Given all of that, I am not sure whether it contributes to an interesting conversation or not to post the next paragraph after the bit about the sun and gravity and all. On the other hand, it *does* tie that stuff to the dream discussion to follow, so maybe other participants would like to comment on whether this works or not. So, just in case, here is the requested next paragraph.

Some believe that the stars control human fortunes, and maybe there is some small truth in this notion. Though the sun is the master, every other body has its influence, however tenuous, reaching out with gossamer touch. Do they lay a glamour on the web of men's thoughts, stirring the shapes of their feelings and dreams? Who can say? But whether by planetary influence, biochemistry, or subconscious cognition, Theodore Busby dreamed of gardens.

[This message has been edited by glogpro (edited September 21, 2003).]
 

I do recall that we had a discussion (several actually) about prologues, and everyone agreed that they often fail badly, I recall the majority opinion (or maybe I was just feeling outnumbered) was that prologues are almost never worth the reader's time and everyone skips them anyway.

Basically, everyone that was actually in the process of writing a prologue at the time felt it was justifiable, and everyone else (except myself ) seemed to think this amounted to an atrocity against the reader. Okay, it wasn't as bad as all that, but there was an argument about whether prologues are intrinsically evil or whether most writers don't do them very well.

P.S. Don't say "free paragraph", you'll make people think "lazy writer's crap".
 

Anyway, I would rather not get too deeply focused on a particular piece of writing. I am more interested in the general issue of this particular literary device, if that is not too pretentious a term for it. I think I like it because it permits me to get a little poetic and metaphoric before really getting down to the brass tacks of a story line, and because I hope it will start some ripples that will echo in the reader's consciousness later in the story. I have another example of the kind of thing I mean, although I don't think it meets the length limitations of the forum.

And on that subject, how strictly is it interpretted. I notice that the edit window for submitting comments has much shorter lines than the actual display window, so it is not exactly obvious how long something will be before it is posted. I guess you could post something, then review it, and edit it if it appears too long. On the other hand, maybe the moderator is not super strict about the limit?

After matching the font and margins of the display page, my best estimate is that the sample I have it in mind to post will be 16 lines. If I post that will it make everyone shun me as a hopeless lout? Does it help to observe that it runs 13 lines if you count in base 13, and no one specified the base?
 

While the first paragraph may not be under the same strictures as later paragraphs, it is under certain very real demands as to what must be accomplished, and tighter limits as too what resources it can call upon (for instance, in the first paragraphs, the reader doesn't already know what the story is about, or who the main characters are, what they're like, and hasn't invested much in the story).

A serious mistake in the first paragraph is far more likely to persuade the reader not to read the rest of your book than such mistakes later in the book. But thinking of it as a "free paragraph" can encourage writers to forget the facts of the case (this isn't made better by the fact that experienced critiquers usually keep going no matter how bad the first several paragraphs are...so writers who only get feedback from critiquers are likely to underestimate how serious a problem early mistakes can be for a story).

Lest anyone forget, remember William Goldman's description of the terrible error made by W.P. Morgenstein in writing The Princess Bride. Goldman's horribly rotund son was unable to get past the second chapter, even with the assistence of Goldman's coldly loving wife. True, all this never happened, but Goldman knows what he's talking about.

Change of subject here, the number of lines a post takes is dependent on the browser font and resolution settings of the viewing computer, as well as the longest member name posted and whether anyone has messed up the forum display by posting a long string of character's with no spaces (like when someone posts a really long url and doesn't use the aliasing tag...or when someone's just being a jerk).

For instance, if I set my browser to "View:Text Size:Smallest" and my resolution to 1280x960, I can fit enough text into 13 lines to take up a page or so at 640x480 and "View:Text Size:Largest" turned on.

Just use your judgement, Kathleen will let you know if your judgement is totally off (Kathleen is now thinking bad things about me ). Seriously, though. The reason for the limitation isn't for KDW's benefit, it is to protect your rights to your work as an author. If you post too much of your story here, it will be considered to have been published, which will make selling first publication rights very difficult (and since first publication rights are usually the only rights publishers are willing to buy from a non-celebrity author...you get the picture).
 

What's the point of posting this? I have fun with these little flowery vignettes. They are fun to write. But do they add to the attactiveness of the finished product? Would I be better off to write them and then hide them away in a drawer? If you are a reader who has not had the matter/antimatter bit explained, so you are just reading this cold, is it intriguing and inviting of further reading? Or is it just obscure and annoying and a turn off. Or perhaps it is neutral, neither significantly helping nor hurting. What do you all think?

Anyway, here it is:

No bird sang. No brook tumbled merrily over stones between banks oerhung with swaying willow boughs. No honey colored sun poured down the upturned mouths of yellow daffodils. No rain fell. No wind wailed. No tree fell unheard in a forest to puzzle philosophers. No mountains thrust majestically toward a heaven of translucent sapphire. There were no mountains. No hills. No stones. No pebbles. No least motes of dust. Only the void, the lukewarm glow of all the universe, the unmisted streetlight of the sun pale and distant, and the occasional errant proton.
The space between the planets is like that. Especially more than a few parts of a degree outside the plane of the ecliptic: a remote and empty stage which waits for no drama to begin.

But see, the spot light has been lit. It stabs a saber of red fire from Calisto's sentry tower. A second, argonne green, leaps from the hand of Ceres to cross blades with the red. Now white, from Luna; red again from New Gibralter; violet from somewhere in the direction of Aries; and white once more from the herald of Apollo. All meet together, but do not clash. They interlock, coalesce, pulsing like the beat of nearly tuned guitar strings. The energy flows, builds, crests, topples down the far side of creation, and then dies away. And where there was but void gleams now a ship, and something not a ship. They flee the womb of flame, now suddenly gone cold, the one rushing toward its destiny, the other stalking silently its past.

 

To an observer, in time, it should look like the anti-matter (by the way, anti-matter has a specific meaning that doesn't mesh perfectly with this concept) not-a-ship went from its destination forwards in time and backwards in space to the point of origin, at which point the beams would hit it and seem to instantly transform it into a non-anti-matter ship, now going forwards in space. Does that make sense?

And...it just seems really melodramatic.
 

I';m sorry, but my eyes glazed over as you talked about what was *not* happening. It sounds like you are trying way to hard here. Tell us a story. At the moment you're writing us a very forced peom.
 

I think I understand where survivor's coming from on what it should look like, but no explanation's perfect (particularly not of any made up scientific background) and this sounds OK to me. Just forget your previous explanation of what was going on and let the story move on from there.

But Christine's right. Drop the first paragraph, it's too cliche.
 

quote:

---

Alfred Hitchcock said that the difference between an American film and a European film is that a European film can open with a shot of clouds, cut to another shot of clouds, and then cut to a third shot of clouds. If an American film opens with a shot of clouds, it must cut to an airplane, and if by the third shot the airplane hasn't exploded, the audience is bored.

---

Feynman showed that this stuff all works out mathematically perfectly, so that a positron is really indistinguishable from an electron traveling backward in time. As this electron travels through an electric field, it accelerates in the wrong direction, because it's notion of cause and effect are reversed. So to a normal observer, the electron seems to accelerate just the way a positively charged particle would. That is, the observer sees a positron.

Follow the path of a lonely electron. It flies along minding its own business, when suddenly it decides to reverse in time. So it gives off a tremendous burst of energy, and does a chronological flip turn. Now it is going backward in time. It does that for a while, until it encounters a huge energy surge, and then it gets turned around forward in time once again. To a normal observer, the first event appears to be an electron and a positron annihilating each other, and releasing a huge amount of energy. The second event appears to be a pair production, as described above. In fact, the pair production is witnessed first, since it occurs earlier in time. The outside observer sees the spontaneous appearance of an electron and a positron, going in opposite directions. Following the positron, the observer later sees it crash into a different electron, and both are annihilated in a burst of energy. But what the observer thinks is a positron and two electrons, is actually just one particle going backward and forward in time. So sayeth Feynman.

Done on a macroscopic scale, I think this would be a great model for time travel in a story. Bit confusing to explain though.

[This message has been edited by glogpro (edited September 27, 2003).]
 

Okay, that makes sense. I thought that you were describing the beginning of the trip, and saying that two ships had to be generated, one going forwards in time from that point, and the other going backwards from that point. And that's why it it didn't make sense as an anti-matter ship, as well.

You're saying that at the beginning of the trip, the passengers get on board a ship, then are merged into an anti-ship which appears to move backwards, but is actually moving back in time from the point of collision (thougth I'm sure they would like to call it something else). The massive energy is released (hopefully in a controlled manner), and from the point of view of the rest of the universe it seems that the two ships have annihilated each other.

From the point of view of the passengers, it seems that they are "now" moving back in time on the anti-ship, towards the point at which they will be "converted" back into matter and re-join the normal time stream.

As they approach the target point, they see something only slightly different from what they saw before, a ship made of matter anti-to-them moving backwards on a collision course. Then they are "converted" with energy being input rather than removed.

From the point of view of an outsider observer, it does appear much as you describe (though without the florid description ). Massive beams of energy are pumped into an empty space and create two ships, apparently made entirely out of the energy input.

There are a couple of difficulties. In the case of controlling the annihilation, the process has to correspond particle by particle, so that the ship and the anti-ship are mirror images of each other. The annihilation energy must be removed so that the collision proceeds smoothly, and that strongly implies some form of control, possible by observing both ships as they approach.

On the other end, the problem for anything in our time is that the ship is just appearing out of nowhere. Therefore the control mechanism must be sent back in time as well. This is not an insuperable difficulty, despite the fact that the energy input apparatus cannot be sent back with the ship. The control information must simply be sent to an earlier point of time as a signel of anti-particles that perform simple pair generation.

It does seem a bit insanely...dangerous and complicated, for one thing. But it works. Sorry I didn't understand before.
 

I just read your stuff on openings and I gotta tell ya, you guys need to know the first rule of writing:

The first rule of writing... Write!

Look, if you want people to read your stuff, you gotta set the hook. That means you've got to set something up that the reader can't resist and must turn the page to find out what's happening.

Fancy settings are fine (yawn), but if you want to capture the reader, grab him or her by their attention and shake hard.

Rob Chilson once said that you must get the hero (protagonist) up a tree and throw rocks at him. Initially, this was a head scratch. What I interpret this to mean is that give your protagonist a problem, then make it worse. Yikes! Confound the poor bastard, make him fear for his freakin' life, then make his problems even worse.

Y'see, you want your readers to bite their fingernails and worry about your protagonist.
Got it? Mebbe. The only openings that work are those that involve and cause the reader to worry about what's going on. Then and only then the reader will turn the page.

Actually, there's a lot of openings that work. The real key is to write something that your readers want to know more about, which depends upon what they're expecting. So, no matter what you write (better not be something that makes them too comfortable and nod off to sleep), make it gripping, vivid, exciting, addictive so that your reader MUST turn the page.

Otherwise, go back to re-write (or give up writing).

Once again, remember the first rule of writing... Write !

woody

[This message has been edited by woody (edited September 28, 2003).]
 

If you're just throwing rocks before the reader is emotionally invested in the story, then there is no reason not to put your book down and stop reading (how long it takes to develop an emotional investment is up to you as a writer--I've read books entirely for the concept, without caring a whit about the characters). If the audience doesn't yet care about the characters, then tormenting them will just make the readers want to turn away.

You don't have to get the reader addicted in the first page. You have to entice the audiance, yes, promise them things to come, yes, but as for making them turn the page...no. It simply isn't possible on the first page. The most avid reader in the world can put down any book on the first page.
 

Seems to me that you have one paragraph or so to entice, no, grab the purchasing editor's attention to buy your piece.

Look, unless you're already published, you have sixty seconds to get out of the slush pile. Talk to agents or editors - they'll tell you the hard realities of writing. You have to be better than a published author to get published.

So, if you want to open with an intriguing setting, or an INTERESTING (God, I hate that word) character, go right ahead. Don't hold your breath waiting to get published. Look, it isn't my narrow-minded opinion; read what successful authors say about openings.

All fiction is based upon conflict. If you choose to avoid conflict, you ain't gotta story. That being said, all good stories involve human interaction (there are some rare exceptions). People, their characterization, personalities, their problems and conflicts. Gee, strange how came back to conflict. Kinda like 'throwing rocks' at our characters. So, the easiest way to engage the reader is to have him / her sympathize with the protagonist who has a PROBLEM. And most problems involve some kind of conflict.

You have two opportunities to become published. First, have a gang-buster opening (that'll insure you get published); then have a great finish (that'll make sure readers buy your NEXT novel).

Anyway, write what you want. It makes it easier for the rest of us. Less competition.

Remember the first rule of writing... Write!

woody

[This message has been edited by woody (edited September 29, 2003).]
 

I'm sure that editors and manuscript readers love to have dramatic, cutting edge, "ripped from the headlines" conflicts right in the opening (actually, I'm not sure of this, but I will grant it for the purposes of argument). That would certainly explain why 95% of fiction (of all media) tries to assail me with the horrible problems faced by the main character before I have any reason to care...which is why I don't have much use for most published fiction (again, all media).

If you really just want to get published, there are markets that accept just about anything as long as it contains the requisite ingredients. I know that we don't discuss these markets much on this forum, but they do exist.

I'm talking about readers, not publishers. It isn't a white line distinction, but I find that in almost all the fiction I actually read, I'm interested first, then I care (if I ever do, I'm quite a cold hearted person). Frankly, I know about lots of horrible things that have happened or are actually happening right now to real people. I imagine that most genuinely educated people in this country could say the same. Nothing that you can possibly fit into the first page of your story could compare with those actual events for sheer horror.

So don't try. Make the reader care about the characters, then throw rocks.
 

You're a READER, not a writer, who got lost and ended up in a writing group.

Y'see, when you said (paraphrased) '...95% of fiction assails me with problems before I care about the main character, which is why I don't have much use for most published fiction...' that tells me you have SPECIFIC taste in the type of fiction you read. So, you're not here to give advice to writers on the craft, but to encourage writers to produce fiction in the form you prefer, which may not (most likely) be what most people want. You're right, you are cold-hearted.

As a writer, I write what I like, :-) , which happens to be more in line with what most people want (I hope).

So, if you wish to offer advice to writers, perhaps you should clarify the fact that you're doing so as a picky reader who doesn't care to read the same material as the hoi polloi.

By chance, d'you have a subscription to the New Yorker?

Remember the first rule of writing... Write!

woody

[This message has been edited by woody (edited October 01, 2003).]
 

I don't know how this all ballooned out of proportion but in a civilized debate we attack ideas, not people. We back up our OPINIONS with facts or we admit they are opinions, we do not resort to mud slinging. This is not a political race.
 

After some digging I found that Survivor used to be like most of the other people here; positive and pleasant. Well, I will admit after a couple hours of searching I finally gave up on finding a reason.

My assumption (which could be very wrong) is that Survivor learned all the technical aspects of writing very well, and (using one of his recent comments) stopped writing much. Now although I find his comments very accurate to most of the writing books I have read, the attitude is something I have seen and dealt with before. Some people learn so much and become a technical expert in a particular area and forget the point of why they learned it. There is typically an arrogance that forms along the way as well.

I actually hope I never slip down a path where I can no longer enjoy a book because it isn't perfect, or it is missing something I expect. I think that would be a very boring life.

So for those of you that get upset by Survivor's comments just realize that what he says is often times correct, although technical. Just ignore the attitude. The english language is very complex and even the "experts" disagree often on the details. Read what he says and determine if it is valuable to you, and do what you want with it.

And for those of you that are curious you go back to the first year or two of the post in the archives and you will see a different person.

Survivor, I do not know you at all. I respect your opinion but I think you need to remember we are human and will continuously fail to be perfect. I bet you will find at least a handful of spelling and grammar errors in this post alone. I would be shocked if there wasn't, but I am working on improving both. But I think if you tried a different approach you could help so many people here.

 

For what it's worth, because we can't hear actual tone of voice, we can only guess at it from what is posted.

Also for what it's worth, too many aspiring writers are confused by the advice to start a story "in the middle of the action" and fail, as Survivor has pointed out, to engage the reader because the writer has not made the reader care about the characters involved in the action.

Damon Knight used to say that a story should start when things get interesting. He would explain that that did not necessarily mean in the middle of a fight scene or a car chase.

Stories that start with fight scenes or car chases or other action that is intended to get the reader's heart pounding are actually on the "what the heck is going on here?" end of the spectrum. Stories on the other end of the spectrum are probably the ones that start with paragraphs (if not pages) of set-up and produce a "ho-hum, when is something going to happen?" reaction.

The advice to start a story when things get interesting means that the action should mean something--so the reader will care (as Survivor says)--and the writer should take up as little time and space in set-up as possible (as I believe Woody is saying).

So, I can see where Woody and Survivor may not be at cross purposes after all.

Okay, guys?
 

Other than that I totally agree wiht Kathleen's compromise suggestion for the debate...so I guess there's nothing mroe to say.

[This message has been edited by Christine (edited October 01, 2003).]
 

I don't know if anyone else here remembers some of the quite pugnacious topics (if you have really read through my old posts, you will notice a certain number of dead links contained therein), but we used to have sort of an unwritten rule of concentrating our venom into certain topics (there were fewer members at that time, so the system actually worked on its own).

I've always been critical, and just for the record, I'm currently writing a novel (actively, that is, I have about four others on the shelf). It is true that I do not regard publication as an important end (I'm actually sort of waffling on a special interest publication I've been asked to write in--I think the goal is a worthy one, but I just haven't devoted the time to it because it doesn't seem like a priority, and no I'm not talking about one of those markets that will accept anything with the requisite ingredients, you should all probably forget that comment as everyone else is too polite to mention those), but that doesn't mean I have contempt for the idea of publishing, it is just that I am more a writer for personal reasons than anything else.

I also agree with KDW about what I'm saying (I think), in that I don't want to eliminate danger and suspense, I just find that trying to create those before the reader has a personal emotional investment in the characters is rather pointless (in a movie, you can just cast a hyper-attractive star as the protagonist and the viewer automatically cares, but in literature, you need to write the attractive character).
 

I guess what really got my attention was Survivor's comment that he didn't care for 95% of the fiction written, because he was cold-hearted.

I'm passionate about writing. That includes craft and content. So, I read all kinds of fiction, even genres that don't do much for me. I keep learning from others. And, I'm grateful for what I get from other writers.
As for the start of a story, I find that to be a challenge. Y'see, I want to get the reader's attention and make him / her turn the page. There are few writers that have the skill to 'set the hook' with a descriptive passage on setting (James Lee Burke comes to mind as an exception). Rob Chilson (who I respect) advocates a fast start. That said, it doesn't have to be an 'action' scene (car chase? never done that), but it has to introduce conflict, problems or something about the character or setting that puzzles, engages or disturbs the reader. Make 'em turn the page, the first page, then the next and so forth.

Yeah, I've read a ton of stuff on the craft of writing and I agree with the old adage that you've gotta write a million words before one is ready to write a novel. I look back at my early stuff and cringe. Yep, made a LOT of mistakes, still do (just not as many or so obviously).

Having been through that, I'm willing to help others along the way, point out things that may help them master the craft. I guess I'm not cold-hearted; maybe I'll become that way when I grow up.

Remember the first rule of writing... Write!

woody

[This message has been edited by woody (edited October 02, 2003).]

[This message has been edited by woody (edited October 02, 2003).]
 

My cold-heartedness applies to the fact that I don't actually care about the character's well-being (nor do I feel a need to care in order to enjoy the story). I enjoy the predicaments if they are well concieved and written, otherwise they have no effect on me (I barely care when real people known to me are in pain--I barely care when I am in pain--how am I going to care about fictional characters?).

This means that I can continue reading a story in which terrible things happen right off the block...but many people, perhaps most, will not, unless they already care abou the characters (or are kind of sick). I can also write terrible things about something written by someone I know, because I only avoid causing pain on sheerly pragmatic grounds.

But of course, by now the thread has gotten ridiculously off topic. Glogpro hasn't even posted in several days, and we aren't even talking about his opening anymore. This sort of discussion belongs in the Open Discussions about Writing area (if it belongs anywhere).

Right now I will retreat to my Pit of Terrors and await my next victim (who has actually been assigned to me by the gracious KDW, Mua ).
 

And as I look back over the discussion so far, I seem to have completely failed to get across the idea I am trying to get opinions on. We got close at one point, when we were discussing opening vignettes or free paragraphs or whatever you want to call them. I am too lazy to look through my collection of SF to find a specific example. But I have a kind of mental image, that seems like something I have seen many times, that goes like this. At the start of a novel, there is an opening paragraph that is distinct from the main narrative. It might appear in italics. Then the main story line starts and it is distinct in tone and setting from the italicized part. The part in italics is not supposed to be understood fully. It doesn't connect completely literally with the beginning of the story. But it resonates with important plot elements or characters in a way that is revealed later.

I thought maybe I could cook up an example, merely for illustrative purposes. What follows is not from anything I am writing -- it was concocted just for this post. So suppose you were working on a story in which a teleportation portal (ala stargate) is used by an ET race to invade Earth. The opening vignette might describe in somewhat poetic terms the appearancee of the portal, but the main story might start with a completely different scene. Like this:

[Begin indented italicized part] Night on the Serengeti. The height of midsummer. The faintest of breezes sighs across the desicated landscape, illuminated to half light by a full moon. And in the deeper twilight of a gaunt acacia tree's shadow, a pale glow begins to gather. Joining the chorus of beetle song, a faint thrumming rises steadily to an electric hum. The glow brightens, shimmers, and then solidifies to a disk of otherworld blue. A figure steps through the disk. It pauses to survey the immediate surroundings, then turns to look back into the disk. Gesturing with a forelimb, it motions for others to follow. And follow they do ......

[End of italics -- the main story line begins in regular font:]

Brian Virgo was a dweeb. His father was a dweeb, his uncle Lem was a dweeb, and his older brother Walter was a super dweeb. When they toiled together in the Virgo's garage workshop, Brian easily forgot his dweebish noncomfority. But when he emerged into that other world of high school, jocks, and girls, .... [end of example]

As I see it, the goals for the part in italics are quite different from the those for the opening paragraphs of the story. What makes this sort of thing "work" would therefore also be different. For one thing, an earlier comment in this thread repeated the idea that no explanation should be needed from an author in response to a critique, because no explanation will be available to give to a reader. But the opening vignette is supposed to be somewhat enigmatic. I would not WANT to explain it to a reader. But I might explain the intent to another writer, particularly when we are only looking at 13 line snippets. The reader might have to wait until he/she is 2/3 of the way through the novel before digesting the ideas that are supposed to resonate with that opening vignette. The fellow writer will not have 2/3 of the novel to consider.

So, my questions to participants in this group are:

1. Does anyone else recall seeing this sort of opening in novels or stories?

2. If so, do you have a reaction about whether it was effective for you as a reader? Did it add to your enjoyment of the story?

3. Can it serve as an effective hook, to entice a reader to keep reading?

4. On a somewhat orthogonal line, can the quality of the prose itself be sufficient to hook you? That is, do you ever read the opening paragraphs of a story, and find the prose so compelling that you read on, swept away by the expressiveness or elegance or rhythm or whatever, of the writing?

Usually, the vignette is a heading to a chapter or chapter length narrative and article, and most often takes the form of a literary (real or fictional) excerpt or dialogue snippet. Usually the vignette creates a mood, or raises certain questions or expresses certain conditions that exist or will come to exist during the narrative segment it precedes.

In the case of the vignette here, it fails to follow some of the general conventions of the vignette, thought it could easily be recast, perhaps as a excerpt from a future history.

quote:

---

In that fateful night on the Serengeti--at the height of midsummer--the faintest of breezes sighed across the desicated landscape, illuminated to half light by a full moon. In the deeper twilight of a gaunt acacia tree's shadow, a pale glow began to gather. Joining the chorus of beetle song, a faint thrumming rose steadily to an electric hum. The glow brightened, shimmered, and then solidified into a disk of otherworldy blue. There the first of the Kiktekt-takcrat steped through into our world. There it paused to survey the immediate surroundings, then turned to summon the others to follow. And follow they did....

--History of the Kiktekt War

---

I have seen an opening that was more like glogpro's original used in opening a published novel, but I never finished reading that novel (I didn't buy it either, it was a present from someone--who I hope is not reading this ). I don't recall seeing one particularly like it in any other novel I've read, thought I've seen it in a number of short stories I've critiqued (I've probably seen it in published short stories as well, I just don't remember).

I do have a soft spot for really good prose. But the quality of the prose has to stay outstanding for me to continue reading unless the story has gotten well and truly started in an interesting direction. But readers that like prose that much are probably not the norm, and in any case they will demand exceptionally good prose. You might as well start the story while you're at it.