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Jack woke up to the unobtrusive ding of an electronic chime. The sound brought to Jack’s mind the fleeting memory of his uncle’s toast to his grandmother at her 80th birthday celebration. His uncle had stood with deliberate dignity and lightly rapped a delicate crystal wine glass with the wooden handle of a steak knife sending a clear, and to Jack’s mind, beautiful tone throughout the banquet hall.
A second sounding of the chime brought Jack’s eyes open and a sudden realization of bodily discomfort. Through gummy slits, all Jack could see was an indistinct smear of white light while the rest of his body sent various distress signals to his brain.
By the third ding, Jack began to remember where he was supposed to be and what his awakening must signify. There were protocols to be followed now. The first thing Jack had to do was turn off the chime, signaling to what was likely a room full of nervous mission controllers on Earth that he was alive.
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Alot happens soon after this, but I guess I can't share that... Be brutally honest please and let me know if its just terrible. I'm already determined to make a go of writing for a full 365 days and nothing you can say will stop me, it will only make me better
Rest assured, if I cracked this book open in a bookstore and read these three paragraphs, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it.
CVG
[This message has been edited by cvgurau (edited January 09, 2004).]
The information you are asking the reader to unpack doesn't seem forced. Once again, good.
By the way, if someone does offer a criticism that seems a little on the blunt side, like a cranky professor with red pen addiction, ignore the tone but appreciate the information. I'm a huge believer in peer review.
b) Sudden flashback? Ugh. I don't care about the past, at least not yet. Give me NOW. Later, throw your history at me. Maybe, sometimes I'll accept a flashback this soon into the story. But it has to be ENERGETIC, and SHORT. This is too thin for me.
c) I felt nothing but annoyance at the delicate, emotional flashback [which means nothiing, because I feel nothing for Jack yet] until the end of the sample, which did intrest me slightly.
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That feels like (and is funtually): Jack was waked by the unobtrusive ding of an electronic chime.
Hence the passive comment.
And, if the chime is unobtrusive, then why did it wake him up? If it did wake him up, even if it really was unobtrusive, would he think of it like that?
Bob read the book.
The book was read by Bob.
In each sentence, Bob is actually doing the action, but the second sentence is passive because the subject (book) is receiving the action, whereas the in the first sentence, the subject (Bob)is performing the action.
"Jack woke." Active: The subject (Jack) is doing the action.
"Jack was waked." Passive: The subject (Jack) is receiving the action.
Furthermore, "Jack was waking." is active because the subject (Jack) is doing the action. "Was" is merely a helping verb here.
I don't even really know why I included that little bit of flashback. I was really only trying to describe the sound and convey a sense of sleepy/dreamy confusion upon waking up... You know... how sometimes your clock radio going off in the morning incorporates itself into a dream you might be having...?Is it acceptable to describe something in the terms that the character in the story would think of them? The mini-flashback has no bearing on the story whatsoever... at least none that's planned (I haven't finished yet, but who knows? maybe his uncle will show up). Its only purpose is descriptive really.
Is this wasted space only in an opening, or would such overly-descriptive passages turn many of you off from reading further? I think I tend to go a little overboard on my descriptions sometimes because I want the reader to see/feel/experience exactly what I'm imagining in my head.
I love detailed descriptions... Anyone read Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon and recall the pages he takes to describe eating Captain Crunch ceral? I tend towards that sort of thing sometimes. Does that bore most people to tears?
I would expect the wedding toast to mean something, even if it were only a usual kind of waking thought stream for Jack that's repeated throughout the story, maybe a method of helping the reader understand Jack.
Gut-level reaction is it is wasted space if it means nothing, yet there are such a things as red herrings -- though putting one in the first paragraph is pushing the envelope to me. Also, whether this is a short story or a novel would help determine if it's wasted space.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited January 10, 2004).]
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Jack awoke to the ding of an electronic chime. His dream-hazed mind conjured the image of a delicate crystal wine glass being lightly rapped with the wooden handle of a steak knife. Jack thought it was a beautiful sound.
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That suddenly makes this 10 lines and nothing is lost. Creating this uncle and birthday party for no real reason other than to describe the sound of an electronic chime seems pretty silly now. "Unobtrusive" is just redundant and I'll agree, a little misleading.
After reading what I've written so far, I realize I could probably cut the length of this story by 75% by speaking directly, but I could summarize everything above by simply saying, "Jack woke up." That doesn't make it a good read, does it?
And I'm not trying to be difficult, I'm sincerely trying to figure out where to draw the line in my descriptions of things. My stories seem to suffer from a sort of time dilation and atenuation as I get intensely descriptive about something and the pace of the story goes into slow-mo. Then I sometimes feel like I'm playing catch-up and rushing through things before getting absorbed in another in-depth description.
I think I've had the same problems trying to sketch things. I was way to obsessed with detail.
What may help you with the first is my definition of what "show, don't tell" means:
Showing is when you let the readers experience the scene as it happens, so that they feel they are watching it unfold.
Telling is when you summarize what has happened ("Jack woke up") so that you can get on to the more important stuff.
Basically, "show, don't tell" means that you need to spend time talking about the important stuff (show) and summarize things that aren't as important (tell).
The other thing is that the amount of time you spend on showing tends to signal to the reader just how important that thing is. If you spend pages on eating breakfast cereal, the reader will tend to think you are showing something very important, and will feel cheated if it doesn't turn out to be that important. The eating can be the important thing, the cereal can be the important thing, what the character thinks as he eats can be the important thing, what someone says to him while he is eating, or some other part of the scene may be the important thing. But you are saying something is important when you spend a lot of time on a scene.
So it really comes down to one question (well, a two-part question) as you write: what is important for the reader to know? and how important is it?
The more important it is, the more time you spend showing it, and the less important it is, the less you need to show. The least important things you can just tell.