Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Blank shot

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Posted by Duffy (Member # 2394) on :

I am beginning work on this, favoring it over the other piece i just posted (which I hadn't quite finished, and the thread of which I am ging to delete right about........now). Wait...nevermind, it won't let me delete it! Ah well. Anyway, This is a piece I have actually been working on for a while now, since maybe last novemeber, and it recently underwent it's biggest facelift, in message, idea, and plot. It still needs significant work. I haven't even finished the ending of the most recent revsion. I can't get it to have the imapct I want. It starts off too slow. Boring almost. *shiver* Here is the beginning:

The bed creaked loudly as Jack rose from it and surveyed himself in the mirror. Swollen bags dominated his face, black and blue, nearly consuming his eyes. They were glzed over, hardly awake, and they disappeared in the blue wrinkles as he yawned.

He thought of his agent, Old Tom, due to arrive today. They were to discuss getting him out of the plays and into some high-profile movies. Jack didn't see it happening after his 6 years of proffessional acting. He had yet to go a week without using up his entire paycheck.

But that wasn't the only reason that Tom was coming to visit.
He rose and dressed, the thought of five-thousand dollars and a dead body circling around in his head. He parted his hair just off center.Five-thousand dollars! He suddenly felt very awake, picturing himself dragging the body of his old college buddy to the side of a lake, and throwing him in. He saw himslef jumping in after the limp corpse.

He finished dressing, and just as he was closing his drawer, the sunlight glinted off of the small hand gun. He reached down and picked it up, feeling the cold steel in his palm. Gripping it firlmy, he turned it over and over, remember every scratch and indent. He had studied this gun often in the past few weeks.

***

If you are interested in reading, It is not quite finished (the revised edition) but I could give you what I have, about 1,000 words, and a synopsis of the rest. I'm estimating based my my first unrevisedcopy and longhand manuscript because I have yet to finish typing it.

[This message has been edited by Duffy (edited February 22, 2005).]

Posted by Beth (Member # 2192) on :

For one thing, the interesting part is the $5k and the dead body. Start with that. There's nothing particularly interesting about a guy getting out of bed.

Posted by NewsBys (Member # 1950) on :

This unnamed guy is your POV character, right? So he is our guide for this story.
If you are going for 3rd person limited, then we need to see the scene through his senses. I'm seeing a bit of that, which is good, but if we are inside his head, then he knows his own name. Might as well call him by that. That's not the kind of info you want to withhold from the reader.

Posted by Duffy (Member # 2394) on :

Just edited it. Looking for opinions, readers, and tips.

Posted by HSO (Member # 2056) on :

Tips (opinion -- could be bad advice, you never know):

Impact can be acheived a variety of ways. But one thing I've learned is to have some sort of conflict in every scene. It can be internal conflict, it can be external. In other words, put your character in situations in which they must think and act to get themselves in or out of.

Conflict could be as simple as trying to sell a used car. But don't make anything too easy for you character. Make them work for it.

To me, that will create a desirable impact. And by thinking up situations in which your character must face along the way, you will create really good plots and subplots -- almost without even trying. Oh, and you don't necessarily need to resolve the conflict within a given scene. Feel free to let it fester a while, and on top of that, layer conflict upon conflict until your protag is at the breaking point -- do or die, kind of thing. But always show a progression towards resolving the conflict.

Of course, it's easier said than done, but conflict is the key to keep us, the readers, interested. Impact is sort of relative to the "idea" of the story. The two go hand in hand, in my opinion.

Good luck. Sorry that I can't offer to read, but I'm packing and leaving tomorrow for a long vacation... otherwise, I would.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Give the reader a reason to care about the outcome. Right now, you're throwing bodies and handguns and and five-thousand dollars around, but we don't have enough information to feel one way or another yet. We don't know what we should want to happen, nor do we feel fear of anything that might happen, because we don't understand the present.

If you've chosen Jack as your POV character, then it should be a good idea to let us get to know more about him, aside from the current, probably uncharacteristic, situation.

Also, if you're looking for readers, specify the length and genre (that's not cheating, an editor or other reader would have that information before reading the story too).

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

I'm sorry, I didn't really mean his job or anything like that (though knowing that he's a starving actor does help give me a bit of an idea of his character, as well as seeing that he doesn't yet know how to understand "agentspeak" after six years of this). I meant more direct access to the pattern of his thoughts, the reasons he thinks about things and how he tends to react internally.

Anyway, I can read a thousand words for you.

Posted by mikemunsil (Member # 2109) on :

quote:
There's nothing particularly interesting about a guy getting out of bed.

But you CAN make that interesting if it advances the story. Joseph Kessel (1898 - 1979) did it in his novel, "Les Cavaliers". In the movie 'The Horsemen' (derived from the novel) Jack Palance gave the best effort of his entire career in the scene that shows the aged Horseman as he gets out of bed and literally puts himself together. Both the book and the movie are worth reading and worth watching. Together they constitute a rare example of a really valid transition of a novel to a movie.

The book: Joseph Kessel's (1898 - 1979) novel, "Les Cavaliers http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9997403436/qid=1109255049/sr=1-2/ref=sr_1_2/104-5130260-6736737?v=glance&s=books

The movie: 'The Horsemen', director John Frankenheimer http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0767856449/104-5130260-6736737?v=glance

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Actually, I think that showing the unique was a character deals with an everyday situation is a good way to start a story. In an extreme situation, you have less latitude for making your character clearly individual without impacting plausibility. The classic is the cold-blooded killer/detective/doctor type surveying a grisly scene of mangled bodies. That isn't where you want to start, you want to start in a fairly ordinary setting before moving (however quickly) to the extraordinary. Thus you show the killer approaching the house before the crime begins, the detective sitting at a desk or riding in a car, and the doctor giving a lollipop to a little kid.

Let the reader get to know the character as a person rather than a plot element, and then the reader will tend to continue to think that even when the plot starts.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

This may not be the time to start the story. The interesting part is stuff Jack's remembering, not what's happening. I don't care that he's getting out of bed, or that he's got an agent. How about showing us the murder? Or when he's trying to hide the body? Or some later scene, when he's afraid of getting caught? Something like that.