posted
To set the scene a little. Grace has called a conference of the folk (about thirty brownies, sprites, hobgoblins and gnomes) that live in her house. She had a visit during the night from a brownie of Woodthrush Manor and sent Robin Redbreast to investigate.
Although the folk speak English, Robin Redbreast is an acual bird and does not. Does this work, or does this way lie madness?
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“Thank you, my dear folk.” It broke her heart to see so many crowded into one home, but she loved them all. “I have distressing news. Will you hear it?”
They murmured assent, their voices no louder than crickets.
“Robin Redbreast has the tale.”
The company cleared a circle in their midst. The bird flew into the center and cocked his head, eyes bright now with knowledge. He began to dance. In the pattern of his wings and the flip of his tail, he painted Woodthrush Manor.
He is the folk of Woodthrush Manor hiding in the nooks and crannies of the house. Then he is the dog, terrible and fierce, its mouth crushing the bones of Papa Nutkin. His body twirls, dips and he is a Dark Hunter. His bright chest seems like a shield of blood against this monster. The Dark Hunter strikes the woman and sets snares for the folk. They hide. They hide. They hide from the darkness.
Robin Redbreast ended his dance and the folk in Grace’s home gasped as if they were a single body, recoiling from the horror. Baby Seedkin cried into the sudden stillness. Grace shivered as his mama tried to shush him.
posted
I don't think this works as you have it. The problem is that you are combining the story told by the bird with descriptions of the bird telling the story. The present tense makes perfect sense, as the bird's dance "language" probably has no tenses at all--but you can't insert descriptions in there of what the bird is doing to tell the story. A few such descriptions can occur before the story proper, and must be in past tense. Then the story can follow in present tense.
Finally, the audience can't gasp all together. It makes it seem like they watched the dance without absorbing any of it, until at the end, they all understood it simultaneously and gasped. Maybe they'd be gasping periodically throughout the story, but what you have won't work. Try horrified silence instead.
posted
Righto! Words of wisdom, as usual Mr. Fisher. The group gasp at the end is something that I've participated in, and seen happen at compelling performances. I'll cut it. It's not important to the story, but it's a phenomenon that I find fascinating. It'll find its way into another story.
I'm relieved that the tense shift works, and glad that you understood my reason for doing it. Let's see what the rest of the Peanut Gallery has to say.
Better? -- “Thank you, my dear folk.” It broke her heart to see so many crowded into one home, but she loved them all. “I have distressing news. Will you hear it?”
They murmured assent, their voices no louder than crickets.
“Robin Redbreast has the tale.”
The company cleared a circle in their midst. The bird flew into the center and cocked his head, eyes bright now with knowledge. He began to dance. In the pattern of his wings and the flip of his tail, he painted Woodthrush Manor.
He is the folk of Woodthrush Manor hiding in the nooks and crannies of the house. Then he is the dog, terrible and fierce, its mouth crushing the bones of Papa Nutkin. The dog, terrible and fierce, bows before the Dark Hunter. The Dark Hunter rises. He strikes the woman and sets snares for the folk. They hide. They hide. They hide from the darkness.
Robin Redbreast ended his dance. Silence held the room. Baby Seedkin cried into the sudden stillness and Grace shivered as his mama tried to shush him.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited June 27, 2004).]
posted
You can't do this properly in thirteen lines or thirty. This is the better part of a full scene.
The problem isn't that the whole audience gasps at the end of the dancing, but that they haven't become an audience before that happens. There is no mention of the reactions of the gathered folk during the performance, no allusion to the fact that they are being bonded together by a shared experience.
Even if this were a conventional speech, you would need to have the audience react as the message unfolds. It is the absence of this process that makes it seem implausible that they would all share a single spontaneous reaction at the end.
Also, you should probably have RR sing as well as dance. Birds communicate by song as much as by dance. And Grace specifically asked if the assembled folk would "hear" the news.
But the main thing is that this is too short. The reader barely has time to figure out what you're doing before the passage is over. I do like the change to a hush at the end rather than a gasp. Perhaps a sigh as they are released from the world of the performance would work as well, but you must show their enthrallment during the dance.
quote:You can't do this properly in thirteen lines or thirty. This is the better part of a full scene
Sorry, could you specify which "this" you're talking about? Is it specifically Robin telling the story, or the notion of a group of people gathering to hear bad news.
There's a half page in front of this about the audience, and more after. I was only concerned about the switch in tense, but thought that if I pointed it out that would diminish the value of reader responses.
quote:Even if this were a conventional speech, you would need to have the audience react as the message unfolds. It is the absence of this process that makes it seem implausible that they would all share a single spontaneous reaction at the end.
I don't want to jump in and out of present tense. I think I can go into it, be there, and come out but to intersperse audience responses... How?
I don't want to translate Robin Redbreast's lines into dialogue with quotes around them, nor do I want to have him speaking in italics. "Grace understood him to say..." would be equally yucky. I'm open to other ideas, but this was the best solution I came up with.
This is ready, in early draft form, if anyone wants to read the whole story.
posted
Better, but you're still including descriptions of what he does mixed with what he "says".
quote:He is the folk of Woodthrush Manor hiding in the nooks and crannies of the house. Then he is the dog, terrible and fierce, its mouth crushing the bones of Papa Nutkin.
The "He is" has to go. Just tell us about "the folk" in this section.
Posts: 932 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Is it just me, or is Robin Redbreast ended his dance. Silence held the room. Baby Seedkin cried into the sudden stillness and Grace shivered as his mama tried to shush him. the classical "Baby crying breaks horrid silence"? Posts: 697 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
For some rason, I thought I had responded to this. I guess I read it and tried, but never could come up with what to say.
First of all, I think your present tense dance works fairly well, whcih was your question. I had a picture in my mind of a robin dancing around and play-acting to tell this message. The biggest issues I have reading it come from not quit eunderstanding the story, but I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt because this is taken from the middle. (You're sending it to me, though, right? Then I might have a different bit of advice.)
As for the audience gasping and reacting as he does his dance....I am going ot have to completely disagree with this. When a person delivers a long monologue in english even, you do not get the gasps and reaction sof the audience until the end. What happens is that the reader becomes a part of the audience of that story and his reactions are the audience reactions, making explicitly telling us about their reactions more of an annoyance than anything else. It's getting in the way of my own feelings. Put it another way....when you go to a movie or a play and sit there with hundreds of people, (assuming it's good and you don't get distracted and look at your husband to see if he's actually enjoying this crap) you get caught up in it, the whole room disappears and it's just you and the film (or play or whatever). If the room laughs, it is your laughter, if they cry, it is your tears, if they are frightened, it is your fears.
Now, if you wanted to say, after the robin did her dance, that the audience had been watching in rapt attention, gasping and crying out as the story unfolded, then ok. By that time I've already had those reactions myself and can hear that others had the same reactions. But a stunned silence works just as well for a story like you're telling, and whether a baby crying or a cough or something....it takes some noise to break that silence. There are options for flowing out of it, in other words, but don't mess up my experience in the middle.
posted
Doh! A crying baby? Oh, for crying out loud... um. I mean. I'll cut that. I'll put in a, I dunno, a blonde virgin in a tight bodice and she'll swoon or something. That's original, isn't it?
All of the "he is" stuff is gone. I'm flirting, a little, at doing a chanted verse representation of the Robin's story, but I kinda suck at poetry, so its probably not a good plan.
Yes, Christine, I am sending this to you, but I had a plot realization last night that I want to incorporate before sending it over.
I don't want you to have the audience gasp and so forth during the dance (though this is by no means impossible). But they must react. You know that an audience gives the performer feedback. I can't speak to Christine's comments...maybe she has a point. But if she does, then this passage has to be far more vivid and affective than it is now. That almost certainly means making it a lot longer.
If you have a straw-haired (you should know better than to use the term "blond") virgin in a tight bodice faint, then make sure that some quick thinking fellow thinks to remove anything that might be restricting her ability to breathe (the preferred instrument is a bootknife, I believe).
posted
Okay, here's a different approach to Robin's story. It's longer, so I'm only posting the story itself. Just FYI the crying baby has been replaced by a flaxen-tressed maid who swoons.
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Robin Redbreast seeks the folk of Woodthrush Manor. He seeks, he searches, he hop, hop, hops through the attic. In the nooks. In the crannies of the house, he looks. The folk of Woodthrush Manor hide in the nooks and crannies of the house.
Why do they hide? They hide from the hound. The hound, terrible and fierce, hunts them. It hunts, it hunts. Hunting, it crushes them. The hound, terrible and fierce hunts the folk and they hide.
Who is the Hound's master? The folk turn their faces. Terrible, terrible. The Dark Hunter rises. He sets snares for the folk. The folk go still as stone. The Dark Hunter strikes the Goodwife and sets snares for the folk.
They hide. They hide. They hide from the darkness.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited June 30, 2004).]
posted
For my own two cents, I liked the "he is" format. Can't give you a reason why, I just liked it better than the revised version.
I liked the present-tense thing, and I slid right into it very easily when it started. The problem was coming out of it and going back into 3rd person. That was a little wierd. Now that I read everybody's comments, I realize it might actually be as much because of the awkward way you handled the audience reaction as because of the tense shift. I think fixing that will smooth the tense shift out a lot.
posted
I like this one lots better. The only thing that bothered me was "hop, hop, hops." Makes me think of "hop-hop-hopping along," which doesn't fit the mood. But "hops, hops, hops" would work fine for me.
Posts: 932 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Whatever, I still think that it's too short. But I already said that. I like that in this version the dance seems rather participatory, but I'm afraid that will be lost on a lot of readers.
Perhaps you could make the participation more implicit and less explicit. Have RR take them as objects, but give them less active roles as subject ("subject" and "object" used here in the grammatical sense). Give them actions and reactions that fit more with the idea of being an audience. Perhaps use a different word for them when they are a subject so as to make it clear that you are referring to those present. "The watching folk go still as stone." I think that the other reactions were a bit too pronounced to simply modify the referance to "folk".
Harping on the length again, I don't think that you give this enough space for most readers to get a clear idea of what you're doing. But it is a promising narrative scene.
The following is taken from a description of an actual semi-narrative choreography at a dance concert I attended. Naturally, the actual form in which I wrote this does not lend itself perfectly to what you're trying to do here, but it may help. Note that I describe the actual choreography, what the dancers were doing (or wearing) to evoke the meaning present in their movements.
quote:The dancers costumes are reminiscent of that the Civil War era, but are limited to drab colors and simple cuts. Almost like rags, yet distinctly feminine, they evoke a sense of conformity to the hardships war. The music ranges from frantic scales and staccato beats to the measured drumming of martial rhythms. In the dance, three expressions come forward. The panic and confusion of battle are shown through broad, sweeping movements, with the dancers running across the stage, only to turn in on their own footsteps. Arms are brought high, as though to cover eyes and ears, or to defend against blows. No two dancers move with the same purpose. In contrast, the determination and resolve of those entering battle are shown in military fashion. Trios of dancers march purposefully across the stage, weapons shouldered, tread unified and calm. Their faces reflect a sense of fatalism and grim intent. As the piece proceeds, the two expressions are used to create a sense of a battle mired in senseless slaughter, as two armies, tactically committed, send reinforcements piecemeal into a struggle neither can win. Finally, the battle grinds to an end, and the dancers move slowly, not driven by the drums, nor in the desperate flight of before, but with quiet grace. Arms hanging down, heads erect, they show both acceptance of loss and rejection of defeat as the piece closes.
This was from a very short description of a single piece in the concert. Still, I think this is a good bit more text than you've given Robin Redbreast's dance, which has to convey even more information, and more precise information at that. Also note that in this I am acting as a audience surrogate by describing both the action and my own reaction to it. This differs from the method that you've attempted in this last sample. Either can work, yours probably has the advantage of being a bit more unique and memorable once the reader figures out what you're doing.
But yes, I still think that you need to give this more text space. The Dark Hunter, his ferocious hound crushing small creatures in his teeth, these are very strong images and I think this is the place where you attempt to give the reader the first full impression of them. This is also a pivotal scene in its own right. Should be longer (have I already mentioned that?).
posted
Mmmm... Thanks guys for clarifying things. I might have confused more things in this last version.
I think that, in context, it will be clear that the folk in this section are not the ones in the house with him, but folk belonging to another house, Woodthrush Manor. This is a solo dance.
To clear up one other thing. Specifically what my goal is for this segment. It is also not supposed to be interpreted as a dance performance, rather this is how Robin communicates. Through dance and (thanks to your reminder, Survivor) through song.
The important thing to me, and what I would like help with, is to convey Robin's report. This is, for all intents and purposes, an info-dump. If I translated Robin's were human the scene would read,
"Robin has the floor."
"Thanks. I just got back from Woodthrush Manor. The folks there are all in hiding because there's a Dark Hunter and his hound in residence. The folk have seen him beating the Goodwife, and they're scared out of their minds. The Hunter's hound has already killed one of the folk."
That's it. The information about what a Dark Hunter is happens elsewhere, (less than half a page after this). They actually already know that Papa Nutkin was killed by a dog. That's why Robin went to Woodthrush Manor. What is new information, is that it's a Dark Hunter, not just some guy and his dog.
So. My goal is to convey this information, and to give an impression of a nonverbal form of communication. It is not to describe a dance, as a dance.
This story is in a middle-rough draft right now, if anyone would like to look at it.
Thanks again for your patience while I struggle with this.
posted
Thanks, I just sent it to both of you. Christine has a copy too. At this stage, I'm mostly worried about the Robin's "speeches" and the overall structure. I look forward to your comments.
quote:Robin Redbreast seeks the folk of Woodthrush Manor. He seeks, he searches, he hop, hop, hops through the attic. In the nooks. In the crannies of the house, he looks. The folk of Woodthrush Manor hide in the nooks and crannies of the house.
I don't know which I like better. I think both would work, depending on what comes before and after. The hop, hopping works for me. In the above, is there a reason to repeat the name of the manor?
As a suggestion perhaps: In the nooks. In the crannies. He finds the manor folk hiding.
This is assuming a robin can only transmit information slowly by dance. It seems like telling a story this way would require very short, simple sentences for anyone to figure it out.
quote:This is assuming a robin can only transmit information slowly by dance. It seems like telling a story this way would require very short, simple sentences for anyone to figure it out.
Thanks, goatboy, that's a good idea.
quote:This might work with a rythmic meter like a poem.
Actually, what I really want is for it to be an epic poem, like Beowulf. But I'm really awful at poetry and verse. Which is probably why I'm struggling with this. It keeps threatening to slide into "See the folk. See the folk run. Run, folk, run!" Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
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quote:Actually, what I really want is for it to be an epic poem, like Beowulf. But I'm really awful at poetry and verse. Which is probably why I'm struggling with this. It keeps threatening to slide into "See the folk. See the folk run. Run, folk, run!"
You aren’t doing too bad. The meter is close to the surface. One day you’ll sit down and it will all go click and start pouring out. I’m hearing something closer to the Hiawatha rhythm than Beowulf, (although it’s been over 30 years since I read Beowulf). Nothing wrong with the Hiawatha rhythm, it’s a real strong, clear beat.
He sought them in the attic bare, In the nooks and crannies there.
As you can see, a Poet I am not, but I think you’ve got the idea.
posted
Not meaning to be difficult, but I'm missing the baby's cry. Maybe it's my motherly instincts, but I feel a huge emotional attachment when there is a threat to children involved. The flaxen-haired maiden just doesn't do it for me.
I'd be willing to look at it, too. It sounds like a great read!
posted
Don't worry Lullaby Lady. The flaxen-haired maid is a joke. I am looking for something to replace the crying baby, but still suggest danger to innocence. I may wind up putting the baby back in. It's a child we've met before, so it's not as random a symbol as it could be.
Let me get feedback from the folk who already have it, and I'll send you the next draft. Is that all right?
posted
Well, all I have to offer is a reiteration of a point I've already mentioned, that you could describe Red Robin's actual actions as well as what they are supposed to indicate.
I suppose that the most valuable point I made (totally unintentionally) is that in its current form, I almost completely misread this passage despite my best efforts. I don't know how helpful any of my actual comments could be in light of this fact.
quote:you could describe Red Robin's actual actions as well as what they are supposed to indicate
Darn. Where's the pouty face emoticon? [:lower lip sticking out(] I don't wanna. I know I could. This way is harder. So... right. So, if I can pull it off I think I'll be happier.
I just broke down and asked my husband, a poet, to collaborate with me on it.
And Survivor-- it's great that you misread it, because someone else probably would have too, but not said anything. Thanks.
Don't forget, that you steered me away from having a blonde maiden, to the flaxen haired one. (Still want the pouty face...)
posted
I think this scene is reminding me of the eagle dancers you see at Powwows. Basically, an audience of people watching folks in bird costume dancing. That imagery is well known to everyone in North America, and you might be able to draw on it somehow. Maybe have Robin thump his feet on the floor to set the rhythm, which the audience then picks up by tapping their own feet. At the end of the sequence, the audience could gasp and fall silent before Robin stops dancing. Then the baby wails in the silence as punctuation. Kind of an eerie ending, I’m not sure exactly how to pull it off, but I thought it was worth a look.
Posts: 497 | Registered: Jun 2004
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posted
You didn't mention anyone coming to her assistance by removing anything that might be restricting her respiration, though Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
Actually. I just got my crit back from Silver and she pointed out that my lead character overcomes all of her obstacles with no difficulty at all. Conflict? Do I see conflict? Ummm. no. So, I'm going to take this puppy back to the drawing board.
Would this scene work in it?
Robin Redbreast ended his dance. Brownie Broadkin gasped, her ample bosom heaving within its clinging corset. The flaxen-haired maid swooned to the floor, her hair fanning out like amber waves of grain; her skirts flew akimbo to reveal long shapely legs.
Brownie Brawnkin leapt to his feet. His manly shoulders thrown back, as he tossed his long mane of black hair back from his flashing green eyes. "I'll save her!" he cried.
He knelt by her, with tender passion, and ripped the cruel corset from her.
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