posted
My first impression is that there is too much description of his clothes. What is your POV here? Are we supposed to be inside his head? If so, would he be consciously thinking of his clothes in such specific terms?
I'm not sure I understand how absence of hope equates to a multitude of personal effects, especially because "quite a number" seems odd right after saying everything he owns fits in a duffel.
I'm assuming this is fantasy? Also I have no idea how long your peice is. For future reference, in order to get a feel for your story, it is helpful to always post length and genre as well as your excerpt.
Overall I'm not really grabbed by what you have here. There isn't anything that makes me go "Oh ho, what have we here?" and hunker down for an extended read.
On the other hand, doing an infodump right up front won't help either.
Perhaps a better place to start would be a scene with more action, where you could show us the things you are describing instead of telling us. Right now your entire excerpt is telling. I need to be shown through action, dialogue, thoughts, etc instead of solid description that he looks like a hobo but it is just a pretense.
posted
autumnmuse, thank you for you input. Unfortunately, the first 13 lines doesn't really give much of the story. This is an older story that I'm trying to out there. I realize that I was probably too wordy back then, but for some reason--and this is probably just my quirk--its easier for me to start a new story from scratch knowing the mistakes I've made back then than it is for me to go back over and rewrite a previous story. I'm trying though. You should have seen the first draft of the story. That was a real mess, even to me. Any more advise would be helpful. Posts: 6 | Registered: Feb 2005
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If they were spread out a bit more it could work. But as is, it got to be very distracting.
I agree with Autumn. Get into his head. Unless the items he is wearing are really important to the story, they probably are not worth mentioning. The only items out of the list that really struck me as unusual and important are the boots. At this point, I would expect the boots (or his use of the boots) to have a role in the story.
posted
Well the use of dragged in the first sentence caught me. For me it is the wrong word choice.
The second sentence feels like a hook, but unfortunately sticks out like a sore thunb. Relevance? If it is there to give us info, it fails. So what does it give us?
And the description of the clothes throws us out of POV. I do not spend time thinking about my clothes, except when it is time to dress. Relevance!
I think what you need to think about is starting point. It is hard to judge here as you have not said anything about the length. But if this is the startin point, we need to see some things happening. I'm not talking about full blown action scenes, but something to let us know why we are watching this guy.
posted
Yah, you lost me at the clothes. The first two lines grabbed me, but then it moved straight to descriptives. I'd suggest either greatly condensing the clothing section, or pushing it back a page or two.
The writing is certainly solid, but like autumnmuse said, it's missing a hook to pull me into the story.
posted
Hi. I don't think it's bad, but I agree on the clothing description. I would mention just one of those details - the hoodie or the coat would probably be most seamless.If you want the rest of the description, I would sprinkle it in later. Michelle
[This message has been edited by MichelleAnn (edited February 25, 2005).]
posted
You're going overboard with adjectives and words in general, and some don't make sense. A 'dusted' duffel bag? 'Dusty' maybe. Zero in on the best adjective. The others, if important, can be feathered into the story as nouns or verbs: 'He brushed the dust from his bag.'
quote:Over his shoulder, he dragged a dark brown, dusted and faded duffel bag that contained everything he owned.
If this is the main character, name him.
Unless his bag is so large that it's dragging on the ground behind this fellow, in which case paint that picture, 'dragged' doesn't seem appropriate. Were the sentence rearranged, it'd read: "He dragged a faded duffel bag over his shoulder." Doesn't make sense. But he may have had everything he owned slung over his shoulder in a faded duffel bag.
quote:Fifteen years living without peace in an absence of hope had awarded him quite a number of personal effects.
Ditto autumnmuse's comments here.
quote:The autumn air was beginning to chill, causing his breath to frost and his skin to tingle.
Anytime you find yourself writing 'was beginning to,' study the sentence to see if it really was just beginning -- often it isn't -- or if you can otherwise eliminate that seemingly weaker structure. 'In the growing chill of the autumn air, his breath began to frost' or 'his breath left him in frosty billows' or some such thing. His tingling skin is really unnecessary. The frosted breath says it all.
quote:He pulled the hood of his light blue, dirt-covered sweater over his head and wrapped his black, ankle-length trenched coat over the rest of his body for warmth.
Overabundance of adjectives. Why not just 'the hood of his dirty sweater' and 'his long trench coat?' 'Around' might be better than 'over.' 'For warmth' can be inferred here.
quote:His now faded grey denims were full of holes and provided little protection, but his steel-toed, black biker boots kept his feet warm, if not hot, all the time.
Since denims are usually associated with blue, the 'grey' could probably stay coupled with the 'faded,' especially since a faded grey seems more pathetic than a faded blue. After all, most colors fade to some version of grey. 'Now' can go, though. 'Steel-toed biker boots' would suffice.
However, having said all that, this is just too much uninteresting info, as others have noted. The reader is looking for a story.
quote:They were his favorite clothes, almost the only clothes that he ever wore in public.
Is this really relevant?
quote:To the outside world, he was just another hobo with nothing of value to steal and no worth of any kind. Some people even turned away from him, perhaps out of disgust, perhaps out of fear. That was just the way he needed things to be.
Again, you're giving us too many words and not enough story. Maybe combine this with the clothes: 'He strove to appear as just another hobo in his faded grey denims and steel-toed biker boots.'
quote:Thankfully, there were only a handful of people littered about the streets in any one direction in this late hour, so it was relatively easy to maneuver through the streets with minimal human interaction.
Trim wordage and strengthen verbs. 'Only a handful of people were about at that late hour, so he easily maneuvered through the streets with minimal human interaction.'
By eliminating the extra verbiage, your story can emerge sooner and not try the patience of the reader. At the risk of annoying you, and not to say this is the only way to write this, but compare the 90-word version to your 206-word version:
He had everything he owned slung over his shoulder in a faded duffel bag. In the growing chill of the autumn air his breath began to frost, and he pulled the hood of his dirty sweater over his head and wrapped his long trench coat around the rest of his body. He strove to appear as just another hobo in his faded grey denims and steel-toed biker boots. Only a handful of people were about at that late hour, so he easily maneuvered through the streets with minimal human interaction.
The trick is to do the job with only the words necessary. Kind of like that old saw about the sculptor who said he just chipped out the stone that wasn't a statue. You do have a story in there. Uncover it.
[This message has been edited by Kolona (edited February 25, 2005).]
posted
Thanks to everybody for their advice. Most of what you guys said, I've thought about myself, but wasn't exactly how to go about it. Special thanks to Kolona for the details. As I said before this is an older story and I plan to go over it one day and trim it down. As it stands now I'm sort of engrossed in another story (brainstorming stage so far) and I've spent so long on the posted story that I feel I need a bit of a break from it before I can effectively edit it. I'll try my best to keep in mind everything that you've said and see if I can't do better on the next project. Hopefully if I do it right (or closer to right) the next time, it will help me to fix up the posted story. (Once I get used to writing a certain way it will be easier to dulipicate it) But if I start fixing it now, it'll be too easy to simply revert back to old (bad) habits. If you guys want, maybe when I start writing the other story I could post the first two or three paragraphs and you guys could give me your thoughts to see if I've improved any. PS. are there any copyright issue that I need to worry about with posting parts of a story that I have yet to publish but wish to in the future? Please let me know. I don't want to shoot myself in the foot.
Posts: 6 | Registered: Feb 2005
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posted
Has anyone answered your question about copyright yet?
The answer is not really about copyright, but about publication. You want to avoid publishing your work anywhere, such as posting the whole thing online, as that may infringe on your publishability later on. A publisher will want to have the privilege of being the sole provider of your story. If your story is already all over the internet, they'll balk, thinking that perhaps their reader base has already been tapped. They're out there to make money, after all.
But simply posting a dozen lines in order to gain feedback or to ask for readers of a larger section of work shouldn't infringe on your ability to publish in the future.
Hence the 13 line rule around here.
Now if your WHOLE story is 13 lines, then you'd only want to post a request for readers or the first sentence. Never a significant portion of the whole.
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