posted
[Start Italics]“Don’t be afraid.” “I feel the truth inside my spirit, inside my chest, but in my mind, in this place, it’s hard to not be scared, terrified of all these things you say I can not change.” “Why try to change things that are needed, and that have to be. Besides, she is your perfection.” “How can she be perfect? How can anyone be perfect, except for you?” “Yes, but I possess no boundaries.” “Is she frightened?” “She is excited and looking forward to her future, to your future.” “Will she love me?” “She won’t know how not to love you. She was born to love you.” “What is her name?” “Lilliana.”[End Italics]
His body trembled, feeling a cold breeze move past him. He had been day dreaming yet again;
---------------------- Okay, I broke and wrote more than 13 lines, but the style wouldn't have made sense otherwise lol. I know I'm bad, but being a life-long novel length writer, commiting to 13 lines is like telling my Jewish mother to not be neurotic. In the manuscript, part of it is written in italics and bold, to symbolize the difference between his awake thoughts and his dream thoughts/conversation.
Thank You All So Much, Artistic_Alexis
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited July 31, 2005).]
It's difficult to stay within the first 13 rule, particularly if it cuts you off in the middle of a paragraph, but it's not a "more or less" sort of thing. First 13 only. The challenge to YOU is to make your writing hook us, even within that line limitation.
Since your opening is clearly a dialogue vignette rather than narrative prose, I don't think that you really needed to supply the bit where Kayden wakes up. I think most editors would understand what was going on if they saw a properly formatted dialogue vignette leading the text.
That said, the vignette itself is interesting and hints at a strong story concept. I particularly liked the apparent non sequiteur the god figure gives in response to the question about perfection. I also thought that a love story that explored the question of predestination/causality/creation was an intersting direction. I also liked that you chose the name "Lilliana", close enough to "Lilith" to invoke the reference, but not force it on the story.
Besides, it's a pretty name
Anyway, were you just looking for comments on your first thirteen, or for a discussion of the strategy you've outlined? Because I think that the strategy you've described would annoy the hell out of me in just a couple of pages. But that might merely be the effect of trying to describe what you're writing is doing rather than letting your text speak for itself, the way it will have to do anyway.
posted
Are you speaking of the part I said about the italics/bold usage? These dreams aren't that often in the story, but usually when they happen it's to push things in my main character's life along. Like the idea that there is this being who does hold all the answers, yet he makes you question more. I just wanted to remark the difference between him being awake and not.
I completely agree that his awakening doesn't have to be there to understand that Kayden was dreaming, but it's for some other facts that are continued on in that paragraph, and every single one after his dreams, that makes it needed. A certain physical response to these dreams.
In the first response, I was happy that you questioned those sentances the way you did, because that is exactly what the main character is doing. He is so confused, and can't ever seem to ask the right questions, and NEVER gets easy answers. I guess by my reader questioning what in the world is going on, I hope they'll want to continue on. But did I make it too out there, that the reader won't give a crud to move on in my story? You guys all tell me.
posted
Hmmm...so he's having these conversations with this god while he's daydreaming? In other words, these "dreams" are visions rather than dreams, right?
Like I said, I don't know, from your description, whether or not that will work for me. But your first thirteen lines, by themselves, seemed like a strong beginning that isn't too unconventional for the well-read editor (whether the next few pages are any good I couldn't possibly know, I've seen promising openings on stories that really didn't deliver before, yes I have ).
As for your last question, I'd say it was just "out there" enough to be interesting.
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