quote:Eric stared through blurry eyes at the livid and non-compromising red digits. 8:00.
“No,” he contradicted them flatly. “Nope, it's only 2 o'clock,” he said. His tone was matter-of-fact, and some part of him completely believed that by stating his desires the matter was now completely settled.
Eric blinked and when the red digits insisted it was 8:00 he covered his face with his pillow. Already time to get up and go to work was a completely unacceptable notion. He forced such ideas from his mind and what came next was a mostly incoherent jumble of words that vaguely explained to the clock why it musn't be 8:00 for another six hours. That meant it was only 2 o'clock. Before Eric finished his tirade his words began to slow and become more difficult to get out.
This is the beginning of my chapter. Is it important to include dramatic tension or a conflict or problem right away? Because this is meant to get the reader comfortable with Eric's character initially instead of throwing you into all of his problems right away. How would you respond to this?
[This message has been edited by Zero (edited January 07, 2007).]
posted
I'm not too interested in someone not wanting to get up in the morning -- too familiar! -- but if you make him a little more quirky (you're on your way to that already!), I would be interested.
posted
Needs better POV if your goal is to get us comfortable with the character. We're mostly seeing Eric from the outside here, and even the exposition of his actual thoughts is somewhat detached and clinical.
I think it's a funny situation, and perhaps one that will appeal to some people. Some others might hate it because opening a scene with a character waking up is "overdone" (to be fair, it is overdone but that doesn't mean it can't be done well). But you need to help us really see this from Eric's perspective. As it is, it doesn't quite work. It also doesn't prepare us for anything, you know, important to happen.
posted
I would vote to go humorous on this. If you're in his POV, his intellectual ruminations about waking up at the wrong time don't grab my interest. It just comes off as laborious, when it could be a very light, fun scene. I can tell you have a very good vocabulary, but do you want your character to be you? I feel a lot of author intrusion coloring the perspective of this scene. I learned the hard way that good writing is not how many words can fit into one sentence, or how impressive the vocabulary. My rule of thumb is to save the longer, more elaborate narrations for the extraordinary moments in my story. And I make sure I've not used unnecessary filler words. For action, I make the sentences shorter, even choppy at times.
This scene (you ssy it is actually the opening to ch. 2) could be very breezy and humorous. I'd like to read more.
posted
Interesting. So is the piece actually hard-to-push-through in terms of being too... pedantic or something? If so I'd really like to know.
Another question. The book is a serious novel and carries a lot of dark and even cutting-edge ideas and concepts that will probably be hard for most people to digest. But sometimes the narration is downright silly, like above, would this be a good ease of tension or just downright annoying?
posted
Um...by "hard to digest" do you mean they'll be difficult to understand or simply unpleasant to contemplate? Perhaps more important, I don't think that the narration above is particularly good. You're describing a recognizably funny situation, but not describing it in a way that makes anyone feel the humor of it.
The central problem is that we're not involved with Eric as a character, only as a specimen. That limits the effectiveness of the scene. Probably the same difficulty would occur with more "serious" scenes, if we don't develop sympathy for the characters we don't really care about what's happening to them.
posted
I understand your point and it's a good one. But as I re-read the narrative I'll admit it I think its funny. And I like it. Maybe that's only because I wrote it, and maybe that's because I have more sympathy for Eric because I know him a lot better than you could after just 13 lines of Chapter 2.
Maybe I'm delusional but I like it. I think it's hilarious.
posted
But that's because you have access to the unmediated experience of imagination/remeniscence that led you to write it. The problem is recreating that experience for us. If it's one of those "I guess you had to be there" moments, then put us there...um, no sneaking into houses and fooling with alarm clocks, either.
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posted
haha! Okay deal no sneaking into houses for the sake of fooling with alarm clocks... but, if they happen to be there, and it's convenient, well, no promises.
I think if you were allowed to read farther into the narrative and had read the previous chapter it would work fine. But there is no way I can really test that on here.
So I'll change myquestion.
If the novel is a combination of "silly" as shown above and also quite serious and dramatic, with cutting-edge and controversial ideas, could the two live in balance and harmony or would the narrator sound like a bipolar lunatic?
posted
Just read any Vonnegut book, or even more appropriate, Palahniuk books and you'll know that humor and dark ideas can reside together. It's called dark comedy. Read Survivor by Palahniuk and you'll know what I mean. In some ways, I think the dark ideas are much more effective when there's a little comedy thrown in.
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posted
I think that a sense of humor is necessary to leaven any story, particularly those with very dark themes. The humor doesn't have to be side-splitting, nor does it have to mock the serious ideas. But we need a sense that there is a lighter side to these things.
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