posted
I don't really want to start the novel here, but I can't find another spot where a character is looking at someone and evaluating the person. So, on the basis of these few lines, would you feel inclined to read on at least to the end of the page, and the next page and so on?
The hovership pilot spotted the arriki herd easily. Their red coats stood out clearly in contrast to the green grasses. The pilot tilted the hovership forward to begin braking. Its compressors blew waves through the knee high grass. The herd moved up the hillside, but with obvious difficulty.
At the bottom of the hill a party of Agriculture’s workers huddled around an arriki lying on its side. One of the healers stood up and waved the pilot to land nearby.
As soon as he cracked the ship’s hatch, the pilot smelled death. “I have a message for your hallen,” he told the young worker sent to bring him over.
He hadn’t met this hallen before. Mranth stood taller than he had been led to expect. Not tall, but she wasn’t so short she had to
posted
I would prefer to begin with Thwelin and the discovery of the Agahharn's changeling (posted somewhere down below, but not too far down -- I have post several variations here in the past few days) but I can't seem to get a physical description in the first paragraphs with Thwelin's opening.
You say, Why do you need to start with someone looking and evaluating someone else? I do not understand the problem you are having with this. To me it is just a way to bring in a description. How am I failing with this?
I'm not sure what you are getting at Why was the change from the dead arriki to waiting for the hallen not working?
what is the next abrupt transition that threw you out of the story?
posted
No, you misunderstand. I want comments on the 13 lines but this is also the only place to solicit longer commentary on chapters, even the entire novel.
Posts: 1580 | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I might read on if this opening led to a point where I felt plot movement. I might give it five hundred or so words to get to a point. I say "point" because this opening and the proposed others don't seem to me to imply this novel's emphasis is about a character, a setting, or an event, but its emphasis might be a theme.
This opening reads a little like the openings of John Grisham's legal thriller The Confession and Tom Clancy's Cold War thriller The Sum of All Fears, both being theme-emphasis oriented. Theme-based narratives tend to be grand and sweeping, covering multiple viewpoints and settings.
Openings I feel should introduce at least a dramatic complication: a want or problem wanting satisfaction. The closest this opening comes to that is revealing a dead arriki. But not a how or why the arriki's death matters, nor what's dramatic about the arriki's death. Knowing from sampling several other potential openings for this novel that lysican changelings are involved implies that the arriki was killed by a lysican.
I project the discovery of lysicans is at the core of this novel's beginning, what complications they pose for humans.
As far as openings go, the story shapes this opening project are visitation, gathering, specimen, danger at the door, and routine interrupted. See Jerome Sterne's Writing Shapely Fiction for features that distinguish each shape type. I project danger at the door as most potent for what I feel you're going for with these proposed openings.
Descriptions of the lysicans I feel do not need to be completed comprehensively in the opening. They can be interleavened as the drama unfolds. In fact, since one of your intents I suspect is a specimen-type narrative, focusing at times on the lysicans, perhaps the strongest and clearest way to introduce their physical appearance, behavior traits, and, most importantly, personality, might be showing a focal-character lysican or two killing and feeding on an arriki for a prelude-type opening.
That kind of prelude scene can be open narrative distance, reported neutrally though viscerally by the narrator. The key for engaging readers in that prelude scene is "viscerally."
Then the main action might begin where the hover pilot (Thewlin?) comes upon the dead arriki's scene. Readers knowing about the lysican creates a dramatic irony, being in the know where the hover pilot isn't, as the pilot unravels the mystery and readers are a step ahead while the pilot fills in details through the investigation and dramatic want to catch the perpetrator lysican. Understanding that lysicans are not at that moment known to humans.
In terms of theme emphasis, I'm a at a loss what this novel is about. Blue-sky projecting, since the dangerous stranger among us seems a general theme area, like werewolves, a figurative theme or intangible theme might be, generally, an indiviudal in nature: Nature is at war with each of us and proves our vulnerability. Satisfaction outcome then might be a truce between humans and lysicans.
Theme in literary analysis or similar venues is not the same concept or approach, actually, as it is for writers. Theme is the unifying feature of narrative forms that makes them relatable. Theme directly relates to complication, in that a theme-complication is what a story is about figuratively. Tangibly, this novel seems to me to be about humans and lysicans clashing. Thematically, what the lysicans represent figuratively I'm at a loss to identify. Maybe the wild, untamed natural instincts humans suppress but let out once in a blue moon.
quote:Originally posted by arriki: I would prefer to begin with Thwelin and the discovery of the Agahharn's changeling (posted somewhere down below, but not too far down -- I have post several variations here in the past few days) but I can't seem to get a physical description in the first paragraphs with Thwelin's opening.
You say, Why do you need to start with someone looking and evaluating someone else? I do not understand the problem you are having with this. To me it is just a way to bring in a description. How am I failing with this?
I'm not sure what you are getting at Why was the change from the dead arriki to waiting for the hallen not working?
what is the next abrupt transition that threw you out of the story?
But, thank you for your comments.
arriki
Arriki, out of all the openings I found the Thwelin one the most interesting. I think you should trust your instincts, and do what feels right for the story. Don't worry about up front description. Work it in where you can.
Just my two cents. Posts: 1102 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
From what I've read about what agents and editors want, they want to see the story moving forward, and that is why I liked the Thwelin beginning. It felt as if we were moving towards something. The others felt a little stagnant. In other words, I didn't have a feel for where the story was going.
Posts: 1102 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
Yes, but don't they want a bit of description, too. Especially for introducing aliens? The humans are mentioned but we don't see any of them until chapter three.
Posts: 1580 | Registered: Dec 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm sure they want both, but they don't need everything up front. Work the descriptions in while moving the story forward. You don't need a full description in the first thirteen, but we should have a pretty good idea of what the aliens look like within the first few pages. Honestly, I think this is one of the more challenging aspects of writing, but it can be done.
Posts: 1102 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
