posted
Is it still a critique when you can't find anything wrong with it? I would definitely keep reading. It has me wanting to know what comes next!
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I feel like your writing craft is developing in a strong direction. Particularly scene development. One area, though, that I think is handicapped by the thirteen lines principle is dwelling in scene in order to fully realize the illusion of reality for a scene. This I know as lingering, which thirteen lines doesn't allow for much of.
Perhaps a thirteen lines challenge or exercise prompting a lingering scene development might be in order. Choose a focal point object and paint it out in a scene. One sketch I did as a linger writing exercise was a description of the trunk of my car, a previous one. The current one is boring. That previous one was interesting from being on its way to the salvage yard. A roll of red theater tickets had unspooled back there and gotten quite dented and dingy along with a horde of life's happenstance accumulations.
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Yeah, the 13 line requirement of the site (though really I just guesstimate, I'm still unsure of what's meant by "13 lines") has been helpful in developing strong openings for the chapter. Granted, the openings change in the editing process, but for the first sketches of the chapter, it really is a useful exercise.
Anywho, I'll ruminate on your suggestion. Thanks again!
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posted
The sacred thirteen lines principle is about enaging reader interest as an aesethetic philosophy. Equal but of a more structural value, thirteen lines is the first page real estate of a half page sink opening page that a screening reader uses to evaluate whether to continue reading or put aside.
A Standard Manuscript Format page comprises twenty-five lines of body text in a monospaced typeface, like Courier New, at 12 points pitch, on a letter-sized page with one-inch margins all around, left justified, ragged right justification. For an opening half page that amounts to a matrix of thirteen rows and sixty-five columns for which each cell may be occupied by one glyph, alpha-numeric, or a word space. In the case of an opening page with half page sink, thirteen lines, for a total of 845 cells. Hard returns on paragraph ending lines and lines that wrap with unfilled cells due to longer words not breaking on shy hyphens shorten the respective line.
I know this structure through second nature from ample practice setting type in hot or cold lead, phototypsetting and digital layout. SMF is a folk practice that evolved with the typewriter as a submission guideline expectation. It is part of the folk conversation between writer and screening reader. SMF is simply easiest to read for editing and typesetting a manuscript into Standard Publication Format. The digital age changed the singular ritualized SMF into a greater choice selection, mostly just typeface choice. One kernel remains, that a mansucript be as plain as practical so that the physical format doesn't call undue attention to the mechanics of formating.
That latter is one of the highest order SMF philosophy expectations all around. SMF is to me a mythic phenomenon, in that standardized formating, due to its conventions and constants and familiarity for practiced readers, dissolves awareness of the artificial construct that written word is in order to stimulate an imitation of an illusion of reality in the text. The text disappears and the simulated reality becomes a waking semi-dream state in a secondary reality. Exquisite. But doing that in thirteen lines is challenging.
Creating a secondary reality in thirteen lines, to me, demands artful deployment. Lingering in a dramatic scene's development is, again, to me, foremost for engaging reader interest.
Let me take a line from this chapter two opening to illustrate. The first line. "If death makes angels of us all, then where are you, my friend?"
One, though a rhetorical question--rhetorical questions are widely deprecated because they ask readers directly rather than imply a dramatic question--the construction of the sentence creates an internal character thought. It's, at first, first person plural then second person nature speaks reflexively from the character's viewpoint to the character. It is free direct thought.
However, the viewpoint of the question is not self-reflexive. It asks the deceased person's whereabouts. Though artful ambiguity can be delightful, this one I feel is too ambiguous to be stable and easily understood. That is a little unclear, whether the viewpoint character asks the self or another where the angelic spirit has gone. I'm not sure enough until after figuring it out. Mystery can be enticing with sufficient clues to work from in the moment of reading. But reading stalls like it cause loss of the illusion of reality spell.
Two, since it's direct thought, it sets up the paragraph to come as character voice, closing narrative distance, closing into imitating the illusion of reality that the scene develops. However, viewpoint and voice shifting in an unsettled way blunts the impact and opens narrative distance.
Three, a method for strengthening and clarifying the sentence's impact and meaning is to strengthen and clarify the character's attitude. Confusion, doubt maybe, maybe ennui, whatever, I take the sentence's point and function to be a nonvolitional thought expressing an emotional state. Since the following sentences describe the setting and especially the dramatic situation of a murder, I'd adjust the sentence by adding perhaps a modifier to a common (nonspecific) noun and clarifying the pronoun phrase "my friend." Going for more specific details that clarify who the question addresses and strengthening the emotional attitude.
//If death makes winged angels of us all, then where are you, my friends?// Assuming both Michael and Nam An Nam are Song Ji Hun's friends. If not both then naming which serves a similar and clearer function. //my friend Nam An Nam .// "Winged" is just my lame projection. It sets up a mystical meaning, expresses a subtle emotional attitude, and sets up for the relevance of the expression to come.
The second sentence, though, is static and an abrupt transition to the exterior world and narrator voice and viewpoint. It is static from the verb "stood" expressing a static action, for one. And more so static from abruptly switching to narrator voice and viewpoint. Song Ji Hun cannot see herself standing. She can see the tree's foliage she stands under though. Her eye has looked up in the direction her thoughts had gone. Just describing the visual sensation directly would stay in character viewpoint.
I'm curious about the tree having what seems a full canopy of foliage in late wintertime. I default to a decidious tree, since "canopy" implies that broad overstory but an evergreen would have dense foliage in late wintertime, maybe not a broad spread, which "canopy" implies. Small reading hiccup there.
The Tsuga Hemlock is evergreen and has a dense cone-shaped overstory of lacey foliage. Tsuga is an East Asian native and ornamental species likely to be in a municipal park. A park Tsuga could have its lowerstory branches and foliage trimmed so that Song Ji Hun could be under it looking on secretively. If those specific physical sensation points were touched upon, even actually touched by Song Ji Hun (tactile, visual sensations), I'd feel myself standing nearby with her, transported into the illusion of reality spell. In other words, lingering a moment longer on Song Ji Hun's immediate setting situation in order to develop emotional attitude and concreteness of the setting from her viewpoint.
The paragraph becomes a little temporally and viewpoint-wise confusing after that. I'm not sure whether Song Ji Hun is progressively flashing back to prior events she observed or the narrator is summarizing and explaining a backstory of events prior to Song Ji Hun's arrival on the scene. Consider recasting so that the tense and viewpoint are consistent. From Song Ji Hun's viewpoint in the now moment of standing under the tree.
quote: A Standard Manuscript Format page comprises twenty-five lines of body text in a monospaced typeface, like Courier New, at 12 points pitch, on a letter-sized page with one-inch margins all around, left justified, ragged right justification. For an opening half page that amounts to a matrix of thirteen rows and sixty-five columns for which each cell may be occupied by one glyph, alpha-numeric, or a word space. In the case of an opening page with half page sink, thirteen lines, for a total of 845 cells. Hard returns on paragraph ending lines and lines that wrap with unfilled cells due to longer words not breaking on shy hyphens shorten the respective line.
I wonder if this is still true, though, as we continue into the digital age with reading.
The books I read on Kindle look *awful*, because I have poor eyesight and so turn up the font so that it's probably ten times as large as it was originally. This gives the text a very scattered look, as there's a lot of abrupt breaks in sentences, and sometimes words fall off incorrectly. I thought I would mind more, but honestly, I don't.
But my point is that now, I think, depending on how I hold my iPad, a "page" is a single paragraph, maybe a paragraph and a half. And I'm unsure what Kindle does with typeface. Every book looks the same when it comes to that aspect.
Years ago I read "House of Leaves", which I think would be a horrible experience on a Kindle, as the look of the book was more important than the actual narrative.
quote: Creating a secondary reality in thirteen lines, to me, demands artful deployment.
Haha, your taste is extremely refined, however. Which is groovy, as I always want to know how people perceive my writing. This is why I post so often on different websites. Novels are children that you have to "send out as sheep in the midst of wolves", to borrow a biblical verse, though I don't mean it in a accusing way. But ultimately, the book has to find a way to work on its own, and seeing it through others' eyes helps.
quote:However, the viewpoint of the question is not self-reflexive. It asks the deceased person's whereabouts. Though artful ambiguity can be delightful, this one I feel is too ambiguous to be stable and easily understood.
A professor of mine in undergrad dedicated a class once to these two words: vague vs. ambiguous. Most people who try to write ambiguity into their narratives are actually falling into vagueness, which is bad because it's not giving enough clues to the reader to genuinely figure out the mean.
'Water fell up from the pond to drown me' is vague because it doesn't offer a lot of clues to the reader. How does water fall up? What pond? Where are you, the speaker? And if you're drowned, then how are you narrating the sentence?
'If death makes angels of us all, then were are you, my friend?', doesn't seem quite so vague. You're right, it begins with a rhetorical question, though actually, it's a line from Jim Morrison that's an epigraph beginning the novel. It does narrow in on Song Ji Hun (a guy, actually). The last chapter ended with Nan An Nam being murdered, and it also mentions the friendship between Song Ji Hun and Nam An Nam, so I'm not so sure a reader who read Chapter 1 will have to wonder who Ji Hun refers to.
I could be wrong.
quote: Her eye has looked up in the direction her thoughts had gone. Just describing the visual sensation directly would stay in character viewpoint.
Very interesting. I'll have to think on that one.
quote: I'm curious about the tree having what seems a full canopy of foliage in late wintertime. I default to a decidious tree, since "canopy" implies that broad overstory but an evergreen would have dense foliage in late wintertime, maybe not a broad spread, which "canopy" implies. Small reading hiccup there.
Haha, I actually went over this several times when I wrote it. Again, from the previous chapter, you realize it's actually Spring now, the date about mid-March. That's why I made it a 'late winter storm'.
But I actually figured that it might come off as confusing. Are trees going to have that many leaves yet to create a canopy? Maybe not. There are trees here, as everywhere, which always have leaves, but it's true, I'm not sure of their types. Maybe I'll just switch it to branches, and think of a descriptive way to include it to match the tone.
As always, thanks! I wrote this response in a rush between classes and don't have time to check for mistakes, so some of it may not make sense.
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posted
One impact of the digital age on screening reading is uncertain word counts due to variant formating choices. Another of SMF's values for screening readers, publication editors, and typsetters is a strongly reliable word count. Word count in print is a matter of space availiablity in periodical publications and cost in book production. Any given writer's diction and syntax could vary by as much as fifteen percent either way of an idealized word count calculation. Wordprocessor word counts are about as reliable a metric as guessing.
If a manuscript is formated in traditional SMF, basic word counts are a simple matter of multiplying page count by 250. Short lines still occupy an entire line's column width. All negative white space areas still occupy real estate that doesn't get counted in automated word counts. Basic trade paperback and casecover book SPF works out to an average of forty or so lines per page, a few more actual words than ten idealized words on average. for about 450 words per page. Converting an SMF word count to SPF space occupied is easy math to do from an SMF manuscript.
Calculating actual real estate for periodical publications, based on multiple column formats, two or more columns per page, relies on column inch estimations. Back in the day of traditional SMF payments for publication, word counts were calculated by actual real estate consumed, regardless of publication format. Per column inch for periodical publication, per page for collection or anthology book publication. I certainly want my due payment, no more, no less. The per-word-payment count process causes novice submitters no end of frustration.
Digital publishing has simplified some aspects, like real estate dimensions are less cost conscious in terms of production, but not in terms of effort expended on editing and publication preparation. Those negative white spaces are no longer a matter of cost nor conscious layout decisions, if a writer has suitably deployed them in the digital mansucript. If a blank line is reasonable, for example, no editorial consideration is warranted. If, though, the blank line is a typing artifact due to a soft page break and hard return on the same line, in a digital layout the soft page break may or may not translate the same as it does in a SMF document.
Digital publishing has complicated other aspects, like you note for e-readers. Kindle, Nook, iPad, any computer reader app (except PDF), the gamut use a few standardized typefaces from compiler typeface limitations and shell system typefaces that limit selection. Times New Roman, the default standard cross platform and application typeface, a periodical typeface that is space conscious, jams glyphs together and may cause more eyestrain than classic book typepaces. Old Style book typefaces like Caslon, Jansen, Goudy, with their spacious and elegant bowls, white spaces and proportional pen strokes, just aren't as widespread in use for digital publishing. They are more elegant and leisurely to read than Times New Roman.
So for e-readers, readers are more or less stuck with compromises that print publications don't demand of readers. Enlarge typeface so it's readable; formating issues with justification, page size display. Not to mention the devices call more undue attention to their physical object than print books do. Practiced e-readers don't notice their devices as much as less frequent e-readers do. However, reading pace is forced slower for all readers, some notice, some don't. Some readers benefit from slower reading. Some readers, like me, are bothered by contrived, compelled delays. I want and prefer a deep reading spell that e-devices don't offer. But e-readers are convenient. That's their strength.
While, ultimately, your writing aesthetic is yours to master, I feel that you have the commitment to writing that could overtop the commercial fiction shortcoming curse. Of course, commercial fiction's blessing is wider audience appeal. However, even though convention-based genre--fantastical fiction--commercial market appeals do not preclude artistic mastery. Those qualities I see in your writing, underdeveloped I feel, but waiting in the wings for realization.
For example, that chapter one reveals details that this opening depends on for meaning, they are prepositioned, two points for consideration: one, that it is a best practice to compose any given dramatic unit as self-contained to a degree. When every dramatic unit portrays its own plot arc, this is artful.
Two, also how chapter one flows into chapter two, repetition, on one hand, reminds and reinforces readers of what's come before. Repetition in another sense also develops continuity, creates emphasis, and allows for further development in terms of substitution and amplification.
My sense of how this repetition, substitution, and amplification rhetorical scheme plays in this opening in particular and for writing in general is, for example, since much of the drama of the previous ending is retold in summary in this chapter opening, is to step up the drama, amplify it using substitution features for the repeated summary of the prior chapter's dramatic import.
posted
I have to admit, extrinsic, this critique has really got me thinking about the voice of the above opening. I guess it does kind of fade in and out in how it's written. The first line is a disembodied voice, similar to what an opening line of dialog does, creating the question in the reader's mind, who's speaking? And because of the way the novel is written, it does seem rhetorical. I can't fault anyone for seeing it that way.
quote: Though artful ambiguity can be delightful, this one I feel is too ambiguous to be stable and easily understood. That is a little unclear, whether the viewpoint character asks the self or another where the angelic spirit has gone. I'm not sure enough until after figuring it out. Mystery can be enticing with sufficient clues to work from in the moment of reading. But reading stalls like it cause loss of the illusion of reality spell.
So yeah, I can see how it's more vague than ambiguous. There's not really enough information to figure out the spaces between the lines.
quote: Two, since it's direct thought, it sets up the paragraph to come as character voice, closing narrative distance, closing into imitating the illusion of reality that the scene develops. However, viewpoint and voice shifting in an unsettled way blunts the impact and opens narrative distance.
I agree here, too. The narrative starts off as a really close third person, or maybe even potentially a first person POV. But then this line:
quote: Song Ji Hun stood beneath a canopy of leaves in Sejong Park in Seorae.
Pulls the voice back out to an omnipotent third person narrative. Who's looking at Song Ji Hun? Who's narrating this story? And so there are two voices at work all in the first dozen or so lines, which is confusing at best, discordant at worst.
*** If death makes angels of us all, Song Ji Hun thought, his eyes turned up to the thicket of naked branches clawing the sky above him, then were are you, my friend?
A late winter storm had swept into Seoul, blanketing the French town of Seorae white. Humans had swarmed Sejong park, the area cordoned off in yellow tape. They’d been at the investigation for several days, the Seoul police force flanked by Korean and foreign news crews brought to the scene by the sensational murder of an American. But a week had passed, and except for the yellow tape, KBS and SBS, CNN and Fox News were all gone by nightfall, their footsteps buried beneath the rolling hills of snow. Michael’s headless body had long since been moved, and Nam An Nam had crumbled to dust, the magic keeping Gwanlyo members employed
posted
More consistent voice. The tense, though, of the second paragraph, while consistently past perfect of the "had" or contraction "they'd" of they had forms, I feel confuses the now moment portrayal. Note that each sentence is in that tense; six sentences, six instances of had verb constructs. I'm thinking more may follow.
Past perfect tense can cause temporal rifts that impact narrative distance negatively, let alone when the voice gives a narrator's summary. Invariant predicate syntax repetition also dulls potential repetition appeals. I have difficulty with when the events are in relation to each other.
Consider whether the sequence is temporally linear. Also, though past perfect tense as an auxilliary tense can work for recollection mode and for setting up a stepped time transition into a flashback, I don't feel this works as strongly and clearly as might be ideal.
The main predicates of the paragraph:
had swept
had swarmed
They'd been at
had passed
had long since been moved
had crumbled
When the snowstorm swept in is unclear.
When humans had swarmed the park is unclear.
How long humans had been at the investigation is given nonspecifically as several days. Also, "at" is both a straightfoward preposition meaning presence at a location and an idiom meaning engaged in an activity. The latter is a delightful expression, potentially delightfully ambiguous, usually an indication of character voice. The former leaves open where "at" the investigation place is: at the scene of the investigation?
"a week had passed" since when? The several days since the investigation began? Since the homicides occurred? Further confusion arises from a week passing before the nightfall departure of the news crews since the investigation began. I get a sense of a week of daytime, then nightfall.
"headless body had long since been removed" since when? Nightfall after the week-long investigation? At the beginning of the week-long investigation? Immediately upon discovery and initial scene processing? as is conventional police procedure so that body evidence is preserved for later in-depth examination.
"had crumbled to dust" when? At first? If first, then chronologically nonlinear, Nam An Nam's corporeal disintegration happened before the snowfall, before police and news crews arrived, before any investigation began, before they were all gone, and before Michael's remains were removed.
On the other hand, leaving that detail until last escalates the paragraph's sensationalism. Only, I'm confused by the flow of time through the parargraph. Which to me is nonlinear, hence I struggle to find another organizing principle for an easily followable pattern and sequence; i.e., escalating sensationalism.
Consider which logic organization is foremost: logical chronology or degree of sensationalism. In scholalry composition and journalism the conventional organization is most sensational events or claims first, followed by greater and supporting details. In fiction's rhetoric, that organization or escalating sensationalism are usually an either-or proposition, with greater emphasis on escalating sensationalism.
The fiction preterite past, or present past in the rhetorical sense--not a grammatical past tense but a present-time tense, not a grammar handbook past tense--events just this moment happened. Consider whether the paragraph could be more strongly and clearly constructed using fiction's rhetorical past-present preterite.
For example, "A late winter storm had swept into Seoul, blanketing the French town of Seorae white." //The late-March snowstorm swept into Seoul Wednesday, blanketed white the old French community of Seorae.//
Then, "Humans had swarmed Sejong park, the area cordoned off in yellow tape." //Frantic humans swarmed Sejong park midmorning, cordoned the area in a maze of yellow tape.//
But those filter through my writing voice(s), offered for demonstration, consideration, and projecting.
quote:Consider whether the sequence is temporally linear.
Good point. Adding a concrete time or two might help resolve some of those issues. Chapter 1, however, does open with:
quote: March 1st, 2012 Incheon, South Korea
It's margined to the right of the page, not part of the actual prose, to give a date and place to the novel. This is the day of the murder, so it would be a week from March 1st, which opens Chapter 2 on March 8th, though it's not specifically mentioned. So sometimes in that week, a storm blew in. I can put a specific date, though, as well as a time when the park empties of people.
Temporally, let's say the sky wept the night Michael and An Nam died. An Nam immediately crumbles to dust, but Michael is found the following morning beneath a layer of fresh snow, which would be day 1. The body is removed, but over the next six days, news crews flock the area with talks about the murder of an American in Korea, the resentment of the local population at the army base in Incheon, the oddness of a French town in Seoul, invariably something about North Korea, and then the sensationalism of the murder itself in Asia: death by sword, a beheading. This all happens off the page, for the narrative to open up on Song Ji Hun beneath the trees, where his friend died, vowing to find the murderer.
Yeah, cool, I can add concrete times to it.
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