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Author Topic: Natural Police - Chapter 8
Denevius
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Lee Yeon Seok limped to the edge of a cliff and paused by a sprawling tree overlooking the Korean Strait. Below him, Dragon Head rock rose out of the waves, its maw open to an eternal roar. Evening approached, and light from the drowning sun painted the water gold and gave the stone dragon’s black surface an orange hue. Further down the cliff, Japanese tourists wielding digital cameras and handphones took pictures of the sculpture shaped by erosion. Trying to ignore them, Yeon Seok set his steel-tipped cocobolo walking cane against the trunk of the sprawling tree. His bad leg left him unbalanced, yet he still closed his eyes and gently swayed in the breeze. A single thought formed in his mind: should he kill his wife and son?
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Denevius
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I made a lot of changes to this chapter to resolve some issues it had. It's about 4000 words. If anyone is interested in a swap of comparable length, email me. Comments on this opening are also appreciated. Thanks!
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extrinsic
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All your efforts are showing signs of stronger and clearer, cleaner writing.

Some still minor shortcoming areas: the opening words are the scene's viewpoint character's name. I believe a narrator naming a character directly should be a last resort and least of all the opening words of a chapter, short story, or novel. To me, that signals excess narrator self-involvement that I find alienating and wide open narrative distance, and opens aesthetic distance.

Include a foil character so that the foil character names the focal character, for one option, because events from within the narrative's moment are closer in distance than a narrator's direct report, and dynamic events are more revealing of character and more engaging than static summary. If for persuasive reasons the focal viewpoint character must be alone, name the character in sentence object as the receiver of the sentence's action, not as the sentence subject doer of the action. That latter being too easily prone to narrator tell.

That first sentence, for example, "limped" and "paused," static summary tell. Sensory stimuli impacting Lee seem to me a stronger and more engaging method that would be more dramatically and hence dynamically eventful and at the same time develop the setting and the viewpoint character from the viewpoint character's perspective.

A daytime cliff top, for example, probably has a stiff onshore breeze blowing, against Lee, ruffling his sparse hair, pushing him back from the cliff. A cliff-top tree would be a flag form shape in such a stiff and constant onshore breeze. The tree's roots might sprawl; its limbs and branches will be bare toward windward and seaward salt spray, and less sparse toward leeward and landward. The prevailing winds of the Korean Strait, for example, blow inland from the south-southwest and follow the strait's prevailing currents. Onshore winds don't die down until about a half hour after full dark, either.

For example, //Strong gusts from the Korea Strait buffeted the tortured cedar perched at the cliff edge, tortured Lee Yong Seok's thinned hair. Below, Dragon Head Rock's rumbled roar rose from fierce wave crashes.//

Recast as many -ing words as practical. Seven in the fragment, none are I think necessary. At the least, they are nonfinite and static present participle verbs or unnecessary gerund nouns or adjectives. Finite verbs are more dynamic and engaging.

The flow is jumpy from confused causation. What is logically and naturally the first cause? For each sentence and the fragment overall? The ideal sequence is the order Lee and most anyone would perceive events. From macro focus to micro focus, for example: sunset, the breeze, views below the cliff, setting aside the cane, closing his eyes, swaying in the breeze, noticing he's unsteady on his bad leg, meditating on his decision.

Unnecessarily mixed verbal phrase tense: "Trying to ignore", unnecessary present participle and infinitive tense verbal phrase. //Ignoring// all by itself is less wordy, succinct, though I'd recast to eliminate the present participle verb. That participle phrase doesn't dangle, in a prescriptive sense. It does modify Lee. However, it doesn't connect to the main clause's idea. It connects to the prior sentence's main idea.

The rhetorical question at the end doesn't justify a question mark. The rhetorical question is itself a bit off kilter. A colon signals a non-parallel but related connection between two joined clauses. Where a second clause is a complete sentence itself, the initial word is in capital case: "Should." The sentence is either a closely coordinated set of ideas, in which case a semicolon is indicated instead. Or one of the clauses is subordinated to the main idea, in which case likewise a semicolon or a comma and suitable conjunction word is indicated instead.

The second clause is best recast for clarity and strength anyway. //The single thought formed in his mind: whether he should kill his wife and son.// That fixes all the grammar faults and discretionary rhetoric issues.

Homophone fault: "further" means additionally, farther means greater distance.

[ March 30, 2014, 04:16 AM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Denevius
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quote:
Homophone fault: "further" means additionally, farther means greater distance.
Thanks. To go back to the other thread, Word never picks up further/farther in my experience.

Also, thanks for the feedback. This chapter is a bit of a cause for concern that I'm hoping the revision alleviates. It's a bit too character contemplative, reducing the usual amount of action the other chapters have. It also touches upon something I have limited experience with, the business world. Very brief, but I can't help but wonder how realistic the portrayal is.

Thanks again!

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extrinsic
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WordPerfect alerts on further/farther in grammar check.

Overly contemplative introspection mode is easily varied with external interaction, easily sensory cause and effect. In an alternative, a secondary character, a companion, or foil, to interact with is a stronger external outlet. The companion not necessarily a participant or even in the company of the introspective character. A stranger whom Lee interacts with at the cliff, for example, not even necessarily verbally or vocally, maybe gesturally, beyond each's brief pleasantries.

This could be dramatic irony, for example, Lee and readers know he considers killing his wife and son. The stranger not knowing, instead perhaps strongly signaling a suicidal ideation that Lee alerts to and attempts to defuse. Huh. Irony of ironies. His noble selflessness with the stranger in direct clash with his selfish murderous contemplation. This puts his moral value system in contention, as dilemma, the very height of drama.

For that matter, the tree could serve as well, its roots partially exposed, tenuously holding onto the cliff though erosion and weathering will win and the tree will eventually topple from the clff. In any case, Lee's external perceptions defuse an overly contemplative scene.

In another alternative, an overly reflexive scene can be defused with a contrast and comparison between near and far, past and present, present and future, inside and outside spaces, etc., like I suggest above for internal and external events. Meditation is itself an event, potentially dramatic.

Though I feel Dwight Swain and Jack Bickham's scene and sequel method is overly simplified, overly exhaustively presented in their narrative theory works, and unfortunately derivative, the essence is scene and summary, scene meaning causal external events, and summary meaning causal effects, internal or external, hence, scene and sequel, that's a sequence order for organization of external and internal dramatic action.

The business world, its culture and social politics, are little different from academia's. Pecking order "sibling" rivalry, passive aggressive cutthroat self-preservation, secrets and courtly irony intrigues, want and problem complications.

Pick a problem and its opposing want, and focus on how it disturbs Lee's emotional equilibrium. For example, say Kye Ban Lo wants Lee's corner office with its expansive windows and views. Location is a prime complication in business world culture and social politics, academia too: office, parking space, closeness to senior associates, promotion or demotion signals, lateral or otherwise, and their accompanying prestige and status markers.

The business of business probably has little, if any, personal bearing, has low, or challenging anyway, dramatic potential. Keep in mind drama at its most straightfoward essence is antagonism, causation, and tension, each and all directly related to dramatic complication. What is the chapter's central dramatic complication that ties to the novel's overall dramatic complication? Address that question and the chapter's significance is laid bare.

[ March 30, 2014, 01:21 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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