posted
Below is the beginning of a sci-fi novel I have written. I do not like this first page. Everything in the excerpt below applies to later in the novel--the tone, the personality of Marc, the dog, etc. I have re-written this page 50 times and my brain is turning fuzzy.
Is there a sufficient hook? Here is my big problem: The character does not know what is happening to him until Chapter 4. From his standpoint there is no in-his-face problem until the...well, I won't say. But it happens after the paragraphs below. Thus, how do I present "the problem" when it doesn't immediately appear in the story?
Thanks
The path snaked downward between prickly pear and tarweed into the heart of the ravine. The trail gave Marc's body and mind time to work well again after just overcoming a vicious four-day fever.
From his childhood, the canyon was his refuge beneath San Diego’s streets among the scrub oak and the towering pampas grass. In elementary school he used to cut through the canyon instead of going around it. He had to avoid what everyone called licorice plants or the other kids would smell it on him and tease him, most likely because they were jealous of his adventuring on the way to school.
Marc found the solace he needed until a dog’s yelp in the bushes ahead of him jolted nearby birds into flight. Given his
Note from Kathleen Dalton Woodbury:
Please keep your fragments to the first 13 lines.
See the section of this forum entitled "Please Read Here First" for more information about the 13-line rule.
posted
I guess the first point people will bring up is that this is waaaaaaaaaaay over 13 lines.
As for your problem: Why are you starting the story here instead of with the inciting incident or the appearance of the dramatic want? What's so important about this first page? Why not start the story where the story starts, wherever that is?
These are questions only you can answer but, if you can't make this opening work then you're probably starting in the wrong place. One opening of mine took two years to find the right starting point.
posted
I hear you on the "two years" loud and clear! What agony the first page is.
I fear if I start at the exciting part, as you suggest, I'll have to flashback to all the character and setting intro material later on. And everyone hates flashbacks, especially me. I'm sure your comment is correct. I just don't know how to do it.
And what really burns me is the last 20 books I've read have a slow startup, just like mine. Meaning, you're telling me what other commenters are telling me. But all the books I've read in the past 10 years tell me otherwise. FOR example, "The Hunger Games." (one example out of many) The main character's name doesn't appear until page six. There are pages of ruminations by the narrator before something actually happens. All books are like this, as far as I know.
So, why does everyone tell me there has to be thrills right off the bat?
This isn't a question for you because you agree with most other people. I'm really asking those who have published books...who do NOT have action occurring in the first few pages.
Well, that's my rant. Thanks for your good thoughts. I appreciate them.
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quote:Originally posted by jerich100: So, why does everyone tell me there has to be thrills right off the bat?
It's not so much that there needs to be thrills as there needs to be something to get the reader's attention. Best example I can think of on four hours of sleep is the opening of Game of Thrones. The prologue is terrifyingly interesting to me, and it kept me reading through several subsequently slower chapters.
I'll give you feedback on your opening this afternoon. Just wanted to mention that real quick while it was on my mind.
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posted
An individual of indeterminate age walks through a San Diego canyonland.
The sensory details are vivid, especially of the licorice plant Helichrysum petiolare. (I lived in San Diego canyonland a while.) The emotional charge of that use is striking; that is, classmates would tease Marc about the aroma. Some additional texture, though, is warranted, like that they torment him for being, say, a wild child and other than their civilized modernity. Otherwise, if the motif has relevance to the whole, what the story is really about, the motif belongs and needs further development, or is best excised, as the motif implies the story is about school social politics.
What is the story really about anyway? Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games is really about the social politics resolved around the proverb "Poverty is Violence," for example. The first paragraph of the debut novel implies what the saga is about from a few foreshadowing motifs that introduce the overall theme and meaning of the saga.
Katniss wakes to a cold and empty bed. Primm sleeps with their mother on the eve of reaping day. Cold and empty bed implies Katniss will be on her own. Primm rejects Katniss for the comfort of their mother, foreshadowing the family's separation. Two sisters routinely share a bed implies poverty. And the reaping is on their minds, that it is a significant event, a problem of significant proportions wanting satisfaction.
Meanwhile, Katniss's more immediate problems and wants intervene this reaping day, though the exposition setup is begun: what the saga is really about -- poverty is violence -- Katniss's subsistence hunt outside the fence, for example, and through which event, milieu and setting, and character developments unfold, ever oriented around the poverty is violence theme and meaning.
The novel's subtlety of implication that draws readers into a somewhat slow though sublime start belies the slowness. The unity facet of poverty is violence shapes the saga from the title through part, parcel, and whole toward exalted emotional peaks.
So, again, what's the fragment's novel really about such that the theme and meaning inform the whole from title to smallest part? I don't know.
How to express that in as few as thirteen lines is a matter of what a viewpoint agonist wants. Hunger Games starts with the problem of a cold and empty bed and mentions the larger problem of the reaping. Katniss wants to satisfy those problems by surviving yet another reaping day unselected.
What does Marc want or what problem does he want to satisfy? The only clue in the fragment is classmates tease him. The fever has already passed and is no longer a problem or want -- a piece of melodrama there, actually, without texture development: what, why, how. Like if the fever causes Marc to acquire some insight or ability or aptitude that will matter later.
The dog yelp draws Marc's attention and by its placement implies a pivotal event is about to let loose. Pre-positioned content could show through implication what's forthcoming without Marc knowing what. Symbolism, emblemism, and foreshadowing serve that function, often from setting details, like San Diego canyonlands are chaotic wilderness stream beds among urbana's order and structure. Wildfire is also a potential motif -- something that foreshadows the immediate and overall action to come that shapes Marc's personal growth from want and problem satisfaction. The action of substance for any narrative.
I would not read on due mainly to no clue what the novel is really about, by no-name title or exposition start.
posted
You have a decently solid grasp on prose, although I'm not fond of the "From his childhood" start to the second paragraph.
It is, unfortunately, difficult to advise you on how to make the beginning relevant to the story's central conflict without knowing what the central conflict is. As things currently stand, my suggestion would be to address the fever (and the cause of it--or what Marc thinks its cause is) in a bit more detail. What did being sick cost him? His weekend? Falling behind in classes? I love the setting description, but there is little about Marc himself in the opening thirteen lines.
I would likely give the story a chapter to hook me because the narrative flow is enjoyable to me overall. If it caught my interest by the end of chapter one, I would read further.
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posted
Disgruntled, Grumpy, and Extrinsic (sounds like a law firm), thank you for your thoughtful comments. I've copied and pasted them locally into my computer so I can keep referring to them. You have good ideas that I will imbue (fancy word) subtly into my first page.
The dog is significant. Actually, it never existed, was a trick by the antagonists of the story. I also don't like "From his childhood"...sounds sophomoric.
Marc's main issue with life is he wants to participate in important matters and be helpful, but feels like an underdog. This while big things are happening around him.
I'll do a better job of providing a theme or motif that sets the tone before the real exciting things happen.
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posted
Perhaps you misunderstood me. Starting with the dramatic want or complication, or the inciting incident does not necessarily imply diving into an action scene.
In point of fact, the opening scene that took me two years to find starts off with the main character waking up and having breakfast--the inciting incident happens about four pages in. But those four pages aren't about 'backgrounding' the character, milieu, or setting; they're about 'showing' the reader who the main character is and placing him in his current frame of mind right now--before everything changes.
If you're worried about explaining to the reader why your hero chose to do what he did, then let him tell his story--you don't need flashbacks, there are better ways to 'explain' things that happened in the past by 'showing' the effect they have had on the person in this present.
quote:Marc's main issue with life is he wants to participate in important matters and be helpful, but feels like an underdog. This while big things are happening around him.
You don't need to explain any of this to readers, just show Marc's frustrations and disappointments at how unfair life is, from his perspective. Of course, this approach is sooooooo much harder than just telling us he's upset and feels marginalised.
posted
Action in the dramatic sense is dramatic movement: story movement, especially character movement, plot movement, emotional movement, and last and least, per se, physical movement.
Marc wants involvement in important matters is generic, vague, though a point of approach. That kind of want is a matter of pride -- a moral human condition. The opposite of pride is humility, perhaps, for a vice-virtue clash. Though other virtues or vices may also be pride's opposite. Moral clash is a complication basis of a work, the theme and meaning. Physical action is superficial; moral action is sublime and profound and what a narrative is really about.
The dog ploy, for example, a setup that lures Marc into a moral trap. The perpetrators' pride, Marc's humility -- compassion for a hurt animal is noble virtue; humiliating embarrassment or worse for Marc is vice. I imagine Marc then wants revenge, which is the vice of wrath. And so on.
Several narrative theories label such a scene segment a bridge conflict -- complication really, our host Orson Scott Card and Donald Maass: a preliminary action scene sequence that sets up for a main action.
Marc's want to do important works could, for example, connect to an effort to help a dog in distress, and the tables turned a suitable surprise pivot. The licorice plant motif also connects, if the teasing by classmates is more developed for Marc's stakes and motivations; that is, Marc does brush against the plant and now has a "real" concern and the teasing raises to an immediate-now personal problem. That all comes together later in the scene sequence, for the thirteen lines some pre-positioned clues are warranted. For example, if the licorice plant problem event were more developed for immediacy.
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