posted
This is my first submitted writing here, and I'm a bit terrified of the feedback it shall receive, but nothing ventured, nothing gained, I suppose.
This is the first 13 lines of the prologue to something I have been working on which, for lack of a better description I'll call 'a satirical novel of epic low fantasy'. In any event, without further preamble, here is the beginning:
Sir Gamon Handsworth was not your ordinary knight. Ordinary knights, despite what the talesingers may tell you, spend a great deal of time managing quite ordinary affairs. They ride about their lands (if indeed they have any at all) acting something like middle management; settling squabbles, keeping the peasants attentive to their work, and making sure the realm meets its quarterly goals for wheat, ale, sheep, items derived from sheep, and what have you.
All of this is done in service to senior management, to wit: the King and the great lords, who once every few years or so might ride through the lands for which an ordinary knight was responsible and tell him
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Your hook line starts with Handsworth is "not" an ordinary knight. It should be followed with--why? Not with why others are boring. Your first thirteen needs to start off with a bang. Save the generalities for further down the line--comparable moments of show, don't tell, scenes.
You have to grab the readers attention and hold it.
Example:
There are knights, and then there's Handsworth--Jump to an action scene or comedic scene, etc, something to show them why.
You need the reader to take interest in your protag.
Just my two cents, no reason to be worried, that's what the forum's for--to work out the lumps.
Given the context provided, I think the critique makes sense, but I'm wondering if it still does given the context of the entire prologue structure, or if it would impact the 'joke' (for good OR ill?) Here's the brief structure of the prologue for context....
1) Briefly toss off that Sir Gamon is not your ordinary knight 2) Establish tone with a bit of tongue-in-cheek description of the life of an ordinary knight 3) Bring us back suddenly and with an about-face to the subject of Sir Gamon with 'but if the gentle reader has already forgotten the inaugural sentence, it bears repeating that Sir Gamon Handsworth was NOT your ordinary knight...' 4) Now do the brief delving into all the ways Sir Gamon is teh awesomesauce in a way that also hints at the nature of the setting (a fantasy world somewhere between Middle Earth and the Brothers Grimm) 5) As we recount Sir Gamon's myriad heroics and admirable qualities the tone gradually becomes less satirical and more melodramatic. We do this as we introduce what is seemingly the Great Evil and Plot Device compelling Sir Gamon to undertake his greatest quest, one to which not even HE may be equal ... really building it up in histrionic terms and then... 6) Abruptly end the prologue with the line 'This... is not his story.'
... with the hope that we can, in the prologue, establish tone, hint at the setting which provides the backdrop while building up what is seemingly a Main Character. Then we super-abruptly bring the whole thing to the close with the revelation that he's not the Main Character at all in a way that kind of makes the prologue a 'joke's on you!' moment for the reader. We then immediately pay off the joke in Chapter One with a jump into the life of the true protagonist, someone whose life is lived in the background of Sir Gamon-style heroics.
Anyway, that was the idea behind the original prologue. But maybe, in light of your critique, it would work better to just drop the somewhat sardonic bit about the lives of ordinary knights and go straight to the 'Sir Gamon is Supergreat!' part? Not sure what that would do the timing, but it might be beneficial? What do you think?
[ April 19, 2018, 07:28 PM: Message edited by: John B ]
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posted
I hate to tell you this, but after you spend a whole prologue engaging the reader in a particular character and then end by saying, essentially, that they've wasted their time reading the prologue, your book is most likely going to be thrown across the room.
It is not a good idea to play tricks on the reader, especially a reader who doesn't know that you will come through eventually.
There are too many other things people can read.
What I would suggest is that you forget about doing a prologue (many readers don't bother with them in the first place).
Start the story in the point of view of your true protagonist and have that character watch and react to and comment on the craziness of Sir Gamon and his ideas of heroism.
A point of view character with a great sense of humor, who can show the readers how over-the-top knightly heroics can be could be a very interesting point of view character, I think.
I hope this helps.
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posted
An anonymous narrator blandly reports about the milieu of a narrative.
Eleven lines, by the way, the eleventh a short line "tell him", two lines to spare.
Not much complication, personal or public, not much conflict, personal or public, a slight tone, one of perhaps attempted milieu formality, as of a chivalrous, medieval knight's cultured dialect, or scrivener or bard's.
Prologues, by definition, detail back story necessary to understand the main action to come, and are often, if not exclusively, in narrator voice, report, summary, explain, tell, little or no dramatic incitement or movement. Due to those considerations, prologues are widely deprecated anymore.
However, if a prologue incorporates several dramatic features, like establish the narrator's identity through show of the narrator's emotional attitude toward the topic of the whole and in parts where the narrator later expresses attitudinal commentary: irony, satire, sarcasm, puns, word play, idiom, period language; emotionally describe relevant sensory details in order to authenticate the narrative, that is, validate the reality imitation; and intimate, imply, or declare those feature are subject to later natural, necessary, and inevitable transformation, and transformation of their significance and relevance to the now moment at hand -- lively dramatic incitement and movement.
The tone, lackluster as it is to me, to me, stands out most for the fragment. The first sentence, for example, is akin to a litotes, an exotic though commonplace type of irony, in which a negation statement affirms its positive opposite meaning.
"Sir Gamon Handsworth was _not_ your ordinary knight." "not" is the negation facet. The positive opposite would be Handsworth is an ordinary knight!? Nonsensical unless Handsworth believes he's extraordinary, and the narrator reports the received reflections of Handsworth's inconvenient false beliefs, and readers realize he is not. That's litotes irony. The lackluster description of "ordinary" knights' activities that follows intimates Handsworth is unextraordinary, though that's a stretch of imagination too far for me from what's given.
Likewise, high brow phrases like "despite what the talesingers may tell you," a contradiction statement, potential for ironic, satiric, or sarcastic commentary missed, though; "great deal of time managing quite ordinary affairs" overstatement, hyperbole, emotionally empty, though; "something like", an allusive comparison yet not a simile or other trope type.
Poetic equipment, like figurative language, rhetoric, that is, expresses a strong and clear tone, or emotional attitude. In a shortage of other dramatic inciters and movers, tone might carry a narrative over an opening's hurdles, especially prologues. Also, a strong and clear tone develops a narrator identity all by itself, even in third-person anonymous. Examples, Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, 1859; William Makepeace Thackeray's Vanity Fair, 1848; Henry Fielding's The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, 1749; Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, 2004.
One grammar glitch: "(if[,] indeed[,] they have any at all)". Conjunctive adverb "indeed" used as a parenthetical aside takes comma separation and is misplaced. The parentheses are a stretch, too. Parentheses in prose distinguish additional emphasis of parenthetical asides, wrap content that is separate from a narrator or agonist persona's viewpoint. Who reports this? Writer? By default here, the narrator, confused though. Commas or dashes indicated instead.
The sentence recast to conventional grammar principles: //They ride about their lands -- if they, indeed, have any at all -- act somewhat as middle management: settle squabbles, keep the peasants attentive to their work, and make sure the realm meets its quarterly quotas for wheat, ale, sheep, items derived from sheep, and what have you.//
-ing suffixes unnecessary and accumulate a ring-rhyme nuisance factor inapt for prose. A long though grammatically apt sentence. Too long? Lackluster? Yeah. Occasion missed for attitude commentary about the ordinary knights "they," middle management, the peasants, their work, the realm, etc.
To me, the sentence, here, a loose sentence by definition, lacks an emphasis arc. What is the sequence of emphasis from, say, most to least, least to most, lesser to most and lesser again, or vice versa? What is the main idea wanting emphasis for readers' reading, comprehensibility, and appeal ease's sake? Ostensibly, ordinary knights' everyday, lackluster routines.
Periodic sentences, compound-complex, multiple syntax units, like loose sentences, build momentum and end on an emphatic emphasis. Loose sentences start on an emphatic emphasis and trail off emphasis. Antithesis is a rhetorical scheme often part of periodic and loose sentences and paragraph and scene syntax otherwise: describes a circumstance by showing what it is not. The fragment somewhat resembles an antithesis, a loose sentence within, describes what Handsworth is not.
Or is he? For best dramatic effect, and reader effect, some clarity about how and why he's different is wanted soon if not immediately. Complication, or motivation, or antagonism, description would fulfill that role. In short, what does Handsworth want? Or what problem compels him to be an extraordinary knight? Want and problem in congruent contention and motivation is complication's antagonism and a core essential of dramatic creative composition from start to middle to end and throughout.
In all, I would not read further as an engaged reader, due to dramatic appeal feature shortages.
posted
Just now realized Miguel Cervantes' The Ingenious Nobleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha, 1605, commonly referred to as Don Quixote, portrays the kind of knight that Handsworth is meant to be and, to a similar degree, the satire design.
Sancho Panza is the narrative's, at times, understated, ironic, satiric, sarcastic narrator-viewpoint agonist, the ostensible protagonist, deuteragonist, actually, and the strongest attitude holder (tone). Quixote wants to restore medieval chivalry, some romantic nostalgia version of it anyway, and blunders into problematic troubles (complication). Panza wants to keep Quixote out of serious trouble, and falls short (complication). Conflict? Overall, noble self-sacrifice and wicked selfishness, and generically success and failure, forces in polar opposite contention -- that's conflict. Acceptance and rejection, life and death, redemption and damnation, sanity and insanity, riches and rags conflicts, too.
The satire exposes the human folly and vice of Quixote's society, chivalry, its misapprehensions, Quixote himself, and Panza, as satire is wont -- no, designed to do.
Satire's practical irony features do not lay so simply alone upon a narrative's surface. Otherwise, Kierkegaard's infinite, absolute negativity of irony transpires. Another thread of Socratic irony subtext underlays the whole; that is, self-asserted means for noble deed ends does not justify or succeed at either, a hypocrisy of chivalry.
However, irony wants a third-thread reconciliation between a congruent opposite surface and subtext expression, hence, the now accepted baseline interpretation of the satire's whole: tilts at windmills.
Therefore, no one can transform another's social-moral being by force or coercion, let alone all of a society's. Tilts at windmills, indeed. Look to the self's social-moral health enhancements instead. Set an example, and mind no one is likely to follow the example lightly, if at all, the very fount of true chivalry ideology.
If one's own affairs are disordered, how can one order another or all of a society? An anti-proverb of the whole: Do as I say, not as I do!? Sheer hypocrisy. Likewise, if one does others' critical thinking for them, they will not develop self-governance ability, and one then has too little time left over to develop one's own responsible self-governance ability. Or, think consciously, critically, responsibly for the self; otherwise, others will -- to your detriment and theirs, of us all.
Anyway, the times now are ripe for a Don Quixote update, reboot, re-imagination. Instead of windmills, at what current, timely symbol-motif might Handsworth "tilt?" Yet is succinctly U.S. medievalism rather than European, per se? Some of those dinosaur looking oil well pumps (pumpjack, Wikipedia)? And what is his steed? A donkey (Equus asinus, domestic ass) would do, regardless. For Handsworth's sidekick's steed, say, shank's mare.
posted
Think about it, John. You tell us this knight is not an ordinary night. What do you think the reader wants to know after reading that, more about what he isn't, or what he is? Story or history?
Not a word of those lines is story, because there's nothing happening. Story isn't talked about or explained. It happens as we "watch." In fact, in the lines presented our knight isn't on stage. Instead, Someone we can neither see nor hear is talking about people who aren't in the opening scene. And fair if fair. You're going to make his life a living hell, and have terrible things happen to him. So, if it's his story give him, not you, the starring role.
Bottom line: No one wants to read the words of a talking-head. Readers aren't seeking to be informed, they want to be made to feel,. And how to do that wasn't one of the subjects covered in our school days writing lessons.
The tricks of the trade aren't all that hard to find, but like any other field, to write like a pro it helps a lot to know them.
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posted
I think the critique is a little harsh. The writing needs time to breath. Following example:
You may depend upon my bare word, reader, without any further security, that I could wish this offspring of my brain were as ingenious, sprightly, and accomplished as yourself could desire but the mischief of it is, nature will have its course: every production must resemble its author, and my barren and unpolished understanding can produce nothing but what is very dull, very impertinent, and extravagant beyond imagination.
The same could be said about this, and that's Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra's preface to his book, Don Quixote.
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