quote:

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Even Now
by Giulia Fancelli

Even now, before me a person dies.

It's incredible how this mystery is so common in our everyday lives. Every few seconds, a new life enters the world, but at the same time, another life ends. Earth is like an enormous room filled with candles of which we are the flames. Some of us light up, some of us die, and the rest of us flicker and flare dangerously under the icy wind of illness before regaining strength. In the same way, another flame dies today in front of my very eyes.

I’m walking through the alleys in the centre of Rome, performing errands I have to fulfil before returning to my job.

‘Good morning, Father,’ says a female voice, forcing me to stop and look in her direction. She stands in front of a shoe shop, smoking, her back rested against the shop’s window, her arms crossed over the violet shirt she’s wearing.

‘You shouldn’t smoke, young lady, it’s unhealthy,’ I say in reply. The woman’s lips turn up in a sarcastic grin as she takes another drag from her cigarette and draws near me, puffing the smoke in my face.

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Please tell me what you think of it . If you're interested in reading the whole story for a review, give me your e-mail in the reply and I'll send it to you

Now, I'm going to give my standard opinion about first person present tense, which your opening reitorates in a way that I've never seen before. First person fine. Present tense fine. First person and present tense...what are you doing walking around with a pen up your nose? I used this technique once before, to play back a telepathic recording which would have been recorded in realitme with no hinderences. I've never seen another case in which this combination makes sense.

You reinforce this image by opening with a line that says "Even now as I speak, as I write..." This actually negates any of the arguments I've heard in favor of first person present tense (which essentially amount to "because I want to." ). The trouble is, you've set up a scene in which your narrator is writing, and then have him go out and interact with people in the same tense. It doesn't make any sense. If it is to make any sense at all, then making references to your narrator physically writing or telling the story really should go away. Seriously, the arguments I have heard is that the author wants it to feel like me, the reader, is walking around inside the narrator's head and living the story. (It doesn't work, it actually creates a strange dreamlike distance, but it's an ok argument such as it is.) But in this case I'm not walking around living the story, you've told me that you are the narrator and you're writing.

The first line written like that was a suggestion another reviewer had gived to me in Zoetrope. But from what you've said, I think I'll revert the opening sentence to the one I had written, which looks better maybe:

quote:

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Even now, before me a person dies.

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I thank you for your suggestion over the tense and the POV. I used the present tense because I wanted to give a sense of contemporaneity.

Anyway, the person who suggested the change did it because the character in question is a catholic priest who, while walking, is revising his sermons. Therefore, the "I write" wouldn't indicate the actual fiction, but his sermons that he was revising.

It would have been hard to discern only from this short extrait, though.

Thank you for the compliments *^^*

It's actually OK to use it for your beginning, which is set at the moment of telling the story and is a description of the ongoing state of humanity. But when you start to tell what happened, I suggest you use past tense: "... another flame died ... I was walking through ... I had to fulfill ... said a female voice ..."

He must be the world champion of ultra fast handwriting too.

My suggestion is that you put the part where he is writing his sermon in italics or double indented and set it off from the text. Use a different person and tense for the text. Yes, because 1PPT is annoying and nonsensical, but also simply because it should be a different tense and person from what he's writing if at all possible.

Okay, for the conversation, you should tell us a bit more about this female so that we get a better idea why Father Fancelli is so rude to her. Is is merely because she is smoking in front of a shoe shop? Because that's just rude. I, king of adverse homicidal reaction to nicotine, tell you this freely. Of course, I live in a country where you can tell somebody that deliberately blowing smoke in your face is legally a form of assault. But I wouldn't even open with that.

If I were acting as a clergyman, I would reply, "Good morning to you."

Of course everything would be clearer if I'd post more than 13 lines. He wasn't being rude at the woman ^^;

Okay, I think I'll revert the first line indeed at the old format, because it's giving some serious problems of understanding.

Anyway, if I can, this is how the bit with the woman continues, just to make you understand the part better:

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‘What do you have health for, if life is shit and all the best men are . . . unavailable, for one reason or another?’ she spats, her eyes running over my body in a glance meant to be seductive. She moves away from me, and again she rests her back against the shop window.

A muffled laugh comes out my throat as I turn to look at her. She’s good at acting -- her eyes look serious.

‘I’m too old for you, anyway.’

‘Says who? You’re barely forty, after all. And age is not the main thing a woman looks for in a man.’

I shake my head and smile, resuming my walk. I know her too well to believe she’s serious; I've been a priest at St Mary's Cathedral these last ten years, and I've known her all through my stay. She was sixteen when I started and had just suffered the loss of her father. I had consoled her as I always do, and she has often come to the church since then when she knew I was overseeing the mass. I suppose she must have a juvenile crush on me. It might be dangerous to continue the joke, but I decide to play along with her.

‘These are impure thoughts. I expect you this Saturday for a confession,’ I tell her with a nod of dismissal.

‘I can’t wait,’ she replies.

Silly woman . . . she loves joking with fire. I still smile as I walk away and turn right to Via Ferrari. I can’t think of her. I have other, more important things to do right now.

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I'm sorry if I did add other 13-kinda lines, but this is the point where the first scene breaks, so you can have a better idea of it.

As for you, Eric, I'll be glad to send to you the full thing Thanks!

I'm very firm about this, if the POV character recognizes someone, always say so. And if he knows her name (given how much else he knows about her, it would be really odd if he didn't) then he should think of her by name.

The way you have it written now, when you finally say "I know her" it is too late, we have been under the impression for the entire time that he doesn't know her.