posted
Here is the opening passage of a fantasy novel I am working on. I would be glad for any reactions on whether or not it does its job in enticing people to read further into the book. Thank you.
There came the slight sound of a boot scuffing against a wall and Toban paused mid-stride. There would be only one guard, he knew, outside the room of Balnak Runce, an important man with some powerful enemies. Balnak Runce knew he had acquired powerful enemies though and therefore the gardens and corridors of his large country mansion, situated barely a mile from the walled city of Theor, were patrolled heavily by his own personal guards. It was somewhat peculiar then that there was only a single guard stationed outside the door to his sleeping chamber. The reason for this was simple and it wasn’t a trick Toban was going to fall for. Toban was probably the best assassin currently working out of the assassins’ guild chapter in Theor and was definitely the most thorough in his approach to fulfilling contracts. To gain a reputation for being one of the best in the short time he had been with the guild and without the years of intensive guild training that most trainee assassins had to survive, he had to be.
The second paragraph is heavy exposition, as is the first for the most part. Right now, I’m going to be much more engaged by the character if you show him being the best assassin in the guild, rather than telling me about it. Its been two paragraphs, and the most interesting part of your hook, the boot scrap, has been almost totally ignored. I would have been more engaged in the character and the situation if you played up the suspense of that first sentence.
The one guard situation – Is it understandable or not? In one sentence you’ve called it peculiar. In two others it’s obvious in its simplicity. While I can assume that only one guard is there to help create the illusion that no one important is in the room, as a reader I need some consistency here to track that assumption.
So, no, I’m not hooked. I think you have things here to make a hook I would respond to, but not as they are presented.
[This message has been edited by GZ (edited December 01, 2003).]
posted
Just because a sentence uses the word "was" does not mean that it's in the passive voice. What determines the passive voice is when the subject of the verb is NOT the agent performing the action, but, rather, that which receives the action.
An active sentence reads: "I was baking bread." "I" is the subject of "was baking."
A passive sentence reads: "The bread was being made by me." "Bread" is the subject of "was being made."
Study grammar, Phanto!!!
PS -- Every sentence in the above fragment is in the ACTIVE voice.
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited December 01, 2003).]
Your real problem is that you don't have a solid POV. Are you writing in omniscient, limited omniscient, or from a third-person character viewpoint? It seems to me that you want to write from an omniscient viewpoint, probably liminted omniscient. A great master at limited omniscient is Flannery O'Connor. Read and reread one or two of her short stories to learn how to use this viewpoint. "A Good Man is Hard to Find" is one of her best.
Are these lines intriging? I think they are; at least the ideas are intriging.
Good luck.
[This message has been edited by Balthasar (edited December 01, 2003).]
posted
Actually, I'm going to run counter on that and say that while the POV could be improved, it isn't really vague. It is fairly clear that Toban is the POV character. The problem is that all this exposition is a POV violation, even though it is cloaked as his POV. He simply wouldn't be thinking about all this at this particular moment.
The mistake is that you're jumping into the action too quickly. Start your scene with Toban's infiltration of the estate. That way, there is plenty of time for him to count guards, think about his strategy, think about Balnak, think about his own training. By starting with the moment of contact you have to make a lengthy detour to explain to us all how Toban got here.
One good rule of thumb that I tend to use is to begin your scene by having the POV character enter the building/room/whatever, so that he is dealing with the setting as a new environment at the same time that the reader is first 'seeing' it. In this case, I think you want to start with the point where Toban enters the estates perimeter by leaving the treeline (assuming that this area has trees).
By the way, the overuse of 'was' here doesn't indicate passive voice, but it does indicate something just as bad. Your POV character isn't thinking about what is going on around him, and he's supposed to be an expert assassin. The 'were' after 'gardens and corridors of his large country mansion...' is passive voice, but that isn't the main problem with that particular sentence.
Anyway, you're opening the scene too late. Open it earlier, let us get Toban's ground level view of the mansion as he infiltrates, as well as his inferances about the meaning of what he sees.
posted
What Survivor said, plus this: the first sentence was great. It gave me good hope of an interesting story, diving straight into the action. The structure of the second sentence was a bit confusing though, and then the exposition set in... Posts: 626 | Registered: Jun 2003
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posted
I'm going to ditto on the 'was' and passive voice. BOTH are common here. In this short passage you use the verb 'to be' *12 times* (not just 'was' but 'being', 'be', etc.). That's really a killer verb, when one overuses it; and the temptation is great because it covers so much ground. That's also the problem with it--find a more specific verb that really says what you want.
People often associate 'to be' with passive voice, but as noted above, no direct relationship exists. However, you do use passive voice a lot. Take the first sentence: "There came the slight sound of a boot scuffing against a wall and Toban paused mid-stride." The subject of this sentence is 'there', the object is 'sound' ("There came the sound," in brief). Since the sound is what came, you've got a clear case of subject/object inversion here, hence passive voice. It's even worse than it sounds, however, since 'sound' wouldn't be much of a subject, nor does 'came' have much energy as a verb. Where does the sound come from? A scuffing boot. Where does the sound go? To Toban's ears. So, you might try something like; "Toban heard a boot scuff against a wall, and paused in mid-stride." Or, "Toban paused in mid-stride as a boot scuffed against a wall."
Well, I didn't mean to go on so. But if you spruce up your verbs and trim the passive voice, 1)your opening will be much more gripping, and 2) it will be shorter. That will allow you to put more story into your thirteen lines, which will make for a better hook.
All that said, I also agree that you should start a bit sooner, for exactly the reasons given by Survivor.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited December 06, 2003).]
posted
I will point out that Jules probably liked the first line because it essentially promised that there would be little or no exposition necessary to get into the story.
You could do just that, have Toban go in, kill the guy along with any number of collaterals required, and make his escape before telling us anything about why or who he's killing.
That might not work for some readers, but it could make it a very compelling work for others, since they have to keep reading to find out why.
posted
"To be" is associated with passive voice, although not every use of the verb form is passive. She baked the bread. (active) The bread was baked by her. (passive) The bread was warm. (active, although working the warmth of the bread into the text more creatively would generally improve the writing.)
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but the subject of the first sentence is not "There," nor is the object "sound." "Sound" is the subject and "came" is the verb. "There" is an adverb. This is one of those sentences where diagramming is helpful; it would be rearranged to read: the sound of a boot scuffing against a wall came There.
Quoting from Webster's New World Dictionary, "There is also used in impersonal construction in which the real subject follows the verb."
It's not the position of the subject/verb that determines passivity, but whether the subject is acting or being acted upon.
The phrase "against a wall" might be better left out. If Toban is merely hearing the sound, how does he know what the boot is scuffing against?
posted
As far as I understand it the subject of the first sentence is the sound. As to whether or not it is in the passive I think the confusion is down to the 'there came', which in all honesty is a clumsy way of introducing that particular incident. A better way of beginning probably would have been to simply say 'a boot scuffed against the wall'. That way there's no confusion and it sounds a bit better.
Anyway, thanks for all your advice, it's great to get some useful feedback for a change.
The sentence structure is definitely confusing in places and I think I could probably do away with most of that introduction. I can see the appeal of beginning sooner but I'm not so sure I need to do that. All I want to introduce about Toban at this stage are certain aspects of his character that you get to see during the completion of this assignment, nothing about his past and hence no flashbacks. Opening the scene sooner would only tempt me to reveal more than is necessary.
Originally I had one more short paragraph where I concluded the explanation of the single guard and then it was back with Toban all the way through. The explanation of where he was and what he was doing though was a bit bungled and detracted from the flow as you all pointed out.
Back to the drawing board for me and if nobody minds, when I come up with something a bit better I'll post it here for you all to comment on again.
Thanks.
[This message has been edited by Gwalchmai (edited December 06, 2003).]
posted
Kolona, you're absolutely right about passive voice. Thanks for the correction. 'There was', 'there came', 'it was', etc. should generally be avoided, but not because they're passive.
Passive constructions do exist in the passage, however. No sentence in the sample is completely passive, but passive constructions should be thought of as pertaining to *clauses* rather than *sentences.* For example, the sentence previous to this has two clauses, the first in active voice and the second in passive. In the passage, an example is: "Balnak Runce knew he had acquired powerful enemies though and therefore the gardens and corridors of his large country mansion, situated barely a mile from the walled city of Theor, were patrolled heavily by his own personal guards." The passive clause is: "...the gardens ... were patrolled by his own personal guards."
posted
For whatever it may be worth, "the bread was warm" is not exactly active (as opposed to passive). It's static, as opposed to dynamic. (And dynamic is so often lumped with active, that anything that isn't dynamic--and is therefore static--is considered passive.)
As Kolona said, static description is not as interesting as dynamic description:
The bread was warm. (It's just sitting there in a state of warmth--static.)
The warm bread sent out such beckoning smells that he had to keep swallowing in order to talk. (It's actually doing something--dynamic.)
posted
I'm recalling something about breaking any rule if the alternative is writing an outright barbarism or somesuch.... Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
He knew there was only going to be one guard outside the door, but he later found it peculier? I find that confusing. You also use the word "there" to begin the first two sentences. I'm thinking that using different words that might mean the same thing might break up the monotony of using the same words over and over again. I like the idea of the story, though, and think it has great potential.
Posts: 5 | Registered: Jun 2003
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