posted
Hope I'm not over the line count. IMHO number of words would be an easier standard to go by. Anyway, this is what is standing right now as the beginning of a novel. I just want to know how bad it sucks as a beginning.
The whole thing is in a constant state of flux, of course. -----------------------------
A lone human trudged through a quietly exuberant landscape. Noon sun asserted its rights with unseasonable vigor, attacking the remnants of winter. Paying little attention to signs of spring, Radovec followed a path along the edge of the narrow valley of a river that had grown large on melting snow. He wore only a loinclout and simple tunic of soft leather and a pair of ill-fitting mammoth-hide boots. A bundle of dead branches on his back made the slightly built youth look like a walking brush-heap.
Ahead of him, a cluster of mounds nestled between the river's deeply cut course and a rounded ridge that paralleled it. The sod-covered dwellings varied from large oblongs that might house several families in very close quarters, to much smaller units. The primary material of their construction, mammoth bone, showed plainly in their framed doorways.
Smoke trailed into the wind from an open hearth and from two of the smaller earthlodges. Other than the several figures clustered at the cooking hearth, Radovec saw no sign of activity. That was good; if nobody noticed him maybe he could sneak a bite of dried meat out of the storehouse. He was hungry after several trips downriver to collect wood. He plodded on toward his goal, the round hut belonging to the band's shaman.
posted
In terms of clarity and grammar, this is fine, better than many posts on this forum. In terms of story-telling, I can't tell yet, because. . . .
Well, let me put it this way. The major problems here are: it's too long, with too much description, insufficiently grounded POV, and nothing happens. The POV is the central problem causing (or at least contributing to) the other three.
Take the start: "A lone human . . ." Two sentences later, we find out his name: Radovec. Why not tell us that right away? What you have might indicate that everyone else around is an alien, but you don't follow up with that. "A lone man," then, would be better, but it still leaves us outside the character, as if watching him from a distance, so we don't care about him. The over-written descriptions that follow, if written from Radovec's viewpoint, would either be toned down, or would tell us something about the way Radovec looks at the world. Either would be an improvement.
Most of the rest of the description is of scenes with which Radovec is familiar. From his point of view, he might take note of the things he passes, but he wouldn't describe them to himself, and you shouldn't describe them to us. The entire middle paragraph should go, and the other two should be trimmed.
quote:Radovec followed a path along the edge of the narrow valley of a river that had grown large on melting snow. He wore only a loinclout and simple tunic of soft leather and a pair of ill-fitting mammoth-hide boots. Other than the several figures clustered at the cooking hearth, Radovec saw no sign of activity. That was good; if nobody noticed him maybe he could sneak a bite of dried meat out of the storehouse. He was hungry after several trips downriver to collect wood.
This extract doesn't quite work: there's a bit of a transition problem between the second and third sentence. But it almost works, and all I did was delete everything that wasn't in his POV. (And the second sentence I included was debatable.)
The thing is, that with the passage trimmed this way, you can now include more and quite possibly get to some action or situation which intrigues our interest.
One other comment:
quote:He wore only a loinclout
That sounds painful. I hope you meant "loincloth."
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited November 27, 2004).]
Unless the village is described, we don't have a way of know what time frame we're in (outside of the title, anyway), so I think it's fine to help establish the setting. Speaking of which, words like "units" are inappropriate--way too contemporary. And I don't care for "band," either. I'd prefer "tribe" or some such.
[This message has been edited by Magic Beans (edited November 28, 2004).]
Thanks, Magic, I didn't know that. Neither did my dictionary (American Heritage, 1st edition). That sounds sarcastic, and I don't mean it that way. The dictionary does have "clout":
quote:4. Archaic and Regional A piece of cloth used for mending; patch.
Clearly this could be extended to "loinclout". So I'm genuinely pleased to have that word added to my vocabulary.
However, I have grave doubts about using it here instead of "loincloth." This is obviously a story set long ago, and thus it might be considered appropriate to use an archaic word; but as the story is written in modern English I'd say it's best to avoid the archaisms.
If this word has come back into vogue in other than a regional sense, somebody please let me know. (And I was using the 1st Edition of the AHD, c. 1970, so it's quite possible.)
posted
I agree that the middle paragraph is necessary to set the scene but perhaps it could be written into what the main character thinks or sees for example and not as a stand alone paragraph of information. I particularly liked this image. Quote: "Noon sun asserted its rights with unseasonable vigor, attacking the remnants of winter." I can feel the strength of the sun and see the patches of snow scattered around.
[This message has been edited by Castaway (edited November 28, 2004).]
posted
For what it's worth, I've seen loinclout rather than loincloth in works by British writers, whereas American writers would probably prefer cloth to clout (and you can read anything you like into that).
Another element of these lines that got my attention: the name Radovic has a Slavic or Eastern European flavor to it, to me. When I read about dwellings constructed of mammoth bones, I felt jarred out of what I was prepared to think of as time and setting.
[This message has been edited by Magic Beans (edited November 28, 2004).]
quote:Another element of these lines that got my attention: the name Radovic has a Slavic or Eastern European flavor to it, to me. When I read about dwellings constructed of mammoth bones, I felt jarred out of what I was prepared to think of as time and setting.
Nope, MB, Matera was right on there. Some of the largest concentrations of mammoth bone dwellings are in eastern Europe.
posted
True about the Mammoth bones. In fact, I heard recently that in Russia they're actually selling mammoth meat from the many preserved bodies dug out of the ice.
posted
Radovec is a lot like Radovic which is a Serbian name. Certainly it has a Serbian form. Serbian is descendant from the Indo-European languages that by 1000 BC were spoken throughout Europe and in parts of southwestern and southern Asia. Serbian didn't exist in the ice-age.
I think you are looking for a name that sounds Proto-Indo-European, which is the prehistoric language that was supposed to exist at that time in the area. It is, unfortunately, unrecorded. However there are many forensic efforts attempting to identify its elements.
posted
a) Welcome b) I feel like being honest. c) None of stuff said here is fact d) (Except for the parts that are) e) Good luck! f) As a whole, this piece does not stay focused. It is loaded with description; the narrative is not written clearly.
Quote: A lone human trudged through a quietly exuberant landscape.
Right here. This is precisly were, if reading, I would switch from stance Neutral to stance On-Verge-Of-Stopping. I'm being this emphatic for the reason that this sentence failing in its purpose is a disaster -- for this is the 1rst sentence.
a) Forgive me if I'm wrong, but my intuitive grammar screams that it should not be "a" landscape. "A" is vague. "A" is bleh. "The" on the other hand...
b) Quietly exuberant landscape -- this phrase is quiantly absurd language. Too many qualifiers, too much meaning is attempted at, and it fails. In fact, it sounds a little funny.
To be honest, trying to tell how great something is...is not going work. It will be neccesary, often, to provide support, but as a rule, saying "A is great" will not do anything but make the reader yawn and look away.
Quote: Noon sun asserted its rights with unseasonable vigor, attacking the remnants of winter.
This sentence is so utterly unexpected that I am stunned by it. Firstly, it is hard to apply to the situation at hand. Secondly, it is a completely different approach to describing the situation.
Quote: Paying little attention to signs of spring, Radovec followed a path along the edge of the narrow valley of a river that had grown large on melting snow.
a) This sentence is saturated with descriptive words. The whole piece is. b) It is switching approaches again. Now we are zooming in on Radovec, before we were elsewhere. All confusing.
The same afflicts the rest of your work. You do not leave nouns and verbs and such alone. Rather, you attach adjectives and adverbs. Far too many.
To illustrate, I have bolded all the adjectives and adverbs -- and all the prepositional phrases that are acting as adjectives and that are excessive.
quote: A lone human trudged through a quietly exuberant landscape. Noon sun asserted its rights with unseasonable vigor, attacking the remnants of winter. Paying little[b] attention to [b]signs of spring, Radovec followed a path along the edge of the narrow valley of a river that had grown large on melting snow. He wore only a loinclout and simple tunic of soft leather and a pair of ill-fitting mammoth-hide boots. A bundle of dead branches on his back made the slightly built youth look like a walking brush-heap.
Ahead of him, a cluster of mounds nestled between the river's deeply cut course and a rounded ridge that paralleled it. The sod-covered dwellings varied from large oblongs that might house several families in very close quarters, to much smaller units. The primary material of their construction, mammoth bone, showed plainly in their framed doorways.
Doing the tags has started to hurt my hand. I can do no more. You seem to love language. Good. But [/b]please![b] write something that is more narrative focused, less adjective.
posted
I'll ditto rf, including his comment about "loinclout". I will say that I would find "breechclout" perfectly acceptable, though (personal pref.).
That said, I also ditto his contention that the opening is non-sucky.
posted
The name Radovec sounds to contemporary to my ear, and even though geographically it was eastern europe, that doesn't mean the language of that area now is descended from the peoples that lived there at the end of the ice age. I'm not up on this sort of history--it's really just a gut instinct about the character's name. It's also a highly subjective aesthetic response (i.e., opinion).
[This message has been edited by Magic Beans (edited December 01, 2004).]
posted
I think the problem I see is that you are trying to explain to me what is happening rather than just showing it me.
For example instead of telling me he had ill-fitting boots. Show me. How were they ill-fitting? what did it matter? In a glacial environment poorly made boots can get you killed. this would be an opprtunity to create tension by showing his struggle to survive. an example: the boots chafed his feet and cold slush soaked through the ragged seams. He had lost feeling in his feet hours ago but he had no other boots and no time to mend these. The thought of his toes turning black haunted him.
a poor example on my part but something like that would show me why the ill-fitting boots are important to the story and create a sense of the character's social and physical condition.
posted
What would make *me* read on with this chunk is some serious struggle on the part of the protagonist. (That's usually true!) Like, tell me in the first sentence that Radovec is so desperate for food that he's going to steal food from a tribe that will kill him if they catch him. Or something.
Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004
|
Printer-friendly view of this topic
