Here is my first 13 lines of my first novel I have been working on and off for several years. Any help would be great! Thanks, Gale
Rozdale looked out the view window and enjoyed the deep blackness of space. He tightened his hold on his wife and said, “do you miss home?” She smiled slightly and said, “home is where you are my dear.” She leaned back into his embrace and glanced up at his face above hers, and saw that he was looking down at her. She noticed how tired, how much this quest has taken out of him, “but I’ll be glad to be back home.”
“We are on the last leg of our journey and then we shall be on our way back. We are very close to this planet, so much like our own.” He shook his head slightly, “we have much information our scouts have gathered about these people, this should be sufficient data to study.” When he looked back up at Emba, his
posted
Story wise, for a novel, this looks good. I do get bothered when the second line of any story is "looked". There are more creative ways to describe a scene.
You need to work on you dialogue attributions (tags). You cannot us a comma before dialogue without a proper attribution. If you do not use an attribution, separate the dialogue from the rest of the text with a full stop (period).
quote:He shook his head slightly, "...
quote:She noticed how tired, how much this quest has taken out of him,"...
These are not proper tags. Tags tend to be variations of 'said'. There is a recent thread in the open discussion forum about this.
Also the first spoken word in a dialogue sentence will be capitalized.
quote:He tightened his hold on his wife and said, “do you miss ...
...and said, "Do you miss...
Now you need to ask people if anyone would be willing to critique your first chapter.
Edit: removed extraneous text.
[This message has been edited by pantros (edited November 08, 2005).]
It's not that you can't say the same things; you just have to punctuate them right.
quote:He shook his head slightly. "We have much information...
It's not a tag per se, so it's its own sentence, but it does identify the quote.
Each quoted thing should be in its own paragraph, with no quote from someone else.
quote:"..." he said.
"..." she said. She always said that.
Now, on to the meat. I am tentatively hooked; I think I would like this story, once told (well).
You need a POV character. You got one---Rozdale---but you put almost all he thinks in dialogue. You can make use of your access to his thoughts, so I don't forget he's POV character, and so you can show things you couldn't on TV (thoughts).
Especially things both of them know. No point in him telling her things they both are aware of.
Nit: he's looking down at her. So there's an up and down in space. Artificial gravity?
Not-so-nit: as soon as we hear about the quest, tell us what it is. Don't keep us wondering what's going on! That's probably why we want to read the story, anyway, so let us enjoy it.
Finally: to get novel readers, drop over to Hatrack Groups (under Writer's Workshops, along with Fragments & Feedback and Open Discussions). It's a long term project and will require long term commitment. Good luck!
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As far as I can see, you are tell the story in the third person. The POV is that of a external observer. I have no problem with that.
The problem is you spare us no detail. You turned an intimate moment into a technical manual on groping.
And you must have used a hydraulic injector to get all the exposition into the last bit of dialogue.
I suggest you walk away from it for awhile and work on something else. When you come back to it with fresh eyes read it aloud and I'm sure you will notice the problems for yourself.
posted
How exactly does one enjoy "the deep blackness of space."
The first few lines of any story need desperately to engage the reader. Yours, I'm sad to say, does not. I was bored, and that's saying something after only 13 lines.
Then again, I realize it's hard to say something meaningful in the first few lines. The harder you work at it, the more artificial it looks.
An intimate part with him and his wife (who worships the ground he walks on apparently) is a bad place to start.
posted
The POV character isn't Rozdale, it's his wife, right? That was my impression.
She doesn't seem to be 'worshipping the ground he walks on' so much as caring about the fact that the time in space took a lot out of him. As far as the 'home is where you are' comment, I took that as her being evasive (or comforting or both), using a line like that. So besides punctuation, I say the first paragraph is great.
I hate hate hate the first sentence in the second paragraph. Why is he saying this, when I see no reason his wife shouldn't know what's going on? Sounds like an info dump, and his voice comes off so artificial! And the phrase "this should be sufficient data to study" sounds like a non-scientist trying to sound scientific. Don't ask me what exactly about the phrasing, maybe it just hits me this way because of an amalgam of my own experience. For example, changing it to "enough to complete our study" sounds just fine. The difference is small; maybe I'm crazy.
I'd offer to crit, but time's short and I'm not a big space opera fan. Couldn't even plug through Foundation.
[This message has been edited by apeiron (edited November 10, 2005).]
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OK people. We like to give helpful, POLITE, and constructive criticism around here. Otherwise we'd see a gradual decline to an all-out flame war--and that WILL NOT HAPPEN at Hatrack.
These comments...
quote:The problem is you spare us no detail. You turned an intimate moment into a technical manual on groping.
And you must have used a hydraulic injector to get all the exposition into the last bit of dialogue.
I hate hate hate the first sentence in the second paragraph.
...fall on the bottom side of the polite, helpful, and constructive spectrum, IMO. If I had been confronted with crap like that in response to MY first post here, I would have gone elsewhere, thinking all the time that people at Hatrack were boorish and rude.
Since I am NOT the originator of the post, I DO get to critique the critiques. So, BrianJKoch, it would have been MUCH more polite to say something like, "The problem is, you spare us not detail (which I completely don't agree with; nor do I agree with your assessment of the passage coming off like a technical manual on groping. I didn't see any groping. Did anyone else see any groping? But, hey...). The intimate moment you were attempting to show seemed stiff and unrealistic." Follow this up by POLITELY explaining exactly why this is the case.
Also, "The last paragraph of dialogue is unnatural. It feels more like an exposition vehicle, rather than natural dialogue two married people would share."
And, apeiron, three 'hate's is a bit much, I think. One would have been too much, actually. Instead simply say you didn't like it. You did a VERY good job of explaining WHY you didn't like it, by the way.
[This message has been edited by djvdakota (edited November 10, 2005).]
posted
Thank you all for the help and honestly I won't run away from Hatrack! I will continue to work harder on my 13 lines and come back to you. Gale
Posts: 4 | Registered: Oct 2005
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