posted
Hey, I'm looking for some feedback on the first thirteen of my current WIP. I'm afraid I'm taking too long to get to the point... again! So any thoughts, comments, etc. would be great. Thanks :-)
Version One:
Sierra finished her exam and glanced up at the clock. It had only been forty-five minutes, but she was seized with a sudden urge to be done with the exam - and with it her college career.
A few eyes flickered up to watch her as she gathered her belongings and made her way to the front of the classroom. She defiantly set her exam down on the table in front of the blackboard, then picked up a piece of chalk. For almost a month, they'd been keeping a running total of hours until the summer language institute was over. As the temperature soared and their patience for Latin wore thin, the countdown had been the only thing that got some of them through the fourteen-hour days. She scrubbed out the three with her fist and scrawled a two in its place. Two more hours and it would be over for all of them.
Version Two
Sierra finished her exam and glanced up at the clock. It had only been forty-five minutes, but she was seized with a sudden urge to be done with the exam - and with it her college career.
A few eyes flickered up to watch her as she made her way to the front of the classroom and handed off her exam to the teaching assistant. She felt like those eyes were burning holes in the back of her head, which was ridiculous. Unless her classmates had found out about the job offer....
As she let herself out into the hallway, she pulled an envelope out of her pocket. For what felt like the hundredth time in the past two days, she unfolded the letter to stare down at the logo of the Magical Security Agency. Her bright and shining future.
If only she could be sure she wanted it.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited April 15, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Kitti because she is completely lousy at formatting (edited April 16, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Kitti (edited April 16, 2009).]
posted
Nothing wrong with the setting. I was always a fast test-taker, so I often walked up to the front of the class like Sierra feeling the eyes on my back. I can put myself in her place.
Problem is, there really isn't a hook and this story needs one. The countdown doesn't work as a device because of the confusion. Sierra was done with her exam, so she was done with the class... yet at the end she's got another two hours to go? That doesn't make sense to me. It shouldn't matter what the others think... it appears that Sierra is done. Where's the elation? Finishing a class generally elicits sufficient emotion to ignore the heat in the corridor.
This seems to be a beginning looking for a beginning rather than the ending as it is currently written.
That said, I'd still read on looking for that beginning to begin.
I agree with Owasm that the hook isn't there. I did like how the scene setting established your protag is clever and the writing is very smooth and clear, but you're right; you're taking too long to get to the point. What's the inciting event? I could do without the background facts about the college (are they that important?) and move straight into the event straight after the first two lines. The clarity of the writing certainly is promising.
posted
I've struggled for some time distinguishing showing from telling, when telling works, when showing doesn't, when showing and telling are artfully combined, and how to clearly identify which and express why one or another isn't dramatically working.
Invariably, all narrative is in some fashion telling exposition, yet a subtle distinction exists between showing and telling narrative. In the one case, telling situates the narrator in a story in such a way that a reader seems to be sitting in front of the narrator listening to the narrator read the narrative aloud, summarizing the salient points. The narrator's presence is obvious. Intuitively conscious of the oral presentation, a reader is detached from a story's dramatic center.
What is the center of this scene in this story? is the question I'm looking for an answer to but not finding clearly expressed. I realize Sierra's the center but she's incompletely centered by the narrator's filtering.
Showing brings a reader into the immediate experience of the action without a narrator's summarized filtering.
Telling as a narrative method in an opening isn't in and of itself ineffective when it's pictorial, dramatically describing a setting and/or circumstances, how they pose opposition for a protagonist. Yet "The Spellcrafter" seeming to have an anonymous objective narrator, an impersonal one--at least in these thirteen lines--the narrator seemingly summarily reading aloud the scene makes the narrator's presence discordant with the voice. I'm hyperconscious of the narrator, yet the narrative voice intends for me to not be.
I sense the intention is to situate the narrative from Sierra's perspective, but the narrator is in the way filtering, summarizing Sierra's viewpoints and thoughts. A narrator does filter viewpoints and thoughts, of course, but impersonal summaries in openings I don't find dramatically effective.
The scene seems to be one of Sierra's circumstances putting her in opposition to her outlook. I'm not sure if her outloook with the Magical Detective Agency answers her desire or her purpose to be a spellcrafter or not, if that is her purpose. But I don't have an unimpeded insight into her purpose or her opposition. What is Sierra's purpose? Is her opposition from her classmates' attitude? What is her classmates' attitude? Or is her struggle internal? And how does the setting pose opposition for Sierra? Dramatically answering one of these questions might answer them all in thirteen lines and more potently open the story.
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