posted
This is a story I have been working on for some time off and on. This is the first of three scenes that the MC Owen beholds at the beginning of the story. While there is reference to the necromancers, it is more of an occult power that has a reign of fear over the City Karador.
A man stood in the middle of the street, his arms outstretched and raised to the sky, and his upturned face was a mask of sadness as he lifted his plea to the heavens above. At his feet lay the motionless form of an older man whose blood stained the stones of the road. Behind him stood another man, dressed in a neat, angular, black uniform with cold grey eyes. What few people remained nearby had cast their eyes to the ground and were shuffling off hastily. When the man's arms fell, the uniformed man with the cold eyes took hold of his shoulder, pulling him away. The necromancers would come soon and ascertain what secrets this body could foretell, although doubtless there would be few indeed from such a dubious death. The blood would remain as yet another stain upon the roads of the City Karador.
posted
The opening is distancing from being in summary exposition, and does little in advancing immersion with the man, the setting, or the milieu. Static action is a tip off indicating summary exposition.
"A man stood in the middle of the street, his arms outstretched and raised to the sky, and his upturned face was a mask of sadness as he lifted his plea to the heavens above."
"Stood" is a static action that tells rather than shows an active action as it relates to the man. The man is in a still-life pose with no preceding context for why.
"His arms outstretched and raised" the action already happened in the past, before the opening. He's already standing still with his arms raised without the cause of the effect. The dead man at his feet portrayed afterward puts the cause after the effect. Depicting in the moment of an action and chronologically unfolding the action lends immediacy and orients on a focal character's sensations. Orienting on a character's sensations initiates immersion in a story through those personal sensations.
"And his upturned face was a mask of sadness as he lifted his plea to the heavens above." A run in clause not directly related to the preceding circumstances in that it's a summary of the man's emotions--rather than an expository description of his static appearance as in the previous clauses--that progresses from an expression that's already on his face before the opening into a concurrent action that's not an action concurrent with the emotional expression or the preceding static actions. "Was a mask" in the past "as he lifted" in the present and "as" signifies a concurrent action.
"As he lifted his plea to the heavens above." A summary of an action that avoids getting into the man's meaning space. An introspective plea, a spoken plea, or a thought sympathic to or condemning the dead man's loss initiates immersion through the pleading man's thoughts.
I'm reasonably sure that this story is in American English. "Grey" is the standard British English variant. "Gray" is the standard variant in American English.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited May 08, 2009).]
posted
Agrred; it's dispassionate, distant, impersonal. This may be the effect you are going for, but it tends not to be popular. Even names give us information, but you introduce three people and name none of them, give no clue as to who is important or not, who might be the protagonist, what the viewpoint is, and so on. It would work fine in a script, but it's potentially a very hard sell for a story.
Main nit: "Behind him stood another man, dressed in a neat, angular, black uniform with cold grey eyes" - this literally reads that his uniform has eyes. I suspect this was not your intention. And faced with that grammar, I suspect many editors would stop reading right there.
posted
If this is something that the main character is witnessing, is he one of the two (surviving) characters, or a third party standing on the sidelines? How does this scene affect him? Why do we care?
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posted
So you're telling me that there's no redeeming values of such an introduction and I should scratch it? Based on your remarks, there's nothing I can do to fix it short of completely overhauling it.
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posted
Personally I like your description, but you have POV issue. Like some others said, it seems detached. You're not looking through the 'eyes' of your MC. I think you could keep a lot of the language, but just rewrite it through your MC's POV.
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posted
For me, the opening reads like a writer's sketch of a narrator's filtered summary of a depiction of a still life of a scene. Removing at least one filtering layer of separation, ideally more, will diminish the degree of separation. There's value there, though, in the sketch, at least from how it captures the setting and the characters that are present, but everyone and everything is mostly just standing there frozen in summary description of a snapshot.
Third-person objective narrative point of view's strength is that it initiates introductions, quickly drops a narrator into the background, and glides into a focal character's point of view as soon as possible. An opening sentence invariably introduces a narrative point of view. But then slips into a character's point of view right away. How to accomplish that with this opening, I don't know. There's too many possibilities I'm projecting from limited information.
The foremost purpose of an opening is introducing a reader to a story. I don't have any grounding on what the story is or an anchoring center upon which to fixate, like a character's predicament, or a conflict (diametrically opposing forces, like life and death, good and evil, acceptance and rejection); an initial antagonism compelling desire and change, and opposing purpose; a causal train of circumstances, a sympathy-induced or suspense-induced initiation of tension, a clash of characters, a collision of circumstances, a secret anxiety, an internal truth, or an intimate feeling, etc. There are hints of possibilities, but not detailed enough for me to suggest what direction to take or method to use.
posted
I agree with the others. I have fallen into the same trap numerous times. We start with the vision of a tableau... it's the opening to a movie.
In fiction, the opening is helped by the tableau, but the elements to move readers forward also include character and a hook. The purpose is to grab you by the collar and put you in the scene with the main character, not to have you view the tableau from behind a see-through mirror.
There are a lot of ways to skin this cat, but the key thing is to conentrate on getting the reader into the story. Who is the main character is it the uniformed grey-eyed fellow, the man pleading or someone else? What's the next action? What's at stake? Will there be an altercation out on the street? What's going to keep me interesting in moving on with the story?
[This message has been edited by Owasm (edited May 08, 2009).]
posted
I don't think it's hopeless at all. I just need to know who I'm rooting for. Whose head am I going to be ridind around in for this story. And the opening didn't give me a clue.
If it's the man in uniform, what is he thinking? How does this affect him? Is it a mystery he's going to have to solve? Is it an annoyance that's holding him back from something else he needs/wants to do?
If it's someone else, most of the same questions apply.
Instead of showing us the scene as a snapshot, show us how someone, preferably the MC, thinks or feels about the scene. That way we get to start to know who the main character is.
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