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This is the beginning of a lengthy (10 000 word) contemporary fantasy/magical realism piece I wrote recently. It starts fairly mundanely but quickly escalates into mayhem, profane talking animals, and slow building friendship. The main characters swear quite a bit, so if you have an objection to harsh language you’re best off not reading the full thing.
(This should be 13 lines, but I wasn't sure if I was supposed to count the paragraph breaks. So if I went over by a couple I apologize)
Danny was tired. This was not a condition of the moment, rather an institutional policy; a prolonged, preemptive, surrender. He’d begun inauspiciously: his mother claiming him an accident; his father, a deliberate act of spite. He was a bruise, a bad riff, an off hand remark that lingered. He had been inflicted more than born, and found the whole thing exhausting. Until today that was the whole of his story.Today he lost his job.
Danny had been drinking since noon; he had his pride. It was the sort of uneven binge seasoned drunks avoided: all thunder out the gates, then long maudlin stumble. By the second hour he was pinned to the floor beneath his whirling ceiling, mouthing sad vowels at a radio he could no longer reach.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited August 22, 2009).]
Yeah, punctuation and I have a fairly stormy relationship. Sometimes it's just to match the cadence of a given characters speech...and sometimes it just careless under (or over) punctuation on my part.
As for the drunk part: Season drunks may not have control, but they have mastered pace. They are like bullfighters that always lose, but know how to draw things out for the crowd.
You're welcome to read the whole thing if you don't mind the length (32 pages), and some fairly vulgar humor.
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I enjoyed the opening. It survives pretty much completely on the likable voice, as there isn't really anything to hook the reader. I wasn't sure about the POV, because the thoughts were pretty distant, and not likely Danny's own (lucid self-description would seem difficult for a drunk). I would probably read on because of the voice, but something would need to hook me quickly.
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The person is essentially "Storybook omniscient, but obtuse, 3rd person narration". The second half of the first page involves a fairly explosive, humorous, and profane exchange that sets up the central conflict/relationship of story. The meandering opening paragraph is meant to counterpoint the burst of conflict that follows...unfortunately the pacing doesn't really synch up with the 13 line limit.
I suspect many of stories will suffer from that on this site. I like to establish tone and character briefly before I move into plot. It's generally just a paragraph or two, but it means most of work has some what of a cold open that lets me gradually unfurl the thesis of the piece.
[This message has been edited by AJ Valliant (edited August 24, 2009).]
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