posted
Daphne, four and wearing a white sundress, walks into the bright yellow kitchen. She pulls a chair from under the table and pushes it against the warm wood cabinets, and then climbs up and reaches for a small video camera. She fumbles for a minute at the controls, and then pushes record. She smiles into the camera. Her blond hair is curled to perfection. The room fuzzes around the edges and the girl disappears. The cabinets are now white, and a blue patterned wallpaper cover the walls. Natalie Portman enters the kitchen. She wasn't thinking of herself as Natalie Portman, currently she was a character named Angie, who is a pregnant waitress. She put a large white purse down on the table. It changes to a small red clutch, but Natalie Portman doesn't notice. She lights a cigarette, raises her hand
Complete at less than 2000 words. Looking for readers and crits on the first thirteen.
Second try:
Houselights up. A few of us get into position. Don't look at the audience, idiot. I'm watching from my post. Houselights down. Daphne, four and wearing a white sundress, walks into the bright yellow kitchen. She pulls a chair from under the table and pushes it against the warm wood cabinets, and then climbs up and reaches for a small video camera. She fumbles for a minute at the controls, and then pushes record. She smiles into the camera. Her blond hair is curled to perfection. The room fuzzes around the edges and the girl disappears. The cabinets are now white, and a blue patterned wallpaper covers the walls. Natalie Portman enters the kitchen. There is a murmur from the audience. She put a large white purse down on the table. It changes to a small red clutch, but she doesn't notice.
Do you like this one better?
[This message has been edited by shimiqua (edited January 18, 2010).]
posted
I was fine with this until Natalie Portman. That put the brakes on the whole thing for me. I'm not sure you should use an actual person (then again, I've only read your first 13).
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm looking for features that engage readers when I read for critique. The three foremost methods are reader resonance wih a milieu, idea, character, event, or narrator, sympathy with/empathy for a focal character, and/or artfully posed suspense questions.
Some small sympathy/empathy with a four-year-old girl preening before a video camera, a suspense question artfully raised in what she's going to do with the video, another in what the camera is doing hidden in the kitchen cabinets. Something sinister hinted at there. Like, a sitter cam maybe.
However, the story moves on to a new tangent before I have a sense of where it's going. My budding emotional engagement is quashed before it's fully initiated. I'm then tasked to begin engaging over again through a new tangent.
I don't know if readers today are familar with the Bolshevik Revolution narrative jokes I heard in my youth. That opening reminds me of one of them.
A burly man plans a brick barbecue pit down to counting exactly how many bricks he needs. When he's through building it, he has one brick left over. He shrugs his shoulders and throws the brick away.
A young Eskimo couple walk out onto an ice pack. They're separated when the ice breaks up. The girl says to the boy, "Chocolate milk," and waves goodbye.
A businessman smoking a cigar boards a bus and sits down beside an old woman with a lap dog. The woman complains about the cigar smoke; the man complains about the dog chewing on his pants cuff. In a compromise, they drop the dog and cigar out of the bus' window. They get off at the same stop and the dog comes running up. Guess what the dog has in its mouth.
The brick.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited January 11, 2010).]
posted
Thanks genevive and satate for your offers to read. I'll send it to you both today.
The flux between Daphne and Natalie Portman is kind of the meet and potatoes of the story. I was hoping that the change, and wondering where the little girl went, was enough to hook. I wasn't anticipating it would knock people out of the story.
Would you keep reading to find out more, or is that enough of a reason to put the story in the reject pile, for you?
posted
I don't see it as a problem. Actually this strikes me as just the sort of off-the-wall thing a lot of places look for. Send it to me.
Posts: 2626 | Registered: Apr 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've encountered rafts full of stories that go off on whirling tangents as a literary device to keep readers off balance. That's the main feature of Bolshevik Revolution jokes, that and that the joke's at the audience's expense.
As an engagment technique, keeping readers off balance suits the sort of story that ends with that kind of trick, the trick or joke ending story. However, keeping readers off balance relies on readers' good faith that when betrayed or isn't timely rewarded the groan factor is high. They're also sometimes referred to as shaggy dog stories or leg pulling stories. In Spanish, as hair pulling stories.
A well-written story that opens with that kind of engagement method, though, pays off and rewards readers for their patience and good faith. A time honored literary device in that sense. In medias res openings in no small part rely on starting off off balance, and rely on readers' good faith and patience that a story will timely make sense and not lead to a joke at readers' expense.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited January 12, 2010).]
posted
If you want to read it all the way through extrinsic, you're more than welcome. I am not trying to play a trick on my readers(all three of them.) Things are constantly changing, that is part and parcel of the whole story. Daphne is trying to record the changes. I'm not trying to keep the reader off balance. I'm just trying to tell a story the way it told itself to me.
Thank you again for your insight.
[This message has been edited by shimiqua (edited January 12, 2010).]
posted
So if what you mean is that Daphne thinks something is going on (constant change) and is trying to document it for herself or others, maybe we need to be privy to her suspicion from the start, before we see the changes. Perhaps what you have written should be nested within that framework. Daphne first thinks she is just mis-remembering things (like misplacing her car keys), becomes suspicious that things are in flux, voices her suspicions, is ignored or ridiculed, sets up the camera, and then we see the resulting video.
Posts: 406 | Registered: Mar 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
A similar opening occurs in K.D. Wentworth's novelette Kaleidoscope. It remains off balance through to the climax. Readers are off balance along with the protagonist trying to make sense of the ever shifting reality she's in. Therein is a potent reader resonance with the story's MICE, and an empathy/sympathy worthy factor. The story almost pays off with the protagonist's transformation in the resolution. The mechanism of the transformation is not fully realized, though.
Published May 2007 in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, page 181, Nebula novellete finalist 2008. The novelette is no longer available for free online access. Fictionwise sells PDF and e-reader formats of the magazine issue for $4.50.
Before I commit to reading and critquing a story anymore I want to sense that there's a functional communication between writer and critiquer. Many of the openings I read tell me that that's not likely to be the case. I see promise in this opening, but I'm not yet satisified that my efforts would contribute favorably to the story. In default mode, I'd rather not engage if I sense the critique dialogue isn't going to be meaningful for all concerned.
[This message has been edited by extrinsic (edited January 12, 2010).]
posted
Well, remember extrinisic...and maybe I'm wrong about what you mean...but here on Hatrack, unfortunately, critique dialogue is discouraged. They go by the "best response to a crit is a thank you" rule pretty heavily for the most part. I agree with you that an open discussion is a lot more useful.
Also remember that people (me included) often don't understand a lot of what you say, since you frame your posts in a totally different way from most of the rest of us.
The story is only 2,000 words. I enjoyed it quite a bit.
posted
Critique dialogue is not discouraged if it's a matter of asking for clarification of what a critiquer meant.
It is discouraged if, as too often happens with new writers, criticism of the story is being interpreted as criticism of the author.
I have no idea what is going on from this opening. I particluarly have trouble when the tense shifts (Natalie Portman enters the kitchen. She wasn't thinking of herself as Natalie Portman). It then drifts back again. This may be nothing more than a sign you converted a past tense piece to a present tense piece - but you really need to catch such things in a first 13, even just for a critique site.
The POV is clearly omni. The rhythm is brisk and the voice, in that sense, works. The changes form a kind of hook so, apart from the tense shift, I'd read on. But if it carries on in the same vein for very much longer, I'm going to lose interest.
I’ll have a read, I’ve been out of commission for a little while and it’s about time I got back into it.
The riskiest part (for me) is the omniscient POV rather than the present tense. It’s a little bit weird starting off with what we assume will be Daphne’s POV and then getting Angie’s thoughts (but through the filter of our narrator). Is there some way to clue us straight away that this will be omniscient POV? It might just be me; I find omniscient POV a bit remote for my liking (currently trying to read The plague by Albert Camus and finding it a slog purely due to the POV).
Although you don’t actually need to do this in Omni, I probably would find it easier if you name the second character Angie since she thinks of herself as Angie. Natalie Portman is simply her appearance, not her identity. I’d personally stick with one POV, but as noted, it’s a personal bias.
Other than that, it reads pretty smoothly. Like NoTimetoThink, I’d suggest the specificity of “the fuzziness of the room” could be increased to give us a better idea that it’s VR. I also think his/her suggestion framing the POV from Daphne’s viewpoint is also a good suggestion.
I didn't mind the present tense per se, as I think it's par for the course for a synopsis and so could fit the idea we're watching a videotape. I think, though, that if that's the desired effect the start needs to be shifted to after the girl presses record. My main hint that the pov is the video is the fuzzing of the changing scene, which I liked.
I was bothered, however, that while watching that videotape I could tell what Natalie Portman was thinking - I'd expect a much more distant pov. For the same reason I was also bugged by the name Natalie Portman - I could imagine it being okay if Natalie Portman is a prop, a real life character against which the rest of the cast will play, but at this point of the story I couldn't get any feel for whether that's the case.
The only reading nit was and a blue patterned wallpaper cover the walls.
Tchernabyelo were you volunteering to read? Either way I still thank you for catching the past tense shift. I've read the thing a billion times and still didn't catch that one. I did start out wanting to write it in past, because past is always better, in my opinion, but this story just wanted to be present.
I don't know who this insult is addressed to. Herself? Another stage hand? I had to read this twice more just to piece together what is going on. I concluded that the person whose POV this is from is the choreographer (or director) of the play. I believe that I am correct but whether I am or not I do hope it becomes clear within the next paragraph or two. If I have to reread before the first page to know what is going on my short attention span generally wants me to bail.
To extrinsic: I disagree. KDW's opening to Kaliedoscope is quite different than this. I fail to see the comparision.
[This message has been edited by snapper (edited January 18, 2010).]
Houselights up. A few of us get into position. Don't look at the audience, idiot.
At this stage in the opening, the narrator is undeclared, so I don't know if this is first, second or third person. Thus I read Don't look at the audience, idiot and wonder if it's addressed to me.
posted
I think either one is fine. I probably like the first one a little more since it maintains...and pulls one on...witht the mystery of whats going on more, for me at least.
In the second one I think the first line will be difficult for some because it has no context. You introduce whats going on further into the story and by that time it, for me at least, was a little more understandble and flowed naturally.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
