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Author Topic: Chapter 5 - Gulf
Denevius
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Hello Kathleen. Actually, it's occurred to me that I might be abusing this system by posting the beginnings of these chapters. I'm doing this for two main reasons: 1) I genuinely want the beginning of each chapter to be compelling because; 2) the novel is shaping up to be episodic, where characters are introduced but don't live very long lives in the narrative.

There's a lot of death in this novel about dying, which to me makes sense, but I'm not sure how the completed piece is going to read as a whole.

Having said that, I'm writing a new Chapter 5 to lead into Chapter 6, which was Chapter 5 previously. I'm doing this to stick to the rule of 'show don't tell', which would have occurred in Chapter 10 or 11. However, if all these posts are a bit much, let me know and I'll curb them.

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Denevius
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Chapter 5 - Gulf

Swimming through each other’s minds felt like sex. The siblings sat across from each other in Bak Shi Hyeon’s apartment in Seoul. He stared at his sister, Won Min Seo. She wore a small, mischievous smile, the features of her face contorting in that odd way it did when they weren’t pretending to be human.

In a previous lifetime, Shi Hyen and Min Seo could have passed for father and daughter. The Gwnalyo had killed Min Seo days shy of her 18th birthday, while Shi Hyeon was in his early 40s. Death erased years from them, however, and though ten years had passed since their dying, Min Seo looked the teenager, while Shi Hyeon wore the guise of a man in his early 20s.

“I want to kill a human.”

[ November 01, 2013, 07:14 AM: Message edited by: Denevius ]

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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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I'm not concerned, Denevius. If you were doing a series of 13-line chapters, it might be a problem, but as long as your chapters are regular chapter length ("short story"-ish), it would be the same as if you were posting a bunch of first 13 lines from a bunch of short stories.

You express willingness to exchange manuscripts for feedback, you comment on others' 13 lines, you are not a "taker," so it's all good, so far.

Thanks for checking, though. I really appreciate knowing that you are conscientious about this.

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kmsf
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Ok, if you were going for that creepy ommpaloompah vibe with the swimming in each others' minds thing, you succeded! The sentence that finishes with "while he was forty" felt like the while clause sucked too much oxygen from the first part. Otherwise, it was very clean. I liked it and would read more.
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extrinsic
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I celebrate your persistence, Denevius.

I'm enjoying watching this long fiction work emerge and evolve. I'm most pleased by how you're using this forum to develop the narrative, as is the intention of a writing workshop.

I don't see long fiction effectively workshopped very often. Long forms ask for a considerable time and insight investment auditors are often resistant to expend.

Features I see emerging that recommend this long fiction revolve around your realization the chapters are "episodic." "Episodic" has negative connotations and positive connotations, working or not working for readers. For me, an episodic drama of the not working kind fails by wrapping up episodes' final outcomes too abruptly or completely or not finalizing outcomes altogether in parts and parcels and wholes. Short story collections are an exception, mostly from a central intangible feature like theme or milieu being a focal point that ties the whole together. Different focal events, different focal settings, different central characters, different dramatic complications but a central thematic cohesion. The episodes then are self-contained though intangibly related as similar motifs.

When I think of an episodic novel, I think of a picaresque: a drama portraying the episodic adventures of a roguish protagonist: episodic and roguish. Only the rogue episodes are part of the drama. Rogue meaning counter to a culture's accepted belief and value system. These rogue actions are the so-called edginess of young adult prose, for example. Or older persons engaging in actions that the society believes are unbecoming.

William Faulkner's Southern Gothic novels and short stories are picaresques. Cormac McCarthy's early works emulating Faulkner's Southern Gothic aesthetic are also picaresques. Their works have central roguish-protagonists.

However, a picaresque in U.S. literary cultures is not limited to rogue protagonists. An object, setting, event, or milieu may be the rogue that episodes portray using different focal characters and settings for each episode. Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears is a picaresque in that the "Broken Arrow" Israeli nuclear warhead is the rogue. McCarthy's No Country for Old Men is a picaresque in that the unseemly violence of drug culture is the rogue. H.G. Wells' The Time Machine is a picaresque in that the settings and overall milieu are the rogue, though a central character experiences them through the agency of the time machine.

I think a contemporary fantasy is ripe for a picaresque, in that the overlapping of fantastical and mundane cultures is a potent rogue. I do not use the term "urban" fantasy, as the settings are too often not entirely urban. Anyway, as a picaresque, the episodes orient around the rogue milieu's clashes in a specific way; otherwise, the long fiction would be little more than a short story collection, not that that's a drawback in and of itself. A tangible, meaningful conceptual premise must tie the picaresque whole together.

But fantasy and science fiction picaresques may be too literary in sensibilities, and steeply challenging to write and read, for general readers. These audiences prefer a central character with whom to align and associate, rather than per se an object, event, setting, or milieu. A picaresque must at least have one unifying, accessible, and tangible feature throughout, notwithstanding similarly appropriate dramatic event, character, and setting development relevant to the picaresque features.

I don't yet see a picaresque's unifying features in these numerous episodic openings I've examined. I think, regardless, a unifying feature is absent. Developing one would keep me interested, curious, engaged. The fantasy milieu just seems overly broad to fulfill that function. What does it mean that immortal revenants exist among humans, watching that no human learn of the revenants' existence, for what purpose? Invisibly shaping human existence toward what self-involved end? Consider a look for comparables within both Eastern (Korean) and Western cultures about secret societies perhaps?

[ November 01, 2013, 11:43 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Denevius
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quote:
"Episodic" has negative connotations and positive connotations, working or not working for readers. For me, an episodic drama of the not working kind fails by wrapping up episodes' final outcomes too abruptly or completely or not finalizing outcomes altogether in parts and parcels and wholes.
Part of my apprehension in how the novel is shaping up is that I personally don't enjoy episodic novels. And I'm not a big fan of short story collections.

I recently bought an iPad, and I've spent a large chunk of money downloading books because for the past four years it's been a real pain buying actual books in English. During this time of splurging, I bought two collections of short stories, "Vampires in the Lemon Groove", by Karen Russell, and "A Guide To Being Born", by Ramona Ausubel.

Both of these books I sampled first, before purchasing, and yet so far I've only read a quarter of each of them, while at the same time I've read and completed several novels I bought. And one of those novels, "Red Shirts" by Jonh Scalzi, I absolutely hated. But still I read it before the collections.

The fact that short stories don't have a central plot but may share a universal theme makes them very hard to finish. And that's not what I want for "Natural Police". So though I'm putting a lot of focus on the writing itself, I'm being particularly conscious of the openings and endings of each chapter for maximum dramatic effect. This is so that if the reader's interest starts to wane, the beginning of the next chapter recaptures them, and the ending "kicks them in the teeth".

quote:
But fantasy and science fiction picaresques may be too literary in sensibilities, and steeply challenging to write and read, for general readers. These audiences prefer a central character with whom to align and associate, rather than per se an object, event, setting, or milieu.
I agree. Haha, another worry. I would actually say that the novel is a bit too literary for its intended audience, but I know there's a bit of sensitivity to that type of parsing.

quote:
I don't yet see a picaresque's unifying features in these numerous episodic openings I've examined. I think, regardless, a unifying feature is absent. Developing one would keep me interested, curious, engaged. The fantasy milieu just seems overly broad to fulfill that function. What does it mean that immortal revenants exist among humans, watching that no human learn of the revenants' existence, for what purpose?
And yet another. So far I've written 60,000 words, though half of that has to be re-written. However, from what I've seen, the story's central plot doesn't become obvious until well after 40,000 words (and even that might be an optimistic reading). The only thing that unifies the story up until that is the Gwalyo, which affects every character in a direct way.

As I write this, two novels come to mind, neither of which I've read. I've heard, though, that the author of "Game of Thrones" kills off a lot of his characters. I actually have the first one in my queue, but I've been reluctant to start it because I know it's a very long series of books.

The other novel that I'm thinking of is "Infinite Jest", by David Foster Wallace. I actually did read the first 100 pages or so of that novel, and I still remember thinking two things in those pages. One, this guy is a great writer, and two, what is the point of this book? In the first hundred pages, I never saw a plot, and no matter how good the writing was, I still put it down. I've tried reading that book several times over the years, and have never gotten past that first hundred pages.

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Denevius
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quote:
The sentence that finishes with "while he was forty" felt like the while clause sucked too much oxygen from the first part.
Hey Kmsf, you're probably right. That bit of backstory in the opening can probably be moved to later on.

Thanks for the comment!

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wetwilly
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Overall, I like this and would definitely keep reading. I've really liked all of the chapters of this book individually. I share your skepticism of the episodic novel. I'm not saying it definitely won't work, but I'm not convinced that it wouldn't be better as a cohesive narrative. In the chapters I have read so far, I've been waiting for them to connect, and have been a little frustrated when they didn't. The characters are interesting, the writing engaging, and the concept really cool, but I get annoyed as a reader when the characters keep getting abandoned in lieu of other characters after I get interested in them.

To be clear, my reaction to this project is mostly positive. I really like the book. I'm just not sold on the episodic thing, but I can't really know until it's written. Maybe the finished project will completely justify its episodic format.

For this chapter, the first sentence is attention-grabbing in a titillating way, and then when the second sentence begins with "the siblings," it has a definite shock factor.

My big question is, in what way did it feel like sex? Was there a pleasurable physical sensation? Or was it a matter of psychological intimacy? Were they literally doing something sexual in each other's minds?

"In a previous lifetime, Shi Hyen and Min Seo could have passed for father and daughter. The Gwnalyo had killed Min Seo days shy of her 18th birthday, while Shi Hyeon was in his early 40s. Death erased years from them, however, and though ten years had passed since their dying, Min Seo looked the teenager, while Shi Hyeon wore the guise of a man in his early 20s."

To be honest, this paragraph was a bit info-dense for me. I had to go back over it and pick apart who was how old when.

“I want to kill a human.”

I like this line a lot. I'm a big fan of short, punchy lines with a big impact like this.

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Denevius
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Hey, thanks for the comments! Yeah, I'm going to have to do something about the backstory. I'll probably drop it down to another paragraph if I can't work it in in an active way.

quote:
Or was it a matter of psychological intimacy?
Yeah, this one. This whole chapter is basically meant to flesh out this detail. It's one of the Achilles' Heels of the characters.

Thanks again!

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