posted
This is the first 13 lines of a young adult fantasy novel I'm currently rewriting. Some helpful feedback would be nice so I can see if I'm moving in the right direction or not.
The black mist described in the first 13 lines is a major component of the setting for the entire novel and is basically a character in and of itself.
Let me know if this is something that would make you want to read further or if there are issues that need to be revised or edited. Thanks!
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Inky black fog circled him like he was caught in the eye of a devilish storm. It flowed and billowed like it was alive; like it was hungry. The haze, as it had come to be known, swirled with an ethereal quality that was darkly enchanting. Whenever Lawrence had to journey through it, he couldn’t help but feel like he was entangled in the jaws of a demonic monster, ready to clamp down and smother him in a cloud of pure darkness.
The hair on the back of his neck rose up when a wailing cry of despair wafted through the misty curtain. Pale forms began darting back and forth behind the wall of fog, shrouded in darkness.
He tried to keep his focus on the black ground in front of him, but as always, he looked up and met the eyes of the pale
posted
Hi -- looks like your first post looking for feedback. I like the picture you've painted, but the technique needs some work.
quote:The black mist described in the first 13 lines is a major component of the setting for the entire novel and is basically a character in and of itself.
We don't need to know this for this exercise; in fact it's better if we approach an opening without preconceptions, the way a reader would.
Overall I'd say there's too much rhetoric going on here -- too many words. Try rewriting this with the minimum number of flourishes, redundancies, and similes. It's not that these things are bad, it's just that when you pile it on, far from making the images more vivid, it tends to drain the images of immediacy. The reader has to decode all the technique you've laid on him to get at the picture.
For example: "Inky black fog circled him like he was caught in the eye of a devilish storm," could just be "Black fog circled him." "Devilish storm" is particularly useless here, because the reader has no idea what you're talking about. Is there satanic weather in this world? There might be. When the reader ponders such questions he's not imagining himself in the scene, which is where you want to put him.
Likewise you don't need BOTH the simles "like it was alive" and "like it was hungry". If it's like it's hungry it's like it is alive. In general I think a light touch with similes and metaphors is a good thing, so anytime you can get the same mileage out of one as you do out of two, choose that one. Or don't use it at all.
As for this: "swirled with an ethereal quality that was darkly enchanting," help me picture that.
"He couldn’t help but feel like" -- note that you're avoiding telling us what Lawrence actually feels like; the simile here is just vague handwaving and you're asking the reader to fill in the details.
"Jaws of a demonic monster" -- Again, this simile doesn't help us picture what's going on. Is the demonic monster something we'd find in a Western European folkore , with red skin, horns and wings? Or is it some blue demonic monster from a Tibetan manuscript? I get the sneaking suspicion here that you're being just a little bit timid, that you're telling us that cloud is somehow demonic but are hedging your bets.
This by the way is the problem with metaphors in fantasy and horror openings; until the reader is well into the story he doesn't know what is possible in the story world, so figures of speech get suspected of being literal.
"wailing cry of despair wafted through the misty curtain" -- "Wailing cry of despair" is kind of cliche. "Wafting" makes it sound like its coming from a great distance; if someone wails a cry of despair sitting next to you "waft" is not how you'd describe the sensation. "Misty curtain" -- here is a metaphor that might have the reader thinking there's a curtain in the room. Maybe "curtain of mist?"
"stared hungrily" -- what does that look like?
I'd go on but you get the picture. Pare the language down to the point where there is little redundancy, where ever word tells. Make everything you are trying express clear, and use simile, metaphor and other rhetoric sparingly. See if you can get the reader to feel the way you want him to without obvious cues. Rather than hints to the reader that he should find this spooky, try to make it spooky in just plain language.
Once you've got a plain, working opening, see how that feels. If it's too spare, add the flourishes back one at a time; each one should add something in and of itself. If it doesn't, then piling it in with a bunch of other ones isn't going to bring it to life.
I think almost everybody starts out using too much rhetoric in openings. It's the legacy of all those middle and high school teachers making us use all the tools in the toolbox so we'd know what they were for.
There's a good scene in here, you just have to scrape off all the stuff encrusting it.
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posted
I looked up the word like in my little handy-dandy dictionary: similar to, in a manner characteristic of, bearing a resemblance to . . ., I could go on.
I remember reading the words of an old hand at writing and he had one important piece of advice regarding atmospherics: Don't tell me it's cold, wet and windy; show me your character shivering against a lamp post as the wind drives the rain into the exposed parts of his face while he tries to pull his tattered hat down over his eyes and keep it there.
So, my first piece of advice would be to show me what is happening instead of telling me that what's happening is like something else happening, but not quite.
Next: You open your story with:Inky black fog circled him like . . . Who is this him, and why should I care about him or some inky black fog, other than the fact that fog isn't usually black?
So, in the first sentence you've lost me twice and three times by the end of the second sentence. The cover is now closed and the book returned to the shelf.
Then, as MattLeo says, there are the similes and metaphors. Unlike MattLeo, I like a good simile or metaphorical comparison but a writer needs to be absolutely certain that the words/phrases they choose do not sound either silly or give the wrong impression. I second MattLeo's advice about introducing them early into a fantasy story where the reader has no idea of what is possible or not.
I see this as an attempt to generate interest in the prospective readers mind by attempting to create an interesting and slightly macabre opening. For me, it fell flat.
I'd instead ask the question: What does my reader need to know to understand what is about to happen? And start from there.
posted
Seconded, MattLeo and Grumpy old guy's points about rhetoric and "atmospherics" (weather report ambience) and what is essentially a summary and explanation tell opening. Though their points are valid, why fors valid, a few pointers of a higher hung fruit: show--reality imitation--inverts narrator viewpoint in favor of character viewpoint predominence, internal to a narrative viewpoint. This fragment's viewpoint looks in from the outside, like a report about a film or television episode reported second- or thirdhand.
Simile and metaphor, rhetoric generally, the function of them is emotional attitude commentary; weather, too: commentary. Likewise, modifiers adverb and adjective and phrases thereof: emotional commentary.
The fragment's first sentence, for example: "Inky black fog circled him like he was caught in the eye of a devilish storm." Neutral emotional commentary.
Use of a pronoun, "him," reaches for a de re, of the thing, substance, purpose, a transference to personal agonist viewpoint; however, it signals--implies--a de dicto, of the word, meaning. A strong artistic instinct, delivery less than intended, unclear. De re works when personal--viewpoint agonist character--emotional commentary strongly and clearly expresses reaction to sensory stimuli events.
Note: event, first and foremost, engages readers, and reactions to the event. The viewpoint agonist Lawrence expresses no personal reaction to the event of the circled fog, nor any event of the fragment. Reaction expresses the personal, internal meaning of events. Reaction to events develops settings and characters, their personal, internal-to-a-narrative meanings to a viewpoint agonist: Lawrence. Through the narrator's overt viewpoint, Lawrence expresses no personal meanings of the events. The "praxis," the conscious, volitional, intentional expression of the sequence of events signals only a poet reads a lackluster National Weather Service weather report to a radio audience: a heavy fog conditions advisory.
Though Lawrence has several reactions to the mystical fog, the narrator tells them. They are not interior-to-Lawrence reactions to the events.
Event, itself, is underdeveloped. Lawrence moves through the fog. Why? Where does he go for what purpose? What does he want? Is he a tourist enjoying the creepy fog? Dramatic complication development and especially emotional disequilibrium therefrom have neither begun nor cued up. The fragment holds plot and story movement in abeyance because Lawrence has no motive, no influence, no purpose for moving through the fog.
Because the fog is a "character," the character's basic nature and behavior must also include influence, agency, upon the other character, Lawrence, of the scene and vice versa, Lawrence's influence upon the fog. Both must have a motive for their interaction; neither need be direct, nor above board, nor even exactly what they intend, better, actually, if their motives and interpretations of each other are erroneous misapprehensions.
The artistic instincts are strong for this fragment's introduction functions, including the rhetoric; however, they fall flat from shortcomings in event and reaction to event and motive intent development.
Punctuation fault: "him, but as always, he looked up" The conjunction "but" connects "he looked up" to the sentence's first clause, "He tried to keep his focus on the black ground in front of him". "as always" is a stand-alone parenthetical aside. The commas should bracket the aside: //him but, as always, he looked up//
The aside, however, is the narrator's commentary, though the intent is the comment originates from Lawrence.
Note that the two principal clauses of the sentence both relate to Lawrence's eyesight, parallel ideas apropos of a conjunction join. Both clauses are complete, independent clauses: subject, predicate, object. A semicolon is warranted before "but." However, the parenthetical aside breaks the two clauses apart already and, therefore, the semicolon is discretionary. //He tried to keep his focus on the black ground in front of him[;] but, as always, he looked up and met the eyes of the pale creatures in the dark.//
By the way, at this time, before Ms. Dalton Woodbury edits for length, the fragment's thirteen lines ends after "pale" of the last paragraph. The fragment is three lines over.
posted
Thanks for your feedback! That really helps give me a better idea of how to get the story started off on the right foot.
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posted
Just to be clear, Phil, I'm not against similes per se. I just believe openings are a place where some things work a little differently than they do in the rest of the story.
I don't ever believe in saying "never" to something like similes in an opening. It's not figurative language in general that's a problem, it's figurative language that is anything less than perfectly vivid and unambiguous. In the middle of a story I think a reader just skims over a simile that is less than perfect and takes away a vague impression of what the author means him to be picturing. That's less than ideal, but not particularly harmful once the reader is committed to the story.
At the start of a story however, less-than-perfect similes undermine the reader's confidence that he's correctly decoding precisely what the author means him to. I believe that can put him in the mindset of critiquing his own reading just when he should be entering the story world uncritically.
Anyhow that's just one theory I came up with to explain an observation I've made many, many times: figurative language in openings has a particularly high incidence of mis-firing. Another possibility that the extra work involved in interpreting a weak simile or metaphor is simply more noticeable before the reader is fully committed to the story.
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quote:Originally posted by MattLeo: figurative language in openings has a particularly high incidence of mis-firing. Another possibility that the extra work involved in interpreting a weak simile or metaphor is simply more noticeable before the reader is fully committed to the story.
Any rhetorical figure or scheme: metaphor, simile, irony, metalepsis, oxymoron, satire, symbolism, ad infinitum; ideally serves the purpose of engaging readers' full committment to a story. Rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion. At the least, rhetoric persuades readers to read. Ideally, though, as the best practice, rhetoric persuades readers' emotional reactions, which, in turn, persuade readers to read.
Plot's very function and purpose is emotional persuasion, as well as every writing principle bar none. Easy to claim plot is a natural sequence of causal events, as E.M. Forester does in Aspects of the Novel. That's the organizational purpose of plot, the what contexture. Why and how, there are plot's function rub: emotionally!
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quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: Rhetoric is the art and science of persuasion. At the least, rhetoric persuades readers to read. ... Plot's very function and purpose is emotional persuasion, as well as every writing principle bar none.
Agreed and agreed. But it does not follow that any particular use of a rhetorical device is necessarily going to succeed at persuasion. Where you place the device and what goes around it is critical.
Take the most famous use of anaphora in modern times, Churchill's "We Shall Fight Them on the Beaches" address:
quote:We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender...
This use of anaphora was exquisitely timed -- both as to where it falls in the speech and the exact moment in history the speech was given. Place it a few paragraphs earlier or give the speech a few days earlier and the effect would be ruined. Churchill's response to the seemingly miraculous rescue of the BEF from Dunkirk was to give a long and intentionally sobering speech about the immensity of the challenges they faced. Then he ended with this immense flourish of rhetoric. The idea I think was to convert the momentary elation at the return of hope into something that might last for a few months or years.
In Britain it's become something of a comic trope to have a character allude to this passage. That's because without the right context and build-up such a heavy dose of rhetoric sounds pompous.
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posted
Churchill uses anaphora and epistrophe, anaphora's opposite, there, or precisely, symploce: "The combination of anaphora and epistrophe: beginning a series of lines, clauses, or sentences with the same word or phrase while simultaneously repeating a different word or phrase at the end of each element in this series" (Brown Silva Rhetoricae).
Bully and church pulpit orality, and pep talks, are especially persuasive when a number of rhetorical schemes and tropes are timely and judiciously used, the repetition, substitution, and amplification schemes of anaphora, espistrophe, and symploce particularly. Not to mention decorum's role: "A central rhetorical principle requiring one's words and subject matter be aptly fit to each other, to the circumstances and occasion (kairos), the audience, and the speaker" (Brown). Narrative starts use of strong rhetoric is challenging. Timeliness, judiciousness, and apropos, opportune occasion suited to the emotional contexture guide rhetoric deployment, as noted about Churchill's signal speech.
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