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"It's not right," I said, shaking my head, "and I know it's not right. But I can't figure it."

Carly, my ex-wife, leaned against the stone railing and frowned down into the river. She had more lines in her face these days, and the black dress and good haircut made her look professional. Even the sunglasses seemed more expensive and grown up. Still too thin, though.

Two kids came across the bridge on bicycles, whooping and yelling at each other. We were quiet while they passed.

Carly took a joint out of her handbag, put the whole thing in her mouth and pulled it out again, damping it with spit before she lit it. It was one of my old pet peeves, like the way she left the shower on while she was drying off and watched my email over my shoulder. This time, it was good to see, just because it made things easier. Still a nasty habit, though.

"So who is the guy?" she asked.

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[This message has been edited by Jerome Vall (edited February 02, 2004).]

I've cut it down to what looks like 13 lines to me (I'm the last word on these things), and I've corrected a couple of typos.

[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited February 02, 2004).]

I corrected another typo.

Two things that really distracted me.

1. The accidental rhymes in the first few lines are really distracting. "I said, shaking my head," and "frowned down." Both of these could have been rewritten without the rhyme. Anyway, how does one "frown down" into a river?

2. There's too much backstory and not enough story-story. I admit, the story it really about the man and his ex-wife, but I think this backstory would have worked better if it had been pushed back out of the opening.

The one thing I did like was this: the kids on the bicycles. A nice touch. However, I think it would have been more dramatic to have them appear after she had pulled out the joint -- or at least have her reaching into her handbag when the kids appear. Make the whole thing a bit more furtive, thereby sharpening the image of the character just a little better. It's a minor point, I admit, but sometimes the minor points and make or break a story.

If we were going to use the "Hook, Line, and Stinker" pun, I'd probably put this in the "Stinker" category. But that's me.

quote:

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"It's not right," I said, shaking my head, "and I know it's not right. But I can't figure it."

---

The kids posed distraction which sets up for the next paragraph about the joint, which goes on to show that some things do not change.

So just from this opening I get the impression that the story has to do with change, but for some reason the change is not what is expected.

Now from the first few lines, I would be inclined to stop reading. The trouble is, I've seen relatively few short stories in F&SF I'd be inclined to read past the first 13 lines. They seem to routinely break the oh so important rules laid down for short stories.

For example, it starts with dialogue. Every time I try a dialogue start it gets beaten to the ground. But more importantly, these lines do not really start anything.

Darkstorm, your analysis is correct. It does have a sense of change, and yet a sense of things still being the same. I'm afraid that for me, this is not enough to keep reading. In the first few lines I want to feel a sense of tension or danger. I'm not talking about an action packed hook, but aside for some annoying at his ex-wife, I don't feel any sense of urgency or even real conflict.

I don't know about the rules of a short-story, Christine, but I do know depending on which opening you choose, the 13-line rule may or may not apply. If, for example, your beginning is dialogue, action, or thoughts, the first 13-lines are very important. But if you start off with exposition or description, you can't judge these openings based solely on its first 13 lines. These openings are usually slower, perking our interest here and there, and they gradually lead us to the main conflict.

I thought it was a good opening, performing not only well, but effectivly. What I mean is, it intrigued me. I wasn't exactly entranced by it, but the passage created a curiosity that would bide me to continue, had I the entire short story in my hand. I don't like stopping until I'm well into a story, when I've decided whether or not I'm interested in what happens, whether or not I care about the characters. Sometimes I don't, and stopping in the middle, or even near the end, really, doesn't much bother me. That, I think, is a failure on the part of the author.

I like the third paragraph. It kind of breaks the focus away from these two people, showing that, while they're the main characters of this passage, they're not the only people in the world. It breaks the feeling that this is a solitary set on a stage somewhere and makes it more real for me.

I like the fourth paragraph, too. It's backstory, true, but it's a backstory that the narrator would think of when she pulled out the joint.

All in all, I'd give it a hesitant "Hook" rating (due in large part to the last line; I want to know who the guy is), if that's the system we're using.

I at first thought this was starting a novel, and even then it was borderline slow.

For a short story, certainly not. It's too expositive, stuff like:

quote:

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Two kids came across the bridge on bicycles, whooping and yelling at each other. We were quiet while they passed.

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is a little too much for me.

The pet peeve part, on the other hand, I liked, as it really shows how far they have come. Though it's effective, I think it could have been better with only one example, let her leaving the shower on.

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I can’t be completely objective about the opening after the reading experience, but by trying to forget the rest of it, it seems that there is the problem that the dialog, while posing a question, is not substantiated by the description into a puzzle that has any immediate meaning. It is disjointed. And while the bicycles are a nice touch of detail and set part of the tone for the conversation (secretive), they also serve to further break up the story.

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I have never read this story, but it sounds like this guy is coming out of the closet to his ex-wife.

The author doesn't paint a very clear picture of... anything.

And then it all got drowned in what seemed like irrelevant detail.

I was curious as to why he was hanging out with his ex and I was curious about why this woman who seems to look more grown/professional up since the divorce was lighting up a joint outside where anyone could see her. The relationship has an authentic feel to it, the characters seem as though they could, in the course of a short story, reflect the idiosyncratic quality of real live human beings.

I guess what I'm saying is, though there was perhaps too much detail about the characters and not enough hint as to the story, the detail interested me.