posted
These are the first thirteen lines of a fantasy short story. I think it will be in the 4 to 5K ballpark when it's done. I had my wisdom teeth taken out today, and I can't focus on writing, so I thought I'd send the opening out and see how it sits. I'll let other people work while I eat icecream.
---
Grace's cat was sitting on her face, sounding as if a badly tuned jet engine were idling in her ear. She shoved the cat away, ignoring its mew of protest. Rolling onto her stomach, she burrowed under the pillow as the cat immediately began walking up her spine. This was why she had stopped sleeping with her door open. It took another moment for her brain to process the obvious thought.
Her bedroom door was open.
She began an internal battle. If it was nearly morning, then she might as well let the cat stay in the room. On the other hand, if it was still the middle of the night then the cat would be on her head all night and she’d never get any sleep. But climbing out of bed and ejecting the cat meant that she would have to wake up a little bit more. She burrowed farther under the pillows.
Something shattered on the floor. Grace froze, suddenly and completely awake. The lamp. If the cat was on her back, then what knocked over the lamp?
posted
Nice. I did find the first sentance a bit strange.
For one thing, what does a badly tuned jet engine have to do with anything? I don't think that you even tune jet engines...and the nearest equivalent would be adjusting the blade geometry (not possible on most existing models of jet engine).
A more serious problem is that "her ear" is an undefined reference. I suppose that technically "her face" is also an undefined reference, but we aren't expecting the cat to be sitting on her own face, whereas we are expecting that the noise made by the cat comes from the cat's anatomy.
But such is the nature of a first line...nothing is in place yet. I like the opening as a whole. The first line could be a bit better. What flavor ice cream?
posted
As a whole, I like this beginning. I would consider removing the third pragraph, hoewver. Well, at least, as it stands now. You say that "Her bedroom door was open." in a paragraph all by itself, giving it enough importance that I assumed your POV character had just come aware of it in a startled fit of fear. Then you go backwards, removing the suspense as I get irritated with her.
On the other hand, if you want this idea, that the door was open, to saturate her sleep-soaked brain more slowly, then you should cut paragraph two and put the information at the beginning of paragraph three in a more sleepy sort of tone...."How had the cat gotten in? Had she left the door open? Maybe he learned to open it, he had been trying to turn the knob...."
Anyway, just some thoughts. But basically, I'm hooked.
posted
I thought your opening worked well. I think Christine's suggestion about "how the cat got in" would add to the scene. The only suggestion I would make is that the use of burrowed twice is distracting.
Posts: 397 | Registered: Mar 2004
|
posted
Crème brûleé. It's lovely, except that there are pieces of hard caramel that I have to pick out.
Thanks, good points.
Survivor, among other things, I've just realized that the reason I used the jet engine imagery was because of the amount of air travel I've done in the past month. It's not the right image for Grace. (Which I thought about, in part, because of Kathleen's comments about "gift horse") The jet engine is outta there!
I hope these brilliant realizations don’t turn out to be holdovers from the anesthetic…
Christine: I chopped the third paragraph. I think it was left over from the thinking phase of writing. I don't want to build up the fear too much, because the thing that knocked over the lamp is not scary. BUT you also made me realize that I hadn't named the wee beasty, and hadn't even given the poor thing a gender. Since the cat in your example was male, so is mine. Tempting to name him Myles...
Kickle: The second burrowing is now gone. Ironically, that came in because I was trying to fix a spot where I used the word “shoved” twice.
---
Grace's cat was sitting on her face. His purr sounded as if a mixer were stirring gravel in her ear. She shoved Malkin away, ignoring the cat's mew of protest. Rolling onto her stomach, she burrowed under the pillow as he immediately began walking up her spine. This was why she had stopped sleeping with her door open. It took another moment for her brain to process the obvious thought.
Her bedroom door was open.
Something shattered on the floor. Grace froze, suddenly and completely awake. The lamp. If the cat was on her back, then what had knocked over the lamp?
She tried to pretend to be asleep. Her heart pounded, the sound resonating where her ear pressed against the mattress. Her eyes were wide open under the darkness of the pillow. She felt suffocated.
What had knocked over the lamp?
For a moment, the stillness in the room let her think she was dreaming. Then she heard the soft shush of a broom and the tinkling sound of glass being swept.
---
Bonus points! I've got passive voice on the very last line here, which bugs me. For the life of me, I can't think of how to rewrite that. Well, okay, I did have one idea. Is this better? "Then she heard the soft shush of a broom against the tinkling sound of broken glass."
The best idea gets an icecream the next time I'm in the same area code as the suggestee. Suggestor?
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited June 23, 2004).]
posted
In "glass being swept," "being swept" actually functions as an adjective. Don't worry about passive voice here. (Besides, the way you have it emphasizes that we don't know who or what is doing the sweeping.) Leave it.
My daughter correctly suggests moving the cat's name one "cat" earlier, at least. Actually, I think the best place would be "Grace's cat, Malkin, . . ."
posted
The idea of taking that even further, leaving the fact that he's purring to imply that he's a cat, and changing the first sentence to "Malkin was sitting on Grace's face" is somehow amusing. Perhaps a little too distracting to include in the story, though
This is good. And you now seem to be getting to the story quickly. The last sentence reads fine to me, BTW, I wouldn't worry about it. Any rephrasing is likely to be harder to understand.
posted
Okay then. I'll leave the line as written. Which means that I get the ice cream, I guess.
Malkin is not a major player in this story, so I don't want to personalize him too much, but I will move his name "one cat" closer.
quote:Malkin was sitting Grace's face
That is a whooooole other type of story.
P.S. Hey. Did you know that if you scroll to the bottom of a post that you've already edited, then you can delete the "This message edited.." tag? That way, only the latest edit date shows. Nifty.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited June 23, 2004).]
I don't mind the passive voice in this case. One thing about passive voice...whenever it appears in my story it bugs me. This is because passive voice - bad is a referenc in my head. This is not always true, and I've come up with some bungled up sentences trying to work around it. Here are a few examples from my own writing:
He was arrested. : The police arrested him, I suppose, but often when I say that someone was arrested they are the subject I care about and who arrested them is not important. But it is passive voice.
Oh, here's one I even have posted in F&F for my most recent story: It had been condemned until a year ago...Thbis is passive voice because the house was condemned by someone....but I couldn't care less who did the condemning, and I suppose the reader doesn't either. :-)
OK, enough about passive voice. I like the new opening better. It gets to the point faster and just feels like it's a quicker pace.
posted
OK. I'm taking the ice cream challenge. Try this:
Then she heard the tinkling of broken glass and the soft shush of a broom sweeping the shattered remains of the lamp across the floor.
One more thing that hasn't been mentioned--there have been times when I have been awakened or startled by unexpected noises in my home and I don't think I would have reacted exactly as she did. I buy the 'she froze' only to a point. The last time hubby and I were disturbed by an odd noise we were both up and out of bed so fast searching for a baseball bat that the cat (if we had one) would have been flung across the room. I want to be more convinced as to her reason for staying frozen in her bed, pretending she's asleep. Try a paragraph that is a fast-paced run-on of thoughts and panics and horrors that her brain dreams up of what might have knocked over that lamp as she's lying there wondering what to do and have this though process interrupted by the sound of the sweeping.
IE. "Her heart pounded. What or who had knocked over the lamp? A burglar? A rapist? A freak wind? Oh, God, please let it be a freak wind!
Then she heard the soft shush of..."
And darlin' I feel your pain. I just had my first root canal today. I've been suffering with toothache pain for a couple of weeks now, been to the dentist three times, tried to save the tooth without the RC, but, since I'm never typical, nothing worked but the most drastic. I was ready to pull the darn thing out myself at about 2:30 this morning--do a Castaway thing, ya know? At least I'm not relegated to eating ice cream and nothing else (is that a positive here?) Maybe I'll just pretend that I am. Yeah! That's it! The kids won't notice when all the mint-chocolate-chip suddenly disappears, will they?
posted
Heh heh heh. It has been demonstrated that you can buy icecream from the local creamery here from anywhere and instruct them to hold it for a third party. I was instrumental in this discovery when I posted an amusing E-mail from my brother lamenting his ice-cream addiction.
posted
I had been putting off having my wisdom teeth removed for the last two years. I finally ran out of excuses. Mint-chocolate chip icecream... Ohhhh. To have something that crunches.
Actually Dakota, you've raised a point that I'm also struggling with. I'm cheating, a little, with the opening, because Grace has reason to know that there are other things in the house besides the cat. "Who had knocked over the lamp?" would be just a valid a question. But, I like the tension that's in the opening I don't want to let go of it too soon.
Would this do it for you? "She tried to pretend to be asleep. If she stayed very still, then whatever was out there might leave her alone. Her heart pounded, the sound resonating where her ear pressed against the mattress, seeming to signal that she was awake."
As soon as she hears the broom, she knows what's there. It's the sentence after my alotted thirteen lines.
posted
I've read it and read it and just can't get over that the tension is too obviously building to the idea that no one else should be in the house at all. Maybe by simply adding: This was why she had stopped sleeping with her door open--to keep the cat, among other things, out.
And if what you say is true than her 'freezing' and coming 'suddenly and completely awake,' is an overreaction that tends to lead the reader to believe that she may be in danger, rather than simply bothered by something that is, to her, not unexpected. And I don't think you necessarily give up tension by making that more clear. In fact you retain the tension without letting the reader down by pulling a mickey on them. Ya know?
posted
Everybody's different. I didn't have a problem with her trying to figure out what had happened before responding to it.
I was a bit puzzled when (in the second posted version) she goes from totally heart-pounding awareness to thinking she must have dreamed it. But I can easily wake 1000% alert and be quite cautious at the same time.
It isn't because I'm imagining horrors either. If I think a mouse or other small pest may be in my room, I'll wait to see if it makes any more noise that I can track before I move or turn on a light. If I think it might be a larger animal (cat-sized to gorrila-sized), then I certainly want to ID it before I greet it with a "hello" or a bat to the head.
Mayb DJ doesn't have kids or pets running around. But for someone that does have pets, identifying the source of a bump (or crash) in the night is second nature. It would be tragic if you were to shoot your own, after all. And both tragic and macabre to try using a squirt-gun on what turns out to be a knife-weilding maniac.
Of course, before I'm actually conscious none of these fine, rational proceedures applies.
posted
Hmm.... food for thought. I might need to just finish the story before I tweak the beginning too much more.
Posts: 2022 | Registered: Jul 2003
|
posted
Three kids (one who sleepwalks), one dog (sometimes two when her buddy comes to spend a weekend). And when something wakes me in the middle of the night or at a time when everything should otherwise be quite peaceful, my mother bear instinct kicks in and the adrenaline goes crazy.
So I guess what I want from Mary is a more convincing reason to believe that the lamp crashing is not so entirely out of the ordinary that her protag's reaction wouldn't be similar to mine--or at least keep her tense reaction from cooling so quickly. When she freezes I'm immediately thinking fear, but I don't get any convincing reason for her to stop fearing and I'm disappointed that the moment of tension isn't built upon or, in my opinion, resolved.
Anyway, I'm feeling much better today. And I am grateful to no longer be in such excruciating pain that I thought I was going to die. Did I tell you, my sister had a root canal last week. She says she'd rather give birth to ten children through her nostrils than have another absessed tooth. I agree! The root canal was a blessing after suffering through the night before it.
How are you holding up? Still pain free? Or has the trauma caught up with you? And what flavor of ice cream today? Lucky girl!
posted
Still pain free. Though I think they left something in my mouth, but explaining that will involve gory details that no one wants to hear.
Today I graduated to Avocado. Mmmm. I tried babyfood. It's disgusting.
I laughed out loud at your sister's description of her rootcanal. I'm so sorry to laugh at someone else's pain, but dang. That's funny.
Now for my other pain. I did post a new draft after this, but I think I'm just moving words around. I'll wait till I've got the whole story finished and then ask for readers.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited June 25, 2004).]
Printer-friendly view of this topic
Ironically, that came in because I was trying to fix a spot where I used the word “shoved” twice. 
