Avalon stirred once more in the bright sunshine of a new day. She plopped her pillow on her head and cursed her sheer lace curtains for the hundredth time. She was struggling to keep the final images of her latest dream in her mind. Ugh! They were slipping away. She closed her eyes again, and saw a woman with flame-red hair being swallowed up in mist, the colors running together like cold drops of rain on a window. The vision was fading-- oh, there it went. Rubbing her eyes, and blinking, the dark-haired girl rolled over, threw her pillow on the floor and wrinkled her freckled nose. "I almost saw her face this time!" she cried.
Avalon thought back to the many strange but similar dreams she had been having for the last month or so. They all had something to do with a woman on a hillside in the midst of a pounding storm. She had tried over and over again to analyze the dream. But she only became frustrated, and was starting to dread sleep.
[This message has been edited by Lullaby Lady (edited May 11, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by Lullaby Lady (edited May 11, 2004).]
Seriously, though, alarm bells rungs from the wak up aspect of this. Your last line gave me a clue as to where you might want to reconsider starting....she was beginning to drew sleep. So start with her in the evening, preparing for bed, perhaps delaying the inevitable going to sleep where she will dream of...
Just a thought. Other than that, I will nit-pick about the "Dark haired girl"...this felt out of POV tome because when I wake up I don't think "the brown haired girl..." But maybe you do.
Is this a novel or a short story? It actually does grab my attention, though I think it could maybe be stronger. If it's a short story, feel free to sent it to me. If it's a novel, maybe just the first chapter or so.
Okay, do you remember my post a month or so back (on the Open Discussion board) about a story's plot moving along in dream sequences? This is the one...
posted
No, this clearly has to be set when she's waking up, because the dream and her inability to remember it clearly are important plot elements that introduce the dramatic tension. That event occurs when she wakes up, not at any other time. If you tried to start the story next time she's going to sleep, then you would be stuck using a flashback to when she woke up that morning and couldn't remember the dream. Just because something feels good doesn't mean you shouldn't do it, after all.
Total agreement on the "dark haired girl" bit, though. I actually didn't spot it as a POV violation so much as a really odd element, "Hey! What's this dark-haired girl doing in my bed?" (Not saying I would find such an event totally objectionable, just really surprising). But if the dark-haired girl is supposed to be Avalon, then yes, it's a doozy of a POV violation and confusing as anything.
Don't delete it, just fix it...
Some other things:
"Sheer lace curtains" need to be explained (the SLC her evil step-mother used to redecorate her room, the SLC specifically intended to make sure she rose with the sun, the SLC some wicked voyuer had foisted on her in hopes of seeing more than he ought) or just left out of the equation. They don't explain why she doesn't have real curtains, they only raise thAt question and the question of why she has useless lace curtains instead.
To a lesser extent, the first line really doesn't do well. Instead of communicating that she is waking from an important dream, it just says that she wakes up in the morning...rather an unspectacular observation. Sure, I almost never do it myself, but I wasn't intriqued when shedid it. Ditto for the "She was struggling" bit. If we already knew she was waking up from an important dream, that line could be both punchier and more meaningful.
"Avalon thought back to the many strange but similar dreams...." Wrong, this wording destroys the naceant confidence we'd been developing in the importance of her dreams. "This dream came to her night after night, the woman in the storm, and Avalon was becoming frustrated with her inability to discern the meaning of it." (Note the strategic ambiguity of the first use of "her", it makes sense either way, and the duel reading invests the sentence with a slight tension--note also how fond I am of pointing out my own cleverness )
Printer-friendly view of this topic
)
)
