Hatrack River Writers Workshop   
my profile login | search | faq | forum home

  next oldest topic   next newest topic
» Hatrack River Writers Workshop » Forums » Fragments and Feedback for Short Works » first 13 lines of The Fear of Evil.

   
Author Topic: first 13 lines of The Fear of Evil.
celtic_lord88
New Member
Member # 3536

 - posted      Profile for celtic_lord88   Email celtic_lord88         Edit/Delete Post 
I couldn't decide which 13 lines. this is the first 13 lines.
Reykjavik, Iceland
“Master, our food supply is running dangerously low and the vampires are growing sick of the blood of animals. They want the fresh blood of humans.”
The voice was from a small old man. His face was wrinkled and one of his eyes was replaced with a glass eye and his voice was very scratchy.
“How many times do I have to tell you, Abraham,” said a man in the shadows. “Only a few more weeks and my plans will be completed.”
The man stepped out of the darkness and into the light. The light around him dimmed substantially. His skin was less wrinkled than Abraham, but his skin was very pale. His hair was grey and his eyes were as dark and eerie as the abyss.

Posts: 3 | Registered: Jul 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Sara Genge
Member
Member # 3468

 - posted      Profile for Sara Genge   Email Sara Genge         Edit/Delete Post 
I'm not the best around here for commenting. I'm not yet trained to be a great reader but I'll give it a go. Hope this helps. I'll work line by line, which is what I do in my own stories, hope you don't mind me quoting.

"Reykjavik, Iceland
“Master, our food supply is running dangerously low and the vampires are growing sick of the blood of animals. They want the fresh blood of humans.”"

There's a couple of things wrong with this:
1. Starting with dialogue is tough. The reason you've gone for it, I think, is because that's what would happen in a movie: the camera would zoom into the characters and they'd start to talk.
In writing we don't have some of the advantages of cinema: we can't SEE the characters so having them speak before we know them doesn't do much for most readers. It's like hearing a scrap of conversation in a restorant from the table behind you. If the conversation is interesting you might TURN AROUND and look at the people speaking. That's when you get hooked, because they become real people instead of anonymous voices.
In literature we've got the advantage of being able to see what's going on in a person's head: choose a character and show us what he thinks.
2. The dialogue doesn't work. It sounds a little like the "As you know, Bob, the flesh-eating aliens"... Your characters are telling each other things they already know. It destroys the readers confidence in the writer and makes it difficult to suspend disbelief. Work that info into the plot in the next four or five lines.

------------------------------------------------------------
"The voice was from a small old man. His face was wrinkled and one of his eyes was replaced with a glass eye and his voice was very scratchy."
--------------------------------------------------------------
Modifiers! Cut any adjectives that aren't strickly necessary. I'm thinkin of "small" in "small old man". You use "was" a lot. The verb "to be" is empty of any meaning, it only links subjects to objects. Try using strong verbs, even in description. "The voice came from an old man. His face creased around a glass eye..." Or whatever, you can do better than me.
-------------------------------------------------------
"“How many times do I have to tell you, Abraham,” said a man in the shadows. “Only a few more weeks and my plans will be completed.”"
--------------------------------------------------------------

Same thing I said about the first part of dialogue: characters telling each other what they already know

-------------------------------------------------------------
"The man stepped out of the darkness and into the light. The light around him dimmed substantially. "
-------------------------------------------------------------

I like this. It's kind of comic-book-ish but if you like that effect go for it.
----------------------------------------------------------
"His skin was less wrinkled than Abraham, but his skin was very pale. His hair was grey and his eyes were as dark and eerie as the abyss"
---------------------------------------------------------------
Same thing as in the last description.

Hope that helped


Posts: 507 | Registered: Jun 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
Survivor
Member
Member # 213

 - posted      Profile for Survivor   Email Survivor         Edit/Delete Post 
POV.
Posts: 8322 | Registered: Aug 1999  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
oliverhouse
Member
Member # 3432

 - posted      Profile for oliverhouse   Email oliverhouse         Edit/Delete Post 
Celtic_lord88,

quote:
I couldn't decide which 13 lines.

It's always the first 13. That fact, and the reason for it, is contained in the "Read Here First" section.

I've got you as one line too long: it should end with "His hair was".

I agree with Survivor's cryptic comment: you have no POV (point of view). We're not inside anyone's head; we're seeing everything as if it were on a movie screen.

In written fiction, you don't need to stick with the limitations of movies, and you shouldn't. Get inside one of the character's heads, and show how they think about the situation. Is your POV character Abraham? Then you can characterize both him and the other vampire by showing us how Abraham feels about him (Abraham is worried that Dracula won't care about the other vampires, or that he's gone insane; or he's confident that Dracula will come up with a plan). Is it Dracula? Same situation (Dracula hates the filthy runt's pathetic whining; or Dracula cares deeply for his brood, and wonders how he can help them feed without bringing the wrath of humans).

One thing to note: if your POV character is Dracula, I'd start with a description from his POV before Abraham speaks, just to anchor that POV in the reader's mind.

quote:
"Master, our food supply is running dangerously low and the vampires are growing sick of the blood of animals. They want the fresh blood of humans."

This is a fairly standard horror conflict situation, and my initial thought is that there'd better be something interesting happening here or I'll assume that it'll be an overused plot, too.

The rest of this post deals with mechanics.

quote:
The voice was from a small old man. His face was wrinkled and one of his eyes was replaced with a glass eye and his voice was very scratchy.

Look at how many time you use the word "was" here. Very generally speaking, overuse of forms of "to be" indicates a struggle to express yourself forcefully, and often leads to an excessive number of extraneous words.

Richard Lanham, UCLA Professor of English, has an excellent book called "Revising Prose". In it, he describes the "Paramedic Method", which I've found extremely helpful for (go figure) revising prose with exactly this problem. He calls the extraneous words the "lard factor". Here's a link to a quick synopsis of the method:

http://writing2.richmond.edu/writing/wweb/concise.html

Also, your sentence construction is a little off, with a series of clauses strung together with "and". Sometimes an example helps:

"One of the eyes in his wrinkled face was made of glass, and his voice was very scratchy."

Note that Lanham's paramedic method could be used on this little edit, too, to make it better; but also note that it would be much easier if you named your character right out (generally a good idea) instead of just talking about "the voice":

quote:
"Master," Abraham said, "our food supply [snip]." His glass eye stared idiotically from his wrinkled face. Dracula considered the consequences of tearing out the throat that emitted such a scratchy voice, and decided against it.

(You can see that I'm describing him from Dracula's POV, which serves double duty: characterizing Dracula and describing Abraham. Orson Scott Card discusses this in his book on characterization.)

You're a little repetitious, too: "and into the light. The light was...", "His skin was..., but his skin was..." And even the structure's a little repetitious: "His skin was... but his skin was... His hair was..." Shoot for a bit more variety, trying not to force it, but maybe writing the way you would talk.

If you're looking for someone to critique your whole story, you should say that up front. If you'd like me to do that, I'll steal it from the original Web page and email you the results.

Regards,
Oliver


Posts: 671 | Registered: May 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
wbriggs
Member
Member # 2267

 - posted      Profile for wbriggs   Email wbriggs         Edit/Delete Post 
Yep. It's just more interesting to see something from within a person's POV. It's easier to care about one person than a situation.

Your POV is cinematic. Legitimate, but less fun, and TV does it better anyway.

Recommended reading: Characters and Viewpoint, OSC. Discusses all this POV stuff.


Posts: 2830 | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
oliverhouse
Member
Member # 3432

 - posted      Profile for oliverhouse   Email oliverhouse         Edit/Delete Post 
I second wbriggs's recommendation. Outstanding book for understanding point of view and its use in characterization.
Posts: 671 | Registered: May 2006  |  IP: Logged | Report this post to a Moderator
   

   Close Topic   Feature Topic   Move Topic   Delete Topic next oldest topic   next newest topic
 - Printer-friendly view of this topic
Hop To:


Contact Us | Hatrack River Home Page

Copyright © 2008 Hatrack River Enterprises Inc. All rights reserved.
Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.


Powered by Infopop Corporation
UBB.classic™ 6.7.2