---
Vanessa studied the scar on the back of her hand as she pretended to ignore the couple arguing beside her. Iliath and Geroth would probably never notice the slight blemish. They were Husiths, the sentient species on a planet a lifetime away from Earth. To her eyes, Husiths were ugly, lumpy creatures with skin like mealworms. Hundreds of supple fingers bristled from their underbellies, expressing their moods and providing traction as they inched through underground cities.
Geroth had asked her to turn off her cameras as soon as the argument started. It was no wonder; he and Iliath had repeated variations of the same discussion a dozen times over the last month. There was no need to include one more sample in the documentary of his life. Iliath wanted Geroth to undergo Chrysalis. Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise.
Unfortunately, I'm still swamped with college-y, graduation-y stuff. Can I read it anyway (pretty please)?
I will write you a critique, I promise. I just can't promise (or even predict) when it will show up....
If not, that's ok too. Let me know!
Comments on this opening, I think that it could be rearranged a bit. A rough re-cut might look like this.
quote:
Vanessa studied the scar on the back of her hand as she pretended to ignore the couple arguing beside her. Geroth had asked her to turn off her cameras as soon as the argument started. It was no wonder; he and Iliath had repeated variations of the same discussion a dozen times over the last month. There was no need to include one more sample in the documentary of his life. It didn't take much effort to seem more interested in her own hand.Iliath and Geroth would probably never notice the slight blemish. They were Husiths, the sentient species on a planet a lifetime away from Earth. To her eyes, Husiths were ugly, lumpy creatures with skin like mealworms. Hundreds of supple fingers bristled from their underbellies, expressing their moods and providing traction as they inched through underground cities. She certainly wouldn't notice a blemish on either of them, and the reverse seemed probable. Besides, they had other things to talk about.
Iliath wanted Geroth to undergo Chrysalis. Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise.
Italics are mine
This isn't necessarily the way you want the opening structured, the point is to make sure that the narrative has a progression that makes sense, one idea leading to the next.
Anyway, I hope you got the time dilation aspects under control and everything.
Thanks, all, for the offers. Let me digest the first round of responses and then I'll send it over.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited April 23, 2005).]
Oh well
Well what about this one?---
Vanessa cleaned the lens of her camera as she pretended to ignore Geroth and Iliath arguing beside her. As soon as the argument had started, Geroth asked Vanessa to turn off her cameras. There was no need to include one more sample in the documentary of his life.
Geroth and his betrothed brayed their points like sea-lions mating. Russ, her audio guy, was probably loving that. He never seemed to get tired of the cries of Husiths, the sentient species on a planet a lifetime away from Earth. Over the last month, he must have recorded dozens of variations of the same discussion.
Iliath wanted Geroth to undergo Chrysalis. Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited April 25, 2005).]
There was no need to include one more sample (of their perpetual disagreement) in the documentary of his life.
Geroth and his betrothed brayed their points like sea-lions mating. <==== Great stuff!!
Over the last month, he (Vanessa? She?) must have recorded dozens of variations of the same discussion.
Geroth wanted to stave it off until he finished his mathematical treatise. - I might have chosen "forestall" instead of "stave it off", only because "forestall" has the word "stall" which he is trying to do, and "stave it off" sounds like he is trying to stop it forever (although he isn't)
Either way, this sounds interesting and is very readable thus far.
Point one is a good, but I'm too jet-lagged to fix it right now.
And point two? That's crazy talk, man. 
The first sentence is still clumsy, though. The emotional part (ignoring an argument) is important, the mundane part (cleaning a lens) is not. Why do you lead with the mundane? It makes your narrator self-absorbed in subtle ways. Is this what you intended?
I'd be honored to read it when you have a suitable draft ready, MaryRobinette.
If you still have people reading the whole thing I would gladly take a look at it for you.
Of course you should not make your scenes into pablum, either. So I'll reword my question:
Was the choice to put cause after effect conscious or unconscious?
It was a concious choice. Although I understand and agree with the idea of cause and effect, I also think that one can look at structure in terms of focus. So, the effect I wanted was to start with an outside focus by beginning with what she is apparently doing. In other words, from an outside point of view, Vanessa is simply cleaning her lens. But then we "zoom in" to the inside, to what she's thinking.
So that's why I did it that way. Did it work?
The part I'm unhappy with is the transition from sentence two to sentence three. It seems abrupt, but I have larger issues in the story itself, so I'll handle that bit of wordsmithery when I have motivations ironed out.
That tells us a lot about her character. It's a great establishing shot for your POV.
---
Vanessa cleaned the lens of her camera as she pretended to ignore Geroth and Iliath arguing beside her. This abrupt halt of the day's work was becoming unbearably regular. Even if Geroth had not asked her to, Vanessa might have turned the camera off as soon as Iliath had said, "Beloved, would you look at the invitation list for your Hatching Day?"
Which left Vanessa to remove imaginary fingerprints from her lens while Geroth and his betrothed brayed their points like sea-lions mating. Hundreds of supple fingers bristled from their underbellies, expressing their moods as the argument went round in circles. Iliath reared on her tail, like a column of living marble, in response to Geroth's anger. Vanessa almost wished she had not taken the trouble to learn the language of the Husiths, the sentient species on Husa.
[This message has been edited by MaryRobinette (edited May 04, 2005).]
I like this version, though the last line seems a bit slow, and the exposition isn't really necessary by that point.
But what are we looking at here?
What we're looking at is an attempt to deal with the repeated comments of "nice story, it's slow starting," which I think has to do with the amount of introspection/exposition at the beginning. So, I'm trying to tighten it and get to the first conflict point faster.