Okay, you guys had a point about those first couple of paragraphs. I think I fixed 'em.
First, a little more about the story. It's gonna be a book. It's set a few years into the future. It's about kids growing up in a thieves' guild-ish kinda community. I think it's fun.
Oh, I feel the prologue is necessary because twelve years pass between it and the first chapter.
Here's the new first 13 lines or so:
Oily Can Do is Steal
Oily Kepner was a pretty bad sort of guy. He knew it too. I mean, he wasn't the worst, but he was pretty bad. His real name was Oliver, but he wasn't having any of that. 'Oily' was close enough and much nastier. Certainly nobody in kindergarten found either name intimidating. The other kids would wrinkle their noses and look at each other.
“What a weirdo,” they’d say or something similar. Who’d want to be called something like that? Oily thought it sounded cool – slimy, slippery, hard to grab and toss in a bathtub – but he saw right away what the problem was.
You've got to earn your name.
Oily started earning it the day he turned ten. He stood up before his birthday cake and announced his name change before blowing out the candles.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited October 17, 2005).]
Posted by Brecca's Sister (Member # 2925) on :
I like it You said what you meant and went on-- gives the reader more information that way then stumbling over sentences that have very little meaning to us yet.
Give yourself a highfive
~Bethany
Posted by ThisProteanSoul (Member # 2882) on :
That very last sentence is unclear. Put what back? I assume you mean the wallet, but a person might misnterpret it to be that he put the money back. As if he did it just to prove he could.
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
Hmm. Might change "took" to "stole".
Thanks!
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
I can't get any takers to read my teeny tiny prologue?
It's like, five pages!
Posted by BuffySquirrel (Member # 2780) on :
If Oily is growing up in a community of thieves, their idea of what's "bad" in a child will probably be different from what's generally considered normal. That leaves me wondering if the narrator is part of the community, or an outsider--ie, what values does the narrator have? Do they think stealing is bad, or do they think that being clumsy at stealing is bad? By what standard are they judging Oily as "bad"?
Without that information, I'm a little lost here. Instead of getting an impression of who Oily is, I'm wondering who the narrator is, and what their part is in the story.
Posted by pantros (Member # 3237) on :
I'll read what you have done of this, send it my way.
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
Thanks for helping me out. I'll get it to you later today.
The main character isn't Oily (except for the prologue). He's the one who creates the community. Pete is growing up there. The narrator is a cop who gets involved.
Posted by BuffySquirrel (Member # 2780) on :
Now I'm even more lost. How does the cop know what happened to Oily in kindergarten?
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
I can see how that'd throw ya. Without giving too much away let me say that the cop has reason to learn everything he can about Pete AND Oily. He ends up feeling kinda parental toward Pete as well. Technically the narrator is being facetious about Oily's character. He doesn't truly know what happened to Oily in kindergarten.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
A more important problem, you don't introduce the narrator at all. There isn't even the slightest hint in your opening that this is a narrator character.
Posted by Gnomeinclaychair (Member # 2926) on :
Yeah, I don't know why that didn't occur to me, but you're right. I'll have to fix that too.
You said what you meant and went on-- gives the reader more information that way then stumbling over sentences that have very little meaning to us yet.