Hatrack River Writers Workshop: A Beginning...

This is topic A Beginning... in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by slysounds (Member # 4266) on :

Thanks in advance to all who read this. Double the thanks to those who have any thoughts to share about it.

This came out one night when I was trying to get through a block on a novel I'm working on. It's the beginning of a beginning, if you'd consider reading the remaining lines, let me know.

I have no idea where this is going, but it feels like it has legs... at least to me.

Thanks again.......

I’m not one to complain about my job. I mean, I suppose there are moments. Working when everybody else is out at the bar bites, and the nights Nurse Creepsville is in charge seem like they’ll never end. Oh, and there is the smell. Some nights it stinks so bad that it hurts, there’s really no other way to describe it. It hurts like hell, like it’s ripping off your nose. Sometimes it's like it HAS ripped off your nose,
and it’s not just the pain, because by morning you realize that you’ve lost your sense of smell. What the hell, it always comes back. So far, anyway.

I don’t complain. Even when Joe decided to use my nights on the job to steal Nancy. What the hell, she hadn’t been happy with me for a long time, and spent every moment I wasn’t working reminding me.

Posted by JBSkaggs (Member # 2265) on :

This doesn't have a strong for hook me. I don't have any sense of impending struggle. Can you tell us where he is working and why it is important that he continues to work there?

JB Skaggs

Posted by slysounds (Member # 4266) on :

It becomes more clear in the next few paragraphs. I'd be happy to send you the entire fragment, if you'd be so kind as to read it.

Posted by JBSkaggs (Member # 2265) on :

Sure go ahead and send me the fragment. But like I said before if I'm not hooked in the first paragraph or so I put the book down. That even includes writer's I love. Some of R.A. Salvatore's Drizzt books are great- some of his other stuff is really lame. Either way When I buy a book at a book store I read the first chapter- ninety nine out of a hundred books I never get past the first paragraph. Why?

Because it is impossible for me to read all the books that exist- so I filter the ones out I don't want to read as quickly as possible. Occasionally if a friend really presses me I'll read a book with a boring beginning. But it's rare.

On the other hand Koontz and RobertJordon became millionaires writing books whose beginnings bored me to tears (I never could finish a Jordan book, I like Koontz though). But writer's like Card, Garth Nix, Jonathon Kellermen, Tony Hillerman, Nevada Barr, Bernard Cornwell to name a view have never failed to grab my attention and drag me all the way through their books.

SO send it my way and I can tell you if it hooks me and why or why not.

JB Skaggs

Posted by Mattsmom49 (Member # 4260) on :

It could have legs if you simplify abit. If the job is the source of tension leave it and ditch Nancy. If working nights is the source of tension then forget the odorous detail. If the tension is the triangle you need to make a better connection. Right now it just doesn't grab me. It can go in too many directions.

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

You've got style, but no story.

This guy has a damn unusual job, and he knows it. There is no earthly reason he wouldn't say what it was right up front if he were ever going to tell us.

Posted by djvdakota (Member # 2002) on :

In my opinion, the reason this opening lacks grabbing ability is that it's a string of complaints. No one likes to sit in the real world and listen to someone complain, complain, complain. I certainly don't like it in a story.

And especially not in first person.

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

Yes, it's a string of complaints -- and not complaints MC cares about much. As he puts it, "What the hell." Since he's not struggling, I'm not engaged in his struggle.

Also,
Why the problem with the first 13 isn't that it isn't enough http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002662.html

Oops -- I just read Survivor's comments, and realized I misread something: I thought MC was working *at* the bar, but he's working while *others* go to the bar. And it *is* an unusual job, and I have no idea what it is, and he won't tell me. Frustrating.

Keeping secrets from the reader
http://www.hatrack.com/forums/writers/forum/Forum1/HTML/002021.html

[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited November 16, 2006).]