posted
Since no one has posted in a while, and I could use some feedback... What's posted below is what I hope is the final version of the opening for my WIP.
Reactions?
Linda sat, hunched forward in the rocker, chewing her lip and ignoring the pain that came with each breath as she studied the man on the bed. Lying face down where he’d thrown himself, Jack sprawled across the bed in a stupor brought on by a night of drink and the effort of beating her. She could undress him, but that might wake him and bring a renewal of the anger. In the morning, sober again, he’d be apologetic—a model husband—but not now. Killing him would be easy and satisfying, and she thought about that for a long time. The pleasure those thoughts brought offset the pain. But if she wasn’t able to do it quickly enough, and he got free… Hands clenched in her lap, she mouthed the words she didn’t dare
posted
Usually it would be "trying to ignore", not "ignore". Or "ignored" if she was successful -- if you have to keep ignoring a pain, it's not working. Could you mean "dismissing"? Or not worrying?
I like how you start in the middle of some action. I prefer normally that things be from her perspective. And the detail is a lot for me, I am not good at detail. I would keep reading, but nothing has drawn me in yet.
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posted
Thank you both. And you're right, of course, Emma, that it should be "trying to ignore." No matter how many times you edit...
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posted
Thanks for posting; it has been slow here. I am still working on determiners! Like the difference between the rocker and a rocker. Which led to starting a story at the start versus starting as if it's the middle.
You wouldn't start telling someone a story and use "She". But if someone came in on the middle of you telling a story, the first thing they hear might be "She sat on the rocker."
Did you think of that start? I like it better, but of course that could be just me and not liking details.
Also, it could be "Jack was still sprawled" suggesting a past. Thoughts?
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posted
I gave thought to having her study "her husband," in the first line, without mentioning the bed, because it's mentioned in the next line. and I'm still ambivalent about it...possibly because I'm used to it as it is (I wrote it as a short story over ten years ago).
quote: the first thing they hear might be "She sat on the rocker."
I never thought about using it at the start because she's the protagonist, and I want the reader to identify with her by name ASAP. If a character appears at some other time, it depends on who she is to the POV character. It's how they view her that matters. If the protagonist doesn't know the woman by name it's "she" But if they do, they'd think of this person they're seeing by name. It's kind of like when the man we've been calling Jack as the protagonist of a scene becomes "The tall man in the corner" if we switch POV to someone who doesn't know him.
I wouldn't use "still sprawled," because in Linda's viewpoint, in her moment of now, he's sprawled. She's studying him, not thinking about the history of the night, yet. Since the reader doesn't know why he is at this point, and the story has no context for the past, "still sprawled would come from the narrator and be a POV break.
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posted
So, thinking about it, I changed line one to identify him as her husband, and dropped line two. Who cares if someone we can't see is face down or up. Eliminating seven words speeds the read for a trace more impact in the same space:
Linda sat, hunched forward in the rocker, chewing her lip and trying to ignore the pain that came with each breath as she studied her husband. Jack sprawled across the bed, in a stupor brought on by a night of drink and the effort of beating her. She could undress him, but that might wake him and bring a renewal of the anger. In the morning, sober again, he’d be apologetic—a model husband—but not now. Killing him would be easy and satisfying, and she thought about that for a long time. The pleasure those thoughts brought offset the pain. But if she wasn’t able to do it quickly enough, and he got free… Hands clenched in her lap, she mouthed the words she didn’t dare speak—the feelings she could never express aloud.
posted
I think I am done with possibly-useful suggestions, but I do want to explain myself. I was not talking about name (Linda) versus no name ("a woman").
I meant pronoun. "She sat..." A pronoun is supposed to have a previous reference, so that's an obvious rule-breaker, but it's done often for effect at the start of a book.
I think the main effect is giving the feeling of starting in the middle of a scene. Which is what you are doing.
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posted
You wrote: "I wouldn't use 'still sprawled,' because in Linda's viewpoint, in her moment of now, he's sprawled."
That's interesting. A movie is necessarily in the now. But people usually don't live in the moment. I was trying to see the scene the way Linda would.
And you are sometimes willing to depart from the now, for example to mention why he is in a stupor.
I don't see a right or wrong here, I am just trying to explain my suggestion. It's interesting that we had the same goal (Linda's viewpoint) and disagreed about how to achieve it.
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Seriously? The moment is all we have. We live in that tiny slice of time called "now." The past is a memory and the future is unknowable. Life, for us, is locked into first-person present-tense. What makes it interesting is that the future is unknowable, and something to try to control.
More than that, our life is an unbroken chain of cause and effect. We wake in the morning and something catches our attention. It could be the the thought of what we have to do. It could be our partner, for good or bad. It might be the weather. But whatever it is, it holds our attention as we analyze its immediacy, the necessity to respond, and—if there is a need—our options and resources.
There are a million things that might take our attention, but that one thing does, until that motivation is responded to.
The sequence can take a millisecond or an hour, but until it's complete, or something of greater immediate importance (or interest) interrupts, we remain focused in it.
Quite often, what will next hold our attention is the result of what just did. But from waking till sleep, our life is a chain of motivation/response events.
Can our characters live any differently and seem real to the reader?
In fact, it's at the heart of our enjoyment of fiction: the feeling that we are living the events, not reading a detailed history of them. History is immutable because we're in overview mode focused on events not emotion. And who ever called a history book a page-turner?
My point is that if our character is to seem real to the reader, they too, must live in present tense, first person, focused on what matters to them, not to the observer.
The author, when discussing the protagonist, may use past, present, or future tense, and personal pronouns of their choice. But when the author speaks it is, inherently, in overview mode.
quote:And you are sometimes willing to depart from the now, for example to mention why he is in a stupor.
That's her observation, and is the motivation for her to consider undressing him, and the decision not to. That matters, because her reason for not doing it gives character development for Jack and shows the reader what a bastard he is. It also (hopefully) adds to the reader's empathetic bond with Linda
Of course you've heard me say all this a million times. It's a kind of hot button issue with me because viewpoint is the difference between showing and telling, and so few people truly understand
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