posted
As he held his daughter on his shoulder in the Peshtigo River, Godfrey Spellen did not know that they would become survivors of the worst forest fire in the history of the United States. As she dodged debris to hold onto to Godfrey and little Lisel, his wife Barbara did not realize that she had gone into premature labor. Sparks singed their faces, and they had to immerse themselves under and under again as flying embers ignited their hair. Lisel tried to protect her cotton doll. Days earlier they had said goodbye to Godfrey’s family in southern Wisconsin, making their way north towards Barbara’s family in Marinette, the last logging village after Peshtigo. They were almost there, but the fire surrounded them in chariots of cherubim with flaming swords.
posted
Okay. I really do not like telling the future. It's a spoiler. Here you don't even need it: "Godfrey Spellen did not know that they were in the worst forest fire in the history of the United States." I think that has all the interest of your sentence without eliminating suspense.
I love the parallel form in the second sentence. I love the immediate plot complexity. Nicely done.
You have created an intensely interesting situation, that has me on the edge of my seat. Then you push me back into my seat to tell me boring facts. Tell the story! You are close, I think. Sparks singed their faces and set their hair on fire. Again and again they plunged underwater to ....
Lisel is not crying? She is not constantly drinking water when her father unexpectedly dunks her underwater? Put yourself in the scene and make it come alive. Actually, he can't hold her on his shoulder and also dunk her, right?
Jay -- remember Jay? -- says that almost everyone is taught to write in a way that's wrong, and we all have to unlearn that. I try to be more charitable; I assume there is a genre someplace where "chariots of cherubim with flaming swords" finds a happy home. If you like it, great! But if you're just writing what you think you should write, I think most writers will not like that.
(I'm not even sure what a cherubim is. A small angel? How can a chariot be made of small angels? I think we need vivid description here.)
Posts: 407 | Registered: Apr 2018
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thank you, Emma. I like the way that you customize your comments for a text. Your suggestions are helpful. I am a philologist, so I try to serve the language rather than trying to master the language. I try to listen to the language and see what it is trying to tell me; then I try to express it and revise it until all the elements are in tune like the strings on a harp, or in order like the threads on a loom.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Sep 2019
| IP: Logged |
posted
Emma hit it right. By telling the reader what you're going to tell them, in the "Little did John know that at that moment..." format, you take the joy of discovery from the reader. They want to learn of the protagonist's problems when he does, and react to them as he does. The protagonist is our avatar, after all, right? So what matters to him matters to the reader. What matters to you? Not so much. You're neither on the scene nor in the story. So every time you talk to the reader, other then in support of the protagonist, you kill any sense of reality for the reader.
History books are filled with facts. Fiction is filled with emotion. History books deal with the sweep of time. Fiction is tied to the protagonist's moment of now.
Why? Because history is immutable. There may be unread data, but not uncertainty for the reader. It's fact-based and narrator-centric. But...place the reader into the protagonist's moment of now and the future becomes as unknowable to the reader as to the protagonist. If we know what has the protagonist's attention, how they react to it, and why; if we know what the protagonist takes into account to generate that reaction; if we know the weight the protagonist places on each facet of the event; if we know what the protagonist feels they must do, then our reactions will have been calibrated to those of the protagonist. Their viewpoint will have become our viewpoint.
But, done that way, what we cannot know is if the result of the protagonist's response will be what the protagonist hopes it will be. That point makes the future uncertain, and therefore interesting to the reader, And that's why we turn the pages. It's the very heart of reader enjoyment.
There's another effect of placing the reader into the protagonist's viewpoint: To do that we must view the situation as-the-protagonist, not according to the needs of the plot. That keeps us from dictating the protagonist's action, and makes us notice things we would otherwise miss. If you've not had one of your characters tell you, "Hell no, I won't do that. As I see the situation I'm going to do this," your characters are not truly real to you, just plot devices.
Look at one way having been in the protagonist's viewpoint would change this opening. As described, you have the protagonist's hair catching fire multiple times. But one dunk into the water and it's fireproof. He might be burned, but not burn. And had you mentally been him, literally feeling what he feels as you went through the situation, you'd have realized that your hair was wet and can't burn. And of course, it would reduce the scalp burns drastically, which changes your description.
posted
Yes, that makes sense. But Great Aunt Elizabeth told me that her parents and the toddler had to go under again and again, probably to avoid the flying sparks and embers, protect their eyes, etc. Thanks for the help.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Sep 2019
| IP: Logged |
posted
Second take: As he held his daughter on his shoulder in the Peshtigo River, Godfrey Spellen did not know that they were in the midst of the worst forest fire in the history of the United States. As she dodged debris to hold onto Godfrey and little Lisel, his wife Barbara did not realize that she had gone into premature labor. Sparks and flying embers hit their heads, and they had to immerse themselves, under and under again, to avoid the extreme heat. Lisel tried to protect her cotton doll. Days earlier they had said goodbye to Godfrey’s family in southern Wisconsin, making their way north towards Barbara’s family in Marinette, the last logging village after Peshtigo. They were almost there, but fire had surrounded them like chariots, like cherubim with flaming swords.
posted
Challenge, I am afraid that this is still "telling" as opposed to "showing."
You are "setting the scene" instead of letting the readers experience what the characters are going through.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
You spent twelve years of your primary education sharpening your report-writing skills, then honed them at the university. Yes, you took a CW course, spent a class or two of that discussing writing. And if yours was like most, a good deal of that was devoted to critiques of the stories the students wrote, done by the other students, who knew no more about fiction-writing than you,
Following that was your academic career. Admirable, but filled with nonfiction writing.
My point is that the tools you have are the tools you have. So no matter how hard you may try to change, the same tools will produce the same result: fiction written with the techniques of nonfiction, which is fact-based and author centric, just as this piece is. You may intellectually agree that your goal should be involving the reader emotionally, but at the moment, through no fault of your own, you lack the tools and knowledge of how to use them to present
Personally, I think that you'll find the techniques of fiction fascinating. Many of them are so obvious that you'll wonder why you didn't see them yourself.
Let me give you one that surprised me, as an example: Can you, without looking, tell me what's different about the first paragraph of over 50% of the novels in the library? Most people you'd ask can't tell you. And I've had many who couldn't see it when looking at the page. Yet it's obvious, and demonstrates my point, which is that if we don't see the obvious when we read, what about things that aren't, like scenes ending in disaster for the protagonist, or the three things a reader needs to have addressed quickly on entering any scene.
And here's something to try, to get a feel for placing the reader into the story. It's a condensation of the Motivation/Response Unit technique. Used well it can place the reader into the story so deeply that if someone throws a punch at your protagonist the reader will duck.
Chew on it till it makes sense, then play with it to see how it makes you, and the reader, live the story as-the-protagonist.
And that's just one of many such things to take into account when writing fiction.
Give it a try. Like chicken soup for a cold, it might not cure your problems, but it can't hurt. And if it does make sense, it just might fan that fire to write brighter.
Posts: 263 | Registered: Dec 2016
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thank you very much. I followed the link. I will try the formulas. I have always been afraid to presume the agency of another person, even a fictional persona. So I could not launch.
Posts: 21 | Registered: Sep 2019
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think you'll find that it wasn't that you were afraid, it was that you neither had the knowledge, nor knew that it existed. So not knowing where to begin, and seeing that your attempts didn't seem to work, you, reasonably, put it down to a lack of ability.
But did you guess that the difference in the first paragraph is that it's often not indented, as a holdover from when so many books had drop-caps there? I missed it when someone posed it to me, just as I missed pretty much everything else when I began writing. And because I didn't know the library's fiction writing section existed, I never looked for it.
The trick is, as with me, you can't fix what you don't see as a problem, and won't even try. And forget about talent. Lots of people who are called "no talent hacks," make a living by writing, because it turns out that knowledge is a really good working substitute for genius.
The thing to remember is that writing is a journey, not a destination, one we take at our own pace. So if you write just a little bit better each day, and live long enough...
Posts: 263 | Registered: Dec 2016
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
