First 250 Words Smash! #55

 

Most Wonderful Author: Renee @ Tumblr
Most Evil Critique Master: Ange
Working Title: N/A

I swung the brass-

Wait, you need to hear the beginning first. I can't leave it out. I'm sorry.

I want you to know that I wasn't always a bad person before I tell you what I did.


The beginning wasn't at my birth. There were years worth of pieces that tied together to make the beginning.

My father. The way anger would distort his long face. The scar across his bottom lip, shaped like a half moon. The way he'd take me outside in the mornings he was home and watch birds with me. The weeks that went by without anyone hearing a word from him. He would come back with bruises and cuts on his face.

The gun I found under my parents' bed. I thought it was a toy and almost shot Galvin with it. My da' found the hole in the wall and I ran outside, climbed up a tree, hid in the branches until he found me. He leaned against the bark and looked up at me, silent and stiffer than the tree itself. He told me that if I didn't come down right then, I would be sleeping outside. I didn't move until he started to walk away, jumped down from a high branch and broke my ankle. When he made me stand in front of that wall and stare at the hole I made, there was a pale, itchy cast around my foot and cold metal digging into the back of my neck.

Strong Points –
There is a suspenseful feeling at the end of this that manages to draw me in and makes me want to read more. The “cold metal digging into the back of my neck” paired with “itchy cast around my foot” gives me, as a reader, insight into the circumstances in which the protagonist lives, but it also gives a forewarning, a hint, that there’s going to be action further on which is neat. The text does create tension, which is good because tension drives plot.

I also like the attention to accent detail, e.g. “my da’.” It creates a little bit of a background picture and I’m a big fan of getting small tidbits of a background through these little details that are dropped throughout the text, rather than spelling such things out. It’s much more...discreet and simplistic. And it makes it necessary for the reader to think a little for themselves, which I personally think is super neat!

And while I’m on details: I really like the details regarding this person’s father. Just like I previously said, I’m a big fan of small hints being dropped and figuring things out with the help of them, and the attention to detail concerning the father helps me build a picture of their relationship with each other as well as form an idea of who and what the father is like.


Some Tips –
Although I do like the tension, which is a small glimpse of plot, the problem is I don’t really get that much plot. I get promised plot, but then this plot, this action, is paused to give me background, which personally I find a little frustrating. That’s not to say that it’s not a commonly used tool; it’s often used in storytelling between friends, and I can think of three TV series’ episodes at the top of my head that use this technique. They give you a glimpse of action and then “48 hours earlier” or something to the likes, and, personally, I find it equally frustrating each time. However, in a book, this method, usually in the form of a prologue—aside from my own personal frustration—can be somewhat problematic.

First of all, there’s a risk in books, that by doing this the narrative leaves out important details because it’s rushed. And in that case, it might be wiser to simply flesh it out so as to make sure that all important things are included. On the flip side, to be brutally honest, if this scene is not important to the story, then perhaps it doesn’t need to be included.

Every scene should focus on telling the reader a story. Every scene should capture some kind of moment, whether that’s contributing to the story development, conflict, the character development, or necessary background information. If this scene fits into one of those categories, the story might benefit from expanding on the scene and fully fleshing it out rather than rushing through it. When a text is rushed, it prevents the reader from successfully creating a mental picture of what is happening, and anything that prevents the reader’s painting is, unless intended, usually not a good thing. Unless the reader is supposed to be confused, the text should not confuse the reader. The risk is that the reader will lose interest and stop reading.

If the background information is important to the conflict, the story, why is it summarised? If it is necessary in order to understand the rest of the conflict, it should be fleshed out and give the readers all of the information, rather than a summarised version of it.

To illustrate my point, here is an example.

Following is Divergent, rewritten in the same form the above intro is written.

I open my eyes and thrust my arm out. My blood drips onto the carpet between the two bowls. Then, with a gasp I can’t contain, I shift my hand forward–

But wait, you need to know the beginning first. You need to know how I got here.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. I was never supposed to choose this.

When we are sixteen we go through the ceremony, the Choosing Ceremony, and it determines our fate. It determines where we will live out our lives.

I’m told it was different before the war. But the war changed everything. Supposedly for everlasting peace we, the population, were split into five factions. We are born and we die in these factions. Many of us are born, raised, and die in the same faction, but some of us are born and raised in one, but die in another.

If you choose a faction that you weren’t born in, didn’t grow up in, you are ripped from your family. You’re only allowed to see them once a year. Faction over blood.

And as a contrast, this is the actual beginning of Divergent:

There is one mirror in my house. It is behind a sliding panel in the hallway upstairs. Our faction allows me to stand in front of it on the second day of every third month, the day my mother cuts my hair.

I sit on the stool and my mother stands behind me with the scissors, trimming. The strands fall on the floor in a dull, blond ring.

When she finishes, she pulls my hair away from my face and twists it into a knot. I note how calm she looks and how focused she is. She is well-practiced in the art of losing herself. I can’t say the same of myself.

I sneak a look at my reflection when she isn’t paying attention–not for the sake of vanity, but out of curiosity. A lot can happen to a person’s appearance in three months. In my reflection, I see a narrow face, wide, round eyes, and a long, thin nose–I still look like a little girl, though sometime in the last few months I turned sixteen. The other factions celebrate birthdays, but we don’t. It would be self-indulgent.

Notice how Roth isn’t afraid to dig into the details here, even going so far as to describe the reflection the main character sees in the mirror. And in this she gives us background, and only background. There’s no interruption anywhere. She’s laying the groundwork for the rest of the story here.

Imagine building a house; if the groundwork isn’t complete, there’s an overhanging risk that the house will fall, or collapse. It’s the same when writing. If there are flaws in the foundation, the rest of the building will eventually suffer.

Roth does very well in beginning her novel where the actual story begins, while still managing to sprinkle important background information throughout the story in a way that doesn't interrupt the flow of the text. However, it’s important to note that there are books that begin with background information (especially in MG literature). It has been done before, it has worked, and it still works. It all depends on what audience you want your story to reach. Storytelling is always subjective, and there’s never any set rule or formula to follow.

Just as well, sometimes things need to be summarised. Too many details, especially if they don’t further plot or character development in any way, may end up giving the text—any text—a 'thick' feeling, hampering the pacing, and that can be tough to read. There’s always a balance to keep in mind, regardless of what you’re writing.



Would I Keep Reading?
I would read the next line, just because of the last line in this text. I’m too curious as to what happens next not to. I’m incredibly intrigued by the taste of plot, there’s something solid there, and with a bit of revision to show the plot more clearly, my mind would probably be changed.

Good luck!

First 250 Words Smash! #54

Most Wonderful Author: Kamil
Most Evil Critique Master: Aly
Working Title: N/A

The driest place in the world is in Antarctica. You wouldn't think it with the whole continent being made of ice, but it's actually true. Right in the middle, there's a place scientists like to call the Dry Valleys where there's no ice at all, just crust. It hasn't rained there in more than a million years and any moisture that manages to roll down into the valleys from the surrounding ice shelves is immediately evaporated by winds rushing through at 200 miles per hour: cold enough to freeze your skin solid or fast enough to rip it off. Oddly enough, even the Dry Valleys aren't devoid of life. A kind of bacteria called extremophiles thrives off the harsh environment and lack of competition for food.

In Sarah's new apartment, the walls were rotting in. A dark, gray water stain clung to the ceiling and bowed it inward, threatening to soak a sofa that looked like it had already been through enough. Sarah stepped in, wary of the creaking floor as she did so, she couldn't help but be jealous of those extremophiles in the Dry Valleys. At least they got to live somewhere nice.

Sarah trunk slipped from her fingers and thudded against the floor. The space between her temples throbbed. Heavy boots on the stairs echoed up through the hallway. Sarah's father, a middle aged man with wisps of thinning hair, circular glasses, and a forced smile pulled his way up the last step.

Strong Points –
This intro has some fabulously evocative description in it. That first paragraph in particular has an off-kilter beat that really makes it stand out. This strong imagery continues through the rest of the piece and doesn't just focus on the external senses, but ties in the emotions at work here. I can really get a sense not only for what this place looks like—kind of a dump—but also what Sarah thinks about it—that she's not too keen on it. My favorite line is:

A dark, gray water stain clung to the ceiling and bowed it inward, threatening to soak a     sofa that looked like it had already been through enough.

There's a lot going on under the surface there, and it's a great sentence. It really helps to build the atmosphere and set up what I presume will be the tone of this first scene—that Sarah's life is perhaps not quite going the way she wants it to, between the crummy new apartment, the rising headache, and the father with a forced smile.


Some Tips –
I hate to say this because I genuinely do like the description in the first paragraph, but I don't know that it transitions smoothly enough from the quirky-sounding narration to the actual story. It's a big chunk of writing for the reader before they get to the characters and plot they're going to be living with for the rest of the book, and the break between the first and second paragraphs is pretty abrupt.

There's several possible ways to address this, which could be mix-and-matched to what seems appropriate. The first I thought of, and probably most obvious way, would be to cut the paragraph entirely, or at least trim it down. This would get the reader right into the story, without the seemingly disconnected initial paragraph of information.

Another idea is to add a transition between the two paragraphs, some sort of “bridge” that gives the reader a heads' up that this information will be relevant later. For example, Sarah's comparison of herself to extremophiles could be moved earlier in the second paragraph to make the link more immediately clear.

Alternately, there could be more of Sarah in the first paragraph. With only these three paragraphs to go on, I'm not sure if the Dry Valleys analogy continues throughout the rest of the scene, but if it is tied strongly to Sarah, this connection could be made clear from the very beginning by including her in that first paragraph. One thought I had is that instead of simply listing the facts, they could be presented as things Sarah read in a book or heard from someone else.

Any of these three options (and others I haven't thought of!) could improve the flow of the intro, making it more natural and easy for a reader to follow. And—just a personal thing—if it did stay in, I'd love to see this analogy continued throughout the rest of the scene. It's an effective analogy, but it's also a lot of setup to only be used once in the second paragraph.

Aside from that, while the descriptive phrases remained solid, the sentences at the end of the first and third paragraphs started to get a little perfunctory, which incidentally is a very fun word to say. They're straightforward and express all the information they need to, but that's it. Varying their structure and tying them together more could draw the reader along more smoothly. For example, in the third paragraph, is Sarah's dropping of the trunk related to her headache, or are they both symptoms of how she's feeling overall? A quick example of one way to do this:

The space between her temples throbbed unexpectedly, and Sarah's fingers loosened, her     trunk slipping from them with a crash.

I feel that working this kind of information into those sentences would be a good way to not only keep the reader engaged, but also to inject the sentences with a little more of that great atmosphere-building description from the earlier sentences.


Would I Keep Reading?
It's hard to say, really. It's not that I don't like the writing (I do) or that I think there's something fundamentally flawed about the intro or story (I don't), it's simply that there isn't a whole lot of the actual story and characters here, with so much of the piece taken up with the first paragraph. When focusing on these three, there's just not that extra push I need to go from “idly interested” to “must read now”—but I get the impression that if I just had one paragraph more, I'd be hooked. If the story started a little sooner or if the first paragraph flowed more smoothly into the second, that might just be enough for me.

First 250 Words Smash! #51

Most Wonderful Author: M. Halter @ Tumblr
Most Evil Critique Master: Katie
Working Title: N/A

Pain drove Shannon to her knees.  One hand pressed to the grit of the floor, the other clapped against bruised ribs, fingers inspecting the rungs woven through her left lung where, deep within, the impeller of a pneumatic pump struggled to turn.  Don’t cough…don’t—   Stars swarmed her vision before she was through, and a nudging at the shutters again slammed the morning into focus.  She grabbed the black-headed spear and unlatched the window, piebald head of a stallion barreling through, nostrils flared, ears thrust forward.  Her soft laugh was a small victory.

“Ready, Atticus?”

They sighed as one, leaning against each other in wan light before he danced away and she followed, pulling low the brim of her shabby felt hat.  By nightfall, their fields lay far behind them.

Shannon scouted ahead, watching for black ground beneath lengthening shadow, gritting her teeth at the whine of axle motors pulling iron wheels through deep ruts of a dry summer.  She led Atticus from the road and into a copse on good soil, unhitching him to examine the catheter plugs dotting his body.  Unbuckled leather boots fell away from his sloughing flesh, exposing the bioelectric prosthetics replacing everything below his rear hocks.

“They’ll graft new skin on your legs when we get there,” she rocked back on her heels, sighing, “but until then you need the boots.” 

Strong Points –
We’re going on an adventure!  There is a lot of action happening right away in this story, which should help to pull readers in and keep them engaged.  A couple of questions spring to mind:  Where are they going?  Why are they semi-robotic?  What happened to Shannon and/or her horse?  There is an element of mystery that made me curious about the path of the story.  Also, the use of machinery in conjunction with a rustic feel in the setting makes a sort of steampunk vibe, which is an interesting take!  I got the feeling that an adventure was underway and I was dropped right before the thick of it, which is exciting to experience!  I feel bad for the horse, even though he seems to be doing okay.

I also really liked the word choice!  Saying “their fields lay far behind them” as opposed to “they covered a long distance” creates a more effective tone, implying that they have abandoned the familiarity of their home rather than just traveling aimlessly.  This connotation is what helps create a bit of dramatic tension and makes me wonder where we’re going!  Another bit that I liked was the description of the horse (“piebald head of a stallion barreling through, nostrils flared, ears thrust forward”), because these descriptive words lend to the feeling of impending action  I don’t know a whole lot about horses, but his apparent enthusiasm told through his body language feels like he is poised, he’s ready to go, and he’s excited to embark on Shannon’s quest.


Some Tips –
I think one of the most important parts of setting a scene is the pacing.  This passage starts out with “Pain drove Shannon to her knees,” something dramatic and troubling and mysterious, so I became concerned and found myself reading quickly from sentence to sentence.  A tension blossoms in the shortness of sentence fragments:

• the pain strikes
• her hand braces her body
• she touches her mechanical parts to try and figure out what’s wrong
• she almost blacks out

This quick succession of actions creates intensity.  But then the emergence of her horse interrupts the scene and this feeling of urgency dissipates; having a “nudging at the window” slows down the narrative because it is a much more mild word compared to the “clap” she gives her ribs or the “slammed” feeling her mind gets in reaction to the horse’s appearance.

As a whole, I think the transitions need to be looked over.  The initial setting seems to be in a building, perhaps in the morning, which is perfectly fine on its own, but there is no easing into the next bit where Shannon and Atticus are apparently outside.  This can just be a tiny note, like, “She met him beside the window,” or, “She climbed through the window and landed at his side.”

Then, I would consider the space they cover on their travel:  is it an easy, familiar ride?  Are they nervous to be far from home?  There is a lot of great implied emotion right before they take off on their quest (the pain bringing her to her knees, the fidgeting with her robotic parts, the laugh she gives when Atticus appears):  more small notes like this in the new surroundings that suggest the nature of the ride itself would really help to build up the feeling (i.e. how the characters are reacting to their situation), which can oftentimes be more effectual than describing the physical scene.

Fixing up the transitions from scene to scene will help to create a better, smoother overall flow to the story so reading along is easy and natural-feeling.

Another idea I had was this:  I think a great way to really understand how a paragraph or passage flows is to read it aloud.  I would try this to find instances of accidental rhyming, such as “fingers inspecting the rungs woven through her left lung”, or to pinpoint missing words, such as within the following: “She … unlatched the window, piebald head of a stallion barreling through.”  This way, hearing the words can help find quirks that reading them silently can’t.


Would I Keep Reading?
I think if you tweak what you’ve got, you could really have something here!  I like the idea of combining futuristic technologies with more rustic elements, and I think you could definitely root some emotional and political feelings in biotechnology that could definitely spark some interesting discussions.  I want to know about Shannon and Atticus’ respective history and future, and what their journey holds for them!

First 250 Words Smash! #47

Most Wonderful Author: Darcy Addams @ Tumblr
Most Evil Critique Master: Rebecca
Working Title: Purple Violets

The money's all they need, the guys on the door know them. Arthur had picked the place out a few years ago, solely for the fact they gave you a wrist band instead of 'one of those horrible tramp stamps'. The muffled base of the music flared out as they entered the building, the noise instantly clamped down on their ears. Bodies milled, sliding past each other, detailed silhouettes in the dim lighting. Coloured lights threw tints over the walls, faces flashed green for a split second, black lace glowed crimson.

“Do you think Mike's got the base amped up more than usual?” Arthur whispered half jokingly as they pushed their way passed a group of girls, cyber dreads laced into their hair. He called it a whisper, but really it was a stage whisper shouted over the music thudding into their bones. Pierre shrugged, personally he liked the way the base reverberated through the floorboards, filling the room. Like a defibrillator, it jolted his heart in to wake-up mode.

“You're going to boil in that,” Arthur tugged at the cuff of his friends velvet jacket.

“We'll see, it'll be worth it on the walk home.”

Arthur himself was braving the cold in a dress shirt and black waistcoat with straps buckled across the chest.

“You'll just have to be the epitome of chivalry and lend it to me when we get outside.” He patted the taller male on the shoulder, smiling in mock sweetness.

Strong Points –
This intro creates a really strong sense of setting from a variety of different senses. I almost feel as overwhelmed as the characters by the lights and sounds. Some lines that I really liked include:

Coloured lights threw tints over the walls, faces flashed green for a split second, black lace glowed crimson.

Like a defibrillator, it jolted his heart in to wake-up mode.

There are some really strong verb choices that keep the description active and in the moment so we don't feel overburdened right at the beginning. My favorite might be the "sliding" bodies, which gives us a bonus to really feeling the sweaty crowd and the fluidity of their dancing all in one go!

You also have some great, specific choices for nouns, like cyber dreads (which after a quick google search I did find out are a real thing and not just fiberoptic connections you can braid in your hair that light up and connect to your favorite social networking medium, but I think the term still resonates with futuristic imagery!) and velvet jackets. This isn't just any old club, but it's also never straight out said that this is a goth club--a great example of showing vs. telling!


Some Tips –
There are a few grammar issues throughout, so it might benefit from another look-over (watch the mix-up of "base" bottom with "bass" wubwubwub. A big issue that kept cropping up is the dreaded comma splice.

Comma splices often lead to run-on sentences which can create a lot of problems in the flow of a story. It might help to take a step back and make sure some of these commas aren't used to link two separate sentences by accident. If both phrases around a comma can stand by themselves, they can either be broken up with a period, or connected with some sort of conjunction (and, but, although, when, etc.). For instance, let's look at the first sentence:

The money's all they need, the guys on the door know them.

For this sentence, it seems like there could be a connecting link between those two ideas:

The money's all they need, because the guys on the door know them. (So they don't need to show their ids.)
The money's all they need, but the guys on the door know them. (So they let them in for free.)
The money's all they need, and the guys on the door know them. (What more reasons do you need to go?)
The money's all they need when the guys on the door know them. (But not when it's that other guy who's always forgetting their faces, God, I hate that guy, rude.)

At other times though, don't be afraid to break up longer sentences and change up the rhythm for that extra special emphasis punch!

For instance, the comma splices also happen in my favorite line about the "coloured lights" and "black lace." It could be argued that the comma splices are left here intentionally to  give the reader that same pulsing feeling as the strobe lights, but because the comma splice is a recurring problem, my faith is shattered just enough that I see a grammar mistake rather than a stylistic choice. However, this sentence could also be broken up. Compare these two options:

"Coloured lights threw tints over the walls. Faces flashed green for a split second, and/then black lace glowed crimson."

"Coloured lights threw tints over the walls, and faces flashed green for a split second. Black lace glowed crimson."

To me the first sentence seems to be zooming in from a larger picture (perhaps could benefit from replacing "Walls" with "The crowd" or "The dance floor" so it stays connected to the people, like our other nouns, faces and lace?) to two close-ups. Using "then" rather than "and" also makes it very sequential—first one flash of color, then the next.

The second option feels like the last sentence is adding more force to the same point made by the first two, but with just a little more intimacy. Especially with the emphasis on that black lace, now at the beginning of its own sentence. Rrrow.

And those aren't the only two options available! Read it aloud. See what flows—and what doesn't! It doesn't matter ultimately which way you choose (even if it breaks grammar rules, although I recommend doing so on a limited basis) so long as it is a CHOICE. There are other great discussions of flow in critiques 44 and 41.

While this scene is told in 3rd person perspective, I can see some character voice coming through in the narration, which is great! However, there were a few instances when it didn't seem so seamlessly integrated, and it confused me instead.

First, the "tramp stamps" line threw me off since I think of tramp stamps occurring on only one body part—and it's not the back of a wrist. For a second I took it literally and thought this was a gang requiring secret tattoos before you could join! Common sense eventually intervened, but I think part of what was tripping me up is that this detail is sprung before we even get a real sense of the characters or setting yet, and it leaves a lot up to inference. First they are an ambiguous "they," then we are hardly introduced to Arthur before we are hearing him quoted about his preferred method of club entry. I think it would help to be a little more obvious and tack on an "as Arthur called them" or some other phrasing to make it extra clear. Then the reader should be safely correct in their assumptions.

Meanwhile in paragraph 2, I got stuck on the pronoun confusion over who is calling Arthur's speech a whisper. Is this Arthur himself reading his dialogue tags out loud? Or Pierre (who I assume to be our limited-pov character) calling it a stage whisper in his own narration?

I really like the image of someone trying to speak over the din of loud music and their yells coming across as a whisper to the person right next to them. But to me, it seemed like there was too much emphasis on terminology, and then in the middle of it all, there's that blurb of description about the cyber dread girls. It creates this disjointed gap in the narration that breaks up the flow.

But why worry about the dialogue tag and who's calling it what? Skip all that and get straight to the description of Arthur's voice. I think it would be easier to just tell us exactly how loud it is in comparison to the noise in the room, and then have the description move on to the cyber dreads. When in doubt, simplify! And that should help the flow of that entire line, so the reader doesn't have time to drift away from that description only to be whipped back for more. (For extra help on dialogue tags, they have been covered very well in past Word Smashs 37 and 42!)

And when writing descriptions, in addition to getting pretty words down on the page, it's important to make sure those words all make sense together. Let's take a look at this line:

The muffled base of the music flared out as they entered the building, the noise instantly clamped down on their ears.

The flaring of the music is great about capturing that feeling of opening up when entering a new, big space. But then immediately, that idea is contradicted by the noise "clamping down," which gives a sense of something closing violently. Rather than expanding on the idea of the noise in an open space, the rest of the description leaves the reader feeling more confused than anything. But that's okay! There's some great experimentation going on here. Maybe a few different word choices will make that second sentence jive better with the first, or maybe it will be axed to let the first part shine on its own. Just like with the flow I mentioned above, some conscious decision-making that tweaks what works in the piece and cuts what doesn't work will make the whole read cohesive, clean, and beautiful!

The rest flows well from there. Too well, even. The only thing this intro is missing is a taste of the conflict these characters will face in the story. I don't have any sense from this intro yet of what that could be, other than the fact these characters have temperature regulation differences. While I highly doubt the story is going to climax over an epic battle at the thermostat, I have no idea whether this will be a supernatural thriller about two vampires who target their victims in dance clubs or whether this is a romantic comedy about dating misadventures in the goth club scene.

The story could benefit from starting closer to the first major conflict or tension. It could have something to do with the reason Pierre and Arthur are at the club in the first place. Are they hoping to accomplish some goal at the club, or see someone in particular? What makes this club night different from the typical ones they experience? Is a fire going to break out any second? Is a rival going to punch Arthur in the face? Experiment with fast-forwarding to that moment when everything begins. Even a slight change in tone with certain words or key pieces of dialogue could fuel the reader's suspense and desire to keep reading.

Because while I think this scene is set up well in terms of balancing between dialogue and description and all those juicy active verbs, what I really want is this same skill of setup around the first conflict that turns this ordinary night into a story I can't put down.


Would I Keep Reading?
Alas, no for now. Although there's a lot that I like in this scene and descriptions, I want a little more that will tell me what plot-relevant incident is going to happen at this club to change your character's lives forever! But I think you will get there. Feel free to resubmit, because when you get this right, I think I'll be hooked! <3