Need help whittling opening chapter

pickarooney

SPLIT from WHU's exising thread

I finally got up the courage to get busy with the delete button and am trying to rework the opening chapter of my book. EileenG's comment just above really brought home something that should have been obvious and I wonde if I'm on the right track with the following:

Previous opening:

Muffled thumps of pre-dawn conflict broke through the half-sleep and set Jonas Cotton in motion. In the absence of songbirds and raindrops, a slamming door and a '**** you too!' were his call to rise on this slate-grey, Calgary morning. Relieved to have an excuse to stop lying immobile and feigning sleep, Jonas rose. The clinging weight on his outstretched body came to rest on his stooped shoulders on the cusp of the day Cotton had been dreading for months – the first day of his vacation. His eyes reluctantly focussed on the green, liquid-crystal face of an alarm clock which would not start screeching for a hundred and twenty minutes. Two short hours before his scheduled rise-and-shine time , six hours before wheels-up on American Airlines flight 1166 from Calgary International, Jonas Cotton was up and running, in a manner of speaking.

Latest rewrite:

Jonas Cotton peered, bleary-eyed, into the silvery depths of his bathroom mirror in the vain hope that his head had caught fire. There was to be no such reprieve. Outside, a pigeon cooed sadly in the slate-grey, Alberta morning. Today was the day Cotton had been dreading for months – the first day of his vacation. In six hours' time, American Airlines flight 1166 from Calgary International would take to the frosty air and, unless he could find some way around it, Jonas would be on it.

I have to apologise to WHU for hijacking the thread a bit, but I hope a broader discussion on the subject of openings might be useful to everyone. How to describe something slow and laborious without the text itself being slow and laborious?

WHU

Pickarooney,
No need for appologies, it was a good place to continue the discussion, great re-write sounds much better.
Has anyone read "On Writing" by Stephen King? There is a part in it where he claims he learnt his most valuable lesson. He does a sports article for the local newspaper, he hands it to the editor who goes through it with a marker crossing out what he thought was unnecessary. King though his original article was good until he read the edited version.
Like eastwest said earlier "Less is more".

EileenG

Pickarooney, I would start your piece with "Today was the day Jonas Cotton had been dreading for months - the first day of his vacation. In six hours, the AA flight to Calgary would be taking off, and unless he could find some way round it, Jonas would be on it."

THAT'S an opening that would grab me and make me read on. I'd really want to know why this guy dreaded his holidays and didn't want to be on the plane. Add in the stuff about the head on fire afterwards.

pickarooney

Today was the day Jonas Cotton had been dreading for months – the first day of his vacation. In six hours' time, American Airlines flight 1166 from Calgary International would take to the frosty air and, unless he could find some way around it, Jonas would be on it. He peered, bleary-eyed, into the silvery depths of his bathroom mirror in the vain hope that he might have come down with smallpox or that his head might have caught fire. There was to be no such reprieve.

Outside, a pigeon cooed sadly in the slate-grey, Alberta morning. Cotton decided to allow himself the dubious luxury of a three-minute shower, though without the effete pampering of a warm-water spray. Dragging the shower door across its grit-encrusted rail, the Perspex squeaking in defiance, Jonas hit ON and woke the rest of the way up. A gelid cat o' nine-thousand tails wickedly flailed the quivering flesh of his naked back, the force of the frigid jet arching him forward. On the wall opposite the shower, a looking glass threw back the stark image of his pearl-white face contorted in masochistic agony. His hands, trembling in the Arctic cold, shivered into action, reaching, grasping, hugging bottles and bars and clenching involuntarily in the localised blizzard. Foregoing the ambiguously contoured, purple bottle of a shower gel he suspected smelled of eau de flaming woopsie, he seized a plain, white, fist-sized bar of manly soap and began to rub it despondently over his stomach.

Moved it around, as suggested. Not bad. I think paragraph two can be whittled down to about two lines, but it's pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey as to which ones should stay, if any.

EileenG

I agree, it needs whittling. Try taking out all the adjectives and seeing how it looks then. Personally, I think all you need to say is that he allowed himself the luxury of a three minute shower with cold water. That says a lot about his lifestyle, without doing into details of him actually washing himself.

pickarooney

I'd still like to give some insight into his character, mainly his put-uponness, neurotic preparation and his scepticism. I didn't paste the whole passage as I'm kind of embarrassed about how overdone and clunky it is, but what the hell. All that actually happens is that he washes, gets dressed, eats his breakfast and leaves his apartment, but it takes eleven pages (yeah, I know, just delete chapter one and save everyone the grief). I started hacking away at it, but got nowhere. I took the approach of removing everything that was not strictly necessary to advance the story, but basically ended up with nothing. Which I suppose tells me all I need to know - that I should bury it for good, but the stubborn part of me doesn't want to have wasted the guts of three years with nothing to show for it.

He decided to allow himself the dubious luxury of a three-minute cold shower. A gelid cat o' nine-thousand tails wickedly flailed the quivering flesh of his naked back, the force of the frigid jet arching him forward. On the wall opposite the shower, a looking glass threw back the stark image of his pearl-white face contorted in masochistic agony. Foregoing the ambiguously contoured, purple bottle of a shower gel he suspected smelled of eau de flaming woopsie, he seized a plain, white, fist-sized bar of manly soap and began to rub it despondently over his stomach. He plucked thoughtfully at the single cluster of black hair rooted in the centre of his chest like the tuft the greenkeeper forgot. In the stark exposure of the unclouded mirror, he caught sight of his thinning crown, its mousy, follicular army in slow retreat. At thirty years of age he had yet to find his first grey hair and at the current rate of depopulation he was resigned to being bald before the first one appeared. That his scalp was gathering dandruff flakes at the same rate it was losing hair seemed an unnecessary punishment, another in a lengthening list topped by the abhorrent inconvenience of what he was obliged to do that day.
He rinsed the thin mousse from his shivering body, turned once to bare his bald chest to the sub-zero flow, gasped, and hit OFF.

He kicked his clothes into the growing pile in the corner of the room where his washing machine would one day stand. Since his arrival in his new apartment, his first tentative step on the wobbly Alberta property ladder, he had yet to receive a single delivery from a long list of electrical goods ordered and paid for weeks in advance of his move. Eating pizza and Lebanese kebabs for weeks on end he minded not so much, despite the evident setback in his plan for an improved physique, but not being able to wash his own clothes or store a cold beer for his return from work was starting to irk Jonas somewhat. He'd have to sort it out when he got back.

His shaving kit sat, blade and foam, beside a toothbrush pre-loaded with green, minty gel in obedient expectation of his matinal ablutions. He took the razor and quickly dispensed with six hours' worth of nocturnal stubble.

His new apartment featured a walk-in closet, sold as a box room. Inside it, his hands quickly found folded plaid boxers, stretched green socks and a pair of beige trousers which he refused to call chinos.

For the purposes of a journey to unknown parts, most likely necessitating the negotiation of roads whose only surfacing was likely to be dried mud, Jonas had gone to the Great Outdoors for a pair of comfortable, functional and stylish boots at a reasonable price. Three hundred dollars worth of yellow, buckskin rock-stompers were now sitting in the bottom of his closet, tongues lolling garishly at him, waiting with far more enthusiasm for their moment in the sun than their owner could ever conceive of. He pulled them on with a grunt and snapped their speckled laces into crude bows. Jonas stood up, every inch the unwilling hiker. They were, at least, extremely comfortable.

On the breakfast table, a bran box, bowl and spoon sat waiting. Even the best of planners would have had trouble incorporating a jug of cold milk into the schematic, and so Cotton had had to content himself with placing the bottle on the window-sill, to chill in the cold, night air. The ledge, thankfully, held no attraction for magpies or calcium-deficient vagrants, and his milk-bottle was intact, unlike the six-pack of Molson he had unwisely left at the mercy of local winos and under-age boozers the previous week. His puritan breakfast downed in a minute eight, he chewed lustlessly at the last morsels as he stood up and transferred his soiled crockery to the sink and stared out into a city slowly emerging from its brief hibernation. A garbage truck began to pull out, a drunk reeled across an empty street, a Québec flag drooped from a bent pole and somewhere out there in the darkness three taxi drivers checked their oil and tyre pressure in preparation for their first sorties of the day. Although none of them knew it, they were in a race to a fare which only one lucky chauffeur would pick up.

While he waited for whichever unreliable carriage would eventually turn up to drag him kicking and screaming to the airport, Jonas checked his e-mail. This once simple, even pleasurable task was rendered improbably frustrating by the enforced use of a 56k modem. Of all the late-century conveniences presently denied him following his move into property ownership, lack of broadband access hurt Jonas the most. With a sigh, he switched on his laptop. Its sleek, powerful body hummed into life, racing through the boot sequence. He was now just a double-click and a five-minute wait away from the internet. While animated globe icons turned in vain hope and his dial-up modem emitted its insufferable banshee-cry as it went through its connection process, he blankly popped open tab after tab in his internet browser, sending each page in turn to look up a separate bookmark. The homepages of four separate mail providers slowly drew themselves on his screen. Too slowly. Jonas duly closed all but one tab, freeing up valuable bandwidth for Google mail, the site he considered most likely to open first. As lines of text and garish animated images began finally to appear on the barren, white field of his inbox, he again popped open a set of tabs and sent his browser hunting for new messages across a range of mail hosts.

Ostensibly checking for last-minute well-wishes or travel tips, Cotton knew deep down he was really searching for news of any impending or actual emergency which would require his services and the cancellation of his vacation. His luck was out on the gmail front, where only an urgent plea of a Gabonese heiress in need of help with the release of her billion-dollar trust fund requested his attention. Five laborious minutes later he gave up on his Hotmail account, although not until he'd clicked on a link from his estate agent offering him a superb two-bedroom apartment in the city centre for a good twelve percent less than he'd just committed to for what was scarcely his dream home. Yahoo! had literally nothing to offer him, not even a sure-fire solution to his sexual problems – in Jonas' case these were largely attributable to the lack of an actual flesh-and-blood female – or a foolproof way to consolidate his debts and see just how truly, financially ****ed he was in one jaw-dropping glance. His GMX account was chock-full of reply-to-alls – caps-heavy shoutathons punctuated with smileys sent by ex-classmates who wouldn't get the hint. Finally, his work e-mail showed its austere, corporate interface, and he gingerly logged on, half-hoping for news of a derailed project or a calamitous presentation, a Batman-beacon that would halt him in his tracks. The minutes from Friday's meeting and a reminder of the staff get-together at Carlo's next weekend notwithstanding, no news was bad news for him.

One last travel decision weighed on Jonas in the final minutes before his cabs were due. His three digital cameras were lined up expectantly on the hallway bureau like schoolboys at team-picking time. The obvious choice was the Canon EOS 5D. He had convinced himself to invest three thousand dollars in the professional-level single lens some months back as a necessary tool for shooting exotic wildlife and fast-moving action scenes. After weeks of reflection, he'd been won over by the camera's impressive optical zoom – expandable with ultra-wide or telephoto lenses – its large display screen, a megapixel value in double figures, extra-long battery life – handy for lengthy trips to bleak, uncivilised backwaters such as Amazonia or Nova Scotia – its compact nine-hundred-gram form and a focal length of something-something millimetres. He had feigned interest and understanding of the finer points of the machine before tut-clucking, exhaling lengthily and sealing the deal, contingent on a beige bag-strap being thrown in instead of the standard white.

His digital portfolio, encompassed in a half-dozen used spaces on a four-gigabyte SD-card, consisted thus far of some unfocussed clichés of his apartment wall and what was probably a dog licking itself, although the "arty" overexposure could have been disguising a pig or even a very small, very ugly, old man. Jonas had, in fact, been waiting for just such an occasion as this holiday to put the Canon to the test. It would inspire him to great things. Sublime pictures would come spilling out, ready to share with new-found photographer friends. It would teach him, and he would become its master. It would be his hobby, then his passion, then his life. It would get stolen, and he killed, should he dare produce it in a public place.

No, it would be better for all involved if he just brought the little Kodak. Light, easy to conceal and with no confusing settings to perturb his picture-taking, it was perfect for making photos to send by mail. Besides, if it got stolen, broken or misplaced, it wouldn't matter a great deal. No great floods of tears would be wept on its behalf. Weighing its plasticky squareness first in one hand, then the other, passing it from pocket to pouch, Jonas scornfully plonked it back on its shelf of shame and considered his mobile phone instead. The Nokia N95 was a far more elegant and efficacious machine in every conceivable way, with the added bonus of being able to call for help in sticky situations such as crop up on a daily basis in the third world, and with a GPS locator to boot. Snug in his palm, the sleek phone cocked an uppity snoot at the lowly Kodak. His decision made, Jonas took a confirmatory look back and observed his Canon Powershot A540. With its six megapixels, 4X optical zoom and easily concealable shape, the perfect tool for a man such as he had almost been forgotten in the drawn-out rush of his departure. Like Goldilocks rolling her adolescent form under the covers of Baby Bear's bed, he took the camera and stashed it, almost apologetically, in the pocket opposite where his phone sat safely ensconced.

EileenG

If you want an incentive to cut it, try this. It's boring. I'm sorry, I really did try to read it with attention, but I kept skipping bits trying to get to where there was some action. And I found I was skipping larger and larger bits, until I skipped the last three paragraphs altogether. If that was the start of a book in a shop, I would have picked it up, and put it right back on the shelf.

One thing that struck me, WAY too many adjectives. They really bog the story down.

So the story is: He got up, had a cold shower, shaved, tossed his clothes into an unwashed pile, dressed, ate bran flakes and milk and went all geeky on his computer and digital cameras?

What happened to "It was the day he had been dreading, the start of his vacation"? That opening worked really well.

pickarooney

EileenG wrote: »

What happened to "It was the day he had been dreading, the start of his vacation"? That opening worked really well.

That's still there, this next bit follows on from it. Or at least it did...

Was there anything at all worth keeping? I'm rapidly losing the illusion that there is. Which is, in the long run, a good thing I suspect.

EileenG

To be honest, No. It really is "He woke up, showered, dressed, ate breakfast, got geeky". It doesn't convey his personality or the mundaneness of his life, just makes the reader skip on looking for action.

Start with the action, the bit that makes this day the start of all his problems. In fact, start with the problem.

Generally, you don't need to convey the mundane, because the reader will assume, unless told otherwise, that this is a normal guy with bills and girl problems and a horrible boss, just like the rest of us. If you want, you can do a very quick flashback to the flat with no appliances, but only if it gives important information.

pickarooney

EileenG wrote: »

Generally, you don't need to convey the mundane, because the reader will assume, unless told otherwise, that this is a normal guy with bills and girl problems and a horrible boss, just like the rest of us.

I don't think there's any point in a character that's 'just like the rest of us'. Everyone has their quirks, which is what makes them interesting, surely?
I still think I need to illustrate (by showing, not telling) how neurotic, stressed-out and subservient the chap is in order to have his character develop throughout the story, and I can't figure out how to do that without showing him displaying some of these tendencies. The fact that he's dreading his holiday is precisely for all the above reasons. It's simply anathema to him to waste valuable working time sitting on a beach or talking to strangers in cocktail bars. There are no explosions or zombies in store.

Soccertainer

I like a larger than life villan who is revealed to be as flawed as the next man in his moments of weakness, but strong sense of purpose makes him formidable in spite of anything else.

EileenG

pickarooney wrote: »

I don't think there's any point in a character that's 'just like the rest of us'. Everyone has their quirks, which is what makes them interesting, surely?
I still think I need to illustrate (by showing, not telling) how neurotic, stressed-out and subservient the chap is in order to have his character develop throughout the story, and I can't figure out how to do that without showing him displaying some of these tendencies. The fact that he's dreading his holiday is precisely for all the above reasons. It's simply anathema to him to waste valuable working time sitting on a beach or talking to strangers in cocktail bars. There are no explosions or zombies in store.

Then use dialogue. You can get across a huge amount of character information when he gets a last minute phone call from his boss, or landlord etc. To be honest, all the long descriptions of the shower and breakfast etc didn't get across your hero's character. I had no idea he was neurotic and stressed. So he gazes at his chest while he showers? That doesn't show neurotic, it shows normal.

And you hadn't actually got to the dreading the holiday bit, which is where I would have sat up and taken notice.

Action doesn't have to involve guns or vampires, but there must be a problem of some sort, something he has to deal with.

Oh, I bet someone neurotic and stressed would have a major freak out if there was a problem with his ticket at the airport.....

desolate sun

EileenG wrote: »

I would start your piece with "Today was the day Jonas Cotton had been dreading for months - the first day of his vacation.

This sounds to me like 'telling'. It's not a great opener, sorry. It just sounds very pedestrian.
I prefer the line you had already, but maybe not say he wished his head was on fire!

Have a look at American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis. That character is obsessive and neurotic and may help you in trying to convey that in your character.
I agree with Eileen, in introducing dialogue to break up the description. Too much description will tire your readers.

i-digress

I'm not sure if it's a great opening, but you do need to tell some information. The show don't tell rule is a guideline, if you show everything your work gets too verbose.

pickarooney

I'll keep kicking this until it gets up or dies...

Today was the day Jonas Cotton had been dreading for months – the first day of his vacation. In six hours' time, American Airlines flight 1166 from Calgary International would take to the frosty air and, unless he could find some way around it, Jonas would be on it. He peered, bleary-eyed, into the silvery depths of his bathroom mirror in the vain hope that he might have come down with smallpox or that his head might have caught fire. There was to be no such reprieve. Only his rapidly balding head stared back.

He dressed hurriedly in clothes specially selected for him by a bossy assistant at Urban Outfitters, eyeing his reflection in the chrome toaster. He looked like a farmer. Or a student. A student farmer. He winced, shuffling his feet in the unfamiliar shape of his new, three hundred dollar yellow boots.

Six hours to take-off. With a bit of luck Spyte would email him and he'd be summoned to the office to resolve an emergency of some sort and he'd be forced to cancel. Insh'allah. His laptop purred softly into life then began to screech like a drunk banshee as the modem connected. He'd need to call his internet provider and issue a harsh rebuke. Or a meek plea - whichever.

Costa Rica. For ****'s sake. Two weeks of mud and poverty, poor hygiene and no basic infrastructure. He would gladly have spent his forced time off in a Holiday Inn with hot and cold running broadband, but the office secretary - nice girl but a bit of a busybody - had taken it on herself to ensure he would have the time of his life.

His two mail accounts finally loaded. There were two urgent messages in his personal inbox - one from a Gabonese heiress pleading for clemency and short-term loan until she could get back on her feet and make them both rich and a message full of exclamation marks suggesting a foolproof way to consolidate his debts and see just how truly, financially ****ed he was in one jaw-dropping glance. At the office, someone called Clara was getting engaged and so there would be cake at three.

Jonas nudged his backpack unlovingly closer to the front door and set about making one, final decision. He had three thousand dollars worth of camera equipment sitting in an otherwise empty cupboard. Two thousand, nine hundred and fifty of those dollars had been spent - no, invested - in a top of the range Canon SLR with all the trimmings and settings he'd need to make beautiful photos he would cherish forever. The fifty-dollar Kodak would fit neatly in his trouser pocket. He slid the door closed. His phone would do just fine.

Cotton was startled by a shrill tinkle. It was, to the best of his knowledge, the first time his doorbell had ever rung. His taxi was early. One of his taxis - he had booked three to be on the safe side. He pulled his front door shut behind him, swivelled the key three times and mentally blessed himself before walking the four short steps in the icy air to the awaiting cab. The car's occupant, a squat man in a Toronto Raptors baseball cap and leather jacket, caught his eye before popping the lock. Portuguese, surely, Jonas thought, taking in the driver's flabby, sallow jowls and uneven moustache.

"Airport?"
"Airport."

Much as I'd like to use dialogue here, he's on his own not that neurotic. He gets plenty of opportunity to talk in chapter two though.

Is this any better?

EileenG

Much much better. I'd keep reading if that was the start of a book I'd picked up.

The shorter paragraphs really work too.

pickarooney

Thanks I should finally be able to start making something of the rest of it now.

Killer_banana

Hey I'm really really sorry I never emailed you back. It's just uwth the mocks I got so side-tracked. I suppose you don't need the help with the first chapter now..I'm really sorry after oyu gave ms so much help with mine. If you need any more help though just email me and I will reply ASAP this time.

pickarooney

Killer_banana wrote: »

Hey I'm really really sorry I never emailed you back. It's just uwth the mocks I got so side-tracked. I suppose you don't need the help with the first chapter now..I'm really sorry after oyu gave ms so much help with mine. If you need any more help though just email me and I will reply ASAP this time.

Oh, I've got 43 more, don't worry How did the exams go?

Killer_banana

pickarooney wrote: »

Oh, I've got 43 more, don't worry How did the exams go?

Well the only one I got back so far is biology. I got a D but I know I didn't study enough for it ('Sure I always do well in biology, I'll be grand') so I expected it really. I think I passed the majority of my other exams but I could be wrong. :P

kerash

Aww, I see you've changed some now but I enjoyed some of the original.

pickarooney wrote: »

That's still there, this next bit follows on from it. Or at least it did...

Was there anything at all worth keeping? I'm rapidly losing the illusion that there is. Which is, in the long run, a good thing I suspect.

I'd keep this

He decided to allow himself the dubious luxury of a three-minute cold shower. A gelid cat o' nine-thousand tails wickedly flailed the quivering flesh of his naked back, the force of the frigid jet arching him forward. On the wall opposite the shower, a looking glass threw back the stark image of his pearl-white face contorted in masochistic agony. he seized a plain, white, fist-sized bar of manly soap and began to rub it despondently over his stomach. In the stark exposure of the unclouded mirror, he caught sight of his thinning crown, its mousy, follicular army in slow retreat. At thirty years of age he had yet to find his first grey hair and at the current rate of depopulation he was resigned to being bald before the first one appeared. That his scalp was gathering dandruff flakes at the same rate it was losing hair seemed an unnecessary punishment.

and I like this

For the purposes of a journey to unknown parts, most likely necessitating the negotiation of roads whose only surfacing was likely to be dried mud, Jonas had gone to the Great Outdoors for a pair of comfortable, functional and stylish boots at a reasonable price. Three hundred dollars worth of yellow, buckskin rock-stompers were now sitting in the bottom of his closet, tongues lolling garishly at him, waiting with far more enthusiasm for their moment in the sun than their owner could ever conceive of. He pulled them on with a grunt and snapped their speckled laces into crude bows. Jonas stood up, every inch the unwilling hiker. They were, at least, extremely comfortable.

I love the idea that this guy doesnt want to go on holiday!

Oryx

Im commenting as a reader, not a writer. The first draft you posted, I read three paragraphs down and got bored, Ill be honest, I skipped to the next posters comment, rather than finish reading.

The second draft I read to the end. I cared where it was going, and it was witty, not bogged with detail. I want to know more about that guy, the first bit I was very concious of someone writing it, rather than just flowing, if you get me?

Careful about the words you use too. Gelid stopped me in my tracks, I got the gist, but dont know the word, so it killed the rhythm of the sentence, and that paragraph.

I'll keep kicking this until it gets up or dies...

PS I love this comment.

pickarooney

I think I've found the worst sentence I've ever written in chapter 2:

The bad seed of his hatred for her blossomed instantly into bulbous, brown stinkweeds of despisal.

I wonder if I originally though it was so bad it was great...

ToasterSparks

Yeah, I think your re-write is definitely better.

One thing to note is that you are definitely being way too over-descriptive. You do tend to over-describe every aspect of the event as it unfolds, when really readers want to dive straight into the action. Why not experiment with the opening chapter more? Try starting the scene at different points - as his plane touches down in Costa Rica, as he unpacks in his holiday hotel, at the airport bar, at a bar in Costa Rica? See if you can dive into the action a little bit sooner, and then fill us in on anything important that has happened previous as the chapter progresses.

If your story continues in the same vein as first draft chapter one, you've got a lot of editing to do. I'll be honest, like EileenG, I skipped through your first draft hoping for something interesting to happen, but it didn't. If that was a book in the bookstore, I'd have placed it back on the shelf instantly.

The rewrite was better, but again it's loaded with information that doesn't appear to tell me anything interesting. I don't need to know about his morning routine, I want to hear about why he's dreading this holiday trip. His actions didn't give me any insight into his life or character. Getting up, showering and getting dressed is what EVERYONE does.

My advice: Ditch the intro, and dive into the action much sooner.

pickarooney

ToasterSparks wrote: »

Yeah, I think your re-write is definitely better.

One thing to note is that you are definitely being way too over-descriptive. You do tend to over-describe every aspect of the event as it unfolds, when really readers want to dive straight into the action. Why not experiment with the opening chapter more? Try starting the scene at different points - as his plane touches down in Costa Rica, as he unpacks in his holiday hotel, at the airport bar, at a bar in Costa Rica? See if you can dive into the action a little bit sooner, and then fill us in on anything important that has happened previous as the chapter progresses.

Subsequent chapters are much less heavy, but chapter two needs a major rewrite, which I'm working on.

I don't really see why I should have to alter the nature of the book though, just to suit some all-action dynamic. I'm not going to just throw in a plane crash or a kidnapping just for the sake of grabbing attention. Later on there's a murder, a couple of accidental deaths, a rape, a series of fist-fights, an attempted kidnapping, drugs of classes A to C... but it's not just a case of drawing the shortest line possible between the dots, in my opinion.

EileenG

Nobody said the book has to be all action. Romantic fiction, where the body count is zero, is one of the biggest selling genres. But you do need to get to the meat of the story, without a pile of backstory and set-up. Honestly, you don't need it, and you are putting off the reader.

I've got books on my shelf which start with three pages of description of the library where the characters are sitting, before you even hear who is in the library. They worked at the time, but nobody would try to sell a book now that opened like that.

ToasterSparks

Pickarooney wrote:

I don't really see why I should have to alter the nature of the book though, just to suit some all-action dynamic. I'm not going to just throw in a plane crash or a kidnapping just for the sake of grabbing attention.

I think you're misinterpreting my definition of action. Action for me doesn't mean 'plane crashes' or 'kidnappings'. Action is merely progressing the story in some way.

You need to begin straight away with the story. In your case, this is probably explaining why the MC doesn't want to go on holiday. Readers don't need to hear in depth about his showering routine and putting on his clothes and his breakfast. Unless it's important to the story. For example, he has OCD and showers three times, or he is overweight and eats an unhealthy monster breakfast, or something else. If he's just going through the motions, it's irrelevant to the story. Skip it.

I know you've spent a lot of time writing the first chapter, but even as an exercise I think you should consider what I said about changing the intro scene. Starting the scene as the character wakes up is almost forcing you into a situation where you feel the need to describe everything up until he goes out the door. Try a different perspective, and see if it helps the opening scene.

pickarooney

ToasterSparks wrote: »

You need to begin straight away with the story. In your case, this is probably explaining why the MC doesn't want to go on holiday.

I honestly don't see how that's not abundantly clear from the rewrite. And if I start the story any later it's going to make it even less easy to get the point across that he's a loner, scared stiff of trying anything outside of his comfort zone and lets people walk all over him.

I may feel differently later, but I think I'm best of leaving it as it is for the time being and concentrating on the rest of the story. I might even shoot a few alternative pilots, focus group them and pick an opening based on that... or have a choose-your-own-adventure stlye plot

EileenG wrote:

I've got books on my shelf which start with three pages of description of the library where the characters are sitting, before you even hear who is in the library. They worked at the time, but nobody would try to sell a book now that opened like that.

By the time I've finished this it'll be at least 2023 so who knows what might be popular by then

Honestly, in have no interest whatsoever in what's trendy (BTW, vikings will be the next big thing) or appealing to specific demographics.You might interpret that as arrogant folly but I just want to write the best book I can, for me. You are all helping me see just how far off that I have been but at some stage I have to make my own decisions about what that all entails.

ToasterSparks

Pickarooney wrote:

I just want to write the best book I can, for me.

That's fair enough. Any advice I'm giving is only to try to further your story as a viable published product. However, if publishing is the way you want to go (eventually), then appealing to specific demographics of readers is exactly what you should be doing. If the book structure is designed to suit your needs and not the readers, it won't be suitable for publication.

pickarooney

Bumping this as I've got stuck in another chapter with a fair chunk of backstory and I could use advice/opinions on whether it works in small doses or could better be relayed in another way or just dumped.

The problem I have is that I want to show (or tell!) why a character behaves a certain way in a given situation, but dropping that info leads onto another paragraph explaining the reason behind that info...

Anyone want to volunteer to read it, by PM? (2200 words)

EileenG

I'll have a go if you like. Be warned, I tend to omit all backstory unless the narration will fall without it!

pickarooney

EileenG wrote: »

I'll have a go if you like. Be warned, I tend to omit all backstory unless the narration will fall without it!

I was both afraid and hoping that you would say that

EileenG

pickarooney wrote: »

I was both afraid and hoping that you would say that

I'll be gentle.... (evil laugh).

pickarooney

That was fairly painless Anyone want to give a second opinion before I get the scissors out?

EileenG

And you didn't need any of that nasty backstory, it worked fine without.

skepticalone

i would like to read it if you have not already got that scissors out .

pickarooney

I've more or less trimmed it now. I have other ones though

skepticalone

pickarooney wrote: »

I've more or less trimmed it now. I have other ones though

im an avid reader , would gladly look over some for ya , cant guarantee youd be happy with any input i could give , but if your serious , send em my way ...

pickarooney

I will do in a bit. Currently working on a major rewrite.

pickarooney

Actually, if you wouldn't mind having a quick gander at this?
I know the character's name is terrible but I haven't got around to finding a more suitable one yet.

A fresh sheaf of stapled papers landed on Jerzy Piotrowicz's desk, making his coffee-cup wobble like a nervous toddler. He lunged to catch it, scalding his fingers with the hot liquid. Pushing the cup out of harm's way, he went back to filling out his accident report in laborious block print.

Another busy day and another boring night lay ahead for the gangly cop. Eleven months in the job and still nobody spoke to him. This was the life he'd always feared –endless hours spent writing about car-crashes he hadn't seen and homicides he hadn't witnessed in an office where nobody cared if he lived or died.

Piotrowicz was never included in the bagel run, always left out of the in- jokes, never invited to Barney's for birthdays or when a colleague hung up his holster. The only concession to his existence at the station was the nickname – if you could call it such – they'd given him on his first week there. Joe. As in Jersey Joe. It was a moniker conferred more out of laziness than affection. He didn't mind so much; it had always been that way – school, the academy, his first job. It was not that he was universally despised, or even disliked; just something about him evidently did not inspire people to want to befriend him. It was the same in the evenings. He'd get dressed, slick back his thin, blond hair, splash on a few drops of Brut 33 and hit a bar. He'd sit for a couple of hours on his own, try talking to some girl – some guy even – ask the score, ask the time. It never lasted more than a minute before the eyes started looking to escape, hands clasping purses, feet twitching. I've-just-seen-my-friend... Maybe he smelled. He couldn't tell and couldn't ask. That would've been nice – to have someone be honest enough to tell him he stank like an old mattress. It could have been his nose – long and crooked – but he'd seen worse, and on guys with pretty girlfriends, too. Was he aiming too high? He'd made an effort to chat up ugly chicks for a while, to no avail. Probably smelled the desperation. Nobody liked that odour. He was no fashion-fiend, but his clothes were okay, pretty much identical to what other guys down the bar were wearing. He'd tried cruising in his uniform – lots of women were into that; he'd seen other cops work a room using only the badge. When he tried it he just met with the opposite reaction – that singular distrust and hostility reserved for members of the force.

Piotrowicz signed off on the MTS 284 and took a quick look at the new set of legal sheets. Missing person. They didn't get too many of these. These cases mostly involved paperwork and the odd phone-call, but occasionally there was an opportunity for some actual investigation. He began to read. It was typical fare. The guy was a loner, stressed out, no girlfriend, took off on vacation and didn't come back. He was fine, probably, better than he'd ever been. He'd obviously just had enough and decided to get out. His stomach knotted as Piotrowicz imagined doing the same.

The file went on – reported missing by employer. Great. The only reason anyone missed him was because work wasn't being done. Parents contacted, unaware of whereabouts. Neighbours questioned, not a single one recognised his name or knew what he looked like. When they'd kicked in the door of his apartment there had been no mess, no signs of struggle, no smell of decomposition. His home was neat and spotless. No plants or animals lay neglected inside. A grainy photo accompanied the form, the kind that only ever seems to show up when a person is missing or dead. Grim expression, check shirt, balding. Jerzy didn't feel it. Give the poor guy a break, let him stay missing. Beneath the photo was a list of people who should be contacted before they could write off the case. Piotrowicz picked up the phone and dialled Visa. In the eight minutes before an employee took his call, he doodled on the back of the form, a sketch of the missing man and a boat. Freedom. The wait music was Prokofiev, which he guessed most callers wouldn't know. When he asked the call agent for the transaction records from the client's card she said she'd see what she could do. He hung up and went to get a Danish.

The fax whined as a set of listings came through, stirring Piotrowicz from a daydream. They were mostly routine movements – salary in, groceries out, mortgage payments, plane tickets and a series of cash withdrawals, the last one in Bogotá. There was also a debit payment from American Airlines. A little strange; perhaps worth a look.

Ten more minutes of Jerzy Piotrowicz's life elapsed before the airline answered. The payment was a recompense for lost luggage, which made sense, in hindsight. If you could get them to admit to ****ing up they were obliged to fund you for a day and send your clothes to your hotel. He verified that this procedure had been followed. The address quoted by the airline didn't match the name of the place he had on file. Probably nothing – people changed hotels at the last minute all the time. He rang the number in San José and was relieved when the phone was answered on the second ring, and in English. Jonas Cotton had indeed stayed there, just for one night, before checking out in the early morning and without waiting for his missing luggage to arrive. When pressed, the receptionist seemed to recall him having taken a taxi back in the direction of the airport.

Piotrowicz had been on the case a half-hour and was already going round in circles. This time he looked up the number and rang the Costa Rican airport directly. Once again, the girl on the other end confirmed that the baggage had been sent to the Ratpackers. Time to move up a level. He asked to speak to her superior, a little sad to let her go. She had such a nice voice. Her boss had a gruffer voice but a longer memory. He recalled, after a little probing, a fellow coming in to pick up his late luggage in person. Now he was getting somewhere. Jerzy pressed him for more information on the missing man's whereabouts. Strike one – the airline didn't fly to Bogotá. Several other companies in the building did, however, fly there and he set about calling them one by one. Strikes two, three and four – none of them had a manifest listing for a Jonas Cotton on that or any other day on any flights to Colombia. Back at square one, he continued his demands. One by one, he asked the airline employee to check any flights leaving San José carrying a passenger of that name. After twenty minutes, the desk-digger at LACSA hit paydirt. One Jonas Frederick Cotton had boarded a plane to Panama City two hours after collecting his bags. He'd paid with paper, after cashing in some traveller's cheques, despite having a credit card. One door closed, Jerzy Piotrowicz set about opening another.

cobsie

Hi Pickarooney - I think you have a potentially really strong character in Jerzy. Love the first name, btw.

I think you should commit more to Jerzy's internal narrative style and let the sentences reflect it more because it is the strongest part of the piece. He speaks in short, factual sentences, quickly appraising the case. If you take out a lot of the filler and concentrate on that, it highlights his voice more. I edited together a couple of paragraphs with this in mind, to show you what I mean:

"Piotrowicz signed off on the MTS 284 and took a look at the new set of sheets. Missing person, typical stuff. The guy took off on vacation and didn't come back. He was fine, probably. Better than he'd ever been. Just had enough and decided to get out. Piotrowicz imagined doing the same.

Reported missing by employer. Great. The only reason anyone missed him was because work wasn't being done. Parents contacted, unaware of whereabouts. Neighbours questioned, not a single one knew his name or what he looked like. When they'd kicked in the door of his apartment there had been no mess, no signs of struggle, no smell of decomposition. His home was neat. No plants or animals neglected inside. A grainy photo accompanied the form, the kind that only shows up when a person is missing. Or dead.

Jerzy didn't feel it. Give the guy a break, let him stay missing. Beneath the photo was a list of people who should be contacted before they could write off the case. He picked up the phone and dialed Visa. In the eight minutes before an employee took his call, he doodled on the back of the form, a sketch of the missing man and a boat. Freedom. The wait music was Prokofiev, which he guessed most callers wouldn't know. When he asked the call agent for the transaction records from the client's card she said she'd see what she could do. He hung up and went to get a danish."

I hope that's helpful!

I love thrillers where there are loads of strands and all the characters eventually intersect...is that what you are writing?

pickarooney

cobsie wrote: »

Hi Pickarooney - I think you have a potentially really strong character in Jerzy. Love the first name, btw.

I think you should commit more to Jerzy's internal narrative style and let the sentences reflect it more because it is the strongest part of the piece. He speaks in short, factual sentences, quickly appraising the case. If you take out a lot of the filler and concentrate on that, it highlights his voice more. I edited together a couple of paragraphs with this in mind, to show you what I mean:

I get where you're coming from but in that example I think you overdid it. It kind of felt like a dog barking as I was reading it, much too staccato for my taste. You did highlight a now apparent contradiction between where I've written "they didn't get too many of these" and "typical fare" though!

There is too much interfering from the outside narrator's point of view though, you're spot on in that respect.

I love thrillers where there are loads of strands and all the characters eventually intersect...is that what you are writing?

Pretty much. I'm currently working on tightening the weave and executing the non-essential extra characters.