Opening scene

cobsie · 20-07-2010 3:31pm #1

Hi, just thought I'd post the opening scene of my new story. It's told mainly in flashbacks, but this is the set-up. Comments welcome! Thanks.

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EileenG · 20-07-2010 6:25pm

I would start with him actually dropping the knife, it's more dramatic than almost dropping it. Have that as a single sentence, then do the shaking. Drop the posing.

The phone call is good, but I'd keep it more direct. Give snippets of the dialogue. Don't tell us he is being polite and restrained, let us hear the conversation.

The beer is good, and a nice place to put in physical reactions like shaking, chills etc.

Is Eddie the father? You don't say.

That's where you lose me. I didn't like the flashbacks, they seemed messy and fragmentary. I'd have preferred a complete episode that showed the man, not the cap or the car.

pickarooney · 20-07-2010 8:34pm

I find it a little off-putting that the father is referred to by his first name. Even taking as given that he had the type of relationship with his Dad where he called him by his first name, in the story it's not just a guy called Eddie who's died but his parent and I think it's the loss of a parent rather than a guy called Eddie who he hasn't seen in years which has shaken him, no? It also seemed a little odd that his father, and by extension he was, 'maybe a little Italian' - this line reads as though some stranger is making an educated guess on his ethnicity from a quick look at him.

It might mean something later on, but what was the point of the knife. I immediately assumed he was after stabbing someone when the police were mentioned but it didn't seem to have any significance. If he nearly dropped a bottle of beer it might have a better connection with the rest of the story - the bottle almost smashing tying in with him almost crying but neither drama playing out, just a numbed reaction.

I would say that with your last two pieces I enjoyed the story as a whole and find it hard to judge the merits of this one on a short extract.

cobsie · 21-07-2010 12:19am

pickarooney wrote: »

I find it a little off-putting that the father is referred to by his first name. Even taking as given that he had the type of relationship with his Dad where he called him by his first name, in the story it's not just a guy called Eddie who's died but his parent and I think it's the loss of a parent rather than a guy called Eddie who he hasn't seen in years which has shaken him, no? It also seemed a little odd that his father, and by extension he was, 'maybe a little Italian' - this line reads as though some stranger is making an educated guess on his ethnicity from a quick look at him.

It might mean something later on, but what was the point of the knife. I immediately assumed he was after stabbing someone when the police were mentioned but it didn't seem to have any significance. If he nearly dropped a bottle of beer it might have a better connection with the rest of the story - the bottle almost smashing tying in with him almost crying but neither drama playing out, just a numbed reaction.

I would say that with your last two pieces I enjoyed the story as a whole and find it hard to judge the merits of this one on a short extract.

Hey Pickarooney - thanks for taking the time to read. That's the second time you've questioned my informal naming style in a story, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree!! Cultural differences, etc (I call my parents by their first names - yes, it is a 'distancing' technique).

The knife is just one of a million arbitrary narrative actions. He could be holding a magazine, he could be cooking pasta, he could be doing his laundry...he happens to be cutting a lime

Anyway, I've pulled the extract, because it seems to be too confusing out of context. I should have been more considered in that respect, it's hard to post 500 words without the 5.000 subsequent words that make up the actual story...sorry, not fair of me to post this in isolation, so I've withdrawn it.

Thanks for reading!

cobsie · 21-07-2010 12:27am

EileenG wrote: »

I would start with him actually dropping the knife, it's more dramatic than almost dropping it. Have that as a single sentence, then do the shaking. Drop the posing.

The phone call is good, but I'd keep it more direct. Give snippets of the dialogue. Don't tell us he is being polite and restrained, let us hear the conversation.

The beer is good, and a nice place to put in physical reactions like shaking, chills etc.

Is Eddie the father? You don't say.

That's where you lose me. I didn't like the flashbacks, they seemed messy and fragmentary. I'd have preferred a complete episode that showed the man, not the cap or the car.

Thanks for taking the time to read, EileenG! Sorry this extract was too confusing out of context - I've seen people post parts of chapters etc and thought I might get some feeling for how this scene was working, but I see how it's impossible to gauge it in isolation. The full story is over 5,000 words and is almost entirely told in a flashback to the last day father and son spent together - I should have been more explicit about the fact that this was only the set-up to a much longer story set in the 80s.

I appreciate the time you took to review, though! Thanks!

EileenG · 21-07-2010 1:01am

cobsie wrote: »

Thanks for taking the time to read, EileenG! Sorry this extract was too confusing out of context - I've seen people post parts of chapters etc and thought I might get some feeling for how this scene was working, but I see how it's impossible to gauge it in isolation. The full story is over 5,000 words and is almost entirely told in a flashback to the last day father and son spent together - I should have been more explicit about the fact that this was only the set-up to a much longer story set in the 80s.

I appreciate the time you took to review, though! Thanks!

If it were the beginning of chapter 15, then yes, you might have a point. As the beginning of the whole thing, my point stands. There is no context for a beginning, it has to stand on its own, and it has to grab the reader, establish the main character, show the start of the conflict.

As a set-up, it needs a lot of work. To be honest, as it stands, I would not have read any further, certainly not another 5000 words. The idea of opening with a phone call saying his father had been murdered is great, but the execution needs a lot of editing.

You've just had two people tell you the opening needs work. Arguing that it's out of context won't change that.

cobsie · 21-07-2010 6:44am

EileenG wrote: »

If it were the beginning of chapter 15, then yes, you might have a point. As the beginning of the whole thing, my point stands. There is no context for a beginning, it has to stand on its own, and it has to grab the reader, establish the main character, show the start of the conflict.

As a set-up, it needs a lot of work. To be honest, as it stands, I would not have read any further, certainly not another 5000 words. The idea of opening with a phone call saying his father had been murdered is great, but the execution needs a lot of editing.

You've just had two people tell you the opening needs work. Arguing that it's out of context won't change that.

Ha ha, I'm not trying to change your opinion, there would be no point posting anything if that was the case

Although, I reserve the right to argue whatever I want about my own story, I never expect people to shift from their original opinion, it is not human nature

I took it down because there is no reason to leave it up, obviously!

pickarooney · 21-07-2010 7:11am

cobsie wrote: »

Hey Pickarooney - thanks for taking the time to read. That's the second time you've questioned my informal naming style in a story, so I guess we'll have to agree to disagree!! Cultural differences, etc (I call my parents by their first names - yes, it is a 'distancing' technique).

I realise that, but I feel it would be dishonest if I didn't give you my gut reaction as a reader. I know a lot of people call their parents by their first name, but it wasn't that as such that seemed out of kilter.

cobsie wrote: »

The knife is just one of a million arbitrary narrative actions. He could be holding a magazine, he could be cooking pasta, he could be doing his laundry...he happens to be cutting a lime

There are those who will slaughter you for putting anything arbitrary at all into a short story, but I'm not going to argue with your choice

cobsie · 21-07-2010 8:39am

pickarooney wrote: »

There are those who will slaughter you for putting anything arbitrary at all into a short story, but I'm not going to argue with your choice

Well, let me rephrase it then as 'spontaneous'

It wouldn't be possible to plan every single action and response in a story before words were committed to paper...therefore, him cutting the lime is just a narrative device. He has to be doing something, there has to be physical representation of some kind...so, I chose this. Spontaneously

EileenG · 21-07-2010 1:49pm

The point of a story, especially a short story, is that you are supposed to think it through first. Maybe in your first draft, you put in a few things that don't work, but you are then take them out and replace them with things that do.

For instance, if he had a drink problem, dropping a beer bottle is a nice little hint. He might well be holding a knife if you want to foreshadow later violence.

In real life, all sorts of unrelated stuff goes on, and co-incidences happen all the time. In fiction, you have to pick exactly what goes into your story and what gets cut. Everything should be significant.

If you are not going to listen to informed criticism, why are you posting? It hurts to hear, but someone telling you what is wrong with your piece gives you the means to improve it.

The Mad Hatter · 21-07-2010 2:22pm

EileenG wrote: »

The point of a story, especially a short story, is that you are supposed to think it through first. Maybe in your first draft, you put in a few things that don't work, but you are then take them out and replace them with things that do.

For instance, if he had a drink problem, dropping a beer bottle is a nice little hint. He might well be holding a knife if you want to foreshadow later violence.

In real life, all sorts of unrelated stuff goes on, and co-incidences happen all the time. In fiction, you have to pick exactly what goes into your story and what gets cut. Everything should be significant.

If you are not going to listen to informed criticism, why are you posting? It hurts to hear, but someone telling you what is wrong with your piece gives you the means to improve it.

I'm not sure I agree with you here. Fiction does what the author wants it to. In some works, everything gets tied up neatly, and everything has significance. In other works it doesn't. Haruki Murakami's stories, for instance, tend to leave a lot of loose ends and have details that "go nowhere," and a lot of people don't like his stories because of this. Personally, I don't see it as a flaw, just as a literary representation of life, which doesn't always have layers of meaning, which doesn't always resolve satisfactorily, and which does leave loose ends.

As for criticism, the way I always look at it is that for each criticism I'm given, if I can't think of a good, solid reason for a critiqued part to stay, it goes, but that's just my method. Every reader will approach a story differently and have different tastes, and if a writer listens to every piece of critique then their story will come out unrecognisable on the other side. Writing isn't a group activity. That's not to say I disagree with what you and pickarooney said on cobsie's story; I haven't read it, and it's very possible I'd see the same flaws. But I think in the end it's her call whether or not she goes with your criticism.

cobsie · 21-07-2010 2:59pm

EileenG wrote: »

The point of a story, especially a short story, is that you are supposed to think it through first. Maybe in your first draft, you put in a few things that don't work, but you are then take them out and replace them with things that do.

For instance, if he had a drink problem, dropping a beer bottle is a nice little hint. He might well be holding a knife if you want to foreshadow later violence.

In real life, all sorts of unrelated stuff goes on, and co-incidences happen all the time. In fiction, you have to pick exactly what goes into your story and what gets cut. Everything should be significant.

If you are not going to listen to informed criticism, why are you posting? It hurts to hear, but someone telling you what is wrong with your piece gives you the means to improve it.

I have thought the story through - and I decided that it doesn't really matter what he is doing when he gets the phone call...holding a knife to cut a lime is one thing, he could be drinking a cup of coffee, or loading the dishwasher. It bears no relation to the content of the phone call, the news that his father is dead. This is the important part of the scene, not the detail of what he is holding in his hand. It is an odd thing to fixate on - a very minor detail, and we have gone back and forth about it quite a bit, for something that was only given about 10 words.

My writing is quite naturalistic. Not everything is significant, just like in life. I just don't write that way. If I mention that there are clouds, or that there are kids shouting in the yard below...well, it's just because I'm thinking about clouds, or kids...

I'm not afraid of criticism, by any means, nor am I even slightly hurt

I have confidence in my work, that's why I posted it in the first place - I'm curious for a sense of how the writing is perceived by strangers, that's all.

What happens, btw, if you offer criticism and I disagree? Who is more right? What if I don't want him to drop the knife, or the beer, because he's just a normal guy, without violent tendencies or a drink problem? He's just having a beer, thinking about his father...there's room in fiction for normalcy, surely?

I am tempted to resolve this strangely acrimonious back-and-forth by putting up another extract...we'll see

EileenG · 21-07-2010 3:21pm

cobsie wrote: »

I have thought the story through - and I decided that it doesn't really matter what he is doing when he gets the phone call...holding a knife to cut a lime is one thing, he could be drinking a cup of coffee, or loading the dishwasher. It bears no relation to the content of the phone call, the news that his father is dead. This is the important part of the scene, not the detail of what he is holding in his hand. It is an odd thing to fixate on - a very minor detail, and we have gone back and forth about it quite a bit, for something that was only given about 10 words.

I "fixated" on it because the very first sentence is about the knife. If he had got the phone call, and three paragraphs later, is using a knife to cut a lime, then it's just a knife. When the very first time you meet your character, he's holding a knife in his shaking hand, then it's significant.

You picked that knife to open the story. If it's not important to you, why did you not start the story with something that is significant?

Of course everyone has their own opinion about writing and how they read a story. But if two or more people pick the same point (like your calling the father Eddie), then it's something that you need to look at closely.

cobsie · 21-07-2010 3:43pm

EileenG wrote: »

I "fixated" on it because the very first sentence is about the knife. If he had got the phone call, and three paragraphs later, is using a knife to cut a lime, then it's just a knife. When the very first time you meet your character, he's holding a knife in his shaking hand, then it's significant.

You picked that knife to open the story. If it's not important to you, why did you not start the story with something that is significant?

Of course everyone has their own opinion about writing and how they read a story. But if two or more people pick the same point (like your calling the father Eddie), then it's something that you need to look at closely.

I picked the knife because a knife is a loaded object, naturally, and I am telling a story - but I didn't have him drop it, or refer to it in any other way, because that would be hacky, IMO

What is significant is the memories the phone call inspires...

He calls his father Eddie because his father is a stranger to him. I write that he thinks about crying but knows that he won't - that's the honest reaction of an estranged son. Because to call him Dad would be incredibly fake.

At least, that's just how I roll

Fatboydim · 21-07-2010 3:44pm

Hi Cobsie

I never got to read your original post - as you have already taken it down. However I would just like to offer some advice.

I've read with interest about the knife and your response to the comments about it.

What I would say is this - It depends how serious you are about becoming a writer. I am a writer and I've made a living out of it for the last twenty years. Whether I am posting on Boards, writing a novel, short story, article, speech or script - every single word matters.

I haven't read Haruki Murakami's work - so I'm not really in a position to comment on that author - except perhaps to say that the loose ends he leaves are probably very carefully thought out. In other words they are not there due to lazy writing.

The best way to describe what I'm talking about is imagine watching a movie where there is a scene during which a gun is placed in a bedside drawer.

If you see that scene then you know that at some point during the movie that gun is going to be used. Why? because we wouldn't need to see it if it wasn't.

I would suggest that if you are trying to be naturalistic in your style of writing you first need to develop the artifice.

In general - if it doesn't inform - character, action or plot - it shouldn't be there.

cobsie · 21-07-2010 3:53pm

I've completely inadvertently created a storm-in-a-teacup, so here's the original post again, and a little more ... seems like everything has become super-loaded now, but whateves! Enjoy, I hope!

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[Untitled]

Joe nearly dropped the knife, he was shaking so hard. He placed it flat on the counter-top and brought his hands up to his face, dragging his cheeks downwards. He held the pose for a moment then exhaled, sighing God out loud without meaning to.

He had been very calm on the phone with the cops. Surprised, of course. Shocked and surprised, standing in his kitchen with the receiver pinned under his jaw while an officer from the Miami Police Department told him his father was dead, that his father's body had been found off Calle Ocho, beaten to death. Joe's head jerked back an inch and he said, what? That was all. He had been polite and restrained with her, thanked her for letting him know. Someone had to identify the body and sign the paperwork. Did it have to be him? Joe asked. Did he have to come down from Boston? Well, a family member, any family member. Joe nodded neutrally, okay then. The officer left details, names, the precinct number. Joe said uh-huh, uh-huh, pretending to write them down. His forehead was pressed against the mesh of the screen window, looking out. The afternoon was a glaring white haze, punishingly hot. He told the officer he'd take care of everything. He pushed off the screen and went to the fridge where he stood in the cool downdraft of the open door, staring without seeing. Finally, he took a Corona and a lime from the door and started to slice the lime into wedges. His mind leapfrogged over years of absence. Eddie. His heart jolted painfully and his hands started to shake.

He brought his beer outside to the back porch and sat heavily on the boards with his back against the shady wall of the house. He was barefoot and bare-chested in the heat and not long awake. He worked the lime wedge down the neck of the bottle and sucked the citrus pulp off his fingers before taking a long slug. He thought about crying, but knew he wouldn't. It was seventeen years since he last saw Eddie. They took a trip to Boston one day, when he was ten. Then his father returned him to his mother and drove away. He had a Dodge Dart, a beautiful vintage green hardtop with white interior. They never saw him again.

Joe rolled the cold bottle against his skin. Carefully, he turned his mind's eye to look at Eddie square in the face, trying to be accurate. Eddie was handsome, Boston-Irish, maybe some Italian in there too. He was wiry, wore white t-shirts. He had sleek black hair, longish, always pushed back under his Red Sox cap. Joe could clearly recall Eddie's beloved cap, faded and stained, perfectly molded to his head. What else, what else? He pressed his fist to his forehead, alarmed at the emptiness of his mind, the refusal of his thoughts to flow. Eddie taught him how to pop beer caps and how to wolf whistle, that last trip to Boston. Joe smiled. He had forgotten about that. They had tacos. The first time Joe tried to whistle, he sprayed taco crumbs all over the table. That was a good night.

It was just after summer when Eddie Sullivan reappeared for what was to be the last time. They lived in Eastport back then, on the Cape. A dreary seaside town of a few hundred houses, Eastport was home to a small fishing fleet, a canning factory, a Revolutionary War graveyard and a square of narrow saltbox houses near the stone pier that offered tourists their only photo opportunity.

Joe was at Little League that afternoon, waiting in line for batting practice. He saw the green Dart straight away, over by the main school building. It turned slowly into the parking lot behind the bleachers and disappeared out of sight. He stared fixedly at the spot, waiting for his father to come around and down the shallow steps to the track, but nothing happened. For the rest of b.p. he had an acute sense of being watched and measured his movements carefully as a result, like an actor. He hooked his fingers through the chain link fence and swung out of it, keeping the parking lot in his peripheral vision. He balanced the bat against his shin like they did in the Majors and clapped chalk through his hands. When it was his turn to bat, he stepped forward with his chin up and asked the deep blue sky nothing more articulate than please please please. The pitch came and he smacked a line drive over third base. Coach clapped him on the shoulder and he high-fived a couple of kids on his way back down the line and was sure his father saw him and approved.

Eddie did see him. He cracked a grin as Joe connected with the pitch. "Alright! Atta boy."

He stood to one side of the equipment store, smoking, grinding one butt after another into the sandy grass. In fact, Eddie hadn't known that Joe would be there. He had come to confront Coach Karapetian over some talk that reached his ears all the way up on the North Shore. He had made it halfway across the parking lot before recognising Joe. One hand shot up instinctively in salute but other, stronger instincts took over and he ducked sideways behind a truck where he couldn't be seen. He cursed and frowned, keeping his head low. The shock of seeing Joe was like a punch in the gut. It had been nearly a year and the kid had grown like a weed. Eddie stared at him curiously, without advancing from his half-crouch. Joe was his boy, alright. The black hair, the long body. He was athletic, good looking. Eddie nodded, pleased. He gradually straightened up. His mood lifted. Even talking to Karapetian seemed ridiculous now. He stepped closer, edging towards the game. He could see the texture of Joe's hair, the mole behind his ear. A new plan formed in his mind. A better one. He pulled out his smokes and decided to wait.

When Joe finally saw Eddie, he was close to desperation with the tension of waiting. He threw both arms in the air and released a shriek of joy. "Dad!"

"Hey there, slugger!" Eddie looped his forearm around Joe's neck in a playful tussle. "Nice work. Nice swing you got going there."

He made a show of pushing Joe to arm's length to see how he'd grown. He felt his biceps for muscles and whistled in approval, not bad, not bad. Joe was eager, like a puppy. He pulled off his father's Boston cap and made him wear his Eastport Eagles one. It was too small. They swapped back. Eddie steered Joe towards the Dart.

"Wanna go for a ride? What time you due back? How's your mother, by the way?"

"She's good. I'm not due in for a while. We ended early today. Why don't you still have white wheels?"

"Ah, they get sh1tty looking in the snow. All the dirty slush. So I switched them out. Hop in. You can get in front."

Eddie glanced compulsively around the parking lot, then slid behind the huge white hoop of a steering wheel and put the car in gear. They sped away from the school.