Wednesday, March 30, 2011

FIRST 500 CRITIQUE #3 - "Pale Horse"

This is the second in a series of critiques of first 500 words from complete novels. Each submission has been made voluntarily by the author.

Authors critiqued in this series will be offered the chance to send revised material for critique in a follow-up series.

Reader comments and impressions are welcome, but please ensure you're offering constructive (i.e. practical, useful) advice. Troll comments will be deleted.



PALE HORSE
By Michael Pallante


Jeniffer Corsica waited at the Café Della Pace nursing a martini.


ALTHOUGH ‘CAFÉ DELLA PACE’ CONJURES IMAGES OF A FRENCH OR ITALIAN STREET CAFÉ, IT ISN’T SPECIFIC ENOUGH FOR THE READER TO BE SURE. IT’S A GOOD OPENING, SO MAYBE JUST BE MORE GENERIC ‘…SAT AT THE CAFÉ’S OUTDOOR TABLE NURSING A MARTINI’. BETTER YET GIVE US A TIDBIT OF BODY LANGUAGE TO IMPLY HER FRAME OF MIND (TAPPING FOOT, UNABLE TO SIT STILL, ETC).



Under different circumstances she'd like nothing better than to start Spring recess under the cool shade of the Della Pace's awning sipping a drink.

THE SENTENCE IS LONG, SO IT’S HARD TO FOLLOW. YOU HAVE SPRING RECESS, SHADE, DELLA PACE, AWNING, SIPPING A DRINK… TOO MANY ELEMENTS FOR A SINGLE SENTENCE. CUT IT DOWN TO TWO (‘…A DRINK ON A SPRING EVENING’?)



Today, however, she craned her neck at each opening cab door and sat upright for every middle aged man in a black suit. She glanced at her watch, a tasteful silver housing on thin band around her petite wrist.

THE IMAGERY IS GREAT BUT WE’RE USING TOO MANY ADJECTIVES TO GET THERE. CUT IT RIGHT BACK. SHE CAN CRANE HER NECK AT EVERY CAB AND GLANCE AT HER TASTEFUL SILVER WATCH AN WE’LL STILL GET THE PICTURE.



“This is ridiculous. He said 5:00.”

TIME SHOULD BE WRITTEN OUT: ‘FIVE O’CLOCK’



The flair of a match reflected in her dark lenses as she lit a cigarette.

YOU GAVE US THE IMAGE BEFORE THE STIMULUS, SO I THOUGHT SOMEONE WAS SURPRISING HER. SHE CAN’T SEE THE REFLECTION ON THE OUTSIDE OF HER GLASSES, SO JUST HAVE HER LIGHT A CIGARETTE.



In her head she gave him until the final embers to arrive.

THIS IS ALL GREAT IMAGERY, BUT YOU’RE COMPLICATING THE PICTURE. IT TAKES TIME TO IMAGINE ‘THE FINAL EMBERS’ AND REMEMBER IT’S REFERRING TO A CIGARETTE. HOWEVER, IF SHE JUST GAVE HIM UNTIL THE CIGARETTE WAS FINISHED, WE WOULDN’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT IT.



But she no longer held any expectations that the man she knew only from faculty photos would show.

‘HELD ANY EXPECTATIONS’ IS A REALLY COMPLICATED WAY TO SAY ‘EXPECTED’ OR ‘BELIEVED’ OR ‘ANTICIPATED’, ETC.



After an hour of waiting she simply attributed this latest waste-of-time to a series of disappointments over the past six months. Bad luck and dead ends had pervaded her life since the disappearance of her best friend, Marcus Corvos.

WATCH YOUR ADVERBS (MOSTLY WORDS ENDING IN ‘LY’) ONLY BECAUSE THEY’RE USUALLY SURPLUS TO REQUIREMETNS, AND YOU’VE ALREADY GOT A LOT OF EXTRA WORDS HERE. I’D SUGGEST REPLACING ‘ATTRIBUTED’ WITH ‘ADDED’ AND GIVIN GTHE MARCUS SENTENCE ITS OWN PARAGRAPH. RIGHT NOW, IT’S NOT AN ENTIRELY SMOOTH TRANSITION FROM CURRENT PREDICAMENT TO BACKSTORY INTRODUCTION. TRY AND MAKE THE MARCUS CORVOS COMMENT A NATURAL PROGRESSION FROM THE SENTIMENT OR OBSERVATION BEFORE IT.



Marcus, a tall, fey, fellow American with high cheekbones and dark eyes, attended the same University as Jeniffer.

YOU’VE GOT FOUR ADJECTIVES FOR MARCUS BEFORE YOU GET TO HIS PHYSICAL FEATURES. PARE IT RIGHT BACK. WE DON’T NEED HIS ENTIRE STORY IN ONE SENTENCE.



They met in her first year in Italy during a medieval art survey course. While Jeniffer stretched her college money as thinly as possible, Marcus lived opulently off a trust provided by his estate.

NOW YOU’RE REALLY JUMPING INTO BACKSTORY PROPER AND THAT’S A HUGE NO-NO IN THE FIRST PAGE.



His family perished in an accident when he was a child, leaving him the sole beneficiary of their fortune. And while Marcus' wealth and status attracted a constant entourage, very few, if any, were truly close to him. Unsurprisingly, Jeniffer was the first to report him missing.

They had made plans to meet for lunch the day he disappeared. Marcus intended to meet her at noon after returning a library book. The librarians, like many on campus, were familiar with the attractive and charismatic young man, but did not report seeing him that day. Jeniffer waited for him, but eventually gave up and went about her day. In the evening she phoned him, hoping to reschedule for dinner, but received no answer.

Marcus frequently abandoned Jeniffer for the eager girls and willing boys attracted to his sensual androgyny. Jeniffer made allowances for this aggravating, but somehow still endearing habit in exchange for his otherwise loyal and generous friendship. To Marcus’s credit, he never expressed any desire for or levied any pressure on Jeniffer. She lived in self-imposed celibacy, thankful for the simplicity it afforded her. While his boyish-girlish mouth often seemed welcoming on late, wine-filled nights, she was a practiced bachelorette. And he a respectful friend.

But his charm may have been his undoing.

Assuming kidnapping, Jeniffer and the Police both waited for for ransom demands. The police spoke to Marcus' stiff lipped lawyer Alex Di'Cosimo. If demands had been made Di'Cosimo wasn't telling. With no other leads the case went cold. Jeniffer mounted her own investigation but ran into the same roadblocks as the police. Still, she kept in contact with his few friends including his doctoral advisor, Dr. Malachi Agrippa.

EVERYTHING BETWEEN THE LAST COMMENT I MADE AND THIS IS BACKSTORY. FEW AGENTS OR EDITORS WILL READ PAST THE SECOND PARAGRAPH OF BACKSTORY. PICK UP BOOKS IN YOUR GENRE AND YOU’LL FIND MAYBE A PARAGRAPH (A BRIEF ONE!) IN THE FIRST COUPLE OF PAGES. OTHER POINTS MAY BE SPRINKLED THROUGHOUT. BUT IT’S CRITICAL THAT YOU GET THE FOCAL CHARACTER MOVING IN THIS PORTION OF THE BOOK. I’D SUGGEST CUTTING ALL OF THIS OUT AND MOVING INTO THE STORY PROPER, INTRODUCING THIS BACKSTORY IN A MORE ORGANIC WAY, LATER ON, WHEN THE READER IS ALREADY ‘HOOKED’.



SUMMARY CRITIQUE

READER NOTE: If I picked this book up in a bookstore I would have been disappointed when it dropped into backstory. The original scene seemed very colorful (if a little complicated). I wanted to see what was going to happen there.

WRITER NOTES: Everything above the sentence “Bad luck and dead ends had pervaded her life since the disappearance of her best friend, Marcus Corvos” painted a picture I wanted to see to its conclusion. Who is this woman? Why is she waiting for this man? Why is she so interested in talking to him? Does it have something to do with the disappearance of her friend?

It’s the beginning of a great scene, full of sensations that ground the reader in reality. It just needs tightening. You’ve got a lot of extraneous words, too many descriptors, and occasion complex phrases. But the showing shines through, so it isn’t a big problem.

Your BIG problem here is backstory. I’ll tell you what a published author told me: If you can paint a scene that intrigues people, you can trust them to stick with it even if they don’t know everything about how and why the focal character came to be there.

In fact, readers generally don’t want backstory until it becomes relevant to the current problem. You haven’t put your focal character into any real danger or conflict yet. If you achieve that first, then the reader will happily watch backstory unfold as and when it becomes relevant.

Dwight Swain puts it this way: Backstory can’t be changed, therefore it lacks tension for the reader. Only the future is undetermined – that’s what drives a reader to read.

Good luck with this Michael. I like your writing and think you’ve probably got a good book buried under here. You just need to do a little digging and cut away the fat.

2 comments:

  1. I agree with everything Aimee said.

    There is just enough here to make me curious, so I would give it another page or two. I'm interested to know who she's waiting for and why. It must be important if she's willing to wait so long for him.

    I struggle with too much backstory in my own writing and many have tried to help me. I'm learning how to weave tiny bits of it into dialogue in the story, and only then the bits that are really important for what is to come. It's so hard! :)

    Good luck!

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  2. Aimee's critique was very useful. I realized that from Chapter 3 on the action is non stop- its kind of cruel to force a reader to sit through two whole chapters before something interesting happens!

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