Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

[Melenka]

In re: happy endings. I can't do them. The best I can manage is open endings with enough optimism that the reader can take them to the happy place if they wish. My best friend calls this my "f**k your happy ending and like it" mentality. If nothing else, her assessment makes me laugh. I don't do particularly sad endings, either. It's that optimism thing again. I believe things can always get better and that there are ways out of difficult situations, even if those ways might be equally difficult. So far, the reader response has been good, but I haven't reached the point where my MS is ready to be submitted, so I don't have a final verdict.

[DreamWeaver]

Good morning, fellow writers,

As I said in my last post I had paid for an editorial assessment through a UK company (Writer's Workshop) of my recently completed first novel. The report has finally been returned. I thought I would share a few salient points with you. And thank you very much for that--I got quite a bit out of it (recognized myself a few too many places :D).

Excuse me, I need to go and BIC.....Another excellent piece of advice. I think I'll go do the BIC thing now, too.

[euclid]

What is the current thinking on the use of contractions? I couldn't, I won't, you can't, he didn't - that sort of thing. Obviously it's fine in dialogue, but is it okay in the body of the text?

[Calliopenjo]

Hi there,

I needed a mental break from my writing so I came here. In reply to the question about contractions, this link may help to answer your question.
http://rmjacobsen.squarespace.com/articles/2006/1/4/contractions-and-how-not-to-abuse-em.html

Personally though, I think it depends on the period in which you are writing your story. Or even the story type. Will it fit? Just make sure it's consistent throughout the story.

[smsarber]

Sure, if that's the feel you need for the story. I personally think that the best fiction has a relaxed feel. Even in the points of high tension narration shouldn't feel forced. But mix it up some. Of course, if you are writing in first person then you are conveying how the MC talks and thinks, so use what you know about your character as your guide.
But it may be less appropriate in third person, again, use your judgement. Realize that everyone, no matter how proper they are, uses contractions at some time or other.
That's my two cents.

[euclid]

Sure, if that's the feel you need for the story. I personally think that the best fiction has a relaxed feel. Even in the points of high tension narration shouldn't feel forced. But mix it up some. Of course, if you are writing in first person then you are conveying how the MC talks and thinks, so use what you know about your character as your guide.
But it may be less appropriate in third person, again, use your judgement. Realize that everyone, no matter how proper they are, uses contractions at some time or other.
That's my two cents.

Thanks, Steven. That was helpful. My book is in first person, so it's a no-brainer, I suppose.

[OremLK]

What is the current thinking on the use of contractions? I couldn't, I won't, you can't, he didn't - that sort of thing. Obviously it's fine in dialogue, but is it okay in the body of the text?

Of course. This is something I've been meaning to take up with Uncle Jim, actually. I have a deep suspicion of any suggestion to force "correct" grammar or style onto today's fictional narratives (I think Jim has been stopping just shy of this suggestion, but he's still coming a little too close for my comfort).

Here's why.

Fiction today, especially genre fiction, employs what's known as tight, limited third-person narration, or "deep penetration" (into the mind of the POV character). What we've done is to eliminate much of the distance in narration, so that even in third-person, we are immediately within the character's head and hearing his thoughts, and the narrative takes on the tone of his voice.

Of course there is still some distance. More than in first-person, anyway. But I think it's probably a good thing to eliminate it where you can, when it makes sense.

Fiction has diverged into this territory ever since the advent of movie-making. There's a reason for this: Film today can show almost everything in a story more easily than we can with fiction--except thought. Today, I think a lot of why people read fiction is so that they can get into characters' heads. They want your narrative to move in tighter, they want another person's perceptions, and yes, voice.

[Dale Emery]

What is the current thinking on the use of contractions?

I love contraptions! http://fantasticcontraption.com/

is it okay in the body of the text?

The way to answer this (and nearly all questions of "is this stylistic choice okay") is to consider the effects of each choice, and pick the choice that creates the effects you want.

One big effect of contractions is to make the text seem less formal. So if you want a less formal text, use contractions to help with that. If you want the text to be more formal, avoid contractions.

Dale

[euclid]

I love contraptions! http://fantasticcontraption.com/


I have a collection of WORDS for contraptions, gizmos, thingammejigs, etc. I love those words.

:)

[IceCreamEmpress]

What is the current thinking on the use of contractions? I couldn't, I won't, you can't, he didn't - that sort of thing. Obviously it's fine in dialogue, but is it okay in the body of the text?

Of course.

It's fine no matter who your characters are, no matter when or where your story is set, and no matter what the tone of your story is.

The only time it might seem off is if the characters are speaking very formally in dialogue--in that case, you want to raise the formality level of the narrative to match the dialogue.

If you're doing this:

"The torches cast ripples of light onto the Pharaoh's magnificent throne. 'O, son of Ra," the priests intoned. 'O falcon of Horus. Hear the pleas of your most humble subjects.'"

then going on with

"Kerem couldn't see the Pharoah's face from where he stood" might seem a bit off--"Kerem could not see the Pharaoh's face from where he stood" might be more in keeping.

[euclid]

I love contraptions! http://fantasticcontraption.com/


Bl**dy H*ll, Dale. What are you trying to do to me? I just wasted 45 minutes with those amazing contraptions. Addictive nonsense.

[Calamity_Jones]

I love contraptions! http://fantasticcontraption.com/


Oh my god. You've just ruined my life...

[Dale Emery]

Bl**dy H*ll, Dale. What are you trying to do to me? I just wasted 45 minutes with those amazing contraptions. Addictive nonsense.

Everybody I send that link to ends up swearing at me, and for the same reason. And that's why I don't send them this link: http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/index.html

Dale

[Calamity_Jones]

Everybody I send that link to ends up swearing at me, and for the same reason. And that's why I don't send them this link: http://woodgears.ca/eyeball/index.html

Dale

I hate you.

I want more!

[Yeshanu]

Dale is evil. Pure evil, I tell you.

As far as contractions go, I'd say, "Don't do it," but then I'd be a hypocrite, wouldn't I? :D

Seriously, this is one case where reading out loud helps. If it sounds pretentious, it probably is. I sometimes also do not use contractions when I want to emphasize a point, as in this case.

But usually the ones I use in my writing are ones I use in my speech.

[Dale Emery]

I'm starting to wonder what's at the other end of those links...

Dale

[euclid]

I'm starting to wonder what's at the other end of those links...

Dale

...take a look? :e2brows:

[Calliopenjo]

Hi there everyone,

If anybody can answer or just give me your opinion I would appreciate it. Silly question really but, if you saw the bolded word "Hazel eyes met light gray from across the room. Both were twitterpated by the sight of the other." What would you think? Too childish, too teenage, too something else, wouldn't think anything about it, throw the story somewhere to help roast the marshmallows. . .

[Liosse de Velishaf]

Hi there everyone,

If anybody can answer or just give me your opinion I would appreciate it. Silly question really but, if you saw the bolded word "Hazel eyes met light gray from across the room. Both were twitterpated by the sight of the either." What would you think? Too childish, too teenage, too something else, wouldn't think anything about it, throw the story somewhere to help roast the marshmallows. . .

"the other" is what you meant there, I think. Feel free to correct me. As for "twitterpated", sounds like their heads' twitching a lot... I wouldn't go there. A bit childish, unless that's the perspective.

[batgirl]

if you saw the bolded word "Hazel eyes met light gray from across the room. Both were twitterpated by the sight of the either." What would you think?
Twitterpated sounds to me like an ongoing state (You twitterpate!) rather than a reaction. If I were told someone was twitterpated I'd assume they were always like that.
It's an unusual dialect word, but whether it would toss me out of the story would depend on what level of dialect had been established for the setting and characters.

Secondarily, you could probably cut 'from', or even 'from across the room' if you'd already established where they were. And 'either' is perhaps a typo for 'other'?
Tertiarily, there are people who are such utter literalists that they will not accept any use of 'eyes' meaning 'gaze', and will insist that such a sentence must be interpreted as the eyes squiggling out of the sockets, running across the room and squishing against each other. The same people have trouble with a character 'tossing her head' and insist that it can only mean the character picked her head up in her hands and volleyed it against the wall. So you want to decide whether you need to guard against that sort of reading.
-Barbara (who knows you didn't ask about the rest of it, and apologises)

[smsarber]

I had never heard the word before, so it would have nat least prompted me to go get my dictionary (which my brother borrowed before he went to basic training and never returned). So at least it would accomplish making me broaden my horizons.

[Perle_Rare]

To answer your question, the word fits if you believe your intended audience would understand it and not find it sticking out like a sore thumb. Basically, don't use an unusual word because you think it's fabulous if it's the only word of that type in your story.

Having said that, here's my experience with it:

I had no idea what the word meant so I went to Meriam-Webster Online. It had no clue either. So that left me with the following: two pairs of eyes saw each other and [something undefined happened].

I then did a plain Google search and came up with an Urban Dictionary (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=twitterpated) definition:

1. twitterpated
1)to be completely enamored with someone/something.
2) the flighty exciting feeling you get when you think about/see the object of your affection.
3) romantically excited (i.e.: aroused)
4) the ever increasing acceleration of heartbeat and body temperature as a result of being engulfed amidst the exhilaration and joy of being/having a romantic entity in someone's life.

Armed with that knowledge, I have to ask: How can two pairs of eyes feel any of the above emotions?

Yes, I do belong to the clan who likes to keep eyes firmly attached to their respective sockets.

[smsarber]

I believe the word would be "metaphorical". Eyes can't feel emotion, but days can't drag, the sun can't rise, etc...

[bpmann]

Oh, come on... twitterpated is from Bambi. You guys never saw it?

[Calliopenjo]

I hear the question and therefore respond. That particular sentence was constructed on the spot. Chances are high that sentence will not appear at all in my story, to me it sounds too much like Harlequin romance line. Anyway, what I was after was the word itself and only wrote the sentence in the hopes of all of you better understanding the word. Now that it has been pointed out to me, I promise not to use that line. (Making a note now.)

Sometimes I get words or phrases in my head so strong it's almost a need. For example, I had a need for the longest time to write the line "On a lonely hill there sat a house." While it sounds nice it doesn't work. I spent three days critiquing other people's stories in an attempt not to write that line. Success is noted.

I've worked my way to twitterpated. You can thank Disney for that word.

[RJK]

I had to look it up, but I had a feeling from the sound of the word what it meant. My guess was close. I saw Bambi but didn't read it, so I didn't encounter the word there. I don't read books where twitterpatted would normally be used but now that I think about it, it might make for good dialog for my hard boiled detective to use the word when describing his partner's love relationship. I'll keep it in mind.

[HConn]

Uncle Jim, what do you think about this post on marketing books? (http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/10/guest-blogger-mj-rose-on-book-marketing.html)

[Yeshanu]

Thanks for the link, HConn. Even if I ultimately don't hire a pr or marketing firm, there's some good info in that article on how to build a career.

[euclid]

Uncle Jim, what do you think about this post on marketing books? (http://nathanbransford.blogspot.com/2008/10/guest-blogger-mj-rose-on-book-marketing.html)

Great blog site. Thanks. I just spent an hour in there, and read only about a half of it. More tomorrow. I may query the guy too!

:)

[Calliopenjo]

Hi Uncle Jim,

I have a question. A person from modern day USA, MC, travels to fantasy land. MC is used to using contractions-can't, won't, I'm, haven't, etc. The people in fantasy land do not use contractions-cannot, will not, I am, have not, etc. Here is where the question comes in: Would it weird or strange if MC uses contractions in a land that doesn't?

"I said I'll clean the bathtub," MC said, "I have to take the laundry to get cleaned first."

"You will clean the bathtub then?" Fantasy member said, "It will be good to soak for a long while."

Does that look strange?

[Alphabeter]

It worked in The Phantom Tollbooth!

[Bartholomew]

Hi Uncle Jim,

I have a question. A person from modern day USA, MC, travels to fantasy land. MC is used to using contractions-can't, won't, I'm, haven't, etc. The people in fantasy land do not use contractions-cannot, will not, I am, have not, etc. Here is where the question comes in: Would it weird or strange if MC uses contractions in a land that doesn't?

"I said I'll clean the bathtub," MC said, "I have to take the laundry to get cleaned first."

"You will clean the bathtub then?" Fantasy member said, "It will be good to soak for a long while."

Does that look strange?

I think it very likely that your fantasy land folk would have trouble understanding your MC. Especially if he has any sort of accent.

[MumblingSage]

The question I'd ask is: why do people in your fantasy land speak perfect modern English, except for contractions?

Or is there some sort of magical translation going on here? Or will you use the contractions/lack thereof to symbolize that they're speaking differently?

[OremLK]

The question I'd ask is: why do people in your fantasy land speak perfect modern English, except for contractions?

Or is there some sort of magical translation going on here? Or will you use the contractions/lack thereof to symbolize that they're speaking differently?

I think it's a safe assumption that in an alternate-world fantasy (Diane Wynne Jones' "fantasyland") the story you are reading is a translation. There's nothing wrong with this unstated conceit, in my opinion.

That said, you don't want to use modern slang in an alternate-world fantasy, because even though the story is a translation, slang still draws attention to itself and doesn't fit with the world of the story.

[Liosse de Velishaf]

I think it's a safe assumption that in an alternate-world fantasy (Diane Wynne Jones' "fantasyland") the story you are reading is a translation. There's nothing wrong with this unstated conceit, in my opinion.

That said, you don't want to use modern slang in an alternate-world fantasy, because even though the story is a translation, slang still draws attention to itself and doesn't fit with the world of the story.

Okay, but does this magic include translation both ways? If so, why would this be an issue? Does the magical translator not know contractions?

[Calliopenjo]

This may sound conceited but, let's pretend that in my fantasy world they speak English. The thing that I want to know is how does it look. Does it look strange, weird, out of place? I don't want somebody turning the story upside down and inside out because I'm mixing contractions in with extended spellings of the same word as in the example below.

[OremLK]

Okay, but does this magic include translation both ways? If so, why would this be an issue? Does the magical translator not know contractions?

The "translation" isn't supposed to be magic at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's like somebody found the text and stuck it into English. Or even better, it's like you're hearing the ideas directly from the point-of-view characters' minds, and don't need to understand the language. Contractions are okay because they're used to convey a more casual tone of speech, which would exist in any language.

[Liosse de Velishaf]

The "translation" isn't supposed to be magic at all, as far as I'm concerned. It's like somebody found the text and stuck it into English. Or even better, it's like you're hearing the ideas directly from the point-of-view characters' minds, and don't need to understand the language. Contractions are okay because they're used to convey a more casual tone of speech, which would exist in any language.


Okay, fine for that... but if the MC speaks english--being from the US, and the fantasy landers don't... then you sort of need magic translation... unless of course it's some sort of parallel world, or realism isn't your goal. Which is fine, I suppose, but then, there wouldn't need to be translation of any kind. It's sort of a conundrum.

[HConn]

This may sound conceited but, let's pretend that in my fantasy world they speak English. The thing that I want to know is how does it look. Does it look strange, weird, out of place? I don't want somebody turning the story upside down and inside out because I'm mixing contractions in with extended spellings of the same word as in the example below.


Really, the only thing to do is write it and judge for yourself. After it's done, take a look at it and see what you think, or show it to beta readers.

Good luck.

[IdiotsRUs]

In my fantasy I have a race that doesn't use contractions. It seems to work, but then again they don't have huge amounts of speaking time. Whether it would seem stilted if only the MC used contractions and everyone else didn't...well write it and see. There are other ways to convey a formality of speech other than no contractions, including word choice and order of words.

[allenparker]

If these people never use contractions, how do the women deliver babies?

Seriously, have I missed something here or is there a large amount of people using this device to separate people? Wouldn't there have to be other differences in the speech pattern to support this?

I am just asking...

[Bookdragonette]

My first thought is always of Data (from Star Trek, for the non-fans), in discussions like this...His excuse was that contractions were a very human thing to do, and thus he couldn't.

I agree with the naked guy above me. The use of contractions vs. the lack of them shouldn't be the only distinction between two groups of people. I'd look for more than that. Differences in slang, things like that.

[smsarber]

Absolutely. Even the Queen of England surely uses the occassional contraction, but probably doesn't say, "We're up s**t creek." (As a wonderful example of American slang.)

[euclid]

Absolutely. Even the Queen of England surely uses the occassional contraction, but probably doesn't say, "We're up s**t creek." (As a wonderful example of American slang.)

No, no, NO. Her Majesty would NEVER say anything so CRUDE. She would say: "One is up sh*t creek without a paddle."

:ROFL:

[Alphabeter]

WE, Royal WE.

We are finding ourselves up the creek of shite without a paddle. Where is that steward?

[IdiotsRUs]

I agree with the naked guy above me. The use of contractions vs. the lack of them shouldn't be the only distinction between two groups of people.

Oh I agree too, as I said you can use words choice and order of words also. But it can be used as one distinction between two speakers.

[James D. Macdonald]

Does it look strange, weird, out of place?

Damon Runyon's characters did not use contractions. It is a legitimate stylistic choice.

As to how well it may work, you will need to read it aloud.

[Emerita]

I had no contractions in my memoir, then I read that agent's like them. Makes for faster reading...is this true? Need I put back the words?

[IceCreamEmpress]

Damon Runyon's characters did not use contractions. It is a legitimate stylistic choice.

Damon Runyon's characters only use the present tense as well. They never use the past tense, even when they are discussing events that occur many years ago.

This kind of highly artificial stylistic choice generally works better with comedy, and in short forms, than it does with other genres and in long forms. Then again, Damon Runyon sells more than somewhat, whereas I am but a midlist hack who can hardly afford a slice of Mindy's cheesecake.


I had no contractions in my memoir

That sounds like a huge mistake. One of the key features of memoir is that they represent different authors' distinctive voices. Using contractions feels conversational; not using contractions almost always sounds stiffly formal.

Since your memoir, as I recall it, is a story of your own challenging life experiences, and is leavened by your wit, why not use contractions? Overformality doesn't seem like it's in keeping with your memoir's subject to me.

[Emerita]

I can't even afford the thought of cheesecake. I guess I'll keep the contractions. Going back and fixing them...well....I'd rather scrounge up change to think about cheesecake.....http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Emerita/Smilies/9.gif

[BlueLucario]

Some people don't talk in contractions at all. :)

If you are writing a memoir, then you should write how you speak. The way you write gives the readers an idea of what you are really like in real life. :)

[Sailor Kenshin]

Damon Runyon's characters did not use contractions. It is a legitimate stylistic choice.

As to how well it may work, you will need to read it aloud.

And it was hilarious because they were gamblers, tough guys and bookies. :D

[pictopedia]

Without contractions people's talk is slower. It might be interesting to invent why people in another world speak slower. Maybe they reflect more about what they say, while they are saying it, which slows them down, and gives more importance to each single word they say.

[MumblingSage]

Wut? Uncle Jim's thread does not drop off the front page. Bump!

[smsarber]

Uncle Jim, first, I looked at your website. I had no idea you had written 35 books. Wow! Second, there was a James MacDonald on CSI: Miami last night (I only got to see the beginning credits and saw the name, then my son wanted to watch a cartoon before bed), it wasn't you on the show, was it?
Now on to the writing question. I looked at the "Show vs. Tell" sticky in this forum, but still have a question. My writing always has a lot of tell. I don't know why I can't break that habit. I know HOW to show, but when I sit down to write it just doesn't convey into my printed words. I've always figured that was just my style, but I know I need to change if I truly want to get published (& I DO). I know what my plan is: To write the way I normally do for the first draft, then fix it to show more in the subsequent drafts. If I do it that way my first drafts will surely always be shorter than the final drafts, and that is how my first novel ended up. 54,000 words for the first. I'm shooting for 80,000 for the final product. But is that a viable way to do things? Or is there some kind of excercise I can do to train myself to show better?

[euclid]

..."Show vs. Tell"... my plan is: To write the way I normally do for the first draft, then fix it to show more in the subsequent drafts... is that a viable way to do things?

... I think there should be no problem with that. After you have written your draft 1, you should look at each section and see where there are opportunties to show the characters interacting with one another. I think lots of writers do it that way. Take a look at Keith Snyder's web site. He has a great piece on this subject.

:)

[Dale Emery]

I know what my plan is: To write the way I normally do for the first draft, then fix it to show more in the subsequent drafts. If I do it that way my first drafts will surely always be shorter than the final drafts, and that is how my first novel ended up. 54,000 words for the first. I'm shooting for 80,000 for the final product. But is that a viable way to do things?

Have you tried it? How did it go?

Or is there some kind of excercise I can do to train myself to show better?

If you have pretty good idea of when showing works best, and when telling works best, try this: Before you start each scene (or perhaps each paragraph or sentence), ask yourself what you goals are for the scene, and whether those goals would be served better by showing or by telling. Then write accordingly.

If you're puzzled about when to show and when to tell, I don't have any advice about that. I haven't thought much (yet) about what effect each approach has on the reader.

Dale

[smsarber]

Dale, I can say this: It goes painstakingly slow. I don't know if I've just lost my motivation for the piece in question, or if it's just because it's the first book I have written and I'm still working out the bugs in my editing and re-writing process, but whatever it is I need to turn off the TV and sit down and write until my fingers fall off!
Euclid, thanks for your response, also. I will check out the site you suggested.

[allenparker]

That's what I do. I write it out like a bat out of hell. Then, I can go back and leave the readers with a good show.

I find the books grow about 20% when I do this.

YMMV

[CaroGirl]

I think any writer is better off training themselves to write a first draft that's as close as possible to a final. The closer the better, imo. At least, that's my goal. When something's there, printed before me, especially when it came out of my own head, it feels more immutable. Unless I have the luxury of being able to put it away for a month, I can't always see what might be wrong with it.

My mother always said, "Begin as you intend to go on." I say, work at your writing until balancing show and tell is second nature. Read a lot, too. That helps.

[ishtar'sgate]

I think any writer is better off training themselves to write a first draft that's as close as possible to a final. The closer the better, imo. At least, that's my goal.
I agree. That's the only way I can write. I want to be satisfied with each scene before I move on to the next. Of course I still end up with revisions but they're usually not that extensive unless I've altered something near the end and have to go back and plug in supporting scenes.

[smsarber]

I read constantly. And it certainly helps. But what I think comes forth in my first draft is more of a detailed outline of what I want the finished product to be. At least for novels. For short stories I try to do what I think is best for the completed story the first pass. But if I need any more confirmation that it is not working, I haven't had any short stories published yet. Except for my autobiographical essay on my path to sobriety. So I think it's time to find a method that does work for me. It would be nice if I could find a writer's workshop around where I live.

[jbryson]

I agree. That's the only way I can write. I want to be satisfied with each scene before I move on to the next. Of course I still end up with revisions but they're usually not that extensive unless I've altered something near the end and have to go back and plug in supporting scenes.

I have to be satisfied with each word in a sentence. Then I move sentences around in the paragraph. Then I move paragraphs around.

[Liosse de Velishaf]

I think any writer is better off training themselves to write a first draft that's as close as possible to a final. The closer the better, imo. At least, that's my goal. When something's there, printed before me, especially when it came out of my own head, it feels more immutable. Unless I have the luxury of being able to put it away for a month, I can't always see what might be wrong with it.

My mother always said, "Begin as you intend to go on." I say, work at your writing until balancing show and tell is second nature. Read a lot, too. That helps.


I've found that I can't work like that, because something always seems to come out wrong, and I can always find something no matter how many times I edit/revise; some of these things I find aren't really there. That's just me.

But I do agree about the "immutable" issue. If I really want to make major changes, I have to open a new document and retype everything, with the original only as reference. It's very frustrating in one sense, but it works for me.

[James D. Macdonald]

These last few are all variants on "Do what works for you."

[smsarber]

Well yeah, the 'Do what works..." adage is accurate. I'm just looking for some ideas of different ways to interpret and execute what my creative process gives me. If that doesn't make sense, let me say it this way: New ways to look at what my imagination conjures up, then, new ways to state it more clearly in written word. Maybe I should get a collaborator. I can write the first draft, then someone else can "show" it up! (But that wouldn't be satisfying for me. If worked too hard to become a published author. My first book has to be my own, but I will take help graciously from anyone who offers it.) Uncle Jim, you work with your wife, do you guys ever just butt heads about parts of your stories?

[HConn]

But is that a viable way to do things? Or is there some kind of excercise I can do to train myself to show better?

You'll be training yourself every time you revise.

Pay close attention to the types of scenes and sentences where you tell but should have shown. Eventually, you'll start noticing these moments in the first draft and can fix it right then.

That's the best solution I can offer, I'm afraid. Good luck.

[smsarber]

So no magic formula, huh? Oh well. Thanks, HConn. That was pretty much what I had assumed, but to hear someone else validate my thoughts helps. And, even though I have been writing seriously for two years, I am still very much a newbie. So every bit of validation is that much more important. I know that when I send my draft to a beta to read I'll have help finding the "tell" spots I missed, and hopefully that will help me to see them on my own as well.

[allenparker]

You'll be training yourself every time you revise.

Pay close attention to the types of scenes and sentences where you tell but should have shown. Eventually, you'll start noticing these moments in the first draft and can fix it right then.

That's the best solution I can offer, I'm afraid. Good luck.


That is wonderful for you normal people, but for us ADD people -- oh shiny. Is that coffee you're pouring. I smell popcorn.

Where were we? Oh, yes. Outline. Always outline and spellcheck.
C-h-e-c-k.Check. Why did you want me to write the milkman a check?
No, I don't want milk in my coffee. Were we talking about popcorn?

Seriously, some people might find writing to the end is more productive telling first and rewriting to showing later. Fixing later can be done in chunks. It really is a matter of "what works."

[pictopedia]

I'd like a coffee with milk please. A bit of sugar, thank you. That's lovely. Shall we sit on you futon? Okay, yes. Sure, go ahead. Hey, wait a minute, why are you undressing?

[James D. Macdonald]

Uncle Jim, you work with your wife, do you guys ever just butt heads about parts of your stories?

We worked it out long ago: I get final say on the plot, she gets final say on the prose.

[James D. Macdonald]

Once again, it's time to play First Page!

Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey descended the wide, impressive staircase of the Mowberry Private Nursing Home slowly and thoughtfully. It was not the first occasion since she had come to work here that she had experienced serious doubts as to whether or not she should remain.

Could she not have been doing the same sort of work, and doing it equally well, in the confines of the Rawbridge General Infirmary where she had worked for the past four years, right until she gave in her notice and responded to Angela Power's appeals to join her and help her make the nursing home a real success?

There was certainly no possible doubt as to the success of the nursing home, Jane reflected. Every bed was fully booked for months ahead, with the exception of the four in the emergency side ward, all of them booked by people who could afford not to leave their names any length of time on the waiting list at the Infirmary. No doubt when any one of those on the waiting list could be classified as a genuine emergency a bed would be found at the Rawbridge General, but those who could afford it preferred to have their operations or indispositions over and done with, not to linger on until room could be fournd to deal with whatever ailed them.

That was the principal reason Jane had agreed to join in Angela's venture. The knowledge that for even a minority of people almost immediate help would then be available had been a great influence, even though she had known at the start the bulk of the money behind the venture had come from Henry Crabtree, a man she...

The novel is Nurse Kelsey Abroad by Marjorie Norrell. How about it, friends? Do you turn the page or put the book back on the rack?

[RJK]

Not for me. I'd put it back if I were ever tempted to pick it up.

[James D. Macdonald]

Not for me. I'd put it back if I were ever tempted to pick it up.

Could you expound a bit?

(I do intend to do a line-by-line fairly soon on this excerpt....)

[batgirl]

I would read on to find out what was up with Crabtree and Kelsey, what sort of history there might be between them.
If I'm reading as a reader, I'd see a woman in uncertainty, about to make some sort of decision, and being conscientious about it. I'd skim that 3d para, figuring it would be expanded and clarified elsewhere if it was important. The surroundings are rich, there's money here, and where there's money there's usually conflict. It's not looking like something I'd read to savour, more to pass the time.
Reading as a writer, I find the writing clunky (how can you descend a staircase thoughtfully?) but readable until that 3d para when the sentences get way too long. Wait, many long sentences, such as those by Georgette Heyer, are quite readable and understandable, because they are well constructed. So, let me call those clunky long sentences, which I had to re-read, even though my reading comprehension is usually quite good. Still, my interest picked up a bit with the Crabtree fellow...
-Barbara

[Yeshanu]

Zzzz...

Oh, sorry. You asked if I'd take it to the checkout or put it back, didn't you. I'd put it back. I had to force myself to continue reading after the first sentence.

No action, not even interior movement. No hint of any real conflict beyond the ordinary, every day tripe of daily living that we all experience. No detail of character or setting that would make me want to read further.

It's all general exposition, all telling instead of showing. If the author wanted me to take this novel home and have me read it through, instead of telling me that the staircase was "impressive" she might have shown me its carved, oaken railing, the handwoven Oriental runners on the treads, the two-hundred light crystal chandelier glittering overhead.

(And I think I'll steal this description and put it verbatim into a novel I'm writing...)

Those patients lying in the beds in the emergency side ward? One of them is Mrs. McReady, whose doctor has told her that having her big toe straightened really isn't an emergency that would warrant bumping her up to the head of the outpatient surgery line at the General, and besides, she's convinced that such major surgery shouldn't be done on an outpatient basis. She's got pots of money she inherited from her recently deceased niece, who was a famous writer of Nurse Novels, so she opted to have her surgery done pronto at Mowberry, where they pay much more attention to her needs than the staff at the General.

And she didn't even mention Mrs. McReady by name! How gauche!

Seriously, in the first few paragraphs of any piece of fiction, I want to be introduced to at least one character. I want to be given a reason to care about the character I'm reading about, and the story that's about to be told. I want enough detail so that I can enter the world of the novel and leave the room I'm sitting in behind me, but not so much that it bogs the story down.

Give me that, and genre doesn't matter. Even the overall quality of the story doesn't matter all that much, in the end. I'm asking for a few hours' entertainment, where I can leave the mundane behind. Ms. Norrell doesn't do it for me. Sorry.

[euclid]

Much too much exposition for me. No emotional connection to the MC. I mean where's the hook?

Back on the shelf.

[FennelGiraffe]

I typically give books more than one page to hook me. For me, this would still be in limbo: It hasn't turned me off enough to be put back, but it hasn't given me any reason to part with my hard-earned cash, either. If I had to decide now, it would probably be no.

The mechanics are ... adequate. I see a lot I would do differently, but nothing egregious enough to pull me out of the story once I got in it.

It's a slow start, mostly background info. My biggest problem is how dispassionate it is. Even though it's all introspection, I have no idea how the character feels about anything.

[jbryson]

Could you expound a bit?

(I do intend to do a line-by-line fairly soon on this excerpt....)

It's hard for me to put a finger on. When you go to sleep, it's sometimes hard to remember what knocked you out.

Well, she did seem to use a lot of words to describe the thoughts of a nurse who was thinking of quitting because she didn't think much of the patients.

[Dale Emery]

Back on the shelf. The first line starts by telling me the character's profession. This immediately and irrevocably invokes Dan Brown, which is unforgivable even if she never uses the word "brilliant."

Then the rest is reflection on key events that happened offstage, but which could easily have been shown in interesting scenes. I had to force myself to read even these four paragraphs of exposition, and that took me three attempts.

Given the title I'd be unlikely pick up the book in the first place. But if this were a series and I was a fan, I might be willing to slog through the exposition (if it were, say, a summary of earlier books).

Dale

[ishtar'sgate]

My first thought was - where are the editors? It was a relief to learn this book was published in 1968. Things certainly have changed.

[Calliopenjo]

Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey descended the wide, impressive staircase of the Mowberry Private Nursing Home slowly and thoughtfully. It was not the first occasion since she had come to work here that she had experienced serious doubts as to whether or not she should remain.

Could she not have been doing the same sort of work, and doing it equally well, in the confines of the Rawbridge General Infirmary where she had worked for the past four years, right until she gave in her notice and responded to Angela Power's appeals to join her and help her make the nursing home a real success?

There was certainly no possible doubt as to the success of the nursing home, Jane reflected. Every bed was fully booked for months ahead, with the exception of the four in the emergency side ward, all of them booked by people who could afford not to leave their names any length of time on the waiting list at the Infirmary. No doubt when any one of those on the waiting list could be classified as a genuine emergency a bed would be found at the Rawbridge General, but those who could afford it preferred to have their operations or indispositions over and done with, not to linger on until room could be fournd to deal with whatever ailed them.

That was the principal reason Jane had agreed to join in Angela's venture. The knowledge that for even a minority of people almost immediate help would then be available had been a great influence, even though she had known at the start the bulk of the money behind the venture had come from Henry Crabtree, a man she...

I can't get a picture in my head when I'm reading this. The sentences are verrrrryyyyyy llllloooooonnnnngggggg. One sentence is one paragraph? There's nothing in this passage to tell me who anybody is. How they think, what they feel things like that. So to answer the question, I'd put it back. Not only because it's not the sort of genre that I enjoy reading, it's also the title. It sounds like a Travel Channel Documentary.

[smsarber]

I thought it was dry. Not poorly executed; just flavorless. I wouldn't have made it past the first paragraph, but since I don't read in that genre often, a piece of this nature has to really grab me by the, uh, ahem-sticles and twist to hold my interest. Those four short paragraphs just didn't seem to flow freely.

[James D. Macdonald]

Line by line through the first page of Nurse Kelsey Abroad:

Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey descended the wide, impressive staircase of the Mowberry Private Nursing Home slowly and thoughtfully.

Introduces our main character in the first four words of the first sentence of the first paragraph. The second part of the sentence introduces the setting, a private nursing home. The staircase rates two adjectives; Nurse Kelsey's descent rates two adverbs.

It was not the first occasion since she had come to work here that she had experienced serious doubts as to whether or not she should remain.

So ends paragraph one. We have a person in a place with a problem. Nurse Kelsey's problem is figuring out whether or not to stay in this opulent private facility. "It was" is a weak sentence opening. The first paragraph of a novel does not need weak constructions.


Could she not have been doing the same sort of work, and doing it equally well, in the confines of the Rawbridge General Infirmary where she had worked for the past four years, right until she gave in her notice and responded to Angela Power's appeals to join her and help her make the nursing home a real success?

The next paragraph, all 59 words of it, is a single sentence. And what a sentence it is! At first I thought that this book might perhaps be a later volume in a series and this was the recap of Our Story So Far. As it turns out, this is stand-alone novel, and this paragraph is quite unnecessary backstory. By the time the plot starts (four pages from now), we'll discover that we don't need to know any of this. By the time Chapter Two arrives (twenty-five pages on), it will all be forgotten.



There was certainly no possible doubt as to the success of the nursing home, Jane reflected.

A bit pf a breather as the first sentence of the next paragraph is considerably shorter, but it does not answer the question posed in the previous paragraph. "There was" is a weak sentence opening, and weaker paragraph opening, unless you want the readers to slide by without noticing or caring about what it might contain.

Every bed was fully booked for months ahead, with the exception of the four in the emergency side ward, all of them booked by people who could afford not to leave their names any length of time on the waiting list at the Infirmary.

We're expanding on the success of the Nursing Home.

The grammar is (in my opinion) needlessly complex. "...all of them booked by people who could afford not to leave their names any length of time..." indeed.

No doubt when any one of those on the waiting list could be classified as a genuine emergency a bed would be found at the Rawbridge General, but those who could afford it preferred to have their operations or indispositions over and done with, not to linger on until room could be found to deal with whatever ailed them.

"No doubt" is just empty syllables.

This book was written in, and set in, Britain at the end of the nineteen-sixties. Perhaps an appreciation of the intricacies of the NHS might help make this sentence less of a chore to get through.

So ends the third paragraph, as we fight our way out of a wholly-unnecessary infodump. The first page of the first chapter is no place to bog the reader down with backstory.


That was the principal reason Jane had agreed to join in Angela's venture.

What was the principal reason Jane had agreed to join in Angela's venture? She wanted to work at a place for rich gits who can't wait their turn to get non-urgent treatment? "That was," like "it was" and "there was," is a weak construction.

The knowledge that for even a minority of people almost immediate help would then be available had been a great influence, even though she had known at the start the bulk of the money behind the venture had come from Henry Crabtree, a man she...

The sentence finishes, on the next page: ...could not stand at any price, but the man, it seemed, Angela was about to marry.

Not to worry; this is the only time Henry Crabtree is mentioned in this book; he's not an important character. He's barely a character at all.

We've just experienced a head-snapping change, too, from the reader thinking about Jane's situation to Angela's situation.

I don't understand why it's even necessary to bring in Angela's social life, seeing as Angela will also drop out of the novel well before the chapter is finished, never to reappear.

The plot appears a few well-padded pages later, when Angela sends a junior nurse to summon Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey up to the administrator's office, there to send Jane to a position at a hospital attached to the British Embassy in the capital of Dalaslavia, a small Balkan country behind the Iron Curtain. Thus the question that Jane was pondering in the first paragraph is answered.

The first five pages of the novel could have been cut without anyone noticing. Whether Jane was working at Mowberry or Rawbridge is immaterial. For that matter, since Jane doesn't arrive in Daraslavia, nor does the main story begin, until the start of Chapter Two, the entirety of Chapter One could have been deleted without loss.

As written, the readers will be hauling Angela, and Henry, with them all the way to the end, waiting in vain for them to take some hand in the story and its resolution.

The prose is adequate, not graceful.

[IdiotsRUs]

This book was written in, and set in, Britain at the end of the nineteen-sixties. Perhaps an appreciation of the intricacies of the NHS might help make this sentence less of a chore to get through.

Sadly no

I doubt I'd have made it past paragraph two in any case ( although to be fair it seem to be my kind of genre). There are books with far more interesting beginnings, so I'd rather take a chance on those.

[smcc360]

That third paragraph bucked me right off. I still can't figure out if the four beds in the emergency side ward are booked or not.

I'd give it a chapter to warm up, though, because my maternal great aunt was Dalaslavian (her parents fled Freedonia when the Marxists took over).

[RJK]

Could you expound a bit?

(I do intend to do a line-by-line fairly soon on this excerpt....)

I'm a little late in getting back to you,
My first reason is, I'm not interested in this genre.
My secondary reasons have been covered by everyone else, no action, insertion of back story, and several character names introduced, all in 4 paragraphs. The long sentences made it difficult for me to follow. The grammar appears to be correct, which surprises me after seeing sentences with over 50 words in them.

[Don]

Line by line through the first page of Nurse Kelsey Abroad:
Thanks for the line by line crit. When I first read the posted page, my first thought was that it lost my interest. My second was wondering why you'd posted this as an example. I failed to consider you might be posting it as a negative example. :)

Now I understand WHY it lost my interest. Thanks again, for this and for all you've done in this thread.

[James D. Macdonald]

What could we do to help poor Nurse Kelsey?

Well. Suppose that, early one morning at that hospital in Dalaslavia, a mysterious Englishman appears--with a bullet wound that he won't explain. This is the anonymous British spy, escaped from a Len Deighton novel. Soon the hospital is crawling with Dalaslavian Secret Police, and Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey is up to her perky starched white nurse cap in international intrigue.

Or, suppose that there's a sudden outbreak of anemia (and neck wounds) among the young ladies of Seonyata (the capital of Dalaslavia, where the hospital is located). Soon enough, Staff Nurse Jane Kelsey meets an elderly gentleman (who had been a nobleman before the Revolution) who only visits by night. He is charming ... and has very pronounced canines.

Before the end, Nurse Kelsey finds herself seeking a coffin in the depths of Castle Seonyata, stake clutched in one hand, cross in the other, in the last desperate attempt to end the unholy curse....

There are charming bits to this novel, to be sure. Young Kevin, the medical assistant, is described by one of Nurse Kelsey's companions as "gay," and all she means is that he's fun-loving and nonchalant. And the head of the Dalaslavian hospital, the fearsome Dr. James Lowth, is described by one of the nurses as "a woman-hater," without anyone wondering if, perhaps, he prefers boys.

Here's how the astounding tale ends (SPOILER ALERT!):

SPOILER SPOILER SPOILER

Last Page:

...shall bewilder you still more when I tell you I've loved you from the moment I first saw you at the Golden Fiddle, the lamplight shining on your wonderful hair, the blueness of your eyes and your general air of being out to conquer the future, no matter what it held...."

"What did you say?" Jane stood back a little and looked up at him, her eyes suddenly very bright, the anger gone.

"I said I've loved you from the moment I saw you," he repeated firmly. "I never knew how much, until you told me this morning that Karl Brotnovitch had asked you to marry him. I knew I couldn't allow that to happen, no matter what. But," he laughed suddenly, "I scarcely expected fate--and Kevin Dean--to play directly into my hands this way," he concluded.

Jane stood very still. It was all true, she was assuring herself of the fact over and over again. Jim Lowth loved her, he had obviously loved her for some time. He wanted her to marry him, not because of the good name of the hospital, not because he wanted an extra pair of hands always there, but because he loved her, and for that reason, she, Jane Kelsey, was important to him as he was to her.

Jim was speaking again, quietly, slowly, as one teaching a lesson to a small child.

"You haven't said you'll marry me yet," he reminded her. "Will you, Jane, my darling? Will you take me on as ... your next assignment?" he asked with a tenderness of which she had not believed him capable.

She thought of home, of all the comforts, the extra facilities for their work, of her parents and her family, and she knew in time they would share them all, just as they would continue to share whatever faced them in the time left to be spent in Dalaslavia.

"Of course I'll marry you, my darling," she whispered, "just as soon as everything can be arranged. I meant to do precisely that when I came out here...didn't you know?" But there was no need for him to answer as their lips met in a kiss which told each that they had accepted not only their next assignment, but an assignment for life, which suited them both very well!

[Dale Emery]

Well... the quality is consistent.

Dale

[James D. Macdonald]

To be publishable the quality of your prose need be no better than workmanlike.

[batgirl]

I feel cheated of the Kelsey/Crabtree hatesex. Also that I missed out on writing for this much less competitive market.
-Barbara

[James D. Macdonald]

Ms. Norrell wrote some thirty-odd Nurse Novels during the course of a twenty-year career. This one was near the end of that time ... and near the end of the Nurse Novel as a genre.


This afternoon I watched A History of Violence on DVD. It's a lovely example of the Three Act Structure as you're going to see. I recommend it to everyone.



Oh -- on a more personal note: I got a call from my editor today. The Trade Paperback edition of The Apocalypse Door is coming out in December, 2009, and could I please write a sequel? So I'll be doing that.

[euclid]

To be publishable the quality of your prose need be no better than workmanlike.

Could you expand on that thought? What factors are most important in order for a ms to be "publishable"? Or is the subject covered somewhere earlier in this thread?

:)

[Duncan J Macdonald]

Oh -- on a more personal note: I got a call from my editor today. The Trade Paperback edition of The Apocalypse Door is coming out in December, 2009, and could I please write a sequel? So I'll be doing that.
Including the Crossman/Lucifer scene?

[MumblingSage]

Could you expand on that thought? What factors are most important in order for a ms to be "publishable"? Or is the subject covered somewhere earlier in this thread?

:)

Agreed. Also, what defines 'workable'? That first sentence (forget the rest of the page) did not work for me at all.

[James D. Macdonald]

Including the Crossman/Lucifer scene?

Especially the Crossman/Lucifer scene.

[James D. Macdonald]

Or is the subject covered somewhere earlier in this thread?



We've been batting that question around for more than seven thousand posts.

[Alphabeter]

Ah, but just what age of workman prose?

It used to be newspapers presumed their readers had an eleventh grade education and television viewers to have an eighth grade one. Neither grade is what is used to be.

Most workmen were assumed to have most of a tenth grade education. Typical sophomores were 16 and could legally drop out. Now kids can drop out in eighth. The stereotype of the construction worker is no longer viable for a baseline of prose construction.

Of course Shakespeare tended to pander to the language of the times--which seems undecipherable to such 'commonfolk' now. The above example (which Jim deconstructed) went with what worked for that series. But thats not always a good idea in publishing.

[allenparker]

Ah, but just what age of workman prose?



Workman-like manner is a phrase that means acceptable to the good workers in the trade. I build houses to a workman-like manner, a manner that is acceptable within my trade. There are builders who build to a less desirable standard and those that build to a higher standard.


Education levels have always varied. Hemmingway wrote mostly on a 4th and 5th grade level. His use of the common man's language would, however, be considered much better than a workman-like manner.

Write to the level of your reader. Using the language of our audiences are part of the magic of literature.

My thoughts... I could be wrong...

[James D. Macdonald]

Allen is correct.

Workman-like here is, at a minimum, Grammatical English with Standard Spelling. The sentences need to follow in order, one leading reasonably to the next. The paragraphs the same.

The reader should be able to tell whether the pages are in order or a random shuffle.

That's "workman-like."

[euclid]

It used to be newspapers presumed their readers had an eleventh grade education and television viewers to have an eighth grade one. Neither grade is what is used to be.

Most workmen were assumed to have most of a tenth grade education. Typical sophomores were 16 and could legally drop out. Now kids can drop out in eighth. The stereotype of the construction worker is no longer viable for a baseline of prose construction.


Education levels have always varied. Hemmingway wrote mostly on a 4th and 5th grade level. His use of the common man's language would, however, be considered much better than a workman-like manner.


As a European with no knowledge of the education system in USA, could someone explain these terms, please?

Over here, in Ireland, we start in infants' class at 4, 5 or 6 years of age. We go through from first to sixth "class" in Primary school, before moving to Secondary school at about 13 years of age. In Secondary (or "post-primary") school, we progress from First to Sixth "Year". In Fourth year, we take a "Junior Certificate" examination. In Sixth Year, we complete the Leaving Certificate Examination. Some of us then go on to University or some other sort of "third level" college and "Graduate" with a primary degree (or diploma, or certificate) in some subject. A few go on to do higher level degrees (Masters or PhD).

[James D. Macdonald]

Okay, American Education.

Many places you'll find Kindergarten. Usually a half-day, concentrating on Playing Well With Others, learning letters and numbers. For five-year-olds.

First Grade: 6 year olds.
And similarly for Grades Two through Eight (though you may see grades Six-Seven-Eight) referred to as "Middle School" or grades Seven/Eight referred to as "Junior High." These latter two are often in different buildings than the students in the earlier grades.

Those earlier grades can also be called "Elementary School" or "Grammar School."

Grades Nine/Ten/Eleven/Twelve are "High School," where the students are referred to as Freshmen, Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors. These grades are almost always in a different physical building from Grammar School and/or Middle School. Age range for High School is 14-18.

In their junior year, students who intend to go on to college will usually take standardized tests called either the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) or ACT (American College Testing).

Sometimes you'll see grades 3-5 (ages 8-10) referred to as "Middle Grades."

I hope that clears some of this up.

Remember that in America almost everything is run by local or state schoolboards, so standards ... vary.

"First God created idiots. That was for practice. Then He created schoolboards." -- Mark Twain

[Don]

First grade is roughly six+ years old in the US.

Highschool, grades 9-12, have alternate names.

9=Freshman
10=Sophomore
11=Junior
12=Senior

Seniors generally graduate at 6+12 = 18 years of age or nearby.

[euclid]

So does that mean that Hemmingway wrote for 9-10 year olds???

[Stew21]

So does that mean that Hemmingway wrote for 9-10 year olds???


No. Hemingway wrote with simple language, but the subjects, and complex characters, complex emotions/motives and plots are at a higher comprehension level. The words and sentence structures are simple. What they convey is not necessarily so simple.

[kuwisdelu]

So does that mean that Hemmingway wrote for 9-10 year olds???

No, just that the sentences he wrote could be understood by a 9-10 year old. The ideas expressed in them, not necessarily.

[James D. Macdonald]

The mechanical "reading level" formulas (e.g. Flesch-Kincaid) have always struck me as being somewhere between silly and meaningless.

==========

Posted elsewhere at AW (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=2968465#post2968465), reprinted here:

You can do a deus ex machina when:

1) You've foreshadowed it sufficiently,
2) There's so much else going on that no one cares,
3) The conventions of your genre require one,
4) It works, and
5) You've run out of things to say and can't figure out any other way to end your book.

=========

Moving a bit off-topic here:

Instructions for Thanksgiving Dinner (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008275.html) by my good friend, U.S. Marine, and fellow science fiction author, Elizabeth Moon.

[MumblingSage]

How are those formulas even figured out? Does vocabulary have something to do with it? Sentence structure and variation?

[James D. Macdonald]

The reading scores come from sentence length and number of syllables per word. Silly, like I said....

[James D. Macdonald]

Next entry in First Pages:

It was shortly after four, when Mabel, the blonde and buxom waitress on the afternoon shift in the Snack Bar across the street from the hospital, went out to sweep the parking space in front of the shop. She'd come on at three and the change from the late summer heat to the air-conditioned interior always made her arthritis painful, so she was glad of an excuse to get out in the warm September air for a few minutes before the five o'clock rush began. The shop, all glass, stainless steel, red-cushioned stools at the counter and booths against the wall, occupied one corner of the Faculty Apartments parking lot. Across the street, above the ambulance unloading ramp, blue neon lights spelled out EMERGENCY ENTRANCE.

Weston University Hospital occupied the entire opposite side of the long block across from the Snack Bar, a mass of buildings with connecting walkways, built of cinder blocks painted white and tall columns of steel-framed windows. On the lunchroom side of North Avenue one end of the block was taken up with the towering building that housed the Faculty Clinic, a privately operated medical group to which much of the medical school faculty belonged. Only about five years old, the clinic had already been enlarged several times and, during the daylight hours, a constant stream of people flowed through its marquee-covered portico at the far corner of the block.

Okay, folks: Do you turn the page?

[euclid]

Yes, if I was an architecture student.

:)

[Yeshanu]

A :) for euclid. I probably would, though the first page leaves a little to be desired. I'd give it one more page because the description of the buildings gives me a sense of place that I didn't get with the other one, and leads me to believe the author may be able to tell a good story.

But the missing element here is character: Mabel is described only as "blond and buxom" (can you say, 'cliche', ladies and gentlemen?), and as someone who has arthritis. So far she hasn't really done anything that would give me a sense of who she is except come to work for her afternoon shift.

[Yeshanu]

Moving a bit off-topic here:

Instructions for Thanksgiving Dinner (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008275.html) by my good friend, U.S. Marine, and fellow science fiction author, Elizabeth Moon.


Excellent article. Too bad it came out a month too late. :)

And thanks for the deus ex machina rules, Uncle Jim. I'm going to copy them and put them up where I can see them.

[Don]

You had me at "blond and buxom." :D

If I was getting near the end of my time in the library or bookstore and hadn't found anything yet, I'd turn the page. If I just got there, chances are it would already be back on the shelf. The long sentences make it a chore to read.

[Nakhlasmoke]

I'm in agreement with the blonde and buxom putting me off already. My first assumption there is that this was written by a man with little knowledge of women, and that this character is going to be 2 dimensional. Nothing stood out for me, and I was already skimming by the second paragraph.

[James D. Macdonald]

Page two:

The Faculty Apartments, owned by the university, occupied the entire end of the block, facing west on Weston Boulevard . Diagonally across the street from it, in front of the main entrance to the hospital, stood the housing facilities for married residents, interns and students, consisting of four apartment complexes with an enclosed playground. The main classroom buildings for the medical school were on the opposite corner of Weston Boulevard and North Avenue from married student housing, convenient to the hospital and all parts of the group of buildings that made up Weston University Medical School.

"Where'd you go on your day off yesterday, Mabel?" Abe Fescue, the short-order cook, lounged in the open door of the empty lunchroom, smoking a cigarette that was forbidden inside. A small transistor radio atop the counter, also forbidden when customers were inthe shop, filled the air with a rock-and-roll tune.

"On the Parkway," said Mabel. "I like to drive up there this time of the year."

Located in the foothills east of the Great Smoky Mountains, Weston was primarily a manufacturing city. It had become a major medical center when the medical school had opened some fifteen years earlier, quickly outstripping in importance and stature the small, older university of which it was a part. Rogue River curved around the city, with a dam some ten miles to the south forming a lake and a source of hydroelectric power that had made the town a natural location for a major textile operation.

"Fall's comin' early this year," Mabel added. "The leaves are already turnin' up towards the Knob."

"Won't bother me none," said Abe. "Come Thanksgiving, I'll be heading south for Miami."

"You short-order cooks are like birds, always flying north or south. I suppose you'll lose all your money at the tracks again this winter and come borrowin' from me next spring like always, so you can pay your rent the first month."

"This is going to be my best winter." Abe was a thin man of indeterminate age. His face was scarred by acne from childhood, and the inevitable tattoos, relic of Navy service, almost covered his upper arms. "Why'd you stay around here winters anyway, Mabel? You could make twice as much in tips working in South Florida and still get your old job back in the spring, when the weather turns warm again. Good ...

So ends page two. Do you turn the page?

[euclid]

I knew I shouldn't have turned page 1. More architecture and some "more tea vicar" dialogue. There's very little meat here. (He gambles, he was in the navy, she likes the views in the autumn). "a rock and roll tune" could have been named. What is "the Knob"?

[RJK]

So we have a good picture of the immediate vicinity, Abe is on his way out of the picture and probably the story, Mabel is a bore and nothing has happened. I should turn the page to find Ninjas maybe. I'd put this one back on the shelf based on what I've read so far.

[Calliopenjo]

:sleepy: Going from page one to page two did nothing. After slogging my way through that page, after reading needless information, it did nothing for me. I have to say Uncle Jim, I'm sorry but, I'm going to have to put the book back on the shelf.

[IdiotsRUs]

Lost me on the first page with the first lot of 'and this building was on the left, and on the right was...and behind that...'

A map would be more fun :)

[MumblingSage]

Next entry in First Pages:



Okay, folks: Do you turn the page?

Let's see...

Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid#Flesch_Reading_Ease)): 49
Aim for 60 to 80. The higher the score, the more readable the text.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flesch-Kincaid#Flesch.E2.80.93Kincaid_Grade_Level)): 14.9
Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

*counts on fingers* Gee, I don't think I've had 15 years of education yet. Do you think I should?

In all honesty, I wouldn't. Mostly because it's a modern setting, which is not my cup of tea. That, and I felt like drawing a picture of Weston Boulevard and North Avenue, just so all those 'diagonally across the street froms' and 'on the opposite corners' didn't go to waste.

[Don]

Back on the shelf for me by now, even if I had plenty of time to browse.

I have to admit the last para caught my eye, though. I have a soft spot for Florida. :)

[Yeshanu]

So ends page two. Do you turn the page?



If you could wake me up, I'd turn the page in order to close the book. One of the big problems with page two is lack of flow. The descriptions are info dumps stuck in between lines of inane conversation that have nothing to do with the buildings. A second character is introduced who is as flat and cliched as the first.

[smsarber]

In fourth grade I changed schools and had to take a reading evaluation test. I tested on a twelth grade level, but that didn't surprise me; I could read and write at three years old (though I wrote my "s"'s backwards). And the above excerpts; not my style. No flow, no hook.

[JasonChirevas]

Next entry in First Pages:



Okay, folks: Do you turn the page?

I wouldn't turn page one, but I attempted page two and couldn't physically force myself to actually read the description; I had to skim it.

I loathe blocks of description, particularly when it's a description of blocks.

On a more constructive note, my main thought while reading this was why am I meant to care about any of this? I definitely don't care that a clinic or a hospital exists because I have no reason to. The characters, such as they are, make only fleeting appearances and then only to speak in that sort of mannered, stilted dialog beginning writers think sounds writery. It reads as writing, which is self-conscious and that always makes me uncomfortable as a reader. It makes me feel like I'm not in good hands.

"Morning folks, this is your captain speaking. You'll be glad to know I've wanted to be a pilot all my life, so we're going to give flying a try today."

Like that.

I'm not sure any of this was actually constructive. Let's try again...

I'm sure the hospital, the clinic (was there a clinic?), the snack bar, and the arthritic waitress are all very important to the story, but I've no reason to think so, or wonder why so, in what's been offered so far.

Characters hook the reader, not architecture.

-Jason

[Scribhneoir]

No page turning for me.

I don't know what's worse -- Mabel and Abe's stilted non-conversation or the infodumpy description that seems to have been lifted from a Chamber of Commerce brochure on the wonders of Weston.

Back on the shelf it goes.

[Alphabeter]

When I have to force my way through two pages and reread words to make sure I understood they were "not right"....I'm officially crying Uncle!

[allenparker]

Next entry in First Pages:



Okay, folks: Do you turn the page?

I guess I am the different one, today. I used to live in the mountains of Virginia, just north of the Smokies. I know that location, or at least that location just down the road.

If it was a regional title by a local author, I would continue.

I also felt when drudging through the info-dump that there were bits of important data hidden among the text, stuff that would be important later, but so cleverly buried in mud, the reader would miss it. Maybe a piece of misdirection.

The example I thought was the blonde and buxom, but then fitted with arthritis. This made me stop change my view of this woman. At first, I thought blonde, buxom, she has to be in mid twenties. Then the arthritis made me shift her age to late 50's.

But if I get no action in a page or two, the author is trying to get me to stop and has succeeded.

[Bookdragonette]

No, I wouldn't. As the others have said, there's too much information given and not enough happening to make me care about the characters that have been introduced. If the geographical stuff is important for the reader to know, find another way to tell the reader. Even a map would help. (I rarely use them, because I don't like flipping back and forth.)

As it is, the blocks are too large with seemingly useless information, and thus entice the reader to skipping them.

[Jake Barnes]

On top of all the obvious problems (no conflict, no tension, uninteresting characters, leaden prose, lack of interesting detail in the description) the writing doesn't make any sense.

"Abe was a thin man of indeterminate age. His face was scarred by acne from childhood, and the inevitable tattoos, relic of Navy service, almost covered his upper arms."

Why are the tattos inevitable?

"She'd come on at three and the change from the late summer heat to the air-conditioned interior always made her arthritis painful, so she was glad of an excuse to get out in the warm September air for a few minutes before the five o'clock rush began."

This makes no sense. If the cool air aggravates her arthritis, why was she glad to be out of the warm air?

Also, the buxom/arthitis thing is jarring. Buxom blonde makes me think heightened sexuality. Arthritis makes me think the opposite.

The buxom, blonde description alone suggests this was written at least thirty years ago. This writing sample and the last one cause me to wonder what people will think of today's popular writing in thirty-forty years.

[smsarber]

Sorry, Jake, I don't mean to defend this atrocious piece, but the line was that she was glad to get out in the warm Sept. air, not out of it ;).

[Jake Barnes]

Smsarber: You're right. It took me a fourth read to understand that.

[Emerita]

"She'd come on at three and the change from the late summer heat to the air-conditioned interior always made her arthritis painful, so she was glad of an excuse to get out in the warm September air for a few minutes before the five o'clock rush began."

This makes no sense. If the cool air aggravates her arthritis, why was she glad to be out of the warm air?



You are misunderstanding. She came out of the September heat into the air conditioning when she came to work. She was glad to go back out in the heat to sweep for a little bit because the air conditioning made her arthritis hurt.... I know...I am blonde with arthritis....http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Emerita/Smilies/oregonian_teehee.gif

[RJK]

Well I'd still go out in the snow with no book under my arm if that was the only choice I had.

[Emerita]

OMG..I see you are probably having snow right now ar at least cold weather. http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Emerita/Smilies/14.gif I am in Florida and our cold weather is 32 degrees....http://i8.photobucket.com/albums/a10/Emerita/Smilies/beach10.gif

[smsarber]

Centigrade? Cuz 32 fehrenheit is water's freezing point, so it's cold EVERYWHERE!:)

[Alphabeter]

But if you burned this book, you'd be warm.

Not that I'm advocating that, but I personally would feel better served by the dead trees in this particular case.

[RJK]

Yes, we got our first coating of the white stuff a couple of days ago. currently it's a chilly 26 degrees farenheit with more snow coming down, outside my window. I have a cozy little fire going in the fireplace, and it's toasty warm in my den.

I'll bet you poor folks in Florida are still running your air conditioners and mowing your lawns.

[Ken Schneider]

I have to turn the page. If in fact I've committed to read this book I have to get the jist of the story, which I have yet to glean.

The buxsom blonde remark doesn't go well with arthritis as I get the feeling this lady is fairly old.

The old cook likes her more than she knows.

Lots of talk about the hospital which I assume plays a big role in the story.

Bet she will go to Florida where our adventure begins.

[Calliopenjo]

Happy Thanksgiving Uncle Jim,

Sort of off topic, but I was wondering, what's an epilogue? I know prologues because I've done those, but what's an epilogue? What makes it different from the conclusion of the story?

[smsarber]

That's a good question. In a play it is a speech addressed to the audience by one of the actors concluding the play. I've always thought of an epilogue as a "summing up" of the story. Just like an epitaph is a summing up of someone's life, an epilogue is to a story. But that's just my thoughts on it.

[James D. Macdonald]

An epilog is something that comes after the story. The climax has already happened. If the readers skips it, he or she already has had a novel experience.

Sometimes you see a "Where are they now" note about the characters. Sometimes something that lets the reader see the events in a new light. Sometimes a note from the author about the historical basis of the story -- HMS Ulysses was based on a real ship! -- or anything else that you like.

Or, it could be the lead-in to the next story.

[stranger]

Just reading Uncle Jim's latest "Do you turn the page", and I have to say no, I wouldn't. However, I have a feeling this is going to be some famous writer. It's not Stephen King is it?

[smsarber]

Not any SK I've read so far, but I haven't worked my way through all of them yet.

[Yeshanu]

Sort of off topic, but I was wondering, what's an epilogue? I know prologues because I've done those, but what's an epilogue? What makes it different from the conclusion of the story?

If you read the final Harry Potter book, the very last part, where Rowling tells us what's going on with Harry and the gang thirteen years after the end of the story, is the epilogue.

And stranger, I don't think the excerpt Uncle Jim posted is from a Stephen King novel. The last one he posted was from a "nurse novel" from the sixties. I'm thinking this is going to be another one of those kind of books.

[ishtar'sgate]

"Abe was a thin man of indeterminate age. His face was scarred by acne from childhood, and the inevitable tattoos, relic of Navy service, almost covered his upper arms."

Why are the tattos inevitable?


My dad was in the navy and tattoos ARE inevitable. I don't know if they have too much time on their hands in port or what but my dad and all his buddies came back with them.

[HelloKiddo]

Would I turn that page? Nope indeedy.

I loathe blocks of description, particularly when it's a description of blocks.

I couldn't have said it better myself ;)

[Liosse de Velishaf]

My dad was in the navy and tattoos ARE inevitable. I don't know if they have too much time on their hands in port or what but my dad and all his buddies came back with them.

My father served in the navy, and he has no tattoos.

[Judg]

I wouldn't turn the page either. Chances are very great I wouldn't even get to the bottom of the first one. No voice, no humour, no action, no conflict, no interesting characters, no nothing. And descriptions that involve geometry make my eyes glaze over. If knowing the relative position of these buildings is going to be important to the story, I will have completely forgotten by the time it matters. I want my descriptions served to me when they are needed, and not until. And then preferably in small, beautiful pieces. This doesn't qualify.

[allenparker]

My father served in the navy, and he has no tattoos.

I work in a small church with 80% Navy people in the congregation (about 40 people, total)

If I were to cut the tattoos from their bodies and make wall paper from them, I wouldn't have to paint the inside of the church.

[Jake Barnes]

My father was in the Navy and he doesn't have any tattoos, either. My problem with the "inevitable" tattoos is that they come before the it is revealed he was in the Navy which suggests they were inevitable for some other reason. I took it to mean they were inevitable because he was a short order cook but that didn't make sense to me.

[RJK]

I spent a few years on active duty in the Navy. Many of my shipmates got tatoos. Usually it was after a night of heavy drinking. My body is pretty much covered in freckles and I never thought a tatoo would look right, so it was a personal preference for me not to get one. I have friends who are in their sixties and still show up with a new one once in a while (he was in the navy too).

One hundred years ago, there may have been some correlation between sailors and tatoos, but today, I think more women get them than sailors.

[Jake Barnes]

I guess I'm saying if it read, "Abe had been career Navy and he had the inevitable tattoos to prove it," it would make more sence.

[Bookdragonette]

Just reading Uncle Jim's latest "Do you turn the page", and I have to say no, I wouldn't. However, I have a feeling this is going to be some famous writer. It's not Stephen King is it?

It doesn't feel like King. While he can be wordy, he doesn't tend to give out this much useless information.

[Calliopenjo]

Hi Uncle Jim,

This is sort of an offbeat question, but. . . are they teaching students in creative writing classes to use single quote marks instead of double? I thought single quote marks were only used when retelling what somebody else said.

"Do you know he said? He said 'Yeah, them doggies do hard time.' I'm still deciphering what he said, because I don't get it." (Bad line, but you get the idea. Right?)

[Judg]

Cal, in Britain they do it the other way around. You've probably been reading something from a British publisher.

In Canada, of course, we meld the two systems and confuse everybody. We do American quotation marks and mostly British spelling. But not always. Ya just gotta know.

[echnos]

Oh my god. You've just ruined my life...

And mine too--ohmygosh this is so much FUN!! *thunk*

Ahem. Made self stop at third contraption, must get back to reading this amazing thread...

[James D. Macdonald]

Line-by-line through a first page!

It was shortly after four, when Mabel, the blonde and buxom waitress on the afternoon shift in the Snack Bar across the street from the hospital, went out to sweep the parking space in front of the shop.

That's a horse-choker of a sentence, but it covers the essentials: A person, in a place, with a problem. We have a bit of description, though it is trite and cliched.

"It was" is a weak opening word-group.

We have two locations being set up: the Snack Bar, and the hospital.

We have action: Sweeping. Not much action, but it's there.



She'd come on at three and the change from the late summer heat to the air-conditioned interior always made her arthritis painful, so she was glad of an excuse to get out in the warm September air for a few minutes before the five o'clock rush began.

A second long sentence. Nailing down the time still farther. Mabel's problem seems to be arthritis, rather than a dirty parking space.


The shop, all glass, stainless steel, red-cushioned stools at the counter and booths against the wall, occupied one corner of the Faculty Apartments parking lot.

Not quite as long, but still a fairly long sentence. We have description of the Snack Bar. Yet another location mentioned: the Faculty Apartments.
This dilutes the Snack Bar description by showing us something outside.


Across the street, above the ambulance unloading ramp, blue neon lights spelled out EMERGENCY ENTRANCE.

We're finishing up the first paragraph with more place-description, and pointing us in yet another direction, this time over to the hospital again. This is the TV establishing shot.

Second paragraph:

Weston University Hospital occupied the entire opposite side of the long block across from the Snack Bar, a mass of buildings with connecting walkways, built of cinder blocks painted white and tall columns of steel-framed windows.

Another long sentence. Some confusion: Is the Snack Bar the important location, or is the important location the University Hospital? And what in the world is a tall column of steel-framed windows? We're infodumping.

On the lunchroom side of North Avenue one end of the block was taken up with the towering building that housed the Faculty Clinic, a privately operated medical group to which much of the medical school faculty belonged.

Wow. Another super-sentence, and another location mentioned.

Only about five years old, the clinic had already been enlarged several times and, during the daylight hours, a constant stream of people flowed through its marquee-covered portico at the far corner of the block.

A bit clumsy, passive, and again quite long.

Presumably that constant stream of people is flowing even now, since it's daylight.

So ends page one. So far the only action, and the only person, is poor arthritic Mabel, sweeping.

Let's move on to page two....

The Faculty Apartments, owned by the university, occupied the entire end of the block, facing west on Weston Boulevard.

The third paragraph starts with a shorter sentence, but we're being directed back to the Faculty Apartments ... and another street. So far we've had Weston Street and North Avenue. We've repeated the name "Weston" in Weston University Medical School. We've had the Faculty Clinic, the Faculty Apartments, and the just-plain-old faculty.

Diagonally across the street from it, in front of the main entrance to the hospital, stood the housing facilities for married residents, interns and students, consisting of four apartment complexes with an enclosed playground.

Not only do we have the faculty, we have facilities. While the author needs to know this, I don't see why the readers do, at least not at this moment.

The main classroom buildings for the medical school were on the opposite corner of Weston Boulevard and North Avenue from married student housing, convenient to the hospital and all parts of the group of buildings that made up Weston University Medical School.

What a great gray block of text this has been, to be sure!


"Where'd you go on your day off yesterday, Mabel?"

A change of sentence rhythm, and the first dialog.

Abe Fescue, the short-order cook, lounged in the open door of the empty lunchroom, smoking a cigarette that was forbidden inside.

We're back to Mabel, and we're introduced to a second character, Abe. We have a lot of information packed into this sentence. A dab of characterization comes with the lounging and the cigarette.


A small transistor radio atop the counter, also forbidden when customers were in the shop, filled the air with a rock-and-roll tune.

Minor acts of rebellion, when no one is watching?


"On the Parkway," said Mabel. "I like to drive up there this time of the year."

More dialog, and yet another place introduced.


Located in the foothills east of the Great Smoky Mountains, Weston was primarily a manufacturing city.

Weston University, and Weston Boulevard, are in the town of Weston.


It had become a major medical center when the medical school had opened some fifteen years earlier, quickly outstripping in importance and stature the small, older university of which it was a part.

An infodump.


Rogue River curved around the city, with a dam some ten miles to the south forming a lake and a source of hydroelectric power that had made the town a natural location for a major textile operation.

Infodump.

"Fall's comin' early this year," Mabel added. "The leaves are already turnin' up towards the Knob."

We're back to the weather. And we have yet another place name.


"Won't bother me none," said Abe. "Come Thanksgiving, I'll be heading south for Miami."

Dialog. Is the plot developing?


"You short-order cooks are like birds, always flying north or south. I suppose you'll lose all your money at the tracks again this winter and come borrowin' from me next spring like always, so you can pay your rent the first month."

Dialog with characterization. A bit of mild dialect. One wonders who cooks at the Snack Bar when Abe goes south. Do short-order cooks frequently quit their jobs, and just as readily get rehired by the same places they skipped out on?


"This is going to be my best winter."

Characterization in dialog.


Abe was a thin man of indeterminate age.

What's "indeterminate age"? It means "the author doesn't know." Lazy writing.


His face was scarred by acne from childhood, and the inevitable tattoos, relic of Navy service, almost covered his upper arms.

A bit of description. (FWIW, I had a fifteen-year Navy career but don't have any tattoos.) The nice bit here is that we're being shown, rather than told, that he's wearing short sleeves.


"Why'd you stay around here winters anyway, Mabel? You could make twice as much in tips working in South Florida and still get your old job back in the spring, when the weather turns warm again.

Can they really get their old jobs back that easily? And, given that we've just had a massive core-dump of local geography, will Florida be important to this story?


Good ...

The page ends here. For those who are wondering how the paragraph ends:

... waitresses are like short-order cooks; they can get a job anywhere."

Even if they have a history of quitting their jobs, forcing the proprietors to hire someone new? If you say so....

[Jerry B. Flory]

Being something of a minimalist, I would chop about half those words.
I hope this is just an off the top example or something. I don't want to dis anyone's work, he said, somewhat sheepishly.

[Jerry B. Flory]

Mabel stood beneath the blue EMERGENCY ENTRANCE sign, at once cursing the shadow of the giant hospital behind her and wishing the streetlight would never change. The three o'clock sun baked the parking lot of the snack bar across the street and she longed for that heat on her arthritic bones. When the white walking man appeared on the yellow box she moved between the striped crosswalk as fast as her aching hips would allow into the sun, but closer to the place she hated most.
Work.
Mabel knew what awaited her inside that crappy little snack bar. Arctic air-conditioning and the smell of cigarette smoke. Her bones would stiffen and Abe, the short order cook would sit there smoking, the sleeves of his button up shirt rolled past his elbows exposing the anchors on his hairy forearms.
This is no place to be, Mabel thought. Not with the leaves burning from green to reds and oranges, yellows and purples all over the Rogue River. Stuck here waiting tables, putting up with the after-school herds of teenagers moon-eying each other and feeling the girls up under the tables and that snarky old navy hound flipping burgers and smoking the place up. No place to be at all.
The parking lot needs swept. Butts, wrappers and cups decorate the parking blocks. Good, one more reason to escape that refrigerator and stand in the sun.
The mill, that's where she wanted to be. The old water mills on the river that used to power the town before it reached puberty and sprouted hospitals and textile mills. Now the river is held slave to hydro-electricity, but the mills remain rotting but still proud in their rustic beauty.
With a sigh that came from her toes she opened the door and let that first wave of cold air crash over her.
“That you, Mabel?” Abe's unmistakable southern drawl. Most of that is put on. Nobody really talks like that.
“Course it's me. Who else it gonna be? Can we turn off that air-conditioner yet? Fall comin' early, ya know.”
“Suit yourself. It does get a might hot over this griddle though. Fall come as early as it pleases. Come Thanksgivin' I'm Miami-bound.”
Same story every year, Mabel thought. Abe would blow his earnings at the dog track and spend winter on the beach. Those tattoos aren't for showing other people; they remind Abe of when he was more than a greasy spatula and gambling bum. She threw that thought away with the trash cluttering the counter and looked down the row of stools that stand before the counter like great red mushrooms. When was she ever something better than the waitress she is now?
“You fry cooks are like your own species of bird always flying south for the winter,” Mabel said as she tied her blond hair into a loose bun.

I just threw that together. I hope I'm not out of line. I'm a noob.

[James D. Macdonald]

So.

Those are the first two pages from Doctors' Wives (http://litmed.med.nyu.edu/Annotation?action=view&annid=12618) by Frank G. Slaughter. The sub-genre is Medical Thriller, filled with cutting-edge medical science and detailed descriptions of medical techniques. (Later on in the book, we have a page-and-a-half description of a doctor listening to a patient's chest with a stethoscope, following the sound vibrations from the bell all the way through the ear pieces, naming the three bones of the middle-ear (in English and Latin) then ending with the doctor using her years of training and experience to interpret the nerve impulses generated by the vibrations into a diagnosis.)

The Parkway and the Knob are never mentioned again. The playground (and, indeed, married student housing) play no part in the story that's to come. The next time Mabel appears in this book, 132 pages on, she'll again be described as "blonde and buxom" for the benefit of those readers who forgot.

Frank Slaughter published over thirty novels -- mostly medical thrillers. He himself was a physician before he turned to writing full time.

This book was published in hardcover by Doubleday in 1967. I'm working from the 1970 paperback reprint by Pocket ... sixth printing with the movie tie-in cover, for this book was indeed made into a major motion picture (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067004/) from Columbia, starring Richard Crenna, Gene Hackman, Carroll O'Connor, Rachel Roberts, and Janice Rule.

So.

What does this book have going for it? Why would you turn the page?

Here's the back-cover blurb:

How does a doctor's wife entertain herself while her husband is working?

DELLA played golf and turned to other women ...

AMY toyed with politics and drugs ...

MAGGIE turned to alcohol...

LORRIE passed the time with other women's husbands.

Wed to highly successful physicians, these women were bored, neglected, frustrated. This is their shocking story, a frightening look at the symptoms known as Doctors' Wives syndrome.

Here's the front sales line:

"Makes Mary McCarthy's Group look like a Victorian Sunday School Class."
And here's the front sales page:

"A prominent Weston physician has just shot and killed his wife."

The radio bulletin continued...

"A man, with the victim at the time and identified only as another doctor, was also seriously wounded."

Five doctors' wives heard the bulletin, and each one of them realized with despair and terror that the "other man" might be her husband.



Given that information ... now would you turn the page?


Indeed, this book features a sex scene roughly every twelve to fifteen pages (remarkably tasteful and restrained scenes by modern standards, but still, they're there).

We never do find out if Abe talks Mabel into going to Florida with him. Abe and Mabel are minor--very minor--characters, who appear as wandering viewpoints during the two or three scenes set in the Snack Bar. Aside from a couple of flashbacks, the action all takes place from a Wednesday afternoon through the following Sunday morning. The exact layout of the University Hospital, faculty apartments, and Faculty Clinic, aren't important at all. We'll get another full description of that dam and lake later on (when Dr. Pete Brennan, brilliant neurosurgeon, goes down there to whip around in his speedboat and contemplate divorcing his wife).

This novel is 330 pages of cardboard characters delivering as-you-know-Bob dialog interspersed with authorial infodumps. The main plot line is resolved by an entirely gratuitous and unforeshadowed plane crash. But! It has sex.

[thethinker42]

This novel is 330 pages of cardboard characters delivering as-you-know-Bob dialog interspersed with authorial infodumps. The main plot line is resolved by an entirely gratuitous and unforeshadowed plane crash. But! It has sex.

Well...it's one up on the Twilight series.

Beyond that...

Nope. Wouldn't read it.

[thethinker42]

My father served in the navy, and he has no tattoos.

It happens, but it's rare. Even now, with the heavy restrictions that the military imposes on tattoos, the vast vast VAST majority of the Navy men I know have them...including my husband, who has 3.

My dad did 20 years in the Navy and has no tattoos, but he's afraid of needles. He can't even look at my tattoos without flinching.

The assumption that a sailor would have a tattoo, though, is pretty reasonable.

[smsarber]

It happens, but it's rare. Even now, with the heavy restrictions that the military imposes on tattoos, the vast vast VAST majority of the Navy men I know have them...including my husband, who has 3.

My dad did 20 years in the Navy and has no tattoos, but he's afraid of needles. He can't even look at my tattoos without flinching.

The assumption that a sailor would have a tattoo, though, is pretty reasonable.
I'd have to agree. It is a reasonable assumption, but perhaps not one suited to just be blurbed in a novel. Now if the tattoos had significance, different story. (Did I spell that right? It doesn't look right, but I'm too tired to check.)

[Ken Schneider]

I wish it was 1967 again.

I guess that if you are going to use whack-a-mole characters it should be in the beginning of a book.

Sex. Now there's a topic that grabs attention. And, with what seems to be an otherwise boring book, it needs to be there to hold interest.
I'd read it because I committed to it.

[James D. Macdonald]

The tattoos:

Abe is a short-order cook. All short-order cooks are Navy veterans. All Navy veterans have tattoos. Therefore, Abe has tattoos.

This book is very much an artifact of its time.

What the characters needed was for Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to parachute into town.

What the novel needed was to take one of its minor characters, horn-dog medical student Mike Traynor, and make him the main character. Stay third-person close on him. Show the entire thing from his POV. He's the only active, interesting person with a clear goal in the whole novel.

[James D. Macdonald]

As long as I have you all here, this is the last page:

...Orleans as its destination. Police authorities who found the plane several hours ago reported that Dr. Dellman was carrying a large amount of money on his person.

"So that's that." Roy reached over and shut off the radio when the announcer turned to national news. "Abner Townsend won't be able to make anything out of the case now."

He looked across the table and grinned at Alice. "You look mighty pretty this morning, sweet. I think you're going to enjoy being the wife of the next state attorney general."

ii


Sunday mornings, Mabel always went to early Mass, then came by the Snack Bar for breakfast. The terms of her employment allowed her one free meal a day, in addition to the one she ate while on duty in the evening--usually on the run.

"Everybody at church was talking about Dr. Dellman getting off and then being killed in a plane," she said to Geraldine, the morning-shift cook, as they were enjoying coffee and cigarettes together in the almost deserted restaurant.

"In here, too." Geraldine wsa inclined to be phlegmatic.

"It's funny." Mabel looked across the almost deserted street to the emergency entrance of the hospital. "To look over there now, you'd hardly believe all hell could break loose before you coudl say boo--like it did last Wednesday afternoon."

"That was something," Geraldine agreed.

"I guess Dr. Dellman getting killed sort of wraps the whole thing up. From what I've been hearing across this counter the past few days, a lot of people have had their lives changed since last Wednesday. It was pretty exciting while it lasted, though."

"Yeah," said Geraldine. "I guess it was."

"It's sorta like the passage the priest read from the Bible this morning. I think I still remember it:

A generation goes, a generation comes, yet the earth stands firm forever. The sun rises, the sun sets; and then to its place it speeds and there it rises...

"That reminds me," Mabel sighed. "Monday morning you'd better tell the assistant manager to take that other waffle iron and have it fixed. The upper-class medical students will be coming back to school next week. They sure do like our waffles."

[euclid]

What the characters needed was for Betty Friedan and Gloria Steinem to parachute into town.

Forgive my ignorance, Jim, but who on Earth are Betty and Gloria?

Didn't shakespeare start his plays with two minor characters setting the scene? I suppose you might say that was a different medium, but not that different. The feather duster approach is clearly a little heavy-handed and hackneyed now, but an author must get some basic facts across somehow if the story is ever going to unfold...

:)

[Jerry B. Flory]

I'm not much into medical thrillers, but I really don't care for cardboard, stock characters. I understand the times were much different then and, as a physician, Dr. Slaughter had an image to project.
That was really published? Made into a movie? Wow. Did he have a publisher friend? Was he a mason?
Perhaps I'm looking at it wrong. All I can see is what isn't there.

[smsarber]

Forgive my ignorance, Jim, but who on Earth are Betty and Gloria?



:)
Feminist activists in the 1960's. But Betty Friedan did some work with Playboy. Little bit of irony there.

[James D. Macdonald]

You can indeed start and end your novel with minor characters. What you shouldn't do is bring them in, then forget all about them for 130 pages (in the case of Mabel) or 150 pages (in the case of Abe).

They should also fulfill other purposes. They should have a sub-plot that comments on the main action, or be the only ones positioned to see the crucial action.

Frank Slaughter had that magical thing that so many wish they had: His books were crap but he sold a ton of copies. He had fans. There were people who waited eagerly for the next Frank Slaughter book to come out.

He also kept things moving right the way through with minor suspense: Will Amy OD on morphine, or is she going to wake up okay in the morning? Will Della go to the golf tournament or stay home and give Paul the baby he wants? Will horn-dog medical student Mike get the clap and pass it on to the entire faculty of the medical school? Will divorced and wary-of-men nurse Janice marry brilliant anesthesiologist Jeff? Will frigid Dr. Feldman find what it is to be a woman in the arms of East German refugee Dr. Dieter? Turn the page and find out!

What I wanted to know is what would have happened at Weston University Hospital if Nurse Kelsey (with her starched white nurse hat firmly pinned in place) had gone there instead of to Dalasalavia for her year abroad.

[Jerry B. Flory]

What about now?
Would he get published today?
Would he sit next to Michael Palmer?

[James D. Macdonald]

Would he get published today?
He's certainly competent. If Frank Slaughter were a writer today, he'd undoubtedly know today's conventions and styles.

Would this exact manuscript be published today?
Depends. Was it the best manuscript to hit the editor's desk that day? You'll notice that, while the rights are undoubtedly available, this book isn't currently in print.

[euclid]

In my (admittedly limited) experience, an awful lot of Cr*p gets published, even nowadays, maybe 70-80 percent of everything, maybe more (anybody?). So if you have a good, well-written ms with well-drawn characters and a decent plot, you're way ahead of the masses. (I hope)

:)

[Jake Barnes]

"A prominent Weston physician has just shot and killed his wife."

I think the story starts here.

[James D. Macdonald]

I think that the story starts on page twelve, when Elaine McGill (wife of prominent dermatologist Paul McGill) is boinking horn-dog medical student Mike Traynor in a tourist cabin.

("Don't worry," she says. "My husband plays golf every Wednesday afternoon.")

She desperately wants a baby for her husband, and is willing to go to any lengths to get one. Any lengths. She can't go to the clinic to get artificially inseminated, though, because then her husband would find out and would know it wasn't really his. She picked Mike because, as a student, she can tell him that if he breathes a word he'll get flunked, and because he looks like her DH.

He does her. Then, he notices that she didn't have an orgasm, so he does her again, and this time she does (leaving her feeling Very Guilty). She's also convinced that this time it took and she's now all pregnant and everything.

Mike heads out trying to make it back to the hospital before his shift in the ED starts, and at that moment the news comes on the radio that Lorrie's been plugged by her hubby. "Holy Crom!" Mike says, or words to that effect, "If he'd come home early a week ago that woulda been me!"

Thus ... Mike as main character. And, thus a good starting place.

[Yeshanu]

I think that the story starts on page twelve, when Elaine McGill (wife of prominent dermatologist Paul McGill) is boinking horn-dog medical student Mike Traynor in a tourist cabin.

("Don't worry," she says. "My husband plays golf every Wednesday afternoon.")

She desperately wants a baby for her husband, and is willing to go to any lengths to get one. Any lengths. She can't go to the clinic to get artificially inseminated, though, because then her husband would find out and would know it wasn't really his. She picked Mike because, as a student, she can tell him that if he breathes a word he'll get flunked, and because he looks like her DH.

He does her. Then, he notices that she didn't have an orgasm, so he does her again, and this time she does (leaving her feeling Very Guilty). She's also convinced that this time it took and she's now all pregnant and everything.

Mike heads out trying to make it back to the hospital before his shift in the ED starts, and at that moment the news comes on the radio that Lorrie's been plugged by her hubby. "Holy Crom!" Mike says, or words to that effect, "If he'd come home early a week ago that woulda been me!"

Thus ... Mike as main character. And, thus a good starting place.

Now THAT synopsis makes me want to read more. But not if I need a degree in architecture in order to understand the rest...

[IdiotsRUs]

He does her. Then, he notices that she didn't have an orgasm, so he does her again,

How unrealistic, men can't tell and / or don't care about orgasms






j/k j/k honest!

It does seem a tad unlikely just for F-buddies though.

[James D. Macdonald]

It does seem a tad unlikely just for F-buddies though.

That might go a long way to explaining why Mike Traynor, horn-dog medical student, managed to do all the doctors' wives, half the nurses, and a visiting grad student from Vassar....

Not that any of the doctors themselves had room to complain: Here's part of the scene where Paul (whipping around on his speedboat down on that lake created by the hydro-electric dam (and after the dam, the lake, and the rest of the local geography, got fully described again)) contemplates divorcing his wife, Amy.

The trouble wasn't sex, he was sure; actually that had almost disappeared from their relationship these past eight to twelve months while Amy had been engaged in her relentless campaign to become state president of the auxiliary. Sex was always in plentiful supply around a hospital, the major part of whose personnel was composed of women, and he'd had no trouble finding all the release he needed there.

Apparently the hospital was a nookie buffet and the doctors were going back for thirds.

But there was still no plot-related reason to describe the exact layout of the buildings. You know how I keep saying that every word has to advance the plot, support the theme, or reveal character? Well, if Mr. Slaughter had followed that advice this book would have been Lots Better.

[James D. Macdonald]

Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.

Here's a different book:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion. The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive. The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.


The question is, as always, do you turn the page?

[IdiotsRUs]

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

That there is one hell of a long sentence. I got lost about three lines in and it took a Sherpa and a St Bernard to help me out and make sense of it.

I might turn the page, I might not - however being fairly sure I know what the blurb on the back cover says, I'd probably slog through :D

[euclid]

That there is one hell of a long sentence. I got lost about three lines in and it took a Sherpa and a St Bernard to help me out and make sense of it.
:ROFL:

here's a rewrite:

Lord Henry Wotton lay on the corner of the Persian saddle-bag divan in his studio. He lit his umpteenth cigarette of the morning, which was a pity, because it meant he couldn’t smell the roses, the lilac, or the honey-sweet laburnum in the garden. The studio window was huge, draped with long tussore-silk curtains, stirring in a light summer breeze. The shadows of birds in flight flitted by, reminding him of the way that the Japanese use fantastic shapes to convey movement.

He could hear the murmur of the slow, sullen bees and the roar of London like a distant organ.

“Shit,” he thought, lighting another woodbine. “I can’t put it off any longer. I’m going to have to cut the grass.”

[sonya bateman]

The question is, as always, do you turn the page?


Ooh! I wanna play...

Holy descriptive overload, Batman. Since this is only the first page, I'd keep going to see if anything happened in the next few - and I'd possibly give it a little longer than most, since there seems to be a chance of Japanese theme in here. And I'm a sucker for Japanese themes in novels.

So there's an example of personal preference overruling a writing style that isn't particularly pleasing. But I sure would hope that something happens soon.

[RJK]

I had difficulty holding my eyes open while reading that 119 word sentence, including the misspelled 'Tokyo'. I'd flip the page out of curiosity, to see if the next page continued with more, long, descriptive sentences. In any case, I wouldn't read further. This kind of writing literally puts me to sleep.

[RobJ]

The question is, as always, do you turn the page?
Not if I'm reading for pleasure, but perhaps if I'm looking for something to analyse or study.

Cheers,
Rob

[smsarber]

Or to wrap in a shirt and use for a pillow if I happened to be lost in the woods.

[Yeshanu]

He lit his umpteenth cigarette of the morning, which was a pity, because it meant he couldn’t smell the roses, the lilac, or the honey-sweet laburnum in the garden.

You were reading my mind...

Um, is cutting the grass the most gripping problem the author could give the main character (at least I'm assuming he's the main character, or one of them) on the first page? Of course, I might keep reading to find out why an English lord has to worry about cutting his own grass...

But probably not.

[JoniBGoode]

Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.

Here's a different book:



The question is, as always, do you turn the page?

Sorry, no. That's more description than I would tolerate in an entire novel, unless it was a major plot point. I would be tempted to make a small donation to the author, though, just so he could afford to buy more periods. And I'd suggest a two-for-one sale.

My rewrite: Lord Wotton reposed on a divan of Persian Saddles and breathed in the honey-scented air. He mused...how the hell did dashing med student Mike Traynor get so much nookie? Was it true that he cared about women's orgasms? And, what had he done wrong in a previous life, to get stuck in this book?

[Don]

I don't turn the page, which probably means it won a Pulitzer or something. :roll:

[Scribhneoir]

I can feel and hear and smell the setting, so I would turn the page and give it a little longer. But if the prose continued to be so convoluted I'd need a really compelling story to keep me turning the pages.

[Jerry B. Flory]

I might turn the page, just to find out if Lord Wotton is laying in a barn with a huge window in it.
Why does a Lord furnish his house with Persian saddlebags? Does he own a chaise lounge made of Turkish rifles and army tents?
This is peculiar hook for me. Perhaps Lord Wotton is the Willy Wonka of military paraphernalia.
I'll turn one page just to find out.

[Calliopenjo]

Let's see if we can point out a couple odd things, that makes me ask, HUH?:Huh:

Okay, first thing the first paragraph is awfully lllllooooooooonnnnng, all 45 words of it.

The next thing, I'm not quite sure how to interpret the second paragraph. I can't get a visual.

The last thing is what's Tokio? As far as I know Tokyo has always been Tokyo and I understand about missing a word or two during the rewrite. It happens. But with a major city like Tokyo can it be explained with a simple ooops, I'm sorry. I missed that. :e2shrug:

I'm sorry Uncle Jim, but it would be a book that I would theoretically throw across the room.

[Niamh1882]

Hello all,
I'm a long time lurker who has been pulled out of the shadows by the latest round of the first page game.

Given my own free will, not only would I not turn the page, I'd actively try to prevent other people from reading it. :P I had to read this one for a class a few years ago, and it's earned a spot on my Top Ten Books I Really Hate List.

If you think paragraph two is bad, you should see the rest of this sucker. There's at least one whole chapter filled with nothing but descriptions of stuff the main character collected, none of which has any importance to the plot what so ever.

Come to think of it, this book is also the only one I can think of where I liked the movie better.

[/rant]

Now that I've gotten that out of my system, I wanted to say thanks to Uncle Jim for taking time out of his day for 7000+ posts and 5 years to give advice, mediate disputes, and answer questions for all of us aspiring writers in the audience. Thank You!

[Jerry B. Flory]

This is one of those British things at the time of Dickens where writers were paid by the word so they saturated everything with detail.
Roses have an "odour" Lilacs have a scent.
Pink-flowering thorns are a perfume.
You would think, in this studio that cigarette smoke and Persian saddlebags would have their own, more dominant redolence.
All that under the dim roar of London.

[Jerry B. Flory]

Is this the same Wotton played by Bela Lugosi?
That's Oscar Wilde.

[Noah Body]

Hmm, a pretty damned dense downpour of words there.

In today's environment, would such a novel fly? I think not, except for at the more literary houses. But commercial fiction? Nah. A Tom Clancy sex scene between American and Russian robots set during the Cold War would probably have more going for it.

[Ken Schneider]

That passage is very discriptive and if broken up with some other info could take up a couple pages, and be okay. Reading that was like walking through a bath and body works store. Odor overload.

[Niamh1882]

Yep. It's Oscar Wilde, who has taken what could have been a rockin' awesome idea for a horror story and board it to death.

[jbryson]

Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.

Here's a different book:
The question is, as always, do you turn the page?

No, but if I could write like that, I'd have gotten my 50,000 NaNoWriMo words, instead of the 25,000 I ended up with after he went there, did that, and brought back the t-shirt.

[Kudra]

Another lurker here, though not exactly. I've been reading the posts in this thread for the past couple of days, and I'm on page 48 today.

I realized though, that I was missing a whole lot of going-on's while I was catching up, so I'm going to start participating here even as I catch up on those 300 pages of posts!

Thanks so much, Uncle Jim, for these lessons. I'm in love with fiction again.

[HelloKiddo]

Ar last, a first page I recognize!

I'd turn the page (actually I did turn the page when I read this.) The first page is not thrilling, but I found the description just intriguing enough to want to know more.

[JasonChirevas]

Well, folks. Many of y'all decided not to turn the page for that last novel.

Here's a different book:



The question is, as always, do you turn the page?

No. My god, no.

-Jason

[Judg]

No, not for entertainment. If I were reading it because I wanted to read some more Oscar Wilde, I'd give it a go for a while. But he'd have to come through with something better sooner or later.

[Yeshanu]

Since we're talking about first pages, I've put the first page to my next WIP up here (http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3016087#post3016087). If anyone cares to comment, I'd appreciate it. And don't feel shy about ripping it apart if you don't like it. I have claws and teeth -- I'll fight back. :D

Seriously, I personally have the feeling that what I've written doesn't stink, but if you've got negative comments, don't keep them to yourself. I can't learn if all anyone says is, "You're writing's fantastic." :)

[pdr]

but this is Wilde and he's always worth reading.

[Yeshanu]

but this is Wilde and he's always worth reading.

If the rest of his prose is like his first page, I wouldn't be able to get through it, no matter how profound his points.

But this is where individual taste comes in. I'd probably be able to read the entire text of the nurse novel, even though aware I'd be reading junk rather than a classic.

I'd rather enjoy a book than read one simply because it's "worth reading," or "a classic," whatever the criteria are for those designations.

To each her own... :)

[Chris Grey]

I would turn the page, possibly a few pages, to see where it's going. It's well-written and that counts for a lot, but today's a bit too attention-deficit for a page like that to fly far. As he brought up Japan, I present a haiku:

We want explosions,
Monsters, and don't forget the
Exploding monsters.

Sad but--ooh, shiny!

[DamaNegra]

I turned a couple of pages, then got so bored I put the book back and blocked it out of my mind.

[Minister]

Another whole-thread reader finally drawn into commenting by the first-page game.

My eyes were glazing over before the end of the first sentence. If I picked that up, not knowing who wrote it, no, I probably wouldn't continue, even though I usually give novels a few pages to prove themselves. That passive, overwrought description of surroundings is almost guaranteed to make me set a book aside.

Knowing it's Wilde, I might have picked up the book deliberately and given the first few pages the benefit of the doubt (I make a far more dedicated effort to read works recommended by those I respect) -- but I'm already skimming before I get to the end of the first page, and if I don't see something more interesting or profound in the first few pages, I just don't have the time to waste on it, no matter how well-regarded the writer or book may be. It's not for me. Life is short. Books are many.

[James D. Macdonald]

As many have recognized, that's the first page of chapter one of The Picture of Dorian Gray (http://www.bibliomania.com/0/0/57/103/frameset.html), by Oscar Wilde.

===========

Since it's the preface, everyone skips it, but here's the preface to that work:





The artist is the creator of beautiful things.

To reveal art and conceal the artist is art's aim.


The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.


The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.


Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming.


This is a fault.


Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope.


They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.


There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.


That is all.


The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.


The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass.


The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium. No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true cannot be proved.


No artist has ethical sympathies.


An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.


Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art.


Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art.


From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician.


From the point of view of feeling, the actor's craft is the type.


All art is at once surface and symbol.


Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.


Those who read the symbol do so at their peril.


It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors.


Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital.


When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself.


We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.


Then comes the epigram:

All art is quite useless.

[Yeshanu]

I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.
I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.

I disagree on many points (though not all), though I'm aware that if that's the prologue to the book, he may be writing the viewpoint of one of the characters and not himself. But still...

I will not get drawn into a long and quite meaningless philosophical debate with Oscar Wilde.

:D

[James D. Macdonald]

The Picture of Dorian Gray is the type-specimen of the literary novel. The interior lives of the characters are more important than the external events. The interior life of the protagonist is even made an external symbol, the "Picture" of the title.

I chose it because, like Doctors' Wives, it opens with long descriptive paragraphs. Unlike Doctors' Wives, however, it has been continuously in print for nearly a hundred and twenty years.

Most "literary novels" also fall into genres. (Cormac McCarthy's The Road, for example, is post-apocalyptic science fiction.) Wilde's novel falls into the sub-genre Gothic Romance.

We'll do a line-by-line on that first page in a bit.

[James D. Macdonald]

I disagree on many points (though not all), though I'm aware that if that's the prologue to the book, he may be writing the viewpoint of one of the characters and not himself.

I believe that Wilde was making his confession of faith in that prologue, and that he then attempted to prove each of those points in the novel. (This may be an example of Samuel Goldwyn's "If you want to send a message call Western Union.") Nevertheless, Wilde not only talked the talk, he walked the walk; at the end he wound up suffering terribly for his art.

And, the book is still being printed and read, and quoted ("The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about" is from this novel, for example). And everyone knows the plot, and Dorian Gray (either the book as a whole or Dorian as a character) has appeared in movies, comic books, and other novels.

Whatever Wilde was doing, he was doing something right. Our job is to figure out what.

[Redaelf]

This may be me having read too much stuff upholding literature at an impressionable age, but the portion I see on this page, at least, is intriguing to me. It makes a lot of bold statements.

Man. I'd never wanted to read that book before...and I'm not too thrilled to want to now, either.

[James D. Macdonald]

Man. I'd never wanted to read that book before...and I'm not too thrilled to want to now, either.

It's public domain now, and available free on-line. Go for it.

[bsolah]

I have Wilde's book sitting in my 'to read' pile. I've snuck a peak at the first few pages, as well as read some his political essays. Quite an extraordinary writer, as well as inspiring for standing about against the first trial against a gay men for being gay.

[Yeshanu]

Just for the record, I don't disagree with everything he says in the prologue. But there are things he does say about morality and ethics that I do disagree with.

For example, I believe that all artists have ethical sympathies, and that not only is it important to express them, you can't not express them. The artist who believes otherwise is fooling him or herself, in what I think to be a very irresponsible way. Not that I believe that everything I write needs to be chock full of my moral values, but I find that even when I'm writing something silly like my NaNo novel, I can't help but create a work where what I believe to be true about humanity and morality is an important part of the story.

And I definitely do not agree that all art is useless. :)

That being said, I'm looking forward to your line-by-line. Not having taken English literature beyond high school (except for one class in ancient Greek and Roman and biblical classics), I consider myself to be woefully ignorant of the classics (in a scholarly way), especially when I compare myself with my son who will be graduating with a four-year English degree this spring.

[euclid]

I baulked at the lines about moral/immoral books, although I suppose OW could argue the point using semantics. There certainly are corrupting books (and other more modern media).

[smsarber]

I think each statement in his prologue is meant to be interpreted the way each individual reader chooses. The moral/immoral line, for instance. I am personaloly a Christian so my moral is what I believe God has instilled in me from birth. The Ten Commandments, etc... Now, if I were the complete other side, into satanism and black magic and witchcraft, my moral may be the thrill of seeing others in pain. (For instance.)
But another way to see it is there is another definition of moral; The practical meaning (as of a story.) Which goes back to the way each person interprets the line, and, everything else they read.
But I'm just wrapping my brain up in bubble wrap right now.
"You may be right... I may be crazy... But it just may be a lunatic you're looking for" - Billy Joel; You May be Right

[Jake Barnes]

"Whatever Wilde was doing, he was doing something right. Our job is to figure out what."

I'll take a shot. First, it's got a great premise. Second the theme of What is beauty? Is an interesting one. Wilde seems to say that what is beautiful is also good (see Plato) but also that beauty is deceiving (so how can it be good?). Third the story plays into the hedonist/puritan divide and this creates tension and conflict in the character in the plot and in the reader (don't we all want a portrait like Dorian's?). Fourth, the character of Dorian is a very modern one like Dr. Jekyll and Sherlock Holmes and people still find it appealing.

[James D. Macdonald]

Line-by-line:

The studio was filled with the rich odour of roses, and when the light summer wind stirred amidst the trees of the garden, there came through the open door the heavy scent of the lilac, or the more delicate perfume of the pink-flowering thorn.

Paragraph one is a single sentence. Forty-five passive words. It gives a place, "the studio" (apparently in or near a garden) and a time "summer."

Sight and smell are heavily invoked (odour, scent, perfume). Colors are heavily invoked (rose, lilac, pink). The only active verb is the stirring done by that light wind.


From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum, whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect, and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters of Tokio who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

Woo! Super-sentence! One hundred and nineteen words. Let's see if we can break this down a bit. Separating the sentence out, clause-by-clause, we find:

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on which he was lying,

smoking,

as was his custom,

innumerable cigarettes,

Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum,

whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs;

First half of the sentence is now complete--we've introduced a person into the place. We have an idea of his social station, Lord, and something of his character. He is an aesthete.

We're back to the smells and the colors.

and now and then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the huge window,

producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,

and making him think of those pallid,

jade-faced painters of Tokio who,

through the medium of an art that is necessarily immobile,

seek to convey the sense of swiftness and motion.

And we've introduced the theme of painting, and rendering the impression of motion in a fixed medium. (Incidentally, Tokio is a perfectly valid, if rare, alternate spelling of Tokyo.) We're heavily into colors still (pallid, jade).

In contrast to the first paragraph, and the first half of this sentence, we have speed (and transitory) action: flitted, momentary, swiftness, motion.

The sullen murmur of the bees shouldering their way through the long unmown grass, or circling with monotonous insistence round the dusty gilt horns of the straggling woodbine, seemed to make the stillness more oppressive.

Sound is introduced in the second sentence, while passivity and neglect is emphasized. The bees murmur (sullenly). They "shoulder their way." They're monotonous. The grass is unmown. The woodbine (the flower theme again) is both dusty and straggling. The stillness is oppressive. One might suspect an impending thunderstorm.

The overall impression is of lassitude and boredom. This may be intended to revealing the character of Lord Henry Wotton.

The dim roar of London was like the bourdon note of a distant organ.

A simple sentence, at last! Nailing down the location, as we hear the sounds of a major city, though it is "distant." The bourdon is a bass drone note.

So far we've got a person in a place with a problem: Lord Henry Wotton, in a studio, is bored.

[James D. Macdonald]

May I comment here that portraying boredom or monotony in our novels is always dangerous? We run the risk of boring our readers.

To do this on the first page bespeaks either ... well, I wouldn't try it here in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

[James D. Macdonald]

One more note, since the Flesch-Kincaid grade level scores have been mentioned.

All three of the last first-page examples (The Picture of Dorian Gray, Doctors' Wives, Nurse Kelsey Abroad) have the same reading level: Grade 16 (senior year of college).

[Berry]

Incidentally, Tokio is a perfectly valid, if rare, alternate spelling of Tokyo.)

Particularly at the time when Wilde was writing. "Romanization", the transliterating of Japanese words into the Latin alphabet, had not yet been standardized to the extent that it is today. THere are still at least three major systems in use, but the Hepburn system is the dominant one. While it was first introduced in the late 19th century, it didn't become de facto official until the Occupation after WWII.

It's interesting to note, if you're a language weenie, that in Japanese "Tokyo" is a TWO syllable word, "To-kyo", and not, as many Westerners pronounce it, three: "To-key-oh", so while "Tokio" was at one time valid, it's fundamentally flawed.

[smsarber]

Uncle Jim, I have a question. One of the lead characters in "A Birthday Suicide" is named Willis Jefferson. Throughout the first draft I alternately use three different names for him: Willis, Jefferson, and The Big Man. Is it proper to do that, or might it be a tad confusing?

[gabbleandhiss]

Uncle Jim, I have a question. One of the lead characters in "A Birthday Suicide" is named Willis Jefferson. Throughout the first draft I alternately use three different names for him: Willis, Jefferson, and The Big Man. Is it proper to do that, or might it be a tad confusing?

I think I'd be too busy singing "Movin' on Up" to notice.

[smsarber]

Ha-ha, funny;)!

[Yeshanu]

May I comment here that portraying boredom or monotony in our novels is always dangerous? We run the risk of boring our readers.

To do this on the first page bespeaks either ... well, I wouldn't try it here in the first decade of the twenty-first century.

And I guess that this is the fundamental problem I have with this novel. I don't read to be bored, or read about bored characters.

As for the philosophy espoused in the prologue, I've been doing a lot of thinking about it since you posted it, and may at some point delve into it from a more academic angle, because of where I believe it came from. I still see it as fundamentally flawed, but his flawed reasoning is very common. Still need to think before I argue with him, though. :tongue

[HConn]

Uncle Jim, may I direct your attention to this article (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/major-reorganization-at-random-house/?ref=media), not just for the back and forth about divisions being dropped, but for the comment section as well?

Apparently, low salaries and celebrities who get big advances are to blame for publishing's troubles (along with TV and texting), not mention their unwillingness to "take a chance on new writers who come up with fresh and original material."

[bsolah]

...celebrities who get big advances are to blame for publishing's troubles...

This is a personal pet peeve of mine, especially freaking sports stars who just pay ghost writers to write their book so they can make some extra money. And bookstores lap it all up because they care more about making a buck than promoting good writers.

Almost every second Friday I walk past this bookstore in the city and the manager is outside calling people in to come to a book signing of some famous sports star. One day I'm gonna scream at her, "Get a real writer!"

[pictopedia]

Shuffling around people within their organisation is just the old game companies play to avoid actually working.

-publishers and agents are still requiring authors to send in printed ms
-they don't have content management driven websites
-they don't have automated email reply scripts
-they don't blog (although some have started)
-they don't use their websites as marketing tools
-they don't use their websites to manage clients (authors)
-they don't take advantage of the web2.0 share/rate/collaborate movement

I work in the media industry and practices like this, now, two years into web2.0 and ten into web1.0, seem as old fashioned as the telegraph. (whatever that was). If they wanted to, publishers could make a fortune simply from royalties by setting up proper websites that connect people in the industry and popularise their products with a world wide audience they get for free. The world has changed, but in their storyline it's 1975.

[James D. Macdonald]

Is it proper to do that, or might it be a tad confusing?

Sure, it's proper. Have you ever read a Russian novel?

What do your beta readers say?

[James D. Macdonald]

This is a personal pet peeve of mine, especially freaking sports stars who just pay ghost writers to write their book ...One day I'm gonna scream at her, "Get a real writer!"

If you play your cards right you can be that writer.

[bsolah]

Sure, but first I'd need to not scream at her, and then actually finish some sort of manuscript that would then have to be published.

[James D. Macdonald]

Uncle Jim, may I direct your attention to this article (http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/12/03/major-reorganization-at-random-house/?ref=media), not just for the back and forth about divisions being dropped, but for the comment section as well?


Oh, dear. The comment section. I got about four comments into it. What a bunch of maroons.


Apparently, low salaries and celebrities who get big advances are to blame for publishing's troubles (along with TV and texting), not mention their unwillingness to "take a chance on new writers who come up with fresh and original material."

Those complaints have been around for years. Decades.

Listen, O my children: Finding publishable works is painstaking hand-work by people who are, themselves, artists. That is why acquisitions won't be automated. That is why it is slow and has a high random-factor. And that is why upper management that says "Why don't you only buy best sellers?" doesn't get it.

Publishing is counterintuitive.

[smsarber]

Sure, it's proper. Have you ever read a Russian novel?

What do your beta readers say?
Well, I am only four pages in on it (the re-write), so I haven't had a beta read it yet.
And, I don't think I've read a Russian novel. I read one while I was in prison, something about an attempt to assassinate Hitler, it had "Eagle" in the title, but for the life of me I can't remember more than that. There was a movie made out of it, I believe it had Lee Marvin in it. Regardless, I think it was British. But a lot of it took place in Russia, that's probably why it comes to mind.

[James D. Macdonald]

In Russian novels, everyone has several names, and which name is used by whom is determined by the exact relationship between the two characters.

May I recommend The Karamazov Brothers?

[smsarber]

I'll put it on my library list.

And on a further note, I figured it was acceptable, but I've put so much time in on this, I've been learning to write while working on it, I just want to make sure. The person who read my first draft had good things to say, except for the things that would be expected from a green writer; show, don't tell, try to stay away from passive voice, etc... but the name issue was never addressed so I thought I would get your opinion. Thank you.

[Jerry B. Flory]

Anna Karenina drove me nuts. Tolstoy seems unable to call Stepan Arkadyevitch anything but Stepan Arkadyevitch. He never just calls him Stepan, Step or Steppy. It's always Stepan Arkadyevitch.

[Yeshanu]

If you play your cards right you can be that writer.


Here's a success story for you.
(http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?p=3025008#post3025008)
She wrote the novel during this year's NaNo, and revised it on a long plane ride. And four days after NaNo is finished, she has a request to see the ms. Sure it's a long way from being published still, but considering she only wrote it last month and already publishing folks are nibbling at the bait, my guess is that it's only a matter of time before it's published.

Yes, YOU can be that writer.

But you have to write first.

[allenparker]

Almost every second Friday I walk past this bookstore in the city and the manager is outside calling people in to come to a book signing of some famous sports star. One day I'm gonna scream at her, "Get a real writer!"


I want to do a book signing at her store. Most managers just stick you in a corner and hope people find you. OR they announce your reading to the people in the store and move on.

A manager that is involved enough to go outside and grab people is someone I would respect.

[smsarber]

I want to do a book signing at her store. Most managers just stick you in a corner and hope people find you. OR they announce your reading to the people in the store and move on.

A manager that is involved enough to go outside and grab people is someone I would respect.
No s#it! You don't see that kind of passion and commitment anymore.

[bsolah]

I want to do a book signing at her store. Most managers just stick you in a corner and hope people find you. OR they announce your reading to the people in the store and move on.

A manager that is involved enough to go outside and grab people is someone I would respect.

But she only does it for the sport celebrities. The one occasion I've seen someone other than a sports star doing a book signing there, she was no where to be seen.

[smsarber]

But she only does it for the sport celebrities. The one occasion I've seen someone other than a sports star doing a book signing there, she was no where to be seen.
But vee have vays of making her promote!
(And maybe that was some poor PA sap.)

[euclid]

Uncle Jim, I have a question. One of the lead characters in "A Birthday Suicide" is named Willis Jefferson. Throughout the first draft I alternately use three different names for him: Willis, Jefferson, and The Big Man. Is it proper to do that, or might it be a tad confusing?

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, by Renni Browne and Dave King, says (p 91):

"Decide how you are going to refer to a character and stick with it for at least the length of the scene. Don't use 'Hubert said' on one page, 'Mr Winchester said', on the next, and 'the old man said' on the third. If you do, your readers will have to stop reading long enough to figure out that the old man is Hubert Winchester. Also, most people don't change the way they think of someone they're talking to in mid-conversation, so neither should your viewpoint character."

[James D. Macdonald]

"Decide how you are going to refer to a character and stick with it for at least the length of the scene."

Yes but...

That's how the author refers to the character. The other characters may use several names for the same character in the same scene.

Michael Traynor, horn-dog med student, entered the classroom a solid twenty minutes late.

"How good of you to join us, Mr. Traynor," Professor Noarth said, as Michael made his way to his seat.

"Yo, Mike," Steve whispered. "You totally missed a pop quiz."

"It was worth it," Michael whispered back. "Mrs. Perth and her daughter, at the same time!"

"Some people have all the luck," said Arthur, from his seat to Steve's left. "If Long Schlong manages to graduate they're going to give him an honorary degree in gynecology."


You remember when I recommended The Karamazov Brothers?

One of the brothers is Alexi Fyodorovich Karamazov, but the other characters refer to him (depending on the situation and their relationship to him) variously as Alexi, Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka.

[Yeshanu]

Michael Traynor, horn-dog med student, entered the classroom a solid twenty minutes late.

"How good of you to join us, Mr. Traynor," Professor Noarth said, as Michael made his way to his seat.

"Yo, Mike," Steve whispered. "You totally missed a pop quiz."

"It was worth it," Michael whispered back. "Mrs. Perth and her daughter, at the same time!"

"Some people have all the luck," said Arthur, from his seat to Steve's left. "If Long Schlong manages to graduate they're going to give him an honorary degree in gynecology."




Now I really want to read this novel, or at least Uncle Jim's version of it.

(When does it come out on shelves? ;) )

[euclid]

One of the brothers is Alexi Fyodorovich Karamazov, but the other characters refer to him (depending on the situation and their relationship to him) variously as Alexi, Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka.

Bl**dy h*ll! :)

[blacbird]

One of the brothers is Alexi Fyodorovich Karamazov, but the other characters refer to him (depending on the situation and their relationship to him) variously as Alexi, Alyosha, Alyoshka, Alyoshenka, Alyoshechka, Alexeichik, Lyosha, and Lyoshenka.

"Now, you can call me Ray, or you can call me Jay, or you can call me RayJay, or you can call me R.J., or you can call me Junior, or you can call me Johnny, or you can call me Sonny . . . but ya doesn't has ta call me Johnson!"

-- Mayor Raymond J. Johnson, Jr., of the Ace Trucking Company

caw