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?
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....
