I am half-way through my re-write of this chapter and would like some feedback. I invite you to get out your red pens and have at it.
Here is the location of the original draft: /viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474976753090
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This is the first chapter of a sci-fi fantasy fiction novel that I've been carrying around in my head and heart for over twenty years. It has been filling pages in my journals and appearing on the paper and canvas of my art since 1984. It spilled on to the web in 1998. It's time I wrote it.
"The Adventures of Stryder-Bill" is the official working title.
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The Vision At Cliff's Edge - Chapter One
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A rutted dirt road with unchecked grasses growing along its sides and its middle slanted up a wooded hill. Dappled by dusky rays of morning summer sunlight casting through a patchy canopy of leaves and pine boughs a man wearing a brownish green fedora and denim jacket hiked the right-hand track of this rarely used road. Dirt and rocks crunched under his boots while khaki cargo pants flexed to the cadence of a determined gait. Leaves rustled occasionally as wild life foraged around him. His hands swung in casual rhythm from the sleeves of the jacket required by this chilly upstate New York morning. He'd be carrying the jacket on his way back down.
Birds chittered, twittered and sang warnings keeping safe distances from this five foot ten beast in motion. A surprised squirrel chatterd and bounded from a decomposing log a few feet from the road. Scampering chipmunks sent statuesque gazes his way at the squirrel's alarm.
He smiled because of them. A smile that grew deeper and more encompassing with every step. A feeling of smiling spread through him the way a cup of warm hot-chocolate does at the end of a cold winter hike. He let the natural world in, and it filled him.
The dirt road led to a fantastic natural vista which he'd first come across as a nine year-old boy playing Indian Scout explorer alone. He wondered idly if any of the stones from his youth's fire ring would still be around. He had found one last time, despite the blurriness of his grieving vision.
His last visit had been ten years ago, just following his mother's burial at a local cemetery. He came then to let his heart weep in a place free from judgments, a place where the heavens were gloriously revealed. God's presence was felt and His handiwork beautifully displayed. He came to this place then to embrace and release her spirit and to try and stitch his bleeding heart closed.
Striding steadily up the hill he walked a second path in his mind and spirit. A road mapped in the world's ancient teachings: "Climb to the top of a mountain to gain rest, perspective and insight. Leave the world and its concerns behind. Push your mind and body toward the peace and calm of the All, then be open and still and receive what it reveals."
He worked at dropping his cares as he hiked. Some of them stubbornly fought him. "Important .. Important" they alarmed in red in his head. "..later.." he responded calmly encouraging growing peace. Life had worn him down, again, and his spirit was in sore need of a recharge.
Relaxing, focusing, letting go, his breathing going deep and even, he walked his roads with purpose. "Out with the bad air and in with the good. Out goes the smog, the nicotine, the city sewer gas. In come the trees, the earth, the sky." Hiking twelve hundred yards to the top of a rutted rocky dirt road his lungs were already laboring two hundred yards in.
Climbing the forested hill took effort and chugged oxygen to his engine. The exertion forced his subconscious to focus itself more on the physical strain and less on the churning nagging concerns. Lungs and muscles slipped slowly into a harmony, the id and the ego coerced into helping orchestrate and coordinate the body's efforts.
The music of journeying rose, stilling anxieties and apprehensions, to what at least would be a dull roar. By the time he reached the top his blood was coursing vigorously. Circulating and shedding toxins, immersed in symphonies and intoxicated by the fragrances of Mother Nature's grand garden he stood surveying a Green Man's playground.
On the top of a two hundred foot cliff he paced slowly allowing his breathing to calm and pulse to ease. A broad rocky ledge, moss padded spots and pine needle strewn a terrace that opened on a postcard view.
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A valley, half a mile wide, from forested hills to forested hills. Rock fenced pastures barb-wired fields, grazing Holsteins and growing corn and alfalfa. A narrow tree lined river wandering through.
On the ledge, a huge flattish boulder, seven feet long, two feet tall, and three feet wide, sits somewhat shaded by a stately pine growing at the narrowest end. This old man pine started its life at the very base of the stone and grew in such a way as to make a most perfect backrest. A natural occurring chair, sans armrests.
Sitting cross-legged, he turns off his phone and slides it back in his denim jacket. Breathing slowly his heart rate slows and his blood pressure drops, below normal. Oxygenation high, relaxing with a sigh, he slides into this envelope of nature, and becomes one with the universe.
He'd come with a purpose; comfort, strength, refilling, explaining. He came to see what the universe would show him, tell him, reveal.
The stems and branches of his "issues" played out into a deep dark void. Strips of running video floated, stretched and connected at each end with other strips, lacing out a huge geodesic framework.
The view receded, as if it were moving away, and the scenes lost their details. the framework changed and took on a new appearance. A glowing golden lattice work of seven pointed suns.
The view moved in, a sense of flying occurred. The golden lines became walkways of glowing stone. The hubs, large circular promenades with a small pagoda at each center.
A sense of feet touched a now ten foot wide walkway on the edge of a hub. His view beheld a pagoda. A dark empty doorway directly in front of him. The dark crescents of other doors could be seen around the edges of the building. One for each path. His view moved forward, passed over the threshold and into the darkness of the unknown.
He floated for a while. Memories and dreams grazing his awareness. Warm, happy, suspended in time's clockwork, he floated. Eventually the stone called him back. Its cold solid presence an undeniable base under his bottom. Slowly he opened his eyes.
The world is dazzling at that moment, Fresh from the inner journeys. Vision and thought are sharp and clear. The muddling comes when gearing up to get back into society. Luckily it takes hours, sometimes days to re-encompass.
He didn't know what it all meant; that golden framework thing. But he was glad to feel better. Some sense of peace and strength had come or been fed. He walked down lighter and happier. Liking his vision, but not knowing what it meant he slung his jacket over his shoulder and headed back down to his truck.
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1116 words - at this stage
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Comments: 22
Hannah - No worries. Thank you for being so wordy, it is exactly what I want.
Mandi - Thank you for the input. I'm not sure how to respond. You do bring up something I will have to address, I'm just not sure, at this point, what I would safely leave in or take out. I'll keep it in mind. Thanks.
- the "founds"
- period between revealed and God's
- colon after world's ancient teachings
- removed slang use of "like"
My sentence fragments often occur when I'm trying to illicit a corresponding feeling in the reader to a feeling that a character is experiencing. My method uses impressions that I hope will run-on to each other or meld in the mind of the reader and stir-up a sensory-memory. Does this make sense? Are there better ways to do this?
Would semi-colons in place of the periods properly clean-up most of my sentence fragments?
Much more succinct than the first draft. Other than that, I can't improve on Hannah's evaluation. Gotta admit, the girl rocks!
Generally, I think you could use a lot more commas. Try reading the piece out loud. Each time you pause, check to see that you've used the correct punctuation.
"Dappled by dusky rays of morning summer sunlight casting through a patchy canopy of leaves and pine boughs a man wearing a brownish green fedora and denim jacket hiked the right track of this rarely used road, dirt and rocks crunching under his boots, khaki cargo pants flexing to the mechanics of a determining gait," is a hell of a sentence. Longer sentences can be helpful sometimes but 55 words seems overkill. I found the sentence difficult to comprehend and suggest you split it into at least two sentences.
I don't know if "chittered" is a typo or if you're coining a word of your own but it doesn't help. "Chatterd", "blurriness", "gloriously", "vigourously" and "pervaing" are all misspelled. "His youths fire ring" needs an apostrophe; "started it's life," doesn't.
"Out with the bad air in with the good", "Twelve hundred yards to the top of a rutted rocky dirt road", "A natural occurring chair, sans armrests", "A glowing golden lattice work of seven pointed suns", "The hubs, large circular promenades with a small pagoda at each center", "A dark empty doorway directly in front of him", "Memories and dreams grazing his awareness" and "Its cold solid presence an undeniable base under his bottom" are all fragments, not complete sentences.
I hope you find these remarks useful.
Carl - I find all of your remarks very helpful, except for the "chitterd" one. According to the American Heritage dictionary at Yahoo.com "chitter" is a word having a similar meaning to twitter or chatter.
You are so right.. 55 words makes to long a sentence. I'll divide it up. (done)
Thanks for pointing out the spelling and apostrophe errors. (fixed)
I fixed the fragments in the first part of the writing which you mentioned. Those in the second half I will try to fix when I rewrite the second half.
Thank you for your input.
Serina - Thank you so much for your glowing comment. "Incredible descriptive imagery" is one of the things I'm striving for. If ya don't mind, I'll count on you to let me know if, where and when things get blurry or muddy. I've often thought of writing as painting in a persons mind with words. The influence of The Artist in my soul, no doubt. - LOL
Thanks again.
Moving forward - I would try writing it again - completely without commentary, no statements that evaluate the narrator's state of mind. Having done this - I would see where the commentary can be created with 'writer moves' - showing rather than telling.
Thank you Bill for your generous offer to be part of your internal writing world - you educate us all by letting us inside the works.
Some of this has already been mentioned. I get what you're trying to do with the use of sentence fragments to invoke a feeling similar to that of the main character's point of view (POV); however, the use of a sentence fragment, like the very first sentence [A rutted dirt road with unchecked grasses growing along its sides and its middle slanted up a wooded hill. ], is like a speed bump. It stops the flow of the reader's eye, often because they are expecting full sentence structure, and when they don't see it, they go back and re-read the sentence, wondering if they missed the all-important verb.
There are other ways to do this, but the first thing you need to do is decide what form of narration you are going to use. Most writers go with third person (omniscent), because it gives the writer more control over the environs and action being described. On the other hand, first person gives the narration a liveliness and spontaneity that is sometimes difficult to achieve with omniscent narration. First person does have a limitation, and that quite naturally is that you can describe only what the person sees and does. Switching POV from main character's first person to third person omniscent can also be limiting.
Second person is rarely used, and I find it extremely tiresome. The writer tells the reader what is happening by saying, "You are here. This is happening to you. You see this and that." A recent Stephen King novel used second person and I just couldn't finish it, as it drove me nuts! [grin]
All that said, the object in selecting narrative and POV is to make the writing easier to read. The magic ingredient is "flow." If the eye rushes from one word to the next, from phrase to phrase, from character to character (without a lot of POV jumps), then the reader is going to zip through the work in the same pleasurable way that a moviegoer watches a film.
There are other forms of speed bumps like sentence fragments, such as too much alliteration, over-description, "spaghetti sentences" that are way too long, repetition of the same words (which sometimes works here and there, but not as a long-term technique), and awkward-sounding combination of words and sounds. One of the very best things a writer can do is read the story or chapter out loud. Your tongue will stumble over the rough spots even easier than the eye. Things you've read and re-read, edited and re-edited, simply jump off the page at you when read aloud.
So, how to not use sentence fragments yet stlil get the intensity across? Try having your character react to what he is seeing, such as ["Looking ahead, he saw a rutted dirt road with unchecked grasses growing along its sides and its middle slanted up a wooded hill. ] You will describe "he" later, and the reader knows this, so he reads on, anxious to meet the character.
No speed bump. :-)
I hope this helps some. The very best way to become skilled at writing fiction is to write it. Every single published author has stories full of stilted, florid, purple prose. They keep it so they can go back and realize how skilled they have become at their chosen craft. Robert Heinlein said, "The first million words are for practice." I think he was about right on that number. An agent once told me, "Self-satisfaction is the enemy of a writer's style and voice." Yep. And that's really what a critique from readers who are also writers is all about; they can see and sense the things that we do not, mostly because for them it is a "first read," something that is difficult to do with your own work. We litter our editing with expectations and self-satisfaction that are inevitable because they are our very own words.
These days when I edit hard copy that isn't a paste-up or final mechanical, I'll use a red or purple pen, knowing that it doesn't matter what color I use on the disposable copy of the manuscript (ms), as long as it's easy to see.
So much of what I learned thirty years ago in the book and printing trade has changed, but some things remain the same. It has been an interesting journey for me as the computer age alters the way in which we accomplish nearly everything.
Annina - Thank you. You grasped my intnet well and I like your ideas. Your comment, like several others, opened doors in my understanding. And you quoted Heinlein (one of my favorite authors). Wonderful!! The re-write is under way.
Thanks also for the industry insight comment. Good knowledge there.
I like the idea of putting the main character in the first sentence. I agree, it would draw the reader in better than the descriptive narrative.
Thanks for catching the spelling mistake.
I'll re-work the hot-chocolate line again.
Thanks for the insight on the section where he is shedding his cares. I'll work on it also.
Thanks for the praise. Glad you liked it. I'm flattered that it reminded you of Whitman.
Hmmm...this is a SCi Fi/fantasy novel, correct? This is also your first novel.
The first thing you have to do is get the reader to want to read. Fantasy and Sci Fi is about being somewhere different. It is plot driven for the most part. It is about 'what if'.
You need to grab the reader from the begining with a purpose - a clue as to why they should be here and what to expect along the way.
You are starting off your novel like a 'main stream literature' novel. - It's just an ordinary world, with an ordinary guy, doing something ordinary. Why am I here?
Pull down your favorite books and open them up and read those first few paragraphs. They start off from the word go with telling the reader that they are somewhere different, somewhere extra-ordinary and they are caught up in that something fantastic with a purpose.
Your novels begins aimlessly with out drive or purpose for a Sci Fi/fantasy novel.
Pull back and figure out why you are choosing the genre of sci fi and fantasy. Answer that question and I can give you some suggestions about how to begin again with in that genre.
I've read alot of classic sci fi - fantasy - began my own fantasy novel.
Since I don't know where you're going with this sci fi/fantasy novel, may I suggest even a modest alteration - a simple gimmick but it is effective.
Start the novel off in the future - at some point when the main character realized or had to realize what had occured to him from having his vision. Open with the character presenting that fact - that the vision affective him and those around him - whatever your point is for the story. Even just a brief glimpse into that realization and then immediately say something like...
Looking back it all began so innocently...
Something like that. Then use what you have now and move forward.
By opening with the 'aftermath' as it were of this Vision at the cliffs end - the reader will be drawn in and want to know what that vision was and how he got to such an 'aftermath'.
That simple gimmick alone will be enough to get by to work as the opening of a fantasy piece.
Fantasy and fantastic share a common root and the reader expects and wants the fantastic in a fantasy novel. Lead off with a hint of the fantastic and you will have them hooked.
Check out Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury - how he makes the ordinary seem so extra-ordinary. Even though the book begins by describing very average and ordinary events by framing it as he does it takes on a feeling of magic and the fantastic.
That is what you need if you want to write a novel in the genre of fantasy - it has to have the context of the fantastic. Even if the fantastic is only pointing out the wonders of nature and living a life of self-awareness.
As for my story; You have read my mind. It has always been my intention to imbed this story with others to create a chain of memorie that show how the vision of the pathway was a recurrent theme in this character's life, and eventually led him to astrally traveling dimensional planes of reality.
Then start off with the fantastic and then after you get the reader's attention and interest - take them back to the ordinary. Re-write the opening with that in mind.
Looking forward to seeing a new draft. Once the mechanics, the framework is in place I will focus on more specifics.