Hi,
I would like a wide variety of constructive criticism/new ideas for the novel I'm currently writing.
I'll only post the prologue, as that is the only chapter I find acceptable. I feel like I need fresh eyes to look over my work to see things that I can't.
One thing I will say, is that I read a lot of philosophical books (plus study law ugh) so I feel as though this has altered my own writing 'voice' and over complicated my sentences. Any remedy for this?
BACKGROUND:
Prologue is written in 1st person.
Rest of novel is written in 3rd person.
Murder mystery type novel.
Protagonist (POV in the prologue) has recently (8 mths ago) been a victim of a violent attack in which the perpetrators took the life of her father. She is convinced it was a deliberate attack on her father but the authorities and her step mother dismissed the claims, saying it was a random attack.
word count: 819
Thanks in advance!
[url]http://www.scribd.com/doc/238944280/Prologue-Because-you-re-Home[/url]
Let me first say it's kind of refreshing to read somebody's creative writing on the internet that is neither overly-complex fantasy of post-apocalyptic sci-fi.
I don't think the sentences being over-comlicated is necessarily a problem in this case, but you might think about whether it's getting over-descriptive at times. Just the first sentence made me think about a George Carlin quote I read the other day.
[quote]I've also grown weary of reading about clouds in a book. Doesn't this piss you off? You're reading a nice story, and suddenly the writer has to stop and describe the clouds. Who cares? I'll bet you anything I can write a decent novel, with a good, entertaining story, and never once mention the clouds. Really! Every book you read, if there's an outdoor scene, an open window, or even a door slightly ajar, the writer has to say, "As Bo and Velma walked along the shore, the clouds hung ponderously on the horizon like steel-gray, loosely formed gorilla turds." I'm not interested. Skip the clouds and get to the fucking. The only story I know of where clouds were important was Noah's Ark. [/quote]
And you know, not to fixate on clouds specifically, but there is a point where the line needs to be drawn between story-critical description and "painting the scene" description.
For example, a reader doesn't necessarily need to know that the narrator has dark hair and pale skin here. That's the kind of description that feels like it's more for the author's benefit than the reader's. At this point in the story, informing the reader of the character's hair and skin colors doesn't really add to the scene. We don't need to be able to pick the character out of a lineup. Just focus on what she's doing and thinking and feeling.
I think there are just several instances of adjectives or adverbs accompanying nouns where they aren't necessary. Like the [b]pale[/b] walls, or the [b]blank[/b] school buildings, or all [b]cognitive[/b] thought in the first sentence. In the course of two paragraphs, there are three instances referring to the woods as [b]damp[/b], something the reader would already be picturing if they haven't forgotten that it's raining outside.
The descriptor that stuck out to me the most was when the narrator refers to "my denim-covered knees." Denim-covered is a pretty obtuse way of indicating that the character is wearing jeans, and I think it's another indication that doesn't really need to be made. I think when the scenes get too descriptive, it tends to insulate the reader from the heart of the matter. Keep things tight and focused, or people might miss the forest for the trees.
Abundant descriptors aside, there are some strong pieces here and there. The narrator fixating on the teacher's footsteps and assuming the teacher is speaking specifically about her is an efficient way of establishing her mood. That, and there's some subtlety in how her feelings in the woods (or really, now that I think about it, throughout the whole chapter) are never explicitly stated, but just indicated through actions and secondary emotions. I like that she never comes right out and says "I was anxious about the test" or "I miss my dad" or "I feel a little better now." Those elements work in the story's favor.
So yeah, I guess my biggest piece of advice is to trim back most of the descriptive words. When people read something like the fact that the pen was black, they'll either forget the detail almost immediately (which I did) or they might fixate on it and get distracted from what's important.
[QUOTE=Loofiloo;45922539]Let me first say it's kind of refreshing to read somebody's creative writing on the internet that is neither overly-complex fantasy of post-apocalyptic sci-fi.
I don't think the sentences being over-comlicated is necessarily a problem in this case, but you might think about whether it's getting over-descriptive at times. Just the first sentence made me think about a George Carlin quote I read the other day.
And you know, not to fixate on clouds specifically, but there is a point where the line needs to be drawn between story-critical description and "painting the scene" description.
For example, a reader doesn't necessarily need to know that the narrator has dark hair and pale skin here. That's the kind of description that feels like it's more for the author's benefit than the reader's. At this point in the story, informing the reader of the character's hair and skin colors doesn't really add to the scene. We don't need to be able to pick the character out of a lineup. Just focus on what she's doing and thinking and feeling.
I think there are just several instances of adjectives or adverbs accompanying nouns where they aren't necessary. Like the [b]pale[/b] walls, or the [b]blank[/b] school buildings, or all [b]cognitive[/b] thought in the first sentence. In the course of two paragraphs, there are three instances referring to the woods as [b]damp[/b], something the reader would already be picturing if they haven't forgotten that it's raining outside.
The descriptor that stuck out to me the most was when the narrator refers to "my denim-covered knees." Denim-covered is a pretty obtuse way of indicating that the character is wearing jeans, and I think it's another indication that doesn't really need to be made. I think when the scenes get too descriptive, it tends to insulate the reader from the heart of the matter. Keep things tight and focused, or people might miss the forest for the trees.
Abundant descriptors aside, there are some strong pieces here and there. The narrator fixating on the teacher's footsteps and assuming the teacher is speaking specifically about her is an efficient way of establishing her mood. That, and there's some subtlety in how her feelings in the woods (or really, now that I think about it, throughout the whole chapter) are never explicitly stated, but just indicated through actions and secondary emotions. I like that she never comes right out and says "I was anxious about the test" or "I miss my dad" or "I feel a little better now." Those elements work in the story's favor.
So yeah, I guess my biggest piece of advice is to trim back most of the descriptive words. When people read something like the fact that the pen was black, they'll either forget the detail almost immediately (which I did) or they might fixate on it and get distracted from what's important.[/QUOTE]
This is all great advice, and there's not much I can say that beyond it.
One thing I would add, though, is that you don't seem to be putting down the words that the narrator would use; the language does seem as though it's been filtered through your expectation of what a book [I]should[/I] read like, rather than what actually fits the story. I don't know that there's that many students who'd use the word "cognitive" outside of their studies/work.
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