Critique #3: Rachel Dunne
Katharine Kerr June 16th, 2006
Submitted June 16, 2006:
Kiirai landed in an inelegant heap on the cold stone floor, and only managed to scramble up to his knees before the guards slammed the cell door shut. Kiirai heard the lock turn and, with a snarl of rage, threw himself against the unyielding wood. He heard laughter from beyond the door, and threw every curse he knew at his captors. The laughter faded away with their footsteps and Kiirai sunk down to the ground, back against the door and knees pulled up to his chest. He tried half-heartedly to twist his manacled wrists into some comfortable position, and gave up quickly out of annoyance. He snarled out a curse, slamming his head back against the door.“You’re going to hurt yourself, boy,†a voice murmured.
Kiirai was on his feet in an instant, eyes straining into the darkness of the cell. Dimly, he made out the form of a man in the far corner, one outstretched leg illuminated by the shaft of moonlight leaking in through the cell’s small barred window. “Who the hell’re you?†Kiirai demanded.
“My name is SÃrith.â€
Katharine Kerr says:
Rachel, your opening is a good example of how to do things right on the macro level while bilging out on the micro. This is a good strong opening marred by small errors. Editors do notice misplaced commas, an excess of adjectives, and other such problems.
For example, “unyielding wood.†Does wood ever yield to bare hands? Are heaps ever elegant?
You also have far too many sentences and long clauses linked by “andâ€. Try reading your passage aloud. Those “ands†lead to a sing-song delivery among other sins. What you need to do here is decide which action of the linked pair is the dominant, and which the subordinate. If they are both dominant, they each need a separate sentence. If one is subordinate, well, then, subordinate it.
Another small flaw: you describe Kirai cursing, but the one curse we see, “Who the hell are you?†sounds much too modern. It breaks the mood.
Why are these details important? It’s time for Kit’s mega-theory of prose! Writing fiction is an act of communication. The goal of all communication is to transmit information, that is, to send a signal. Noise and static interfere with transmission. In prose fiction, bad grammar, poor spelling, sloppy sentences, and the like all fall under the heading of noise and static.
Eliminate the noise. Let your story come across clearly to the reader.
That said, let’s go back to your opening. You’ve chosen an active moment to start upon. Your characters’ actions reveal their personalities. The situation is obviously dire. All of these are good strong ways to engage the reader’s attention right off the bat. If I were an editor of a fantasy magazine, I’d read on. If the rest of the story were this strong, I’d send it back to you for revisions and corrections, then consider it again.
Rachel,
I’m going to agree with Kit in general but differ on small points, but for different reasons.
The “inelegant heap,” the “unyeilding wood,” and so on aren’t so much redundant as they are clichee. (Yes, I’m using a double-e here so I don’t need to find how to do an accent.)
The “inelegant heap” would be a proper description if your hero were a ballerina or someone else concerned with elegance, as opposed to someone trying to escape a prison cell. The “unyeilding wood” is okay, however, because it is possible for wood to yeild (sorry, Kit) when/if the door is forced open. That said, it’s a clicheed way of saying “but the door held fast” or somesuch.
As for “and threw every curse he knew at his captors,” your hero either doesn’t know that many curses or he’s going to be there a good long while.
You should try not to have “twist” and “wrists” in the same sentence unless you’re trying to be funny. Internal rhyme can be problematic unless used for effect.
That all said, I agree with Kit that this is a dramatic introduction and I’m wanting to read the next section.
Hi Rachel,
I agree with what’s been said so far. You need to clean up a few things, but overall you’ve done a good job. But I want to add one additional warning. Be very careful with “the young person is thrown into a prison cell and meets a world-weary older prisoner” trope (otherwise known as “the count of monte cristo scenario.”) I can think of several stories that open this way. So make sure you have a new twist on the situation.
Keep writing!
I agree with Kit and Kevin, only adding that ‘dimly’ isn’t needed when in the sentence before you already told us the cell is dark.
Make every verb interesting, and you won’t need a trainload of modifiers. Like Kiirai was on his feet in an instant–because ‘was’ is a dull verb, you load on ‘in an instant’ which actually slows your pacing. Kiirai leaped to his feet would be quicker and a tad more vivid. (But if he leaps to his feet, do his manacles make him fall down again? Also how are we supposed to pronounce Kiirai? I hear those double i’s as the bleating of a sheep–is he a comedic figure?)
First of all, I want to thank you all for your advice! I’ve taken your kind words to heart, and am working on cleaning it up. I have a tendancy for long sentences, since I tend to talk in long sentences myself.
As for the pronunciation of Kiirai, I pronounce the double i like ‘ear’, but if there’s a different (”correct”) way for it to be pronounced, I’d love to know of it. I’m still playing around with the intricacies of sounds and spelling, and to my own eyes/ears “Kiirai” looked/sounded like I wanted it to.
And “the count of monte cristo scenario”…I’ll admit that I wasn’t aware it’s such an often-used scenario. I created a number of beginnings to bring these two characters together, and I liked this one best with my idea of the personalities of both and where I wanted the story to go… I’ll have to take that into consideration in the revision.
Thanks again for the help!
Pronunciation : this is always a drag for any author to figure out. Don’t forget that English speakers in various parts of the world pronounce simple words like ‘ear’ in very different ways.
There’s nothing wrong with long sentences IF each part of the sentence is properly subordinated and stands in a clear relation to the other parts of the sentence. Joining two shorter sentences with a conjunction, like and, or, but, is the problem. If you’re not sure what I mean by subordination here, you might want to get a copy of EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES or Strunk and White’s ELEMENTS OF STYLE and read it carefully.
Rachel,
Reading Kiirai, I would pronounce it “KEER eye”. Is that what you want?
Lynn Flewelling’s Luck in the Shadows is one recent example of opening with a young person in prison, meeting a (slightly) older character and teaming up. I’m certainly not saying don’t do it, just be aware and be careful.
One of the points we’ve made in this blog so far (I think!) is that there are fantasy/adventure tropes that many of us love and go back to.
Carol
Carol: Yes, that’s exactly the pronunciation I had in mind. And I do know about Luck in the Shadows (it’s one of my favorite books, as a matter of fact). Perhaps there was some subconscious manipulation…
I have Elements of Style and I’ve skimmed through it, but I haven’t read it from cover to cover. I’ll move it to the top of my list.
Rachel,
Have a large dish of salt handy when you read “The Elements of Style.” It was composed primarily with an eye towards students writing essays and mid-20th century business correspondence, not fiction writing. I’ll refer you to the recent review of it linked to by editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden over at the Making Light blog:
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2005/10/23/frankenstrunk?mode=PF
I think a superior bit of advice for fiction writers comes from Mark Twain here:
http://users.telerama.com/~joseph/cooper/cooper.html
 and here:
 http://www.ewritermagazine.com/News/mark_twain.htm
About “Kiirai”:
I can also imagine it being pronounced ‘Kee-ee-rye-ee’, ‘Kee-ee-ray’, ‘Kerr-rye’, or ‘Kerr-ray’. To be honest, the first one was the the one I thought it was at first until I read the rest of comments.
…er, uh…yeah.
Yeah, me too, which translates to my mind as a squeak, or a bleat.
I’m not sure I understand what you mean by “bleat.” I’m a fan of blending vowel sounds together, which is how I got my pronunciation. ‘Kerr-rye’ is also a reasonable pronunciation, I think, though I prefer ‘Keer-eye’. In the end, though, pronunciation is entirely up to the reader (which my mother keeps telling me during our frequent disagreements about pronunciation).
I don’t really imagine it to be a bleat, though I think that’s a fair description. I was thinking more along the lines of pronouncing each of its syllables seperately- that is, if it’s syllables were arranged ‘Ki-i-ra-i’.
Though, thinking of it as a bleat makes me hear a trill on both the seperate i’s.
Yeah. I’m always surprised when I find out about the original creator’s pronunciation of a name.
Kevin, ELEMENTS still has plenty of good stuff in it on punctuation, no matter what Patrick thinks. Also on good style points like no passive voice, strong verbs, etc. There is a lot to be said for trimming one’s style of the Unnecessary, and no one points this out better than S and W.
However that may be, I realize they are too rigorous for some, which is why I recc’d EATS, SHOOTS AND LEAVES — that misplaced comma is part of the title, btw. I can’t remember the author’s name, though I think it’s Lynne Somethingorother.
Also for Kevin — doors may yield, but wood does not.
Metonymy is tricky that way.
Kit
Rachel,
The thing that struck my when I first read this was the word repetition. You used the name ‘Kiirai’ to start both the first and second sentence, and it appears three more times in the fragment. That’s five times in thirteen lines.
Also, you used ‘threw’ in consecutives sentences, once literally (sort of) and once figuratively.
Otherwise, nice and dramatic.
Marianne
I’ve done some revising with this–can I post the revision here?