tripping over the cobblestones

[calimac]

Fiction ought to be fun to read, but I find much of it to be rather difficult. I must be clear: I'm not denigrating the challenges and complexities of a really good novel, or demanding that the author spell out all the implications. Richard Adams's The Girl in a Swing is a better novel because the author hides what's really going on beneath a thick layer of implication. If it were plainly stated, the book would actually be rather stupid; as it is, I found it evocative.

That's not what I find difficult. I mean a writing style that, especially in openings, doesn't set the scene properly. The reader is uncertain who's there and where they are and what's physically going on, though it's not meant to be cloudy.

vgqn just wrote about a good example of this. I commented there, but I want to pass it on here, and revise my reworking of the text. This is the opening of a police procedural, with supernatural elements, called 9Tail Fox by Jon Courtenay Grimwood:

"Okay," said Bobby, "Show me how you shot him."

He handed his .44 Magnum to the child and watched thin arms tremble as Natalie Persikov tried to keep the gun steady.

"Like this," Natalie said.

Taking the Colt from the girl, Sergeant Bobby Zha placed it on a table, next to one of the many photographs in her grandfather's dining room. "Now show me."

The eleven-year-old struggled to lift the gun. When she finally did, it was using both hands and its muzzle wavered between the door and a high sash window...

What stumped vgqn was what was going on with the gun. "Didn't he just take the gun away from her and set it on the table?" particleguy figured it out: "lift the gun" means "lift the gun off the table." Well, fine. I'm sure it was clear in the author's mind, but at least one intelligent reader found it baffling.

It's not a big deal, but it is like walking down the street and tripping over a cobblestone; it halts you up, it makes the experience of reading less enjoyable. And if you keep tripping over cobblestones, you might choose not to walk down that street any more.

For me, this passage is full of cobblestones. Why is Natalie referred to as "the child" before her name is given in the same sentence? It'd be clearer that they're not two different people if it were the other way around. What's with this weirdly disembodied reference to "thin arms"? If they're her arms, why not say so?

Up to the end of the fourth paragraph, I was picturing them in a police station. The sudden reference to the dining room table was jarring. What's that doing in a police station? Oh, they're in a house. Reset my mental image; go back and re-read the previous paragraphs.

Not a big deal, as I said, but a lot of little things. Too many little things. It wouldn't take a huge expository lump to fix this. I'm no fiction writer, but maybe something like this:

Sergeant Bobby Zha looked down at Natalie Persikov as the eleven-year-old girl stood, looking lost and alone, by the table in her grandfather's dining room. "Okay," he said, "Show me how you shot him."

He handed his Colt .44 Magnum to the child and watched her thin arms tremble as she tried to keep the gun steady.

"Like this," she said.

He took the revolver back from the girl and placed it on the table next to one of the many photographs that decorated the room. "No," he said. "Show me how you did it."

She struggled to lift the gun from the table. When she finally did, she needed both hands to hold it. The muzzle wavered between the door and a high sash window...

Maybe a little overloaded in the first sentence, but do you see what I mean? Now it's clearer who they are, where they are, and what they're doing. The scene is set first. And that's even without giving the useful information of whom she shot. (Her grandfather? A burglar? Both of the characters presumably know what they're discussing, why is the reader being kept in the dark?)

Donald Westlake is my favorite crime novelist because he always lets you know exactly where you are, who's there, and enough of what's going on to keep you oriented, and he does it so entertainingly. In his hands, the dropping in of expository information is a high art.

Comments

[pnh.livejournal.com]

Very well put. I agree completely, with both the specific and the general points.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

It's obviously a very personal thing, but I like the published version precisely because it disorients slightly, and doesn't start off with a plodding introduction through the characters' names, and then their descriptions, and then what they're doing, and then why...

But I also don't think it's actually unclear what's happening, just slightly disorienting -- and not, for me, in a tripping-over-cobblestones way (which I do find with more basic things like typos: more than three over two pages and I'm out of the mood entirely). I had to read vgqn's post several times earlier today in order to work out what about it she found unclear and/or jarring, but I didn't find the opening to the novel unclear when I first read it.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

I can see how a sense of disorientation can be pleasant in a book, but for me a lot of this book was 'tripping over cobblestones' as calimac puts it. I enjoyed it well enough to finish, and there were certainly some nice bits (the mobilization of the homeless intellegence forces!), but I'm not sure I'll try another of his.

Btw, thanks for the recommendation (in Banana Wings) which is what prompted me to seek it out. I'm glad to have read it even if it wasn't entirely to my taste.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

Ah, you see, this is always part of my concern about recommending things, which was partly underlying my comment (and why I didn't initially comment direct to you): that stories that have really worked for me will not chime so well for other people!

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Surely my rewriting, incompetent as fiction though it undoubtably is, couldn't be characterized as "a plodding introduction through" this "and then" that "and then" something else.

And I don't want "plodding" anything, descriptive or non-descriptive. I mentioned Westlake: he has more description and introduction than anyone else, much of it completely superfluous, yet it's sprightly and delightful to read.

I'd have to say that jumping from a (presumed) police station to a living room in the middle of a paragraph, disembodied arms waving around, guns that jump into people's hands without having been picked up - this is more than disorienting.

[fishlifter.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was your rewrite specifically, which was very methodical; more that I just don't have any problem with the clarity, or level of detail, of the original.

I do enjoy Westlake, although it's pacy plots and comic timing that leap to memory rather than clarity -- which doesn't, obviously, mean that he is unclear.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Here via your link in sartorias' journal, and just wanting to stand up and be counted as a reader for whom the changed first sentence might well make me put the book down where the original opening would not (not that it is notably smooth either), precisely because it is spoon-feeding me the details of the setting rather than solidly inside a POV. If the narrative stops to tell me what it thinks I would think is important, rather than what that character thinks is important, it's a characterisation failure that breaks my suspension of disbelief, because it is foregrounding the nature of being told a story over being inside someone's head. (And if we're not inside someone's head, I want a consistent omni narrative voice which again tells us things about what it considers important.)

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Your comments here are why I raised the question of "But what is the voice?" in my reply back at sartorias's. You dislike my rewrite because it's not solidly inside a POV, but the original isn't solidly inside a POV either, and the two first sentences sartorias gave of the story she's reading show no indication of a POV at all.

Do you only read fiction written from a strong interior POV? If so, you're missing out on a lot of great literature.

[lenora-rose.livejournal.com]

Here via Sartorias:

As regards your rewrite: Extremely ploddy first sentence. However, the basic gist, and the rest of the rewrite, do strike me as markedly better, and the point is well taken. The original opening was, as a whole, more alienating than the one you attempted, even with the bad first line.

Also however, I disagree that this is necessarily true of the opening lines sartorias quoted. They establish enough for the next handful of sentences to build on. I would hate to see two good solid sentences sacrificed for fear of lack of clarity.

Most readers, even with a sentence as odd as the opening one she cited, or as plodding as the opening one you tried, will give until the end of the first paragraph - or, for extra short or extra long paragraphs, about four or five sentences - to get enough establishing detail to make sense of the scene and the voice. Trying to overload the first sentence to avoid the risk of losing the reader? might be trying too hard.

Even your own example demonstrates this; both the passage you cited and the passage you essayed to replace it are about six lines. you felt it appropriat to give about that much to make the example clear.

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

Fair enough, which is why, when commenting on sartorias's example, I kept pointing out that this was only two sentences. And it was not, in any case, as clear an example of the problem as this one was, which is why I linked to this one.

Agree that my sentence is ploddy. This is why I don't write fiction! Its only function is to convey the orienting material that would avoid tripping readers over cobblestones.