Euellula - yet another rewrite.

[ventanamist]

Many thanks to Judge and The End is Nigh for the last thorough crit. I have soldiered on, tinkered and tampered, slashed and embellished. And have come up with yet another rewrite. I am determined to get this piece as good as I can as it is the start of the story. As usual, I welcome any comments from anyone.

Thanks folks.

Oh, and I really do intend to start criticising other peoples work when I feel ready. it's just that I do find it difficult. Growing up with comics and pulp fiction, I tend to read fast and forgiving as long as there is a good yarn. It's tough to slow down.

THE ITINERANT


It is often said that a tale well-told should have a beginning, a middle and an end. Curiously, apart from the birth and death that punctuate our short sentence on Earth, life is not really like that. Life is a relentless leapfrog of events, a cavalcade of beginnings, middles and ends and, of course, all of the ends are also beginnings.


Such is also the nature of the universe you are about to enter. Its origin in a remote mysterious past and its distant future demise, can only be imagined. In between, things happen – a great many things. And I am expected to deliver a minute part of it, in a neat organised window of happenstance, so you can file it away in a box marked 'STORY'. Apparently, if I do this, you might, just, possibly, read it.


Very well, but you must realise that this tale exists as a tiny slice of a greater reality: one in which I have travelled often and far, through space and time; one with which I have become more intimate with than the familiar world in which I am writing and you are reading. You will appreciate my unease, for it seems I must select a point in space and then reluctantly sever the sacred stream of time in this universe, and present you with a 'beginning'.


But where - or rather - when do I cut?


There is a tiny corner of this other reality that resembles our world, but it is not time to go there yet. I think this will do. So we can witness the drama being enacted deep within Duke Howath's Chase. It seems as good a place as any, but you must be aware that the person you are about to meet already has a history that would fill many books. Undoubtedly this would be the end of one of those books. There is a danger that it could be 'The End' for her but, hopefully, it represents a beginning, for we do need a beginning. Don't we? We shall see.


Ah, but how shall we see?


One of the marvels of travelling in a story world is that you can perceive it through the senses of any creature, real or imagined. In this instance we look down through the keen eyes of flesh-hungry birds of the night, gliding above the many wooded acres of the Chase. We see the forest canopy almost as sharply as we would in daylight. The individual leaves are distinct, but their browns and greens are dulled by the subdued light and the soft rose glow of the obscenely-large, featureless pink moon. At intervals we glimpse the ground beneath the trees, where our eyes have evolved to detect the tiniest movements. We spy something which is not prey and not competition. It is large and strange. It tumbles inexorably through the undergrowth and every time it crashes through a moonbeam, its colours defy the night, and SHOUT.


This is not a thing of the forest.


How can I describe it?


I know. What if the strange magic that quickened the ill-fated Gingerbread Man, was used to animate a ridiculously large wedding cake; one that had been embellished by a demented, colour-blind cake-decorator. That is the thing that lives and moves and breathes beneath us. It too is pursued, not by the old woman and a menagerie of animals, but by a small army of determined and dangerous people; we can see the glow of their torches and hear their distant gleeful shouts. They seldom get a chance to hunt a woman.


This thing appears to have arms and, somewhere deep within its multi-coloured excrescences, there may be legs. To see more, we must go nearer. Let us swoop down through the branches. We are no longer birds; as is more usual with author and reader alike, we are mere insubstantial wraiths blown by the steady wind of the narrative. We join those who pursue this... This girl. You see now; this is not a creation of flour and sugar; it is made from silk and cotton and it envelops a human body. She looks young, seventeen years old, eighteen maybe, nineteen at the most, and she is fleeing for her life. There is fear in her face, but not as much as you might expect; determination and anger distort the muscles around her eyes and mouth.


The dress looks even more outrageous up close: part Southern belle, part gypsy queen, part Marie Antoinette. Impractical clothing for careering through acres of mature oak, chestnut and beech. Her flight is only possible because it is a well managed Chase, but it is far from easy. Ground that allows swifter and safer hunting for mounted riders still provides many obstacles for an encumbered, stumbling human figure.


Think of Cinderella running from the ball, but with no pumpkin coach waiting, only the moonlit forest and the hope of escape; or of Beauty fleeing the handsome prince who has irretreivably reverted to the Beast. Euellula would have been elated if her elaborate gown had turned to rags at midnight, but it hadn't. It billows and bounces around her, it catches on thorns, it trips her up, and she cannot fill her corseted lungs with much-needed air. With one hand she must hold up layers of petticoats and with the other grasp the carved wooden case containing her maps and keys. She thanks the Weave that she has managed to recover it. It has slowed her down but that is a small sacrifice.


As we join her she is cursing the world and herself.


'Damn this stupid backwater thread, damn my insane wanderlust. If I get out of this, I will settle, I will find a good person, I will keep house, I will plant trees, I will bake cakes. I swear by the Weave. Damn these skirts!'


She would have torn the gaudy costume off but the dressers have strapped and laced and stitched her into it, a fancy gift to be slowly unwrapped by the customer. But she will not be bought and sold. She is Euellula. She is legendary. Songs have been written about her. She will not become the property of that ancient lizard of a man, no matter how much he paid.


'Damn! Damn! Damn!'


Why didn't she see through the Duke? He claimed he detested slavery, and she had thought, oh what a splendid creature in such a sordid world, so enlightened. What he really believed was that you should look after your own possessions, treat them well and not steal or abuse those of other men.


How could she, Euellula, Euellula who dances the threads, 'Damn. Damn.' Euellula who can stroll into new worlds as others walk in and out of rooms, how could she be taken in by that man? With all her years, all her experience, she still manages to fall for complete, mealy-mouthed, false-faced, double-crossing, execrable, irredeemable, blackguards. 'Damn!'


They have dogs now, one pack on the valley road and one rapidly making its way up the fire-break; their muffled baying spurs her to new exertions. Two locked doors have not yielded to her skills. She is sure the next will open. It has to. As a last resort she could initiate a rent or a vortex but, even if she got through alive, she could end up anywhere. Still, the prospect was far preferable to being captured. Here, women who rebel are simply faulty goods to be repaired or dismantled.

The horns echo off the rocks ahead. They have her scent. No matter. Out of the trees, up the mountainside; they can see her easily now, golds and pinks and blues, sharp against the limestone scarp, and the noise, those stupid bells! She still hasn't managed to pull them off.


There it is. Heart hammering to escape the tight bodice, throat burning, legs aquiver, tripping over the torn petticoats. It smells right, it looks right. Yes, it unlocks. A membrane, a tough one. Push.


Cold. Still cold after the ice has left her bones. Hard ground, more bruises. Entombed on three sides by brick walls. The night has followed her but only a few sad stars brave the darkness far above. There is a cold light ahead and...


Who is this?


What a noble-looking soul, what lovely eyes.


What is he doing in such a vile place?


That smell!


New world. Come on Euellula, you know the procedure: observe, deduce, adapt.

 

[The Judge]

Hello there.

I have to confess that after reading this through, I went back to the version in September to check what changes you had made. Doing that reinforced my gut feeling, which is that I preferred the earlier one. Sorry.

For my taste the teasing introduction went on too long. I think you had it right the first time: the narrator's voice, a hint of the bigger picture, then plunging us into the action. You tell us there is a pursuit in the paragraph beginning 'I know' , but only after that whole digresson about being birds, and then you immediately bring us out of the picture again to fly down to the lower canopy, and then we get three paras of description before at last we get to 'As we join her'.

Why did you decide to add the extra? Did someone comment that your intro needed to be longer? I've just checked. Up to and including 'a small sacrifice' this version is 925 words; the other was 442. I'm not sure the extra two pages are justified - or helping the story. Personally, I'd advise you to omit all the extra stuff. Not just the new paragraphs but things like the opening and closing bits of the para 'There is a tiny...'. I know, however, that others here take a different view from me as to slow beginnings, so do wait for other feedback.

I won't do a big nit-pick as I gave the earlier version a good going over, but a few things caught my eye:

It is often said that a tale well-told - I don't object in principle to the passive voice, but for me your other opening was much more direct and forceful, explicitly bringing in the narrator immediately as it did.

the birth and death that punctuate our short sentence on Earth - 'punctuate' when not being used in a grammatical sense means to interrupt or insert or occur at intervals, so neither birth nor death qualifies for the verb, not for an individual's life on Earth anyway. And even if you are using it by way of metaphor in conjunction with sentence (and by the by, did you intend the separate idea of a prison term?) it's still half meaningless - death might be a full stop, but what is birth in that context?

one with which I have become more intimate with than the familiar world - you've got yourself in a pickle with two 'with's. Correct English dictates the one before 'which'; demotic uses the one before 'than'. Whichever you choose, you can only have one. And to me your earlier 'mundane world' is preferable to 'familiar'.

But where - or rather - when do I cut?[FONT=&quot] - the dash is in the wrong place. You can see this if you delete the bit between the two dashes: 'But where... when...' doesn't make sense. It should be 'But where - or rather when - do I cut?' ie pushing the 'when' into the subclause, which gives you 'But where... do I...' which now reads correctly.

Sorry if this comes over as a bit negative. It may be someone coming fresh to it, or those who enjoy a slow build-up, might have very different feelings. Good luck with it anyway.

[/FONT]

 

[Jarshen]

Coming at this first time I agree with The Judge, it is too long.

You have a narrator with all sorts of opinions and thoughts and while I just about accepted that for the first three paragraphs, though I wanted to shout at you, I gave up on the line:

But where - or rather - when do I cut?

Because with everything you have said before I assume you know how to tell a story, beginning middle end etc and then you say you don't.

I think what happens here is the narrator becomes more dominant/interesting than the story. It means we, like the narrator begin to observe what happens so we are not involved. Euellula is not a character at this point in her own right, but a vehicle of the narrator's intentions. It just seems that you are giving your main protagonist a lot of barriers to gain our attention.

Sorry, not badly written at all, but I am struggling to understand and be engaged with the story.

 

[ventanamist]

I suppose there's a lesson here. That is: don't delete your first draft. Sometimes it contains an immediacy and vitality that further re-workings lose. Sorry to keep inflicting this piece on you, but I'm determined to get it right, and learning lots in the process.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Simply as personal feedback, the lack of sharpness, clarity, and focus in the introduction simply begged me to skip as much of it as possible.

There are times when not getting to the point in writing can be very effective, but the intro didn't seem sculpted to entice.

It reads far more as a spoken piece - ie, in a play - rather than as literary fiction, to myself. In which case, if you do wish to keep it, I think it's needs to be stronger, otherwise it's in danger of trying to look clever, at the expense of its intended medium.

Simply personal feedback.

 

[poisonoustea]

I read both introductions. I'm not much of a critique but I want to be helpful as far as I can, so...

I like the choice of words and the narrator's voice. Actually this version could be better than the previous if - as other readers pointed out earlier - it weren't a little dispersive.

That's because you tend to detach description from narration: many of your descriptive passages tend to be a little abstract, thus lacking motion.

Since your narrator is able to move with great freedom you should always keep in mind to make use of that freedom. Murakami Haruki uses a similar type of narrator in a very effective way, using a "cinematic" approach that would benefit greatly to your writing.

You probably had a glimpse of that when you wrote the "through-the-eyes" passage, which was very effective. But don't forget about keeping up the pace of action, try to always introduce an even amount of movement along with still imagery (thoughts).

However, I'm far from being an expert on writing. Don't take me too seriously.

 

[ventanamist]

I'm still chewing this one over. It's crucial I get this sorted out as it affects the way I tell the whole story. Funnily enough someone I know, recently wrote a fantasy novel which they published themselves, and I found a similar thing with their story. Not only could it have lost a third of the text and still told the same story but the unnecessary stuff, even though it was very well written, actually got in the way of the narrative. It either slowed it down or blocked it completely. Even though it was relevant to the story, it actually hindered its telling.

I must admit, as a reader, I often jump over this stuff completely and just read on. Trouble is there is often some crucial plot twist embedded somewhere in it.

I guess a good editor just ruthlessly hacks all this stuff out.

Thanks for your help

 

[TheEndIsNigh]

Sorry Ventanamist I with Judge on this.

Gingerbread men and wedding cakes are all very well in a cookery books but I fancy they're not a recipe for success here.

OK, OK, I'm sorry I just couldn't resist.

Seriously though, as Brian said, the temptation to skip over most of it is difficult to avoid. I see what you're trying to do, but is it necessary.

Let the story out. I like a bit of action to grab my interest before the politics, landscape, philosophy and personal relationships. I can usually pick up on the fancy stuff if it's trickled out in dribs and drabs.

 

[ventanamist]

Just another thought: when you create a character you can usually let them take on a life of their own as they are limited by the confines of the story. But when you create a character who is the narrator, you have to keep them well under your thumb. They can easily take over.
I mustn't blame everything on him/her though. I was sooo pleased with the gingerbread man bit. I will now take my scalpel and do the necessary reduction and reconstruction.