'Bringer Of' take two. A better place to start?

[Cory Swanson]

Ok, this gives a lot more info. Would it be a good place to start the book? Does it make you want to keep reading?:


For many hundreds of hours I have been given access to this vast library. One that reaches back twenty millennia. My job is context. My job is condensation. My job is summary.

The boy that they have lent me to complete the menial tasks busies himself by making himself of as little use as possible. He is lazy and slow and I must hold his hand through simple tasks.

"What is that?" He asks.

"This is a stick of information."

"How does it work?"

"For may years, we did not know. At a certain point, people thought that physical books had no use. Knowledge was instead stored in vast banks of these. When new technology was adopted, the old sticks had to be transferred to the new. Each time, some information was destroyed or deemed unworthy. In this way, these things died forever.

"Thousands of years later, we began to dig them up. Piece them back together. Begin to figure out what people used to know. Before this, to kill information, libraries had to burn. This time, man trusted his history to silicone rather than paper. Information died on its own. Perhaps the lesson is once again to always trust plants above that which does not grow."

The boy fetches me my meal and I begin to interface with the sticks of memory using a twenty thousand year old tablet that is full of old religious texts. I balance a bowl of warm bean soup on my paunch and read.

We are religious pilgrims. I read on this tablet about Moses. We are not very different, wandering as we are. Yet, unlike Moses, we should know where we are headed. At least our rock does. We sail the solar winds on a craft run by a surly and mocking crew that does not care for our faith. They deride and humiliate us on our long voyage to the point where we stick to our quarters and hope for survival.

Many of us have fallen ill. Travel between planets has proven quite difficult for some of our people. This mode of transport is disorienting for both the stomach and the soul. There is no day or night on the ship. If the aft panels are to catch the winds at a slice and glide along with them, we see only daylight. This may seem optimal to some, but a land without dark brings difficulty sleeping, and throws the body's circadian systems into upheaval. If, instead, the solar fore panels face front to pull us forth like a spinnaker, then the position of the ship provides us with no day. At first this may come as a relief, as we may have been days without a proper nighttime. After a week of nights, though, we lose vitamin D and other essential daytime nutrients. This is when the lunacy and depression kick in. Perhaps this is when we miss home the most.

When we boarded this ship wishing to grow our own food, the crew nearly laughed us off of the docks. They pointed out that the shade of the sail would deprive the plants of the necessary sunlight for weeks at a time. We steeled ourselves against the mockery and built a movable aft deck that could swing on an arm to any side of the ship and move the plant life out of the shade of the sail. Had we not been in such a rush to depart in the end, we would have built another such deck to live on. Thus, like the crew, we have to endure the perpetual darkness that the sail creates. It is not easy.

God did not create us to do easy things. For the freedom of thought we deserve, we must endure our quagmire.

 

[The Judge]

Um... this is still a lot of info-dumping, I'm afraid. More things are happening, and the concept of pilgrims is one in which I'd be interested, so I might stick with it a bit longer, but you're still too concerned to give information rather than show it.

Basically, you need him to be doing something or solving something, without dumping the info on us in great paragraphs. Could he be translating the text? Could the boy be having a crisis of faith? Could he be going to fetch some of the crops he's grown and be heckled/abused by one of the crew members? Any of those things would give us some clues as to what he is doing, where he is etc without just dumping the detail on us.


Stylistically, I really don't like present tense for a novel, though I know it's very popular, and for me the problem is exacerbated when it's first person present. If this is YA, then no doubt it's the way to go, but if not I'd question why you're using it. (But this could well be my personal hang up as most other people have no problem with it!)

NB "What is that?" He asks. This is wrongly punctuated -- despite the question mark, it has to be he asks with a lower case "h" since it's a dialogue tag. If it were an action afterwards eg "What is that?" He peered closely at the stick. it would be right with the capital "H".



EDIT: by the way, is Lucifer involved? It's just the title you've chosen is coincidentally one I used in a short story a few years back! The Three Hundred Word Challenge Roll of Honour
(And you'll see that hypocrite that I am, I used first person present tense in that story!)

 

[Brian G Turner]

This is better - this is story. I've made a few editorial comments below:


For many hundreds of hours I have been given access to this vast library. While it's good to raise questions, it's also good to be clear to ensure the reader asks the right questions. In this opening, it's not clear is your character is a librarian (one word description!) or a casual worker, or an assistant, or simply a customer with a special access discount One that reaches back twenty millennia. My job is context. My job is condensation. My job is summary. Someone who works in a library, but isn't a librarian? I'd love you to be more clear here.

Also, if you want to raise a question quickly for the reader, then present one with a challenge -and stakes, where possible - for your character. This is clearly a big library, and the character's job surely requires a lot of work - perhaps more than a lifetime?


The boy that they have lent me to complete the menial tasks busies himself by making himself of as little use as possible. He is lazy and slow and I must hold his hand through simple tasks. Be careful that your character being condescending can lose them reader sympathy.

"What is that?" He asks.

"This is a stick of information."

"How does it work?"

Wrong question. We don't need 2 paragraphs explaining what a USB stick is at the start of the story. Ask one or more pertinent - or even irrelevant questions. Doing so can even allow you to slip in some background detail without explaining anything more, set up plot elements for future use, or even foreshadow.

"For may years, we did not know. At a certain point, people thought that physical books had no use. Knowledge was instead stored in vast banks of these. When new technology was adopted, the old sticks had to be transferred to the new. Each time, some information was destroyed or deemed unworthy. In this way, these things died forever.

"Thousands of years later, we began to dig them up. Piece them back together. Begin to figure out what people used to know. Before this, to kill information, libraries had to burn. This time, man trusted his history to silicone rather than paper. Information died on its own. Perhaps the lesson is once again to always trust plants above that which does not grow."

Delete above two paragraphs - or find some more relevant way to bring plants into this. Perhaps the boy helper is doing something wrong with moving the plants? Whatever you do, provide as little explanation as possible.

The boy fetches me my meal and I begin to interface with the sticks of memory using a twenty thousand year old tablet that is full of old religious texts.

I balance a bowl of warm bean soup on my paunch and read. Really? Have you tried this?

We are religious pilgrims. I read on this tablet about Moses. We are not very different, wandering as we are. Yet, unlike Moses, we should know where we are headed. At least our rock does. We sail the solar winds on a craft run by a surly and mocking crew that does not care for our faith. They deride and humiliate us on our long voyage to the point where we stick to our quarters and hope for survival.

Many of us have fallen ill. Travel between planets has proven quite difficult for some of our people. This mode of transport is disorienting for both the stomach and the soul. There is no day or night on the ship. This is good - I did like this - it's personal, it speaks of effort and weariness. BUT what immediately follows I personally find stretches a well-made point too laboriously. If the aft panels are to catch the winds at a slice and glide along with them, we see only daylight. This may seem optimal to some, but a land without dark brings difficulty sleeping, and throws the body's circadian systems into upheaval. If, instead, the solar fore panels face front to pull us forth like a spinnaker, then the position of the ship provides us with no day. At first this may come as a relief, as we may have been days without a proper nighttime. After a week of nights, though, we lose vitamin D and other essential daytime nutrients. This is when the lunacy and depression kick in. Perhaps this is when we miss home the most.

When we boarded this ship wishing to grow our own food, the crew nearly laughed us off of the docks. They pointed out that the shade of the sail would deprive the plants of the necessary sunlight for weeks at a time. We steeled ourselves against the mockery and built a movable aft deck that could swing on an arm to any side of the ship and move the plant life out of the shade of the sail. Had we not been in such a rush to depart in the end, we would have built another such deck to live on. Thus, like the crew, we have to endure the perpetual darkness that the sail creates. It is not easy.

^ Okay, I do appreciate the attention to detail in the above. But we're still on the first place and you're killing immediacy. My personal suggestion is to simply bring us into the story, and keep everything as immediate as possible. Then bring in the issue of plants, solar sails, and orientation of a platform to somewhere else once the reader has relaxed in - anywhere but on the first page!

God did not create us to do easy things. For the freedom of thought we deserve, we must endure our quagmire. I do like the tone of weariness and resignation from this character, and do like this overall line. However, the caveat is that the attitude might drag through a novel, so ensure we feel his highs and lows appropriately through the novel, rather than a constant sense of weariness!


Overall, I think you do have a beginning here. Some tweaking and editing and you should be able to change the focus onto those details that are most important, and push anything else aside until such time as you think the reader has relaxed enough into the narrative to start dripping them in.

I also get a clear image of a tired old greybeard in my head - no need to describe him.

 

[Cory Swanson]

This is a tremendous help, and I am busily rewriting my intro.

Is info dump always a sin? Should I just avoid it in the intro or should I avoid it throughout? Once I have the reader hooked in, is it ok to explain some stuff?

 

[Brian G Turner]

Is info dump always a sin? Should I just avoid it in the intro or should I avoid it throughout? Once I have the reader hooked in, is it ok to explain some stuff?

The point is that infodumps can disengage readers, so it's best to avoid doing any too early in the story, and try instead to simply keep the reader emotionally engaged. Remember, you have the entire story to drip in any information you need.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

This is a tremendous help, and I am busily rewriting my intro.

Is info dump always a sin? Should I just avoid it in the intro or should I avoid it throughout? Once I have the reader hooked in, is it ok to explain some stuff?

When it's not a sin it gets called exposition

I like:
The boy that they have lent me to complete the menial tasks busies himself by making himself of as little use as possible. He is lazy and slow and I must hold his hand through simple tasks. The boy fetches me my meal and I begin to interface with the sticks of memory using a twenty thousand year old tablet that is full of old religious texts. I balance a bowl of warm bean soup on my paunch and read.

That to me is a great beginning - it needs some tweaking (as both begin with The boy and it's better to vary sentence beginnings) but we now know he's working with texts and sticks of memory and his relationship with the boy is established.

Maybe then go on to have them work together - The boy could perhaps get something wrong and the explanations will then feel more natural.

 

[ThomasG]

Hi, I'm a newbie here, and would like to add some comments. I agree with what has been said so far. I do like the idea of pilgrims in space facing challenges, and the premise that paper is better than electronic data could be intriguing - but I wasn't convinced. I'd prefer to be lead to that conviction rather than be told it off the bat. There is indeed too much information and explanation for what is the beginning of a story, so I did not get enough sense of where the story is going to take me. Maybe some wider scene setting would help. Some of the information/explanation could be diluted into dialogue at later stages, for example.

The main character actually felt bored to me - from the first paragraph - yet I don't think that was your aim. In fact the last paragraph (inverting the two sentences as I personally wouldn't start with the word God) might have been a better start.

Finally, on two technicalities: a) could we travel between planets on solar winds alone? b) would it be that easy to get a 20,000 year old tablet and understand what's on it? Maybe it needed deciphering.

 

[tinkerdan]

Okay this is good.
But I can't help getting the feel that you are trying to steer the reader in some direction by the first five sentences; though I'm not certain where you mean to guide them. They are short sentences that create for me a certain staccato nature.

For many hundreds of hours I have been given access to this vast library. One that reaches back twenty millennia. My job is context. My job is condensation. My job is summary.

The use of my job three times is obviously for emphasis, but what is it emphasizing when to me it makes it sound like he's bored and its easy to add mentally.
My Job is context. My job is condensation. My job is summary. My job is boring.

You could almost skip the first paragraph and start with the boy. This way you could introduce the character a bit more before letting him tell us too much about his boredom. Then if you must you could cap the whole thing off at the end with the emphasis.

Again this is just me and how these things read to me.

 

[hopewrites]

Ok, this gives a lot more info. Would it be a good place to start the book? Does it make you want to keep reading?

Yes!

For many hundreds of hours I have been given access to this vast library. One that reaches back twenty millennia. My job is context. My job is condensation. My job is summary.

The boy that they have lent me to complete the menial tasks busies himself by making himself of as little use as possible. He is lazy and slow and I must hold his hand through simple tasks.

Voicy. A little awkward, but not halting. I'd love to see it tightened up. Put it exactly as this guy would say it. Show us his expression through his thoughts.

"What is that?" He asks.

"This is a stick of information."

"How does it work?"

"For may years, we did not know. At a certain point, people thought that physical books had no use. Knowledge was instead stored in vast banks of these. When new technology was adopted, the old sticks had to be transferred to the new. Each time, some information was destroyed or deemed unworthy. In this way, these things died forever.

"Thousands of years later, we began to dig them up. Piece them back together. Begin to figure out what people used to know. Before this, to kill information, libraries had to burn. This time, man trusted his history to silicone rather than paper. Information died on its own. Perhaps the lesson is once again to always trust plants above that which does not grow."

The boy fetches me my meal and I begin to interface with the sticks of memory using a twenty thousand year old tablet that is full of old religious texts. I balance a bowl of warm bean soup on my paunch and read.

You're pulling back out here.
Keep it tightened in. Rather than just saying the kid drops off the soup and this guy reads, rather than telling us the others on the ship ridicule their religion, have him dive in only to be interrupted by the shouts of some crew member as the kid stumbles back into quarters with his soup. Or the smell of burnt soup which reveals the kids snuck off again to go tag after someone he idolizes...

Keep me involved in the world. Tell me about it, sure. But keep me involved.

 

[abrucestewart]

At a certain point, people thought that physical books had no use. Knowledge was instead stored in vast banks of these. When new technology was adopted, the old sticks had to be transferred to the new. Each time, some information was destroyed or deemed unworthy. In this way, these things died forever.

I won't add to the comments above which seem useful to me, I just wanted to say that any story built around the idea of information and knowledge storage issues is dealing with a definite problem.
I've lived it, trying to find answers to how information (let alone knowledge) can be transferred down the decades - and the answer in one case was to print it all out on aluminium sheets and store them carefully...

ABS