Opening to Corn Dolly - enough info? (599 words)

[sule]

Hi, I'm new to these forums and also new to critiquing. I just had a few thoughts reading this new version and wanted to share them. Hopefully you find them helpful. I won't get into word choice or anything grammatical because frankly I feel like that worked for the most part and there are others on this forum that are far more capable of speaking to those topics than I am.

I really thought you gave your main character a distinct voice and that your descriptions did well enough to pull the reader into the story and engage more than just one of the reader's senses. There was a sense of isolation running through the whole piece that I felt underlies the narrative nicely.

As a reader, I initially bought in to the idea that she can't just leave the village and her duty behind but as the excerpt grew there were some parts of it (especially including that last section where she thinks about running away) where I instead began to think, "Why doesn't she leave? What is actually holding her here?" There are mentions in the passage of a sense of duty, but I felt like the reader never gets a chance to connect to it.

There are a few more things that I took note of in this passage which I didn't fully grasp but could have been intentional on your part:
The 'thoughts' in italics sometimes feel like they're coming from another character. If that was your intent, then I have no issue.
I think you established well some of the main character's wants, but the scene sort of fizzles at the end (although I would not be surprised if the scene continued after the end of this passage) because she doesn't come to any sort of conclusion or resolution about any of those wants or goals. There's a hint of a desire to run off, but it feels like it is quickly dismissed.
Beyond the earliness of the planting, there doesn't appear to be anything different about this particular year of the harvest that would drive the character to action.

Hopefully you find something helpful in all this. If not, feel free to ask for clarification or just ignore it completely.

 

[tinkerdan]

I'm partial to the first version.
The second version; I can't put my finger on it, however, something about it has me reading in 'stop-py' jerky fashion.
If I figure it out I'll let you know.

 

[Azoraa]

niiiiicceeeee! I like!
I still don't understand what's going on, but I understand the scene. This feels like I can follow the protagonist, I understand the setting - present day, countryside, and that some even is at the horizon, which she dreads. The rest is a bit unclear, but that doesn't matter, because it feels like we'll get to that later.

Only one really minor thing that caught my attention (sorry if that came up, didn't read the replies yet):

Up ahead the moon had lowered, and now sat atop Goldenpuck Hill like a cold beacon beckoning her, reminding her of her impending, hateful duty

the "hateful" sounds wrong. Again, I'm not a native speaker etc pp, but wouldn't that mean that the duty itself is hateful, meaning it hates her? I thought that only a person can be hateful, aka not meaning someone well, despising someone. I think you wanted to say that she hates her duty. So, errr, "hated"? Well, probably you can think of something better.

 

[HareBrain]

the "hateful" sounds wrong. Again, I'm not a native speaker etc pp, but wouldn't that mean that the duty itself is hateful, meaning it hates her?

Logically it should mean that, but eh, that's English for you. "Hopeful" is sometimes similar, but not always (in "a hopeful sign" it's not the sign that feels the hope, but "the sign made her hopeful" applies to the person). I'm sure there are others too, more like hateful, but I can't put my mental finger on them.

I thought that only a person can be hateful, aka not meaning someone well, despising someone.

That would more likely be "hate-filled".

 

[The Judge]

Sorry not to come back to you sooner, but I'm conflicted by this version and I've been gnawing it over in my mind. On balance, though, I'm with tinkerdan -- I prefer the setting and writing of the original.

This version is definitely easier to follow, so we've got a better idea what she's doing even if not why. She's a lot stronger here -- the drooping self-pity has gone, and she's much more active, with active verbs around her. By grounding her in ordinary life, she seems more "normal" now, and as a result it's easier to connect with her and empathise. All of that is good. But...

For me there's something lacking in this version. The rather eerie atmosphere of the original has gone, and by comparison this reads as matter-of-fact, especially as there's much less about the wheat and the festival. You've given us more glimpses of the natural world, but... I dunno, I was going to say the writing was a bit pedestrian compared to your usual lyricism, but the words that actually popped into my mind were crabbed and confined. I can't point to anything in particular, I can't say that anything is wrong, or even very different, but I'm just getting this overall impression of a loss of freedom, a lack of flow both in and underneath the writing. The first version felt very you -- all heart and mystery, but just a little bit wayward, and not always easy to follow. This seems more controlled, but somehow not so alive.

Does that even make any kind of sense??!

And I really, really don't like the italicised thoughts here. They're terribly intrusive, and I agree that they don't read as someone thinking, but as someone else having a conversation with her with that use of "you". If, indeed, this is someone else mind-talking, or she's got some kind of split personality so there are two different halves of her, then it would work but I think you need to tell us that or at least give very broad hints.

I don't know if you could eerie-fy this version, but for me the better way would be to try and bring this one's strengths into the original somehow. Either way, good luck with it!

(By the way, I was thinking about Drywell as a name, and it occurs to me it would undoubtedly be pronounced Drool, which rather pleases me!)

 

[Brian G Turner]

The original was good with minor quibbles, but there are far more problems with the revised version - specifically, rather than telling the story you've fallen into the trap of trying to be writerly. So instead of simply stating something happened, you instead use a sentence loaded with unnecessary verbs, adjectives, and irrelevant descriptions. This isn't due to your voice - this is due to you rushing, with the resulting that you're drowning out your own voice with unnecessary words IMO.

Don't rush things, take it easy.

 

[The Big Peat]

What The Judge said.

Well. Other than I don't care about the italicised thoughts.

 

[Jesse Harris]

Rosemary woke in midnight darkness praying the distant noise in her mind was a hangover from a bad dream. Restless from too much cider and no company in her bed she pulled the scratchy homespun blanket from wobbly, clammy legs, and sat up. The ancient wire frame squeaked in rhythm with her heavy breathing. Outside, a small animal clattered through the undergrowth.
Though the half moon shone through her cottage’s buckled windows, the single bedroom remained hidden in darkness. Her alarm clock flashed 88:88.

This is how I parsed the first paragraph.

• Rosemary: Female
• Hangover + Cider: Old enough to drink, could be 21+ or could be a teenage drinking illegally
• no company in her bed: implies she has had sex before, and probably with multiple partners, lack of a specific name means she is single
• homespun blanket, ancient wire frame. cottage: these say poor
• small animal: could be rural, combined with cottage, almost certainly rural, might be a raccoon or alley cat otherwise in the city
• alarm says present day-ish, its digital so ~1980s+?? or later
• midnight, half moon, darkness, dream: something supernatural, or at least out of the ordinary is going to happen soon.

I see shortly thereafter the mention of a phone(mobile) and a cul-de-sac, this helps me start to paint some of background in my mind.

I think the second version lost some of the voice of the first one but not in a bad, like a different voice shining through. I like how some of details were added to answer questions about timing and setting. I struggled in the first version with my hardest part being "horn of a speeding lorry on the A4". I am half a world away from the A4 and I had to run my mental dictionary to remember what a lorry was using the horn and speeding as context clues, once I deduced a lorry would need a roadway of some kind, the A4 being the name of a highway made more sense.

 

[DannMcGrew]

Well, I'm only a reader who wandered into this discussion, but I'll say this: I read the first version with a small yawn and was only interested in seeing the comments. I read the second version and thought it was written by a different author, and this time I wanted more.

 

[The Judge]

Interesting that it seems to be newer members prefer the second version while those preferring the first are old timers. Because we're more used to Phyrebrat's stories and style, perhaps? So we're more able to digest/forgive any lack of ease of reading and/or the second version jars on us because it's less "him"?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Should be working, but hey-ho.

Restless from too much cider and not enough company, Rosemary stole This drew me up as I wondered had she actually stolen something from the cottage, or left. Obviously the context is clear almost immediately, but I still had to hesitate and think which isn't ideal for the first sentence, I think from the cottage and made her way barefoot to the top of Goldenpuck Hill.

Soon come, soon done, she thought looking over the Vale of Pewsey in the chill of an early spring midnight. The night mists might hide the tiny spears of green pressing skywards from the chalky soil beneath them I think you could leave out beneath them - soil is generally beneath. This is an early draft, though, and you'll pick up the bits and pieces that can be cut as you go on, I'm sure, but the white noise inside her head told her all she needed to know; in a few weeks This bit intrigued me, why in a few weeks rather than now. For me, this is your hook. she’d be unable to sleep, unable to leave, and unable to silence the noise in her mind no matter how much cider she guzzled.
The crop had been planted earlier than normal this year, and she supposed she should take a measure of comfort from that;
At least harvest will come sooner.I agree with others about the italics. Here, you're already very close to her thoughts, and I don't think you actually go into direct thoughts anymore than the previous sentence did, so this jars with me.

Till then she had around two months of hearing the screaming wails of the wheat in the East Field, two months of finding new ways round Camberic that would avoid passing any crop fields. Pumphrey Woods, the cruciform sprawl of ancient forest would be her scenery for those months and she might as well live in the Amazon forests. Being able to hear the wheat saplings so early in the year installed in her a simultaneous rage at the Goodfellow’s for their greed, but also an immobilising terror. It seemed they planted their crops around Camberic earlier and earlier each year.This puts it as folk horror for me. I agree with Toby, that there is a danger of cliche in that genre, that I'm sure you will be avoiding, but maybe a twist here that shows us you aren't going down that line would ensure people don't set it back, thinking it will. I also agree with The Judge. This landscape could be anywhere. You tell us above its midnight, but there's little here to show it. In fact, for some of it, it feels like it can't be midnight since the green can be seen, and the chalky soil. This is quite nitpicky but I think if you really want to set the tone of a naturaistic setting, I need to feel more held within the place, if that makes sense. Here, I don't know if it's a still, cold night of if there is a breeze, or if the moon is full, and I find myself held distant because of that. I hope that makes sense. (I'm also not saying I need reams of description of the land, just the little visceral touches that would make it come alive and sing).

Miles away, the horn of a speeding lorry on the A4 rang through the night like a clarion loud enough to wake the dead lying behind their stones in West Kennet Longbarrow, and she slumped down on the wet grass praying for sleep. Here, we start to get a little more of what I wanted above but I still want to know this sooner. She's barefoot,the grass should have been noticed already. Her white cotton slip, already damp from the air that hung in the roads cut between the slopes of wheat and barley fields, clung to her knees and at the sight of it a single tear swelled and fell to the grass. This threw me. When she slumped, I imagined her lying, but I think she's actually kneeling?

Tubby Cribbard and the rest of the soul-cakers would no doubt be sh****ng themselves with excitement if they knew she’d already heard the wheat, I liked this, much more voicey. I liked her spunk here. and at this thought she wept freely.But here, as TJ says, it moves to self pity. This is actually the only part where it felt like that - the rest of it is tinged with anger, and duty - and could easily be cut? She doubted they’d be so happy if they knew what she had to endure just for the sake of…actually she didn’t know why. Was she ensuring a good harvest or ensuring the protection of the village from the Scarlet Battalion? It wasn’t clear to her anymore - probably wasn’t clear to anyone anymore; the festival now little more than habit and routine. Nice building on the earlier hook, I'm intrigued.

Not for Tubby Cribbard.

No, the sage with her dried apple-skin hands, the ones that fussed over her when they went a-souling at harvest, was likely fully aware of what she was doing. A fall in crop yields - Camberic’s only genuine income - would spell disaster. This stupid festival, this root-sucking superstition was to Camberic what the Pyramids were to Egypt.Very Louis MacNeice. I like.

Minus the spectacle.

Without it the village would miss the tourists who flocked here that time of year. Hell, even the hoaxers who tagged the crop fields with geometric pictograms had lately moved further afield; to The Netherlands, France, even Eastern Europe - where would that leave the village?

Where would that leave you?

Free, that’s where. Free to leave, free to move to the city - Salisbury or Loewe, perhaps.

Tomorrow she would go to the sage and tell her she was leaving. Tubby Cribbard could find another Maiden of Tears.
No more Straw Crow, no more threat of the Red Pwceh, no more Black Peter or Morrismen, but most of all, no more summer nights filled with the agonised screams of wheat.

Despite the bold, I liked this. I found it less dense that some of your other work (which is fine, of course, that other work is dense since many readers love dense, thoughtful writing) and that made it read in a more flowing fashion for me.

Sorry, didn't see the second version. I MUCH prefer the first. The second feels like the opening to some YA fantasy that has to hit the reader with the hook and stakes, and hare off right away. Not that I don't like YA fantasy. But I don't like ones that feel the need to hit the reader with the hook and stakes and hare off right away....

 

[Phyrebrat]

I've been run off me hooves the past week, despite it being Half Term so I apologise for not getting back to you all sooner.

Thanks for all the comments. So much to think about. As is often the case, many are contradictory inasmuch as some may like one way and hate the other. Some of the comments are relating to my writing style/voice/idiosyncrasies, so are purely subjective.

In that respect, I think what I'm going to do is keep to my own plan and then when I'm further into the story, the opening will have probably endured several rewrites/change, so I'll check back in with you then (Although bear in mind, that might be ten years' time ).

What I think I'm doing now, is instead of having 2 POVs (a hoaxer from the South along with the M.O.T) , just have the hoaxer's POV and all of Rosemary's 'stuff' is observed by other people. I think I can then write in the detail I want, whilst keeping the story at a decent novel length.

Thanks again for all who contributed to this crit.

pH

 

[reggiesaun]

I'm gonna have to go back and dig into this. The first version had "style" and atmosphere, but lacked characterization I think. The second has characterization but I'm not drawn in by the atmosphere. I'm not sure how to even make that helpful. I'll look into it. But I like where your're heading. Great writer.

 

[Phyrebrat]

I'm gonna have to go back and dig into this. The first version had "style" and atmosphere, but lacked characterization I think. The second has characterization but I'm not drawn in by the atmosphere. I'm not sure how to even make that helpful. I'll look into it. But I like where your're heading. Great writer.

Ooh, thank you so much for the time and comments. I didn't want you to go back and make an effort as this is on the back burner whilst I write on another project that I'm far more ahead in.

Welcome to the forum!

pH

 

[Metaluna]

The idea of screaming wheat is very, very scary. That's what I want to know about.