Spork: I Am Number Four [intro and prologue]
A couple of months ago I decided to try my hand at sporking, but I couldn't decide what would be a good piece to try. I took a peek at FF.net and picked out a few truly horrible stories. I browsed through several indie booksellers and found a couple of spork-worthy books. In the end, though, what I finally settled on was this.
I Am Number Four jumped out at me in the YA section because it was probably the only book without a girl in a prom dress on the front cover. I picked it up, looked at the blurb, read the first few pages, and decided to buy it. I thought I was buying a suspenseful, action-filled book that would, if not keep me on the edge of my seat, at least give my imagination a good workout. What I actually bought was a mind-numbingly dull grocery list of a novel filled with a complete lack of logic, caricatures of characters which don't even have the courtesy to even pretend to be 3-dimensional, and one of the most generic YA romances ever.
For simplicity's sake I won't be going into the whole controversy surrounding James Frey, who is one-half of the brains behind the completely ridiculous pseudonym 'Pittacus Lore'. I haven't seen the movie so I won't be making any comparisons between the two. No, for this spork I'll be focusing only on the book itself - and trust me, there is more than enough material here to work on.
The prologue opens with a flimsy, bamboo door that shakes a little and stops almost immediately. Then we're introduced to the first and last sympathetic characters in the book.
They lift their heads to listen, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fifty-year-old man, who everyone thinks is his father but who was born near a different jungle on a different planet hundreds of lightyears away. (pg. 1)
What an awkward sentence. It's jarring and yanks the reader right out of what the scene. Also, what does it matter if the man was born lightyears away on another planet? That doesn't automatically disqualify him as the boy's father unless they're like salmon and must go back to their birthplace to breed.
Anyway, apparently the two are shirtless and on opposite sides of the hut, lying down on mosquito net-covered cots. That's actually a good example of showing as opposed to telling, since we can deduce several things about the setting here. Unfortunately, by describing this detail the narration ventures further off track. It realizes this a sentence later and promptly jumps back to what they hear: a distant crash, like the sound of an animal breaking the branch of a tree, but in this case, it sounds like the entire tree has been broken.
Everything goes silent, then the shaking starts again and there's another crash. The man goes to investigate but before he can open the door a long sword made of a shining white metal that is not found on Earth stabs through the door and into his chest.
The man grunts. The boy gasps. The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: "Run." He falls lifeless to the floor. (pg. 2)
How very gripping. I get that the author's trying for suspense with the short, to-the-point sentences, but it just falls flat here. It's a step-by-step list of what happens and there's absolutely zero emotion.
The boy goes and runs through the thick wooden wall, which breaks apart like paper when he tears through it. He then proceeds to jump over and/or dodge trees as he runs at sixty miles an hour. Umm...if he just ran through the strong, mahogany wall of his house like it was nothing wouldn't it be faster to run through the trees instead of taking the time to jump over them, especially since he's running through a freaking forest? There's a few more ham-fisted mentions of how he's better than beyond humans, how his pursuers are right behind him, yadda yadda.
The boy reaches a ravine that's three hundred feet across and three hundred feet down, with a river at the bottom. He runs, jumps, screams, and hits the ground on the other side. He made it, so he'll survive. Yes, the writing really is this bland.
So, he makes it...or not. A hand grabs his throat and lifts him into the air while the narration assures us that no matter how much he struggles it's futile and his end has come. What a great way to keep things suspenseful. We get a name for the aliens chasing him; they're called "Mogadorians". I keep thinking of the Mogas from Monster Galaxy when I look at that name so from now on I'll be referring to them as Mogas.
The boy says something which I assume is supposed to be incredibly mysterious and cryptic. The Moga laughs at him and raises its sword and we get the most emotional, best written three sentences in the entire 440-page book.
And as it falls, an arc of light speeding through the blackness of the jungle, the boy still believes that some part of him will survive, and some part of him will make it home. He closes his eyes just before the sword strikes. And then it is over. (pg. 4)
I Am Number Four jumped out at me in the YA section because it was probably the only book without a girl in a prom dress on the front cover. I picked it up, looked at the blurb, read the first few pages, and decided to buy it. I thought I was buying a suspenseful, action-filled book that would, if not keep me on the edge of my seat, at least give my imagination a good workout. What I actually bought was a mind-numbingly dull grocery list of a novel filled with a complete lack of logic, caricatures of characters which don't even have the courtesy to even pretend to be 3-dimensional, and one of the most generic YA romances ever.
For simplicity's sake I won't be going into the whole controversy surrounding James Frey, who is one-half of the brains behind the completely ridiculous pseudonym 'Pittacus Lore'. I haven't seen the movie so I won't be making any comparisons between the two. No, for this spork I'll be focusing only on the book itself - and trust me, there is more than enough material here to work on.
The prologue opens with a flimsy, bamboo door that shakes a little and stops almost immediately. Then we're introduced to the first and last sympathetic characters in the book.
They lift their heads to listen, a fourteen-year-old boy and a fifty-year-old man, who everyone thinks is his father but who was born near a different jungle on a different planet hundreds of lightyears away. (pg. 1)
What an awkward sentence. It's jarring and yanks the reader right out of what the scene. Also, what does it matter if the man was born lightyears away on another planet? That doesn't automatically disqualify him as the boy's father unless they're like salmon and must go back to their birthplace to breed.
Anyway, apparently the two are shirtless and on opposite sides of the hut, lying down on mosquito net-covered cots. That's actually a good example of showing as opposed to telling, since we can deduce several things about the setting here. Unfortunately, by describing this detail the narration ventures further off track. It realizes this a sentence later and promptly jumps back to what they hear: a distant crash, like the sound of an animal breaking the branch of a tree, but in this case, it sounds like the entire tree has been broken.
Everything goes silent, then the shaking starts again and there's another crash. The man goes to investigate but before he can open the door a long sword made of a shining white metal that is not found on Earth stabs through the door and into his chest.
The man grunts. The boy gasps. The man takes a single breath, and utters one word: "Run." He falls lifeless to the floor. (pg. 2)
How very gripping. I get that the author's trying for suspense with the short, to-the-point sentences, but it just falls flat here. It's a step-by-step list of what happens and there's absolutely zero emotion.
The boy goes and runs through the thick wooden wall, which breaks apart like paper when he tears through it. He then proceeds to jump over and/or dodge trees as he runs at sixty miles an hour. Umm...if he just ran through the strong, mahogany wall of his house like it was nothing wouldn't it be faster to run through the trees instead of taking the time to jump over them, especially since he's running through a freaking forest? There's a few more ham-fisted mentions of how he's better than beyond humans, how his pursuers are right behind him, yadda yadda.
The boy reaches a ravine that's three hundred feet across and three hundred feet down, with a river at the bottom. He runs, jumps, screams, and hits the ground on the other side. He made it, so he'll survive. Yes, the writing really is this bland.
So, he makes it...or not. A hand grabs his throat and lifts him into the air while the narration assures us that no matter how much he struggles it's futile and his end has come. What a great way to keep things suspenseful. We get a name for the aliens chasing him; they're called "Mogadorians". I keep thinking of the Mogas from Monster Galaxy when I look at that name so from now on I'll be referring to them as Mogas.
The boy says something which I assume is supposed to be incredibly mysterious and cryptic. The Moga laughs at him and raises its sword and we get the most emotional, best written three sentences in the entire 440-page book.
And as it falls, an arc of light speeding through the blackness of the jungle, the boy still believes that some part of him will survive, and some part of him will make it home. He closes his eyes just before the sword strikes. And then it is over. (pg. 4)