New SERGE entry...
Parts One through Three of Serge's interesting times can be found in this entry:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/benchilada/50530.html
( In which benjamin introduces a damn plot )
http://www.livejournal.com/users/benchilada/50530.html
( In which benjamin introduces a damn plot )
Those are your artistic choices and I think they are quite reasonable. My problem is that the paragraph under discussion had exactly the OPPOSITE effect on me.
I didn't feel overwhelmed the least by it. It was just too neat for the surrounding grit. (That it will prove unreliable or incomplete was something I took for granted. Indeed, if it gave all the plot away, that probably wouldn't be good and I didn't expect that from you.) I was thinking that excerpts of a recording would be more vague, would, of course, be incomplete, and would overwhelm the reader MORE because of the unfamiliar lingo and references of the beggars. The recording would only provide tantalizing hints of their society, not explain them too much at all. (To answer one of your other points.) While at the same time, the recording excerpts would be just barely understandable enough that the reader could deduce the basic content of what is plainly given in those sentences as they are now.
Oh, and I just re-read your installment again and I take back the juvenile remark. It didn't read that way to me this time. I must have been in an old curmudgeon state when I read your piece and wrote the first time.
"If this were a “traditional” novel, we’d be about thirteen pages into the book. Again, using Stephenson, we still wouldn’t know much about the world yet. Worlds should unfold, not be presented. And who’s to say that’s the whole plot?"
I never expected that it was a traditional novel. Of course worlds should unfold. I agree completely with all of that and I see you have been doing exactly that. I wasn't criticising this at all.
I think you miss-understood what I was trying to get at and that's my fault for not being clear enough. Yes, you are not "spoon-feeding" the actual plot cause, this is just some information that supposedly will trigger action on Serge's part in future installments and so it moves the plot along. I understood that. I understood that it was unreliable or incomplete. I think what I was reacting to was the way that the information was delivered seemed out of sync with the surrounding style a bit. (As I said in other words above.) Of course this is all your artistic choice. It just bothered me a little is all. Maybe when there is much more of the story written down, and I re-read this in the larger context, I won't notice it a bit.
I'm still trying to put into words what I was trying to say. I guess it is just that before in the piece you have to work to understand everything a bit because of the wonderful and unusual environment. All of a sudden, there are these few plot moving sentences written as plain as day "explaining" some of the world. Instead of being so plain as day, which contrasted with the surrounding style, they could have hinted more and maintained or even strengthened the mystery of the place. This could have been done many ways, the recording excerpt, for example, or just having MT's and Mike's dialog not be in such plain speech. But hey, maybe MT and Mike like to speak plainly sometimes. Especially with something important like this. Maybe that's part of their characters. They would be thin characters if they keep up the "fuck you, you wombat snoodler" repartee all the time. (Also in your defense, the sentences in question did add new mystery to the story: who and what are these groups mentioned. How do they relate to each other and the rest of society?)
Anyway, I'm definitely enjoying it and I'm looking forward your next installment.
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