Lovecraft Openers

[krinndnz]

I was rereading, and I found a thing to admire. Despite his failings as a prose stylist, H.P. Lovecraft could put together one heck of a first line sometimes. That's a specific trick of the writing craft that I struggle with - I like to think I'm getting better, bit by bit. Behold:When Randolph Carter was thirty he lost the key of the gate of

Comments

[badnoodles]

I would say that all three share the same general weakness: they are too long and too structurally complex to parse in a single glance. The Lovecraft example you give is much the opposite - fourteen words, one dependent clause.

The third has the strongest hook. It sets a strong tone, and jumps into the story. though I would break it into two sentences: "Every town has a high school for fuck-ups, and Ant Creek was ours. The fact.."

[krinndnz]

Thank you!

[badnoodles]

Oh, don't get me wrong. There's certainly a place for, and a shortage of, appraochable and entertainingly erudite prose. I'd just argue that the immediate opening of a short story isn't it.

[bossgoji]

I'm gonna have to echo the above feedback: far, far too verbose, with the exception of number three, which I find perfect.

1 and 2... it's so dense and stuffed-in, it feels like the literary equivalent of trying to take a bite of a sandwich that's way too big for your mouth: none of it is BAD, it's just a ridiculous excess. More than anything it strikes me as though you're trying to impress the reader with your vocabulary, rather than clearly communicate information, which is very off-putting. To be rather blunt, it speaks of an insecurity in the author's ability to hold the reader's attention, and is thus trying to blitz them by being overwrought and conspicuously clever. You're not engaging the reader in the first two examples, you are Telling Them Things. Pare it down a bit, and try to be more conversational.

[krinndnz]

"Nancy's elbows left ovals of tacky blood where they rested on the table."

How about that?

[bossgoji]

Hmmm. It's getting there, but it's still a bit odd. We can bounce this back and forth later on IMs, if you'd like.

[ceruleanst]

These are indeed compelling openers, in terms of content.

What the McAdam's Pub sentence needs is a parallel form in the things being compared; you have a concrete noun being compared with a content clause. You might say "That the four...were different species", or you might say "than the blood that was making the clothes and fur of the lioness stiffen as it dried." Also, I'm not sure "noticeable" is the word you want for the comparison, as it would seem that casual observers would be aware that the species were different even if they did not find it interesting. Maybe "notable" or "remarkable". I also think that "The rest were merely scruffy" is best kept in its own sentence, because a semicolon implies some sort of nonsensical correlation between how comparatively unkempt they are and how comparatively noticeable their species is, or something

[krinndnz]

Ah! These details are helpful. Thank you. I have more to work with now.

At some point I will join an actual critique group, and I hope that it contains people like you.

[ceruleanst]

I should further say, I agree with Bea that the first one says too much of little consequence and is best redone from scratch (In particular, the mention of "species differences" as barely worth mentioning yet significant enough to mention anyway is a cliché that does not so much evoke "Wow, what's going on here?" as "Sigh, furries."), but I approve of the verbosity of the Fae sentence and think you should keep all of it as long as you arrange it better.

[krinndnz]

Yeah, the first one - if the only place I'm going to post it is FA, I probably shouldn't bother with the narrative details that establish "this is a story about anthropomorphic animal-folk."

[masstreble]

Oh, gods, I love a good hook. I've spent the evenings of the last three days hitting keys in the most bizarre authorial adventure I've ever been on. I'm not even a writer, I'm just a guy that can write and loves stories. It's the first thing I'm going to do when I get home later, and the last thing I'll be doing before I go to sleep. I'm on a very strange roll and I don't want to get off.

Any case, let's look at yours.

The species differences between the four whist-players at the table in McAdam's Pub were less noticeable than that the lioness' clothes and fur were growing stiff from all the blood that had been drying for a few minutes; the rest were merely scruffy.
Heh. I see what you're up to here. I love humorous interplay between imagery and narrative presentation, but this does have a bit of a problem. There's actually two disjointed ideas that you're trying to communicate. Well, no, not disjointed, you're trying to direct focus in a scene while at the same time setting it, which is a pain in the ass. It ends off coming as a

[krinndnz]

Your comment is producing many giggles as I read it. Thank you. I think I'm likely to use the phrase "idea rodeo" in the future. Perhaps there are idea-clowns hiding in barrels.

I'm glad you dig the Ant Creek line, it's definitely much more promising after reading all these comments about it.

The thing you point out, that there are way too many ideas in the first two samples, is a very good point, and it's a useful lens for me to apply in thinking about how to begin those stories.

[masstreble]

I forgot to mention that I do the same thing. Constructing sentences like carry-on baggage to the airport, stuffing them like rice into a pouch of inari. It's not like there's a tax on periods. Plus, with short sentences, you can manipulate momentum. It's how I finally learned to stop worrying and start loving the period.

[masstreble]

Note on this thread, now that I've read the other comments!

I found myself a resident of a wonderful land.

That is all.