Why you don't get published.
Friday, August 04, 2006
New Beginning 42
Alaya leapt into the stream, savoring the feel of water lapping at her ankles. She spotted a frog and focused on it. The alarmed frog glanced up and leapt from one rock to another and Alaya splashed forward. A strand of red-gold hair blew into her face and she brushed it back behind her ear.
The wind shifted and Alaya froze. Something wasn’t right. Behind her, a twig snapped and Alaya began to tremble.
A shadow fell over her and Alaya turned around slowly. A mountain lion stood not a foot from her, watching her with hungry eyes. It pulled back its lips and snarled. Alaya screamed and fell backwards into the stream. She bit the inside of her cheek and tasted blood. She scrambled back, cold fear trickling down her spine. The lion followed her slowly. It was playing with her. Alaya’s back touched bark and she whipped her head around. She had backed into a tree.
The mountain lion lunged.
Alaya recoiled in terror. Suddenly, a snare pole shot out of the trees, its looped end collaring the proud beast. It howled and spat at the uniformed man keeping it from its dinner.
“Thank God,” said Alaya. “I . . . Can I . . . ?”
“Ma’am, this is the third time we’ve warned you. I know you love the animals, but I’m afraid you’re no longer welcome at the Atlanta Zoo.”
Continuation: Novelust
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21 comments:
Hilarious ;) Thanks for making me have to try to hide a laugh at work.
Alaya moves like a ghost! At least it seemed like it because I'm having trouble following her.
First she leaps into the water, but only gets ankle deep.
Then she splashes forward, but doesn't get very far apparently because a lion steps on a twig right behind her.
Then she falls backward into the stream again. But when she scrambles backward, she runs into a tree. Hmmm. Maybe this can all be fixed with a word or two up front to describe the stream.
On my first read, I was thinking of a stream where someone might go fishing. Perhaps this is a very small stream that is only ankle deep. And not wide is she falls in and then runs into a tree.
That was my only concern. Otherwise, tension is there and I'd keep reading at this point to see how things played out. Good luck!
John
I'm still with you on the name thing, bethany. Geez. -JTC
For the author's possible assistance, I did have concerns about the original opening.
On the one hand Alaya is alert enough, while frollicking in a stream, to notice the very wind changing. She notices this and freezes. I think, "ah-hah, she is extremely experienced in the wilderness, she might even be a ranger or druid or something." Then a twig snaps. "Ah-ha! A clumsy invader! It makes sense for it to be that, because she, as a young druidess, can handle natural problems with ease. I wonder if this is going to be one of those stories where barbarians sweep into town killing everyone except for the protagonist."
It turns out that the danger is a mountain lion. A creature famed for its stealth and ability to move in silence snapped a twig. Next, the mountain lion snarls and Alaya screams and panics. Now, I am thinking, "I guess she isn't all that experienced in the wilderness. Somehow she can sense changes in the wind and smell danger before it arrives, but she doesn't have an idea what to do when a mountain lion in in the area."
Finally, the lion seems to come to her slowly, menacingly. It's a great image, but I can only think of all the videos I have seen of lions attacking animals. The lion always seems to crouch in the grass and then suddenly pounces with as much force and speed as it can muster in order to break the animal's neck. Why does this lion slowly walk up to its prey, seemingly unlike all other lions?
This is intended to be helpful and are just my thoughts as I was reading it. It's one of those things where each sentence sounds fine, but together I as a reader was having a hard time figuring out the age or experience of the heroine.
You can probably substitute "she" for "Alaya" a few times. She's the only person in the scene other than the lion, so it's not like the pronoun is going to confuse the reader any.
Pronouns = friends.
Frogs, when alarmed in a stream, have the habit of diving under water.
And then there's the lion, only a foot away, though she has splashed forward.
And the cliches..."cold fear trickling down her spine,"
...I'm inclined to think that's water from when she fell backward.
The opening has a lot of cliches, which the author should excise ruthlessly. It's easy in an early draft to grab the phrase that first comes to mind--as you revise, though, take 'em out. In this excerpt, cliches such as these undermine the tension right where it should be building:
a twig snapped
A shadow fell over her
watching her with hungry eyes
She bit the inside of her cheek and tasted blood
cold fear trickling down her spine
Some of these are cliche in terms of overused expressions; others in terms of the situation or image they create. The problem with cliches is that we've heard them so many times that there's something reassuring about them. To get the reader scared and involved, use language in unexpected ways.
RE: Names
Elspeth is an old one, and I've heard Basia (a Polish-born? jazz singer in the 1980s or '90s), but Alaya is a new one.
And yes, there is a Character Naming Source book : )
The names don't trip me up as much as the protag leaping and the frog leaping and the mountain lion not leaping.
I'm with frainstorm -- I had the same reaction up front. "Leapt" is not a good verb if the stream is only ankle deep -- "waded," or "splashed" might be better. One leaps only into deep water if one doesn't want to break one's legs, and that jarring note put me off right away. It might be the start of a good story, though, if you can smooth out all the incongruity.
I agree with what others said of a changing sense of what is seen/understood.
In addition, I found the sentence structures to be repetative. Too many sentences joined with the word 'and' (AND the rule is, if you join two complete sentences with a conjunction like 'and' you need a comma after the first.) To many sentences that start with a proper name, a noun, or a pronoun followed immediately by an action verb. It would be better written with more sentence variety (in structure, and also in sentence length). As is, I read it with a cadence, which gets old after a bit.
Hilarious ending. Well done!
I knew, even before I read it, that her hair would be red-gold. Another cliche?
If the lion is right behind her, there would be water and a twig wouldn't snap (besides the lion's prowess at stealth). I also got tripped up on the sequencing, especially when she fell back into the stream water and a split second later backed into a tree. (Perhaps because I think of streams as wide and flowing, while creeks can be anything from small rivers to dry rocky ravines that occasionally have water in them.)
And I have to admit I don't know what a "snare pole" is.
I didn't like this opening much as written, but I still got a sense of what the author was trying to get across. So it's a beginning, but it needs more work.
At present, I wouldn't keep reading. With a good rewrite, though, I might be intrigued to find out how the MC gets away from the danger. Good luck
Love the new ending. Got lost in the original - same issue as some of the others - her movements/reactions don't always make sense.
Is Alaya human? I got the impression that she might not be from the reaction of the frog - In my experience, frogs don't usually care either way about people - combined with the sensitivity to the wind and the reaction to the lion.
Carmel Bird (Australian writer and author of 'Dear Writer', a how-to for writers) says that if a scene doesn't ring true, it isn't because it is imagined, it is because it hasn't been imagined ENOUGH. I have found this very useful when my own writing is flat, and I think it would help you improve this scene.
When you close your eyes can you see the stream? How wide is it? Is it sandy, or rocky underfoot? Is she barefoot? Do the stones hurt? Does it flow quickly or meader? Is it at it's spring melt height or in a high summer doldrums? Is in in a clearing, or do trees come right down to the water line? What kind of frog is it? Why a frog? Why not a fish? Is there a reason? Is the mountain lion hungry, or just wanting Alaya to go away because she has a cub she wants to bring down for a drink? Would her behaviour change based on that? If Alaya were truly surprised and truly terrified, would her reaction be to scream and back up or to freeze? What would happen to her senses? Would all her attention focus on the lion, so she can almost hear it breathing, while all of the other sounds around her switch off as though someone has pulled the plug on the ambience recording?
You get the idea. I'm not suggesting that you necessarily put the answers to all these things in, but if you know them, you can write a scene of much greater power and narrative purpose.
Also, just because I'm curious, is she planning to eat the frog? Because that was the impression I got!
HOpe it helps
Imelda
I rolled my eyes when Alaya's hair colour was mentioned.
Axe the first paragraph. There is nothing of interest in it. The second paragraph is where the story starts.
A snare pole is a long pole with a loop of rope or wire at the end and running up the pole used to catch dangerous animals. The loop goes over the animal's head and round its neck, it can be tightened if necessary, and the pole maintains a safe distance between animal and handler.
Snare pole
Btw, if Alaya is a small child, I don't have a problem with "leapt"--it's a very small child exploring the world word.
(Something funny happened when I tried to post a comment. I'm trying again and hoping I'm not posting a duplicate.)
The constant use of her name was intrusive. Since she's the only character in the scene, introduce her once and use the pronoun thereafter.
The writer needs to work on varying sentence construction and length. This had a rhythmic feel to it, which is deadly in prose.
While at least something is happening in this opening, it feels more like the description of an incident, not the beginning of a story. There's action, but no real conflict. And it feels rushed.
I thought she was a little kid chasing frogs and getting eaten by a mountain lion. The part where the wind changes and she freezes is really awkward. It's not how a human would react, but it's not cool enough to suggest an elf or something of the sort, either. Most importantly, the lion wouldn't have sneaked up on her until he was "not a foot from her" and waited for her to turn around. He would have pounced from his cover while she had her back turn and she wouldn't have known what hit her. I think it should read like this:
"Alaya leapt into the stream, savoring the feel of water lapping at her ankles. She spotted a frog and focused on it. The alarmed frog glanced up and leapt from one rock to another and Alaya splashed forward. A strand of red-gold hair blew into her face and she brushed it back behind her ear. Then something heavy hit her in the back and she fell. The mountain lion dragged her carcass up a tree to eat at his leisure."
I have the feeling she's a wolf cub or something... hightened senses yet totally clueless.
Oh, another possibility that hadn't occurred to me... she could be a herpetologist studying frogs.
Okay, author, time to speak up and solve the mystery for us! What/who is Alaya?
I say have the mountain lion attack her. She fights back (if you play dead, you end up that way) and hears a voice in her head telling her to reach into the animal's mouth. She does what the voice says. She reaches right in as far as her arm will go, then rips out its tongue and it bleeds to death all over her.
True story. Happened not far from where I live, except it was an old guy, not a girl. We're cougar savvy up here--we get maybe two attacks a year in the region.
Actually, the one common thread with cougar attacks is that the victim doesn't know it's there until it's already pounced. They come at you from behind or above, and that's pretty much that. A cougar that would pussy-foot around until he's been seen probably isn't hungry. Maybe he wants a drink?
Call me crazy, but I think I read a different version of this on the COM. I'm remembering a young person/shaman's apprentice out on a vision quest-type thingie. If this is that piece, I remember them advising the author to start the story where the action is. Kind of irksome, now that he/she's done that, and now no one knows what the hell's going on. ;)
Author says...
Alaya's a 7-year-old human
Thank you for the comments, everyone. I'm going to take what you said and run with it.
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