Why you don't get published.
Saturday, September 02, 2006
New Beginning 100!!
After hearing his name announced, Dedalus arose, walked to the podium and spoke:
"The Tong, or secret society, will be nothing without the actions that it will carry out, but before the actions come the intentions. The link between the intentions and actions is the text, the legend, and the cause it represents. The text draws out the actions from the sea of potentiality to actuality. These poems will be meaningless without the actions they invoke, and will therefore achieve either the highest goal of poetry, or else nothing at all. The City of Willows is not merely an imaginary city, but an imaginal city; a dream space, which will be manifested more and more clearly until, finally, the Ming is restored. And yet, The City of Willows is also a poem. The legend of our Tong is nothing but a text, true, but it will call a world into being, even if only for a few moments in which our desires are not only articulated, but also satisfied."
Dedalus paused, examined the crowd for a moment, and then continued:
“We must sing the songs of the Tong. We must harness the energy of the Ting because the swords of the Ting in service of the Ming can only oppose the knives of the Tong.”
He paused again, and took a sip of his Tang.
Continuation: Dave
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17 comments:
LOL at the continuation. Thank dog for Tang, a cultural icon that has proven so useful in spoofing.
Author, I didn't much like Dedalus' style of talking. It seemed meaningless. I would not read on.
A speech?
My blue willow ware is more exciting.
It's a nice speech but not, I think, a good opener in a publishing climate that wants slam-bam - to engage to imagination and emotion before the intellect.
Sometimes telling really is better than showing.
Are the contents of this speech essential to the story, or only the characterization point that Dedalus gives this kind of speech? If it's the latter, you could try having a viewpoint character summarize the speech very briefly: "Dadelus launched into an involved philosophical lecture about the relationship between the Tong and the poems that inspired it" (said in some way that brings out the personality of your POV character).
If the contents of the speech are really essential, I can only suggest beginning the story somewhere else and getting them in later. I need a reason to care before I'm willing to digest this much philosophy -- especially since I don't know what region or time period I'm in, or whether Dedalus is the POV or not. (Maybe the "after hearing his name" shows that he is, but there's nothing in here to suggest what his emotions are, or why I should care about him.)
This is an "As you know, Bob" beginning. I have trouble believing that this speech is necessary to the plot, rather than an attempt to insert backstory.
Chop it. Find a different (slower and sneakier) way to work this information into the story, it it's needed at all.
Then, figure out where your story actually starts. At what point does the main character's life change irrevokably? At what point does he see that there is something in the way of his happiness, and he must act to get rid of it? Start the story at that point.
Ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang!
This might sound like a small thing, but why open in the moment between the announcement of Dedalus's name and his reaction to it? Just the opening words, "After hearing his name announced," make me feel like I missed something, like I arrived late at this occasion (whatever it is). And I hate being late.
Part of the problem with the speech is that it's so big and blocky and it's visually hard to follow. But because the author hasn't taken a moment to situate the reader--where are we? what's the occasion? who's Dedalus?--we're doubly lost.
How's Dedalus feeling as he walks to the podium (or before)? Is he confident, troubled, nervous? Why? Who is he and what's at stake for him in this moment? Is he the protagonist or a minor character? Who's the point-of-view character in this scene?
The first line of his speech also bugged me: "The Tong, or secret society..." Whom is he addressing? If he's addressing the Tong, they already know they're a secret society and he doesn't need to tell them that. If he's addressing an audience outside the Tong, why the heck is he telling them about a society that's supposed to be secret? He seems sympathetic to the Tong--he doesn't seem to be exposing them here.
Finally, without some idea of context, Dedalus's speech is impossible to understand. It looks like the author has some potentially really cool stuff going on about the relationship between poems, dreams, and reality, but darned if I can figure out what it is.
If you want to start with this occasion and a speech, start a little earlier. Give a sense of the gathering and who's there. Let Dedalus worry about the problem he's about to address, so that we understand that problem before we hear him speak of it. If we're inside Dedalus's head for a bit (or maybe inside the head of a spectator who's got strong opinions about what's going on here), we'll be more ready to hear what he has to say.
Good luck!
Nice big fancy words, but they won't make me read on.
Congrats, EE on New Beginning 100.
Too many words.
Daedelus throws too much at the reader in the first paragraph. As a result, the reader is confused. Is the CIty of Willows real or imagined? Is it a poem, an ideal, or a place?
The phrase "...the sea of potentiality to actuality" sounds like pop psychology gone wrong. The reader isn't ready for that concept.
And when you say: "...The Tong, or secret society, will be nothing without the actions that it will carry out, but before the actions come the intentions..."
do you mean Actions speak louder than words?
Yikes! I don't have a clue what that is about.
I can imagine the kind of pseudo-intellectual academic that would enjoy this type of book, and I can imagine finding them incredibly irritating and avoiding them at all cost.
Although... does that kind of person even read fiction?
Huh? squared.
I don't know about the rest of you guys, but the only part that made any sense to me was the continuation. But then, I have a migraine and am wacked out on codeine, so what do I know?
Ting-tang, walla-walla bing-bang! I'd laugh, but my head hurts too much.
Huh. Wow. Okay then. Some thoughts:
"The Tong, or secret society..."
That's quintessential As You Know Bobism right there. If Dedalus is addressing people who know what the Tong is, he's not likely to explain what the Tong is - especially not if it's a secret society! (First rule of Fight Tong: You do not talk about Fight Tong.) You could possibly keep the exposition if you phrased it so it didn't feel like he was explaining. Better, probably, to just lose it.
Also, the Tong? Isn't that sort of like founding a club and calling it "The Club"? Kind of ballsy, really.
The word "imaginal" makes me itch.
As I understand, the word "Tong" is Cantonese and "Ming" is Mandarin. That's not really a problem, I just figured I'd work in a bit of linguistic criticism while I was here. Hey, it's what I do.
Hang on, wait, why the hell is a guy named for a Greek/Irishman so intent on restoring the Ming? I presume we're talking about the dynasty here? Is this set during the Qing Dynasty or in the present day? Cause, I mean, there are plenty of people who aren't fans of the PRC, but you don't hear many of them calling for the return to the Empire. But even if it's during the Qing period, why would a guy named "Dedalus" give a damn about which ethnic group was in power in China?
Incidentally, my brain keeps wanting Dedalus's first name to be "Stephen". Either that, or it wants it spelled with an "ae".
The whole thing reads like a cross between The Quotations of Chairman Mao and really dry postmodern literary criticism. (Just sprinkle the prefix "meta-" around at random, maybe call somebody a "paper tiger", and you'd be golden.) Not exactly compelling, in short. I'm just glad I'm not in the audience - hopefully Dedalus will keep his speech brief, for their sakes.
I'm not saying take it out, because if that's how Dedalus speaks, then that's how he speaks, and there's not much you can do about that except ditch the character. But as the opening? There's a limit to how many unexplained words a reader can deal with at a time; a bit of (subtle) exposition before this would make the whole thing more digestible. And frankly, it's just not particularly interesting. Bait the hook well and you can drag your fish/readers wherever you like.
Borges got away with writing stuff like this piece because he narrates as an archivist discovering manuscripts that turn out to concern imaginary things. The irony of it all makes ostensibly boring passages interesting, even funny. See, e.g., "Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" or "Pierre Menard, Author of The Quixote".
Why not show the world of your story in all its actuality first, then explain it later as necessary, or omit the explanations altogether?
I said this for another recent opening and someone else said it above, but there is just no emotional connection to be made with any of these abstractions.
Author, it seemed like it would be intriguing, but honestly, I had to think so much as I read that I wouldn't continue...I'd suggest you figure out your point and make it a little sooner, without all the words.
And the continuation was the reason I commented :)
word verif: ltgoki -- Lt. Goki, at your service
War and Peace, by Dave.
The French invaded Russia. It was cold. Finally they got beaten back.
The End
I honestly thought this was a troll.
I got two sentences into the enormous first paragraph filled with what seemed like a substitute lecturer's overused script, and my eyes glazed over. I kept expecting Dedalus to stop and think, "What utter tripe, and not one of the students is listening."
Any paragraph with over 150 words AND the phrase, "The text draws out the actions from the sea of potentiality to actuality" is meant to be constrained to the halls of academia, not presented as the opening for a book that expects to hold the reader's attention.
Yikes.
This opening simply has no information that would make me want to keep reading.
Why not show the world of your story in all its actuality first, then explain it later as necessary, or omit the explanations altogether?
Good question.
The opening reminded me of the last chapter of 'The Handmaid's Tale' by Margaret Atwood. She told the whole story first, though, and only used the academic-style lecture at the end to let us know our heroine had indeed survived and society had moved on from the religious Dark Age. Quite effective and surprising when used that way.... had that been the beginning, well, not.
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