~520 words -- too bleak for an opening?

[Cthulhu.Science]

This is great. Not too bleak. You hit an excellent tone. I'm curious where this story goes from here.

I particularly loved the description: amorphous blue smudges retreating through the glass.

 

[Far Stranger]

Hi, I am new to Chronicles. So impressed with your writing; I found this a pure, beautifully expressed scene of grief. I can see why @THX1138’s first impression of Bo was as a manifestation of a mother’s despair, not a flesh&blood character: his single word “Baby,” his touch to her belly.

I think this will be a strong, evocative passage wherever you choose to place it.

 

[SciFyBry]

According to all of my friends, I had the worst college literature and creative writing professor That Ever Walked the Earth. I've spent a significant portion of my life repairing myself from what I've learned and am trying to figure out what was good and what was bad from what I learned. So please, correct me if I am wrong about this but from what I was taught in class, tense shifts should be taken care of. There were a few tense shifts where it goes from present to past tense. However, I see the same issue with published novels! According to my creative writing professor in college, Stephen King would have gotten an F on his report card. However, if this is actually something good that I learned, double check the shifts in your tense. Other than that, I think bleak was what you were going for! I think you did a good job.

This is the new opening for A Sour Ground (don't roll your eyes, yes I know it's been 11 years...)

One of the POVs' (Redd Sommer) arc is dealing with the loss of her twins (around 7-10 years old -- not important), and Redd and her husband moving house from the New Forest (a place analogous to Bransgore to those who know Dorset) to Kyngesmouth (Bournemouth).

Not so much a crit as a sort of straw poll. If it's too bleak I'll change back to the other POV's' (Willie) opening which atm happens after this, in London.

nb: Line breaks added for ease of reading.

Redd Sommer waited for the two detectives to walk down the short, red-bricked pathway leading to the front gate of the cottage before she closed the front door. Despite everything, she felt stupidly compelled to display decent etiquette as they left. No tears — she couldn’t even if she wanted to — and no weakness. It was a ridiculous act, and one she couldn’t explain. Grief made fools of the bereaved. And the optimist.

Grief.

The word itself was insufficient. Too small, too contained and precise. It didn’t come close to describing the roiling sea inside that was, at the same time, a stagnant, flat, unplumbable lake. Losing the twins — not even knowing where they were — was more than a stupid ****ing word.

Grief.

Such a trite way of defining loss; grief was what you had when Grandpa died at ninety-one, or when the old duchess who sat everyday at the Wilts & Dorset bus stop for the X1 to Loewe, stopped showing up. It was the loss of the family golden retriever after eighteen years.

This wasn’t grief.

It was violation. It was hate — for her and Bo, not from them. It was the gears of reality meshing so the cogs ground each other down and placed good people in the unimaginable. It was proof that life was made up of equations and numbers, and nothing else. No God, just eternal entropy.
‘Baby,’ Bo said, appearing from behind and curling a thickly haired forearm around her belly. She leant back into him, staring through the warped bulls-eyed glass of the front door, and breathed in the stench of weed as he exhaled.

‘They’ve gone,’ she said, needlessly, nodding to the amorphous blue smudges retreating through the glass. She didn’t trust herself to say anything else. At least he wasn’t trying to reassure her that after four days, James and Jillian would show up at the front door.
Tricked you, mummy!

Nausea had become an emotion; she turned in to Bo, buried her head in the nook between his jaw and shoulder, her eyes as dry as his were wet. If only she could cry. Even squeezing out one teardrop was impossible.

She hid in Bo’s darkness. Outside, the sounds of the odd car trundled past, down Gorse Lane on its way to Christchurch or Kyngesmouth, probably after a day out in the New Forest with the kids; the crunch of tyres on gravel as they pulled into Gallowsgrene Inn that sat opposite the cottage at the crossroads that was Gorse village. She hated those families for having one.

Bo said nothing. It reassured her in a small way that she still felt something. Her love for him. He knew her so well, knew that there was no point in doing anything other than being together, silent. The pair of them observing each other and just being.

Is that what grief was? Being?

Without words they both turned and made their way up the crooked, precipitous staircase to their bedroom and fell on the bed together, a pair of still bodies in foetal contraction, and she waited for the being to finish.

 

[Toby Frost]

I don't think it's too bleak, but it feels too abstract to me. It's almost entirely about Redd's introspection, and the interesting question you immediately ask - Who are these detectives? - isn't really answered. To be absolutely clear, you do not need immediate action or pulpy drama. But it does help to have some sense of forward movement, a sense that we are entering the plot rather than discussing the circumstances around it. It feels as if Redd is (understandably) retreating from the story rather than interacting with it.

If it was up to me (and it isn't), I would give her something low-key and undramatic to do - buying something from a shop, etc - which is interrupted by her thoughts and becomes very difficult.

As ever, the writing is very good.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Hi all,

Thanks for the continued comments — been away so I haven’t caught up.

I think it could be chopped or placed elsewhere.

The funny thing is I’ve never written a prologue and I wonder if this kind of thing ends up as a prologue in a first draft and then on the chopping room floor on the first edit.

I’m not married to the scene as is, or here at the opening, so I’m happy to play with it.

Thanks again

 

[Paul J. Menzies]

11 years, huh? Should be safe to post a reply then, and still be relevant, lol.

As usual this excerpt features your always strong prose. But, I have to go along with the others that point out it is missing something.

Along the lines of Yozh and Toby Frost I think the scene lacks emotional authenticity, which is what should be its hook. In part this stems from the lack of context, but more so from the inner dialog. As such, I don't think this scene works no matter where you put it (prologue, opening chap, or later on).

So, the kids are just officially missing, not dead, as there are no bodies. For four days. Most parents are not going to go straight to grief in this situation. They might fight grief, and might need to build resolve and push aside doubt and hang onto inner hope or faith, but that's the battle they're going to face in that moment, not an internal argument (albeit bitter) over the meaning of grief. So unless her main flaw is she capitulates to the vagaries of life far too easily, I don't think she's delivering a believable, or sympathetic, portrayal of what her emotions would be in that moment.

There is one other situation where she capitulates easily: she has reasons for doing so, ie privy to knowledge which we don't have. But then again that inner conversation would be going a lot differently.

You have actual emotional pain on the page, which is one of the hardest things for writers to do, but it doesn't ring as the right pain at the right time.

Fixing the lack of context would help the scene too. It's not critical, but would not be useful. Knowing something about the kids... a quick flashback... maybe attached to hearing a kid's voice outside and racing to the door to find it's just a passerby. I would be more likely to use such a scene for a prologue if it was my story, over this one. Something ethereal, a treasured memory.

The scene has other issues...

It implies that immediately before we start reading, the cops gave her the bad news that there is no news. I'm not sure why we didn't get that scene and are deprived of her reaction and instead just get the after tremors. Why not the more powerful event? We get them lying in bed doing nothing... but not the cop convo?

I'm also not sure why they're not basically sleeping at Police headquarters, and giving TV interviews or at least harassing them for coverage, and out organizing search teams or combing the streets themselves. This scene describes a very passive reaction, considering the situation the characters are in and that as a reader, we're going to take her as our protag and avatar. Makes it tough to engage the reader, regardless of where the scene is placed. Again, I allow there is the possibility they have knowledge of the death that we don't have. You should hint at that, if it is the case.

And... Bo smoking pot, while the cops are there over his wife's kids missing for four days? How is he not getting punched in the face when he does turn up, lol?

Best wishes with this project, @Phyrebrat . Hope you see this labor of love come to fruition one day.

 

[Droflet]

You don't want a crit so I won't give one. As per usual for you, it's a wonderful, yet tragic, opening. I'll go along with the vast majority in saying it's informative but not too bleak. Of course, it has to be bleak-like, considering the subject matter, but not overwhelmingly bleak, which I think is your concern. Anything else, you can sort out in the rewrites. Well done.

 

[Phyrebrat]

Thanks for such thoughtful and deep feedback @Paul J. Menzies and @Droflet — appreciated.

This scene is now changed substantially and later in the chronology. But more importantly, I’m on hiatus with this book and focusing on the new one.

Thanks again.

 

[Paul J. Menzies]

@Phyrebrat

Lol, I was pretty sure it would be. I wrote in part for me. Getting really deep into one's guts and putting that on paper is maybe the hardest thing writers do. Something I struggle with, at any rate. Thanks for being a good sport.

 

[Bowler1]

Highly polished as well it should be after 11 years and reading much better for it if I am honest too, which I like to think I usually am. I don't mind it as it reads well, but as an opening I would want more to come right quick. Grief is a demanding opening, but you're clearly sticking with it so keep on going.

I thought I was bad at 10 years, but mine is now out in the world. All I need now is for the world to find me!

Anyway good luck with it, it is a brave opening.