Confusing openings...

[jon_jones]

I think we all agree that a story that goes straight into the sex with no build up or tension or anything is pretty sloppy writing.

On the other end of the scale is this:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=151038

Apologies to the author if they're reading this, but could anyone tell me if it's any good? I couldn't get past the third paragraph.

Maybe the style is just wrong for me, I like clever writing but this guy seemed to be too clever for his own good.

Does anyone agree? Disagree?

J-J

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I actually don’t think this opening is that bad, but I think I know what you mean. You’re talking about the confusing expository story opening: a topic which seems to have become something of an obsession with me lately. I notice expository openings all over the place, and I too don’t have much patience with them.

Exposition or expository prose is that part of a story that is neither direct action nor dialogue. It’s usually where the author describes the background to the reader and sets the stage for what’s going to happen. Since just about every story has considerable background associated with it (“backstory” is the fashionable term these days), exposition is pretty much inevitable. The problem for the author is how to handle it and incorporate it into the story in such a way as to make it as unnoticeable as possible.

Probably the worst way to deal with it, in my opinion, is to just start the story with a great big chunk of backstory. A story is generally about action: the things people do and experience, and the problem with opening a story with background information is that the reader’s sitting there waiting for the curtain to go up so he can see what’s going on, and instead he has to sit there and wade through paragraphs of this stuff about characters he doesn’t know or really care about yet.. It’s very discouraging, like sitting in a flick and watching endless credits role before the movie starts.

The problem with the expository opening is twofold: (1) it delays the start of the action, (2) it tells and doesn’t show.

Personally, I didn’t think it was as bad in this story as what I’ve seen in some others. (I’ve seen stories that start with background information that runs on and on for half a Lit page, recounting entire family trees and describing characters we won’t meet for pages yet. That’s just impossible to read.) What made it seem so noticeable in this opening was the fact that the opening scene was a tableau, static and devoid of any action. The women are just standing there while they’re being described to us and there was nothing really to engage our interest, and so a lot of this information kind of just blows right past us as we’re scanning along, looking for some action. I’ll bet I’m not the only one who won’t remember their names and have to check back at the top to see who’s who once they start talking. Information relayed in exposition never has the impact of information conveyed through the characters’ actions. No matter how many advanced degrees we’re told this guy has, if the first words out of his mouth are “What the fuck’s goin’ on?!”, we’re going to see him as a vulgar lout. In fiction, actions speak a thousand times louder than what we’re told in exposition

Which brings us to the second point, of showing not telling. Imagine that the story had begun with the two women being a little late and hurrying through the airport to get to the gate. Or even getting out of their limo and strolling into the airport. We could see by the way they moved and the things they said that one was an older, more matronly woman, and the other was younger. Their dialogue or an authorly aside “She followed her mother-in-law through the crowd…” or something) could have shown us that they were mother-in-law/daughter-in-law, and could have told us a lot about this Frank and where he was coming from. We would have known something of their social class, their feelings about his returning, and a hundred of other things that people’s words and actions say about them. Plus, this information would have been conveyed in a context of something happening, of ongoing action.

Most authors of really good fiction have this gift of folding the background into the action so that we’re fed backstory without even realizing it. And for those who don’t do it that way, I’ve noticed that their backstory often takes the form of describing things that were done in the past, a kind of action once removed. It avoids the kind of “Joe worked at the car wash where he’d been hired when he got out of Millard Fillmore High School having graduated at the bottom of his class with thoughts of working at his cousin Bill’s tavern…” with all its very specific and irrelevant information.

Anyhow, that’s my take on it. I’m not saying that it can’t be done, that a story can never open with exposition and still be a good story, but the primary thing an opening should do is make us want to read more, and static descriptions of background and appearances rarely achieve that.

---dr.M.

 

[Rainbow Skin]

Well the second paragraph is clunking. We know the author's got a neatly ruled and lettered family tree at their left elbow. But maybe that paragraph was just repetition for emphasis.

Paragraph seven:

Her busty daughter-in-law, well turned out in a gray skirt and blazer, smoky gray hose and dark gray pumps, not to mention a fawn sweater that was stretched tightly over a bosom of simply mountainous proportions, despite the restrictive brassiere she wore beneath, replied ...

That's forty-three words before the verb, including modifier phrases nested five deep (I think).

Then when I got to this:

[color=crimson[/i]Neither grandmother nor mother at first recognized the burly, black-haired, chisel-featured young man walking toward them attired in a charcoal gray double-breasted suit.[/color]

... I'm afraid I got a clear mental image of the long-nosed, greeneyed, curly-haired, wide-mouthed, thick-necked, broad-shouldered, round-bodied, short-armed, bow-legged, big-footed monster from The Phantom Toolbooth; and had to stop reading.

The author keeps doing it too:

She referred to her own mother, Frank’s sixty-two-year-old maternal grandmother.

Now, she consulted a thin, expensive gold wristwatch.

Frank felt his heart pound in his chest as he stared at the legs of his own gray-haired grandmother, beautifully shaped legs despite her age, legs that glittered darkly in the ultra-sheer, misty black tinted nylon stockings she wore, her stocking feet arched exquisitely in stiletto-heeled black opera pumps.

etc. etc. It's a deliberate stylistic thing, because the author's other stories are all a little stiff, but none have these maddening repetitive tics. I can't see why setting it a little bit in the past (1958) would require such a strange style: it's not the eighteenth century.

 

[The Mutt]

The exposition in an erotic story should be like the date before the sex. It should make you want to have sex with these characters.
Or at least watch them.
But I have noticed that when you ask anyone their opinion on the sexiest movie ever made, it is almost never a porno film. It is usually a movie with a slow tease that leads to an explosive sex scene.
Of course, I think Starship Troopers is the sexiest movie ever made, so what do I know?

 

[Sunnie]

I agree with everyone. I am not huge on exposition (and thanks for the word-reminder, Doc, I can tell now that you're a professor ), I prefer to let the dialogue tell the story for the most part. So I agree with you, I didn't make it past the fourth paragraph, either.

 

[thebullet]

The two women varied widely in age, yet there was a definite similarity in their appearances that spoke mute testimony to their being related. And indeed they were.

Yes, they were related. By marriage. I don't think I've ever seen a pair of women whose appearance bore mute testimony that they were related by marriiage before. I guess these two were a first.

It's really unfair to pick out a story and rip it to shreads when the story is no worse than the majority of other stories on Lit. However, this particular author's stylistic conceit does go to the head of the class. He uses a dozen words when one or two would do. It's a conceit that just doesn't work.

 

[LadyJeanne]

He uses a dozen words when one or two would do. It's a conceit that just doesn't work.

That type of writing works for Jane Austen, but then, she wasn't writing about nylons. Wonder how she would write about a society that doesn't blush...

 

[Boxlicker101]

I think we all agree that a story that goes straight into the sex with no build up or tension or anything is pretty sloppy writing.

On the other end of the scale is this:

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=151038

Apologies to the author if they're reading this, but could anyone tell me if it's any good? I couldn't get past the third paragraph.

Maybe the style is just wrong for me, I like clever writing but this guy seemed to be too clever for his own good.

Does anyone agree? Disagree?

J-J

I have to take some exception to the first paragraph. All I am trying to do is write stroke stuff and I tend to usually get to the sex part pretty fast. I usually have about two paragraphs of describing why the characters are having sex and then they get it on. In those cases where I start with a long conversation, I try to make it quite explicit and promise plenty of sex very soon. I have two stories classified as romances and neither has any sex for the first 10,000 words. I meant to say ten thousand; that is not a typo. Even in these, I try to imply that there will be plenty of sex eventually and there is.

In the past, I have had some disputes with other writer/critics over adjectives. In writing smut, I believe they are important. I refer to delicious juices from her pussy because I think the adj. conveys something. I was not able to read the piece in question but if Rainbow Skin's examples are typical, this guy really goes overboard. I can't help thinking it is some kind of a puton.

 

[vargas111]

Jane Austin Smut

That type of writing works for Jane Austen, but then, she wasn't writing about nylons. Wonder how she would write about a society that doesn't blush...

Hey, that would be a fun challenge, write a smut story in the jane Austin style.

"It is a universal truth not to be denyed that a sincgle man of
adequate menans is is wnat of:

a haren of voluptuous babes to knock up"

 

[cantdog]

the link doesn't point anywhere anyway.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

That type of writing works for Jane Austen, but then, she wasn't writing about nylons. Wonder how she would write about a society that doesn't blush...

Hey, I've got to stand up for Jane. Personally, I think she was a master (mistress?) of understatement, and she had the rare gift of never telling her readers something they couldn't figure out by watching and listening to her characters. To my mind, keeping your audience's attention on the story and not on the telling of it is one of the greatest talents an author can have.

---dr.M.

 

[vargas111]

Yeah, but can we figure out that all the chaacters are boinking each other off camera maybe a little friendly BD. Are ahy oif her heroines into Fdom?