Story discussion Dr. Lust, Main Queue, 7/5/05

[drlust]

Hi all:

I'm posting this a bit earlier than it's assigned date because I'm going out of town for the weekend and won't be back until the 6th, at which point I'll be able to comment on any comments you've made...so if you comment early, don't be surprised if I don't chime in until the 6th.

This one needs a bit of background explanation, which I hope won't turn out longer than the excerpt I've included below! The back story is this: I'm writing a full length novel involving a private investigator in Upstate New York who is tracking (and being stalked by) a female serial killer. A part of his back story is that before he returned to his hometown in New York, he was a professor in West Texas who did some PI work on the side (a trade he picked up to help pay for his PhD studies years before). In the novel, I make reference to a situation in Texas that resulted in (a) one of his clients almost dying, (b) him getting shot and (c) him getting fired from his university job. I developed this back story for him because it helps to explain a lot about his present behavior, his reasons for being so reluctant about doing any sort of PI work, and his general reticence about his personal life.

Still with me? Okay. A couple of months ago, I was stuck around page 175 of the novel, so I decided to write part of the prequel, both because I needed to clear my head and do something different and because I'd read somewhere that the first question an agent asks about detective fiction is whether the book she's looking at is part of a series. So, I figured I'd try to get part of the prequel novel down on paper. To my surprise, a lot of it flowed out of me that weekend and I almost got so distracted by it that I was tempted to put the original project to the side. Fortunately, a couple of well placed head slaps stopped that and I'm back at the original project.

But , the prequel stays with me. So, what I'm going to ask you to do is to read the first few pages of it and tell me what you like and what you don't like and in particular, whether you would want to read more if you just happened to pick this up and read it (assuming, of course, that you like detective fiction...not everyone's cup of tea, I know). No sex here, just character and place.

Sorry for all the introductory text, but it seemed like it needed setting up...

Allan

Lonesome Dust

The dust had been blowing for five days now without letup. The only mercy in it was that just before it started up, the wind had been from the southeast for two days, bringing with it the smell of the feedlots down around Slayton. Cow shit, cow piss, cow sweat. God I hated that smell. Twelve thousand head of cattle crammed together in less than 200 acres. When they stood up in the evening and started to move toward the feed troughs they kicked up such a cloud of dried shit, piss and sweat that the least breeze from their direction left me gagging. Whenever it got too bad I‘d check into a motel until the wind turned back around from the west.

West Texas—the world’s largest human-inhabited hair dryer.

Only Americans have been stupid enough to actually live here. The Comanche just passed through on their way down from the Sierra Blancas to their hunting grounds in the Hill Country. The Spaniards passed through on their way to Eldorado. They were smart enough to know they weren’t going to find their city of gold here. All they left behind were some archeological sites and a name—the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains—an homage to the Yucca and Agave bloom stalks that dot the plains. Even the Mexicans gave it a pass—that is, until the Anglos settled the area for good.

The weather here is nothing short of Biblical—tornadoes, thunderstorms that can drop three inches of rain in an hour, turning the wash down below my house into a raging torrent for a couple of hours, isolating me up here against the canyon walls, hail stones the size of baseballs—and sometimes even softballs—that can punch through your roof and end up in your living room, It even rains mud sometimes, when the leading edge of one of the thunderstorms kicks up a wall of dust and converts it to falling droplets of mud along the boundary between the dust and the rain. From late April until early November the temperature soars to over 100 almost every day. At least the nights cool down into the 60s. We do have winter here. Not a real winter of course, but I’ve been here five years and it’s snowed at least once every year. Two years ago we had three feet of snow the day before Christmas. The whole city shut down because they don’t own a single snowplow. Bulldozers were called in to clear the routes to the emergency rooms. Of course, it was all melted within four days and the panic subsided.

One of these days I’m sure it’s going to rain frogs.

Only one thing is for certain and that’s the wind. Growing up in the mountains of New York I thought I was used to the wind, but not like this. A low wind day in West Texas is 15 m.p.h. Most days it blows in the 20s and at this time of year, right on the border between spring and summer, 35-40 is more the rule. That’s when the goddamn dust starts. Some days it’s just hazy and gritty, but when the wind really blows, you can’t see a fucking thing.

Right now, staring out my window, I can’t see the far wall of the canyon and that’s less than half a mile off. All I can see is billowing, surging clouds of red dust, like something Stephen Spielberg created for a movie. How there is any dirt still on the ground west of us I can’t imagine. Not even the sun can get through—we’ve been in a half twilight now since Monday morning, the sun glowing like a red dot up in the dust clouds. You know it’s there because you can feel the heat of it, but most of the time the light is what, in Upstate New York, we’d call “bright overcast.”

There are a lot of things I hate about West Texas, but the dust is surely at the top of my long list.

After two days of a dust storm people get cranky, sniping at each other, being mean to their kids, probably kicking their dogs. By the fourth day almost everybody is downright ornery, yelling and getting into fights in bars or anywhere else that works for them. The roads get slick with the dust and they start crashing their cars and their SUVs and pickups, going apeshit when they see the dents in their precious babies. I’ve got a couple of friends on the police force and they all say that after three solid days of heavy dust they start trying to call in sick.

I remember when I first moved here five years ago from Upstate, how I’d read stories about frontier families spreading bed sheets over their dinner table, pulling food out from underneath and popping it into their mouths as quickly as possible to keep from eating dirt. Until my first big blow I was sure those stories were Texas tall tales. Now I know they were the plain truth.

If I’d had half a brain I’d have bought a new house close to campus that was sealed up against the dust. Nope. Not me. I had to buy this creaky old post and beam bunkhouse built in 1917 for the Mexicans who worked the ranch on the Caprock up above me. Three hundred and forty days a year I love my house, but not when the dust is blowing. I just can’t keep it out of this old place.

Lord knows I’ve tried. But after my first dust season here I bowed to the inevitable, putting garbage bags over all my electronics so they won’t fill up with dust and short out, making sure I keep all my cabinets and closets closed, and I eat out a lot so I don’t ingest too much dirt along with my food. Around mid-April when it stops blowing, I throw open all the doors and windows, set up big fans blowing out, and kick up my own mini dust storm indoors, blowing as much out as I can with a leaf blower, then washing down every fucking thing in the house.

I hate the way it gets in my ears, between my teeth and is caked in the corners of my eyes when I wake up. I can’t even use my hot tub—not that I’d want to be outside when it’s blowing—because I have to keep the lid on tight or it’ll turn into a mud bath. The cheapo transistor radio I bought so I could listen to some music during the dust storms only picks up three stations—one full of wailing cowboy ballads, another offering non-stop end of the world fire and brimstone from some hardcore Baptist crazies down around Post, and a Tejano station serving up one jaunty, jazzy song after another. What they’ve got to be so fucking happy about I have yet to figure out.

All this week I’ve gone into town just long enough to teach my classes, hold my office hours, and grab something to eat. The rest of the time I spend here, sitting, reading, or at least trying to read, and staring out of the window. That, and I wait for Mindy.

Once the dust has been blowing for at least three days I know she’ll come. Something about all the ozone in the air I guess—but day after day of blowing dust makes her want to fuck—and fuck me in particular. She knows I’ll be here—cranky as hell, full of aggressive, angry energy, energy she can put to good use.

When we were first together I thought we were made for each other, but now, four years later, the only time we see each other are days like today—both of us pissed off and ready to fuck until we’re sore.

It was this old house that brought us together.

Four years ago I started looking for a place to live and focused my search on the canyons east of town for two reasons. They, at least, offered some scenery as compared to the unrelenting flatness of the Caprock, and the people who live out here in the canyons are here because we want to isolate ourselves from the city. In the canyons I hoped I’d be able to reclaim one tiny piece of the solitude I’d come to depend on when I lived in the Adirondacks.

I crapped out quickly, because nothing ever seemed to come up for sale. When I asked my realtor what the deal was she just shook her head and shrugged. She thought I was nuts to want to live out in the canyons in any case, when I could buy a nice new place ten minutes from campus. So I fired her and started driving the dirt roads that wound up and down the canyons, checking out every property I could get a good look at. When I found a place that looked vacant, I’d go to the county land office, look up the owner and try to talk them into selling. One after another told me to piss off. Finally, I hit pay dirt three months into my search.

The place was 12 miles off the asphalt down Yellow House Canyon, on the far side of the wash that I had to cross on a cement culvert that dipped down into the creek bed and struggled up the other side. Not willing to risk the suspension of my old Saab on the rest of the driveway, I parked on the far side of the culvert and walked in, the driveway flanked by mesquites and Cholla, some of them a good three or four feet taller than me and crowned that morning with their brilliant fuscia flowers. From peeks I could get at the place with my binoculars from up on the road over on the far side of the canyon, the house appeared abandoned, but I didn’t feel like getting shot at by a trigger-happy isolationist, so I called out as I walked, “Helloooo, anybody home?” Neither shot nor voice answered me as I emerged from the mesquite into what amounted to the yard—a scruffy expanse of buffalo grass and Prickly Pears.

The house itself was surely abandoned—all of the windowpanes were broken and about two thousand beer cans littered the front porch and yard. Still, you can’t be too careful around here, so I called out one last time, “Helloooo!” No answer.

For the next half hour I stomped all around, examining the structure, the flooring, what of the pipes I could see. Surprisingly, the place seemed pretty sound except for all the broken glass and the smell of piss in what had been the dining room. Downstairs was a big living room with an actual fireplace—where the firewood came from in this land without trees I had no idea—a dining room, a kitchen and a utility room out back with rusted out hookups for a washer and dryer. Upstairs were four small bedrooms, one of which had about a dozen rotting condoms on the floor. It took me a minute to figure out what was missing—bathrooms. Leaning out one of the upstairs windows I solved that little mystery—a two-door outhouse back behind the house about fifty feet from the back door.

Outside, the best feature of the house from my perspective was the fact that there were two ancient cottonwoods guarding the west side of the place, providing much-needed shade during the furnace-like afternoons. The front porch stretched from one the west corners to the east and then wrapped around on the south face, providing shelter from both the sun and the wind. Standing on the porch I couldn’t see another house—shit, I couldn’t even see the road I’d come in on. I went back upstairs and looked out the front windows. From there I could see the road, but still no other house. The isolation was just what I wanted, but the challenge, well, I wasn’t sure about that. I’d done some work on houses in the past and my guess was this one needed $20,000-$30,000 in immediate repairs and the same again to get it just right. That was if I did all the carpentry.

I tried hard not to get my hopes up about the place. It was exactly what I’d been looking for, but thus far my experience had been that no one who owned these places was willing to sell. Why would this one be any different? At the land office the next day I learned that Ellis Mathews of County Road 6851, nearest post office Slayton, owned the property. I tracked down his phone number without too much trouble, decided what I’d be willing to pay for the house and per acre for any land that went with it. Mathews owned the mineral and water rights too—the property had been in his family for close to 80 years—so he was the only one I needed to negotiate with. Anxious, I called the number I’d found and when a woman answered, I asked to speak to Mr. Mathews.

“I’m his daughter, “ she said, “Can I help you with something.”

“Well,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I was, “I’m a professor at Tech and I’ve been trying to buy a place in Yellow House Canyon, and, well, I found a place that your father owns down near where County Road 7632 splits and heads toward Slayton, and, um, I’m interested in buying it if he’s interested in selling.”

I held my breath, waiting to see whether she would put me through to her father.

“Sugar,” she said, laughing lightly, “I’ve been waiting for you to call me for close to two years now.”

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Let's see if I've got this right: this is the prequel to the detective story you're working on now, right? Since you call it a prequel, I'm assuming that it's a stand-alone book (or story) and won't just be part of your New York detective story, because I think what you have so far is much too rich to be a mere introduction. So I'm going to assume that what you posted is the start of a different story involving this professor-PI. Right?

I love the setting. I've always been fascinated by the notion of the "staked plains", even though I never knew where the name came from, and the description you give with the dust and the wind and heat makes this seem like a little bit of hell on earth, just right for a detective story. (I can't help but think of some of Raymond Chandler's stuff, set in LA when the Santa Ana wind was blowing and the streets were full of grit and people were on hair triggers.)

At the same time, I've got some concerns about this opening: (1) I think maybe the physical description goes on for too long, (2) I'm afraid the opening kind of stutters before it finds the direction it wants to go in, and (3) I'm not sure you want to go into the details of how you bought the house.

(1) As fascinating as the setting is, I really think you have to shorten and—more importantly—concentrate the description. You want to describe the landscape, mention the heat and the wind and the desolation (even the cow stink is good—the idea of all these cows waiting to be slaughtered is quite ominous), describe the dust and of course talk about what all this does to the people who live there, but I think you take too long to do this. I'd like to see the description of the setting edited down to maybe 3-4 paragraphs.

Once that's established, you can bring the setting into the ongoing story. A mention of him shielding his eyes against the blowing dust as he looks at the house for the first time will reinforce the description and keep the setting always in mind. The sound of the wind through a cracked window as he pokes around on the inside--that kind of thing.

I'm a big believer in the power of one good image over a wealth of detail, which is what I meant by concentrating the description. I think some good, vivid images—maybe about how the dust gets into your bed or covers the butter with a film of red at breakfast—would be more telling and arresting than a discussion of the steps taken to protect your electronics (although the leaf-blower image is pretty powerful.)

While you’re at it, I would love to know what the wind sounds like. I've always been fascinated with the stories of the settlers on the plains where the incessant sound of the wind drove them raving mad. I think something about the sound of the wind would do more to give us a feeling of the place than discussing wind speeds.

I also think that when you're establishing a setting, you don’t have to tell us what it's like in every season, unless that's going to figure in to the rest of the story. The fact that it snows in the winter only subtracts from that hellish feeling of heat, wind, and dust.

(2) I got the feeling here of a story stuttering and laboring to get off the ground. Part of that is due to the attention given the setting. Just when I was ready for the story to begin, we got some more description.

There's a definite rhythm to stories, almost like the take-off of an airplane. We sit on the runway as the scene is described to us, and then we start to taxi as the story begins, and at a certain point we expect to be airborne, carried along by our involvement in the plot. In this one, I had the feeling of maybe sitting on the runway too long.

There's a feeling that we're finally going to get going when we hear about Mindy (and my hands tighten on the metaphorical arm rests of my seat, getting ready for takeoff), but, no, it's a false alarm. Instead we're now involved in the backstory of his discovery of the house and how he came to buy it.

By this time, I'm getting very impatient, and all I can say is that the main story had better be beginning here when he calls Matthews, because if this is just more background, I'm getting off this flight. By this time in reading a story, I want to have some idea of what it's about. I get the uncomfortable feeling that the narrator is dithering, and there's nothing worse in a detective story.

(3) As I said, if the story of how he came to buy this house is actually part of the main plot, then that's okay. If it's just more backstory, then it's really irrelevant and you're going to lose me.

Also, I don’t know if I need all this description of the culvert over the arroyo or whatever it was and the set up of his porch. I can see where this would be useful to you as an author in getting a clear view of the scene of your story, but I don’t think the reader needs this kind of detail. I might be wrong, but it seems to me the important thing is where he lives and not how he came to purchase the property.

One thing bothered me about his house hunting too. If the setting is so forbidding, why on earth would he be looking for a house out in the middle of the heat and dust? I mean, he puts a lot of effort into this house-hunting; he's looking for weeks. He really seems to want to set up housekeeping in the middle of hell. That didn't make sense to me.



Actually, once he mentions that he teaches at the University, that was the point that grabbed my interest. I wanted to know what he taught and what the U was like. When I first read that your hero was a professor-private eye, I kind of swallowed hard. That seems to me like it'll be a tricky one to pull off. Those two personas are quite different, and I'm really interested to see how you'll make him authentic as one without subtracting from the believability of the other. That's going to be a real challenge.

We were talking about creating character backgrounds once in the AH, about writing biographies of your characters to help you get to know them. Personally, I've tried that once or twice, but I always have too much fun writing their bios, and I don't know how much that helps me really understand them. I mean, if you understand them enough to write their biographies, it seems to me like you already know them about as well as it's possible to know a character, and these bios have a way of spinning off into stories of their own.

If you're just trying to establish what happened to this guy in West Texas, wouldn’t a little thumbnail description be more useful than spinning it out into a full story?

Well, it's up to you. So far you've got a great setting for a story, and a setting that I'd be interested in spending some time in. But I also want to know where this story's heading and what kind of adventure this is going to be. I think you still have to solve that problem.

---dr.M.

 

[drlust]

Hi:

Just a quick reply to Dr. M's question...yes, that's right. This is a stand alone book, so what you've got is the first four pages of that book. Also, quickly, the house is central to the story, hence the time spent on it early on...it brings the main characters together and much of the action revolves around it (and the mineral rights that go with it).

Allan

 

[Penelope Street]

I'm guessing from 'Tech' and 'Post' and 'Slayton' that the university in question is Texas Tech in Lubbock? I've driven through the area a few times and even spent the night in a motel off highway 84 near Slaton during the eighties because the windshield wipers on my old falcon quit working during one of those thunderstorms. I was thrilled to find any place at all, let alone one for thirteen bucks. Sure, the roof leaked and it smelled icky, but at least I didn't have to sleep in my car.

I liked the descriptions, but after a handful of paragraphs I was thinking, "Ok, I got the picture, on with it already." What I pictured was a desert with wind-eroded red rock formations and little vegetation other than cactus, not the irrigated plains of the Texas panhandle. Also, I think the flow is a bit off, as if the paragraphs might not quite be in the best order?

The flashback is smooth enough and gives me a question or two I want answered; hard to say more about its effect without reading the entire story.

The description of the house is good too. I liked it better than the description of the region. Maybe I'm spoiled by contemporary plumbing, but is an old bunkhouse with an outhouse really exactly what he's looking for?

I suppose the most important thing I can say is I was interested and would have read onward had there been more. That's the best you can hope for in an opening, right?

Take Care,
Penny

 

[drlust]

Hi Penny:

Right you are...it is Texas Tech that I'm thinking of. I spent a year in Austin back in the late 1980s and a good friend of mine from graduate school taught at Texas Tech. I went and spent a couple of weeks with him during the summer and thought it seemed like hell on earth. I guess maybe my time in Texas slowed me down too much, given what you and Dr. M. have written about the pacing. Point well taken. As for the contrast between the irrigated plains of the region, the canyons are a whole different story...dry, lacking vegetation, etc., etc.

Allan

 

[wishfulthinking]

Hi Dr Lust, solid writing effort. Not sure if I can add anything though I feel as though you have given me a snapshot, so what I say is on the basis of not knowing where you are leading me

What I got so far:
* he hates wind that smells like cow piss and dust - *wrinkling nose!*
* he wants to buy a place.

What I don't get so far is that he is a PI. He doesn't make observations that I would think (like I know ) a PI would make. Eg he thinks the place is deserted because the glass is broken etc. I don't know the area, but wouldn't there be some other indications - eg the generator is/isn't running, no livestock or feed, rubbish bins empty or full of food remains dating back to the stone age, there is no car or the car has no tyres and is no better than a trash heap? Wouldn't it be going through his mind almost like a checklist as he walks up the drive. Would he be worried about potshots? (sorry, have no idea )

I'm worried you spent so much time on the weather and the setting is because you didn't know what else to say. I think you really need to chop and change it a bit to try and grab me - eg starting out with the real estate agent and working back/forth. But I do like the unrushed, lazy feel to it.

Jumping straight into the description of the setting - As a reader I need some action first, eg that he is driving a car, before you go on to tell me about where he is. This is personal thing though, because I skim to find out, and then I may or may not go back and read about the setting.

Great start though. Good luck, this is not an easy story to write!

 

[drlust]

Hi:

Thanks to everyone who wrote thus far. I can see right away where the issues are. I suppose I got so entranced by my description of the place that I forgot to grab the reader. This is why I wanted to post this here!

Regarding some of the specific comments, as I go back and re-read what I wrote in light of what the three of you said, I'd agree that it takes too long to get moving. But, in defense of the choices I made, here was my thinking behind it all:

1. As Rose noted, I did want a slow, kind of lazy feel to it. My impressions of Texas during the year I lived there (when I rented an out-building on a ranch about 30 miles outside of Austin) was that it was all about slow. Slow talkin', slow movin', slow thinkin'. Not that this should be perceived as any sort of commentary on any famous Texan, but it was just that way to me...especially as someone coming from the Northeast. By the end of my year there, though, I'd slowed down a lot. One reason, of course, was that it was too damned hot to move fast. Anyway, I wanted the reader to get a sense of that. Apparently, I went too far and I'll be thinking about ways to revise.

2. When I was there I was also impressed by the "Texas-sized" weather we had and whatever stories I'd tell my friend who lived in West Texas, he'd always top me. He's the one who used to tell me the weather out there was biblical. I always felt like a fish out of water in Texas and I wanted to communicate to my reader just how out of water my main character felt. A central device in the plot of the book is that (a) he's really glad to have a university teaching job and (b) he couldn't be more miserable where he is. But (c) for a short time a woman comes into his life who changes that outlook. And then (d) that relationship goes to hell and now (when the story begins), they only get together when the dust blows. It's a case involving her that ultimately leads to his departure from the area and from academia. So, it's the weather that brings them together at times and so I wanted to put it out in front, as though it were one of the characters in the book.

3. I particularly appreciate Rose's comment that she had no idea this was a PI we're talking about. I wrote this assuming that the reader knew all that I knew about the main character. Bad, bad, bad.

Thanks again for the comments. Back to the drawing board!

Oh, and for those who are interested, to my continued puzzlement, the story I posted here last time for comment (Orgasmatron) continues to be my highest rated story (4.85 at last peek). Given our discussion of that story, it does make me wonder if the audience in the SF category is more forgiving than those in other categories.

Allan

 

[BlackShanglan]

DrLust -

I'm going to do this by commenting as I read, to give you a sense of how it's striking one reader as it unfolds. Once I'm done that, I'll sum up at the end and try to draw threads together. I'm going in cold, so I won't comment on other SDC posts in this one.

Shanglan

Lonesome Dust

The dust had been blowing for five days now without letup. The only mercy in it was that just before it started up, the wind had been from the southeast for two days, bringing with it the smell of the feedlots down around Slayton. Cow shit, cow piss, cow sweat. God I hated that smell. Twelve thousand head of cattle crammed together in less than 200 acres. When they stood up in the evening and started to move toward the feed troughs they kicked up such a cloud of dried shit, piss and sweat that the least breeze from their direction left me gagging. Whenever it got too bad I‘d check into a motel until the wind turned back around from the west.

Not bad for an opener. Good, gritty sense of the physical place. My only objection here is the reiteration of three stand-out words - shit, piss, sweat - very close to each other. It jars the attention a bit.

Only Americans have been stupid enough to actually live here. The Comanche just passed through on their way down from the Sierra Blancas to their hunting grounds in the Hill Country. The Spaniards passed through on their way to Eldorado. They were smart enough to know they weren’t going to find their city of gold here. All they left behind were some archeological sites and a name—the Llano Estacado, the Staked Plains—an homage to the Yucca and Agave bloom stalks that dot the plains. Even the Mexicans gave it a pass—that is, until the Anglos settled the area for good.

I like the use of repeated structure here to heighten the sense of desolation and loneliness that marks the opening mood of the story. The Spainiards get a little detailed, though, and start to draw me off from that into a more in-depth discussion of word orgins and local names. It's interesting information, but it undercuts your use of repetition to create mood and it leads to a slightly draggy pace that feels like the tightness of the structure is starting to unwind.

The weather here is nothing short of Biblical—tornadoes, thunderstorms that can drop three inches of rain in an hour, turning the wash down below my house into a raging torrent for a couple of hours, isolating me up here against the canyon walls, hail stones the size of baseballs—and sometimes even softballs—that can punch through your roof and end up in your living room, It even rains mud sometimes, when the leading edge of one of the thunderstorms kicks up a wall of dust and converts it to falling droplets of mud along the boundary between the dust and the rain.

I'd suggest looking at some puncutation and grammar issues here. I assume that the word "It" is capitalized because you intended a new sentence, so let's call that a typo. That still leaves a first sentence with some serious parallel structure problems. A list or series should be composed of grammatically similar elements - all nouns or all verbs in the same tense. Instead we have two nouns ("tornadoes" and "thunderstorms") followed by two verbal phrases describing the thunderstorm ("turning" and "isolating") and then another noun ("hail stones") with a dashed addition and a following description, and without an "and" to indicate to the reader "end of the series." I think it would be best to work on this, as right now the reader ends up a bit lost in the various objects and phrases. One way to revise it would be to put the thunderstorm at the end after an "and" marking it as the last in the series of objects or events. Once you've done that, it's more clear to the reader that the verbal phrases are descriptors for the thunderstorm and not new items in the series or descriptors for something else in the sentence.

From late April until early November the temperature soars to over 100 almost every day. At least the nights cool down into the 60s. We do have winter here. Not a real winter of course, but I’ve been here five years and it’s snowed at least once every year. Two years ago we had three feet of snow the day before Christmas. The whole city shut down because they don’t own a single snowplow. Bulldozers were called in to clear the routes to the emergency rooms. Of course, it was all melted within four days and the panic subsided.

I think we're losing focus here, or at least I as the reader am no longer sure of the purpose of the opening. In the first few paragraphs, I was enjoying the desolate, powerful feel of the place and making emotional connections to isolation and a sort of spiritual grimness and harsh, beaten-down existance. Now the text seems to be moving away from that to more of a lighter tone and a sort of conversational review of local weather. I'm no longer certain why I am being told about the weather and the powerful impact of the opening imagery is fading away.

Only one thing is for certain and that’s the wind. Growing up in the mountains of New York I thought I was used to the wind, but not like this. A low wind day in West Texas is 15 m.p.h. Most days it blows in the 20s and at this time of year, right on the border between spring and summer, 35-40 is more the rule. That’s when the goddamn dust starts. Some days it’s just hazy and gritty, but when the wind really blows, you can’t see a fucking thing.

Right now, staring out my window, I can’t see the far wall of the canyon and that’s less than half a mile off. All I can see is billowing, surging clouds of red dust, like something Stephen Spielberg created for a movie. How there is any dirt still on the ground west of us I can’t imagine. Not even the sun can get through—we’ve been in a half twilight now since Monday morning, the sun glowing like a red dot up in the dust clouds. You know it’s there because you can feel the heat of it, but most of the time the light is what, in Upstate New York, we’d call “bright overcast.”

More of the same. I don't object to the descriptions in terms of their style or the language used, but I'm rapidly losing my bearings and my sense of purpose. I'm not sure why I'm still getting weather, and I'm starting to get a little cranky about it. It's wearing on the goodwill that the initial paragraphs generated.

Same feelings carry through the discussion of the dust storms. I can see some connection to an emotional purpose with the crankiness of people and the irritation they feel, but I feel like I was there on the human connection back in the first paragraph, and more powerfully so. Now it's losing strength and becoming a little nagging. Also, I'll suggest that dust is more challenging than thunderstorms or hail in symoblic terms; people see thunder and hail as dramatic images of danger and angry nature, whereas dust has a duller character. If you're really keen to make them feel the dust storm (not sure it it's vital to later development or something), then I would just do that. Really make them feel what it's like, and leave out the other weather that will only confuse the issue. On the whole right now, the weather's been given too many aspects for me to really feel any one of them.

If I’d had half a brain I’d have bought a new house close to campus that was sealed up against the dust. Nope. Not me. I had to buy this creaky old post and beam bunkhouse built in 1917 for the Mexicans who worked the ranch on the Caprock up above me. Three hundred and forty days a year I love my house, but not when the dust is blowing. I just can’t keep it out of this old place.

I like the voice here. It's engaging and homey without becoming a caricature of itself. If only the speaker was not talking about the dust ... (Or if only there was less other weather to have worn me down by this point.)

I hate the way it gets in my ears, between my teeth and is caked in the corners of my eyes when I wake up. I can’t even use my hot tub—not that I’d want to be outside when it’s blowing—because I have to keep the lid on tight or it’ll turn into a mud bath. The cheapo transistor radio I bought so I could listen to some music during the dust storms only picks up three stations—one full of wailing cowboy ballads, another offering non-stop end of the world fire and brimstone from some hardcore Baptist crazies down around Post, and a Tejano station serving up one jaunty, jazzy song after another. What they’ve got to be so fucking happy about I have yet to figure out.

Good on concrete detail. I just need a bit more sense of purpose here, which I think can be instilled by cutting back on the quantities of description and detail that go before.

All this week I’ve gone into town just long enough to teach my classes, hold my office hours, and grab something to eat. The rest of the time I spend here, sitting, reading, or at least trying to read, and staring out of the window. That, and I wait for Mindy.

Once the dust has been blowing for at least three days I know she’ll come. Something about all the ozone in the air I guess—but day after day of blowing dust makes her want to fuck—and fuck me in particular. She knows I’ll be here—cranky as hell, full of aggressive, angry energy, energy she can put to good use.

This is a strong characterization that gives me a good opening idea of both characters. That said, it's a little tricky to accept it because the description you've given of the dust weather makes it sound like close physical contact would be the least appealing thing in the world under those circumstances. Can you give me a line or two to help me understand how this could make someone randy?

It was this old house that brought us together.

Bit of a heavy transition.

Four years ago I started looking for a place to live and focused my search on the canyons east of town for two reasons. They, at least, offered some scenery as compared to the unrelenting flatness of the Caprock, and the people who live out here in the canyons are here because we want to isolate ourselves from the city. In the canyons I hoped I’d be able to reclaim one tiny piece of the solitude I’d come to depend on when I lived in the Adirondacks.

This is better. I like the double duty this paragraph is doing - describing the setting and fleshing out the character at the same time. I think that's where things are sometimes going wrong earlier. Some of the early weather description feels a little thin and unfocused because it's not doing double duty. It's just doing one thing - telling me about the weather - and it's not connecting it to a feeling for the town, a sense of the narrator, a hint of foreshadowing, or something else to add both density and purpose to the lines.

Interesting work with character in his quest for the house in the canyons. I like how it develops him. I do feel a little wary, however, at how far this is going to meander before I see some sort of action or sign of where the story as a whole is going.

For the next half hour I stomped all around, examining the structure, the flooring, what of the pipes I could see. Surprisingly, the place seemed pretty sound except for all the broken glass and the smell of piss in what had been the dining room. Downstairs was a big living room with an actual fireplace—where the firewood came from in this land without trees I had no idea—a dining room, a kitchen and a utility room out back with rusted out hookups for a washer and dryer. Upstairs were four small bedrooms, one of which had about a dozen rotting condoms on the floor. It took me a minute to figure out what was missing—bathrooms. Leaning out one of the upstairs windows I solved that little mystery—a two-door outhouse back behind the house about fifty feet from the back door.

I think I'm getting too much here. I've lost the opening of the story and am into a detailed description of the house that does not form substantial emotional or plot connections. I'm asking myself, "Why do I need to see this house?" It may be that later in the story, it will be important, but it needs to convey some sense of signficance now or I'm going to skim it and/or give up on working out where all of this description is going.

I felt the same way about most of the rest of the story about the house.

“Sugar,” she said, laughing lightly, “I’ve been waiting for you to call me for close to two years now.”

This I like both for the voice and for the hints as to the nature of the person on the other end of the phone. I just would have liked to have gotten there a good deal sooner.

So, in summary: you write descriptions well, but I think you need to consider structure more carefully. I enjoyed the choices you made in language and in style through most of this, but I often felt lost for a sense of purpose and the pace was very slow. There are smaller sections of description that are powerful and tight, but there are also large, rambling patches that don't convey a sense of direction or movement. I would consider cutting back on physical detail and asking more searching questions about what the key descriptive elements are and what they have to do with the story you are telling. Weather and environment can play an important and symbolically powerful role in a story, but only if they are trimmed down to a smaller number of powerful visual symbols that carry weight and depth through their connection to the text.

Shanglan

 

[drlust]

Hi Shanglan:

Thanks for the very detailed comment. If you read up into the others you'll see that we've got what amounts to a general agreement about this opening...that is, everyone feels the same loss of purpose/direction as the opening unwinds. Your comments on the language are all well taken. Thanks.

One thing I've been thinking about since yesterday (or was it the day before) is my desire to have the weather be a main character in the story. I'm sticking with that decision, primarily because if you read anything about life in the high plains, the weather always seems to be one of the main characters. You just can't escape it and it's something that brings people together or drives them apart. So, one thing I'm going to do to tighten this up is extract a lot of the detail from the opening and save it for later points in the tale, working in details here and there so that the reader comes away with a clear sense of the importance of weather to the lives of people who live in this place.

Allan

 

[BlackShanglan]

One thing I've been thinking about since yesterday (or was it the day before) is my desire to have the weather be a main character in the story. I'm sticking with that decision, primarily because if you read anything about life in the high plains, the weather always seems to be one of the main characters. You just can't escape it and it's something that brings people together or drives them apart. So, one thing I'm going to do to tighten this up is extract a lot of the detail from the opening and save it for later points in the tale, working in details here and there so that the reader comes away with a clear sense of the importance of weather to the lives of people who live in this place.

Allan

I think that that is an excellent idea. I hope that my comments didn't obscure the fact that I thought the opening quite good, and that the weather worked well for me in the early sections. Your decision to cut it into smaller chunks and integrate throughout the text should make it more managable and should also more effectively imply its significance by returning to it from time to time. I'm looking forward to seeing what you do with it - hope you'll post some of your revisions.

Shanglan

 

[rpsuch]

This and that

I take it this is a mystery as well as the sequel. I also assume you're writing it in hopes of getting it published, so my comments will address that.

I've attended some writing conferences and had the opportunity to speak with some agents and editors and even an publisher. They wanted to know who got killed, what got stolen, who was kidnapped or whatever the story is going to be about very quickly. The agents ask for that because they know the editors ask for that. They get so many manuscripts and sample chapters that their main focus is finding a reason to reject. Your excerpt is 2321 words according to Word. I understand that books have around 250 words per page (surprisingly small, isn't it?) which means this covers 11 pages. That's a very long time to keep an editor's attention without knowing what it's about. Agents have different things they look for. They seem to ask for 3 chapters and expect to find in them an idea of how you do exposition, how you develop characters, how you develop plot, how you pace and how you write dialog. They want to see enough in those chapters to judge whether it will be time well spend trying to develop a new author. I'm not saying this is a good approach or that they are good judges of talent, but that seems to be the way most of them feel, at least the ones I and friends have spoken with. Your approach may work for readers. We're willing to take some time to decide whether it is worth continuing. The people you need to get it sold probably lack that patience.

Setting can work very well as a character and the setting you're talking about seems to have the possibility of influencing the action. But you can give it to us in doses. Add more information as it becomes relevant. If it's all relevant, we may have to go back to the beginning to find out about the rain when we need to know about it. It's like meeting a person who tells you his whole life story. That's hard to follow and can be hard to remember when you're trying to understand them. I used Philadelphia as a minor character in a mystery I'm trying to sell. My (validation) readers are all from the area and every one said to tone it down. It's now sprinkled throughout and no description runs very long.

Think about stories you read here. You probably pick by genre and a 75-character teaser. So you start to read a Loving Wives story and he tells you how they met in high school and how they dated through college and what they majored in and how they eventually got married. Unless the teaser is great, if that background is too long, you're probably off to another story. Even if it is beautifully written, you don't yet know what it's about and the author better do something to get your interest or you're gone. The stories that keep you reading are the ones that let you know there is some crisis coming and give you some idea what it is about. Then you're willing to get through the back story to find the answers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with what you've written, except for the repeat of the three words in the first paragraph, but we have no idea where you're going and the longer you take to clue us in, the more we become concerned that you may not be going anywhere (not you personally, but the story).

Just like we pace clues and character traits and events, you can pace the setting. When you've got a book or two under your belt, the editor will be more likely to listen to your explanation of why the story development you chose is the better artistic vision. Until then, (s)he wants to know who is going to buy it and how well it matches the patterns of those books being bought.

I know, the comments are practical and don't address the art of the writing. After breaking half the rules of the mystery genre in the first draft, I've seen the light.

 

[rpsuch]

example

I just read the first chapter of Mystic River. He gives a view of the two neighborhoods three boys come from, the socioeconomics of the areas, the nature of the relationship between the boys, their place in their families, the relationship between the families and a key incident that sets the story in motion. His picture of the neighborhoods is not as complete as yours, but he blends in the story, characters and their relationships in a way that compels you to continue reading. You have an idea of what will be happening, even though the incident leads to a chain of events in the distant future that comprise the heart of the story.

I just finished One Hundred Years Of Solitude. It starts:

Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.

We know nothing about who Aureliano Buendia is, but he's created an anticipation of a future event in his life about which we've got to be curious. The book is about his family and their village.

Mix in something about the story as you unfold the description of the west Texas environment. Give us an anticipation of what or whom we are going to be reading about.

 

[drlust]

Hi:

Thanks for these very helpful comments and for picking up the thread of this forum so much after the fact. Welcome to our discussion circle!

Allan

 

[oOScarletWingsOo]

My Impressions

The weather here is nothing short of Biblical—tornadoes, thunderstorms that can drop three inches of rain in an hour, turning the wash down below my house into a raging torrent for a couple of hours, isolating me up here against the canyon walls, hail stones the size of baseballs—and sometimes even softballs—that can punch through your roof and end up in your living room, It even rains mud sometimes, when the leading edge of one of the thunderstorms kicks up a wall of dust and converts it to falling droplets of mud along the boundary between the dust and the rain. From late April until early November the temperature soars to over 100 almost every day. At least the nights cool down into the 60s. We do have winter here. Not a real winter of course, but I’ve been here five years and it’s snowed at least once every year. Two years ago we had three feet of snow the day before Christmas. The whole city shut down because they don’t own a single snowplow. Bulldozers were called in to clear the routes to the emergency rooms. Of course, it was all melted within four days and the panic subsided.

This seems to go on for a bit too long. I would like to have seen it maybe start here:

From late April until early November the temperature soars to over 100 almost every day.

But maybe there are some phrases in this section that you like best so perhaps you should pick those with the purpose of moving through this portion a bit faster.

I find your descriptions to this point to be strong (Having lived there myself I know of what you speak ::wink:: )

One of these days I’m sure it’s going to rain frogs.

This phrase should reflect back to your comment about the weather being biblical. I’m called to remember a line from the comedy show of Lewis Black. He’s talking about some kinda of strange weather where there were huge temperature changes over a 3 day period (he also referred to them as biblical) but he had summed it up that he expected the next season to be locusts. My point is that you should maybe add a little humor here and reflect back to the biblical comment.

All I can see is billowing, surging clouds of red dust, like something Stephen Spielberg

Omit Stephen Spielberg, some how to me the use of a well known name removes the originality of your description) created for a movie.

You know it’s there because you can feel the heat of it, but most of the time the light is what, in Upstate New York, we’d call “bright overcast.”

This portion interrupts the flow for me. I would omit it and start with: After two days of a dust storm people get cranky, sniping…)

Once the dust has been blowing for at least three days I know she’ll come.

Reword this sentence…maybe: Once the dust has finished blowing, I know she’ll come.

I’m concerned about the order of events once you introduce Mindy. That description of their sexual connection is elemental and strong but then you take the pace way down by going into an extended description of how you acquired the house. The only way you tie Mindy to it is with “It was this old house that brought us together.”, unless of course you’ve cut the piece before that could be revealed.

choice of words: You’ve covered this area well. Your descriptions are vivid.

style: Your style works too, although at times I think you get a bit wordy and over describe in certain passages.

structure, overall: The structure is sound

clarity and coherence, overall: The clarity is good. At times I think that you could lessen breaking in with comparisons between New York and Texas. In the sample that is given I’m there with you in Texas and found those distracting.

dramatic values: I think we got a twinge of where it could go at the initial introduction of Mindy. I’m not curious about what will happen next though.


character: From the selection I don’t get much description of the narrator. I really don’t come away knowing anything about him or his motives. What’s presented seems more driven by descriptions rather than your character. Since you said that this selection is “character and place” I think you may want to put more character in. You’ve locked in the place well.

If I picked this up and read this selection pre-purchase or pre-check out at the library I don’t think this is enough to convince me to read on.

I would suggest you choose a different title though. ::smile::

 

[tempsbrat]

I got the feeling for texas and what a terrible piece of land it was pretty quickly. I would condense some of the descriptives down, to make the reader feel the place and then move on to something more pertinent to the story. I'd go into why they left NY for Texas. What they are doing there and why the need for such solitude sooner.

I wasnt even sure of the sex of the person, which I'd like to know. While I enjoy the description, I wanted something to spark my interest more. There is an author I like a lot, but it irks me that it takes 200 pages to get into the book before I concider it good. Most of that time I am trying to survive it to get to the meat.

I'd be willing to read on to see if something developed to interest me though.

Good luck with it.

 

[Pure]

bump!