Sometime in the mid- to late-1970s, my third time through college (and still having no luck with traditional education of the time), I sat in my study in a rented house on Willand Pond Road and flipped through my copy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (the centenary edition revised by Ivor H. Evans). I wasn’t looking for anything in particular except to be distracted from exceedingly boring classwork.
I found it on pg 409: “Fains I.”
“Fains I” is “a schoolchildren’s term of unknown origin exempting the first to call: ‘Fains I goal-keeping.'”
Dig a little deeper and it’s used to offer protection for someone asserting an unprovable claim.
Dig lots deeper and there’s a reference to “Hercules’ Shirt,” meaning his wearing the skin of the Nemean Lion which was impervious to all but the most powerful weapons (can you say “arms race”?)
That prompted an ~2k word story which is now, thankfully, lost to antiquity.
BTW, that deepest reference is lost except in certain modern retellings of the Hercules legend (such as Dwayne Johnson’s Hercules) in which much of Hercules’ legend is called into question.
Yeah, okay, great.
What’s this got to do with the Experiments (in Writing)?
I mention in An Experiment in Writing – Part 7: Inciting Incidents that my current #work-in-progress is Fains I and that the opening sucks.
Well, of course it does.
And it’s fixable.
I’ve spent considerable neural horsepower over the past few weeks coming up with ways to a) make it better craft-wise and b) make it a better story, period (storytelling).
Some of the solutions point to the (currently 3,425 word) story becoming a novel.
I really don’t want to write another novel right now.
Okay, okay, okay.
What I can do is use Fain’s I as an example of some of the things I bring up in the Experiments in Writing.
Which we’ll begin now, with Fain’s I’s opening paragraph (anybody remember So I gave myself an exercise (eating my own dogfood)…? That’s what we’re going to do here for the next several weeks (or however long it takes for me to decide the story’s working and publishable).
Tim screamed. His father kicked off covers and rose quickly. He didn’t bother with robe or slippers and hollered, “It’s okay, Tim. We’re coming.”
First, and to be completely honest with everyone, this opening isn’t much different from the opening to my recently published Mercy which appears in Tales from The Hanging Tree.
Yes, I am ashamed, and Mercy is already slotted to be a Verduan and Patreo Mystery novel hence will get a massive(!) rewrite.
Back to Fain’s I (FWIW, I liked my original take on the title, Fain’s Eye), read that opening paragraph and who cares?
Who cares who Tim is? Who cares what his father’s doing? I don’t, and because I don’t, chances are the reader won’t, either.
Especially after they get a few paragraphs in.
First Question: Who Owns the Story?
Tim is a highschool senior preparing to take his girlfriend, Betty, to the prom. Does he own the story?
- Yes – then what happens at the story’s start which is about Tim and makes the reader want to know more?
- No – then move on to the next character.
Tim always led the story (even before I knew enough to ask these questions) so let’s let him continue ownership for a while.
Then what’s happening re Tim that’ll keep the reader reading?
How about…
Tim watched the doctor discretely shake his head, no, as he leaned into Michaela, Tim’s wife of thirty-five years, and whisper something. Her eyes welled up and she nodded. The doctor and nurse left the room as Michaela wiped away tears, turned back to him and smiled.
Tim’s eyes went from son to son to daughter to daughter to eldest grandchild as they each glanced at Michaela. She discretely shook her head at each’s gaze. Each nodded and each turned to him with their own smiles. One son, David, glanced at the monitors over Tim’s head as they bipped and beeped and drew jagged lines across the screen. Gayle, his eldest daughter, held his right hand in a soft, loving grip.
He weakly pointed at a cup of ice water with a straw. Michaela tenderly placed the straw between his lips. She watched the fluid rise into his mouth and dribble down his chin. “Slow, my love. Easy.”
Tim pulled his face away, and Michaela dabbed the moisture away with the tissue she used to dry her tears, the sharp tang of her Tocca Cleopatra perfume still there. He smiled up at her before he blinked and coughed, the swishing fluid in his lungs obvious to everyone present.
Bernie, his eldest leaned over him. “Poppa?”
Tim motioned all his family to come forward until they formed a human tent over him. He swallowed, blinked again, and whispered, “I killed her. I helped kill her. I was there. I can tell you where she’s buried. You tell the police. Give her family some peace. There’s nothing they can do to me now.”
Bernie pulled back and stared at his mother. “What did he say?”
Okay. Longer, yes. Lot’s more revealed, though: setting, scene, voice, tone, character.
And it still needs work.
That’s for next week.