Tone – Page 2 – Joseph Carrabis, Author Blog

An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I

We left off in An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I with the promise of sharing the original Fains I opening and the rewrite making use of multiple storycrafting techniques.

First, the original’s first ~900 words

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.”
Mrs. Young lifted her gown and cursed the folds as her hands fought to find their place. Mr. Young wrenched the door open.
A hallway nightlight flooded their bedroom with dark colors.
“Put on a real light , ” he said as he and his wife raced down the hall to Tim’s room.
Mr. Young entered first. Mrs. Young caromed off the door at the end of the hall.
Mr. Young grabbed Tim as he landed on the bed, his tears washing Tim as he held his son against him, rocking and speaking softly.
Timothy continued to scream, unrelenting, unaware of his father’s arms, each scream higher than the last, longer than the last, each scream more hopeless than the last.
Mrs. Young flicked the light in Tim’s room. His bed held a sweat soaked outline of his body. “Can you move him? I should change the sheets.”
Mr. Young continued rocking Tim, his eyes closed, still holding his son against him, too big to sit in dad’s lap, too terrified not to. “Why bother? The covers are off the bed. Just let it dry out.”
Tim stopped shrieking. His eyes started to focus. He sat up, rigid, arms locked by his sides. He looked at his father.
“You’re home, Tim. Mom and I are right here. Do you know where you are?”
Tim clenched his father like a child seeking the security of its mother’s breasts, sobbing heavily. His body finally went limp and he slept again.
Mr. Young looked at his wife, framed in the doorway. “I’ll spend the night in here with him.

***

Continue reading “An Example of the Experiments, 3 – Fains I“

An Experiment in Writing – Part 9: Final Conflicts Worth Reading

A little more on closings.

Or near closings because the final conflict between protagonist and antagonist should come as close to the end of the story as possible…unless there’s another antagonist waiting for a few rounds with the champ.

Think I’m onto something? Take a class with me or schedule a critique of your work.
Think I’m an idiot? Let me know in a comment.
Either way, we’ll both learn something.

Pick up a copy of Empty Sky and/or any and/or all of my books because it’s a nice thing to do, you care, and I need the money.

An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I

We left off in An Example of the Experiments – Fains I with a rewrite of the first paragraph, which was much better craftwise than the original and still sucked.

It was better than the original because of the solid POV, the protagonist’s situation was clearly stated, the setting and tone were much stronger, more character roles were defined, …

And still it sucked, and I knew it sucked, hence I wrote “Still needs work, though.” at the end of the post.

The real problem was I didn’t know how to fix it because I wasn’t sure of the specifics of what wasn’t working.

Much of the answer came while I worked on An Experiment in Writing – Part 8: Worthy Antagonists when I talked about developing a character’s backstory, about why the character behaves, thinks, responds, interacts, does as they do.

Give the reader only as much character background as necessary for them to understand the story.

Let me give you a caveat at this point: Give the reader only as much character background as necessary for them to understand the story.

Empty Sky’s Earl Pangiosi, The Inheritors’s Seth Van Gelder, look at any of the main and primary characters in my work and you’ll find lots of their background woven into the story.

It seems I do this weaving well because readers constantly comment on how real and vivid my characters are.

Back to Fains I (or “Eye.” I’m still deciding).
Continue reading “An Example of the Experiments, 2 – Fains I“

An Example of the Experiments – Fains I

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).
Continue reading “An Example of the Experiments – Fains I“