First Page: Elegy in Seven Parts (New Adult/Lit Fic)
First Pagefirst page / literary critique13 Comments
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Children lean past the railings to glimpse the outlaws stampede down the street. On the opposite end of the wide, clay-orange thoroughfare stands Deputy Gibbs, his hand hovering over his Colt Peace Maker. His white hat’s brim covers his eyes as he stares mutely at his boots. Here come Smokey Sampson and his Band of Ruffians™, led by Smokey himself. He’s a grizzled horse-thief and stage-coach robber who in recent years upgraded to murder. Wanted in seventeen counties across the mythical West, Smokey arrives now in West Town where he plans to hide away his latest bounty while getting lousy-drunk at the Spittoon Saloon. Behind Smokey ride the Ruffians: Rattlesnake Jack, Kyle the Kid, and Bloody Ben, on all-black horses wearing black bandanas wrapped around their faces. Behind Gibbs, Sheriff Townsend paces his horse back and forth across the street. The Sheriff totes a rusted rifle and chews steadily on a cigar.
Poking their heads through the porch slats, children gasp as Smokey rears up his horse and halts. He leaps down from the saddle, his silver spurs rattling, and approaches Gibbs. “See you decided to show your yellow-bellied face. We thought you’d be hiding inside by now.” He speaks broadly, gesturing to the crowd crabbed onto West Town porches.
Gibbs nods and says, “We gonna have a gunfight or not?”
Usually, they might banter for a minute or two before getting down to business, but Gibbs just drank half a liter of rye-whiskey. Every day—three times a day at noon, five pm, and nightfall, Gibbs and Smokey face off, take ten paces away from each other, turn around, and shoot. Blam, blam, fake smolder rising from the barrels. Smokey turns first—that devil—and then Gibbs, quick as a whitetail, twists and shoots. West Town smells like barbecued catfish as plumes of manufactured smoke obstruct the crowd’s vision. Coughing, hacking, the children waving at their faces. Then Smokey lying dead in the dust. His outlaws book out of town. The audience cheers.
I sit on a barrel next to Rory, peering over tourists’ heads. Grit my teeth. Whoops erupt from the horizon, followed by thunder of hooves. Six shirtless Mexican men ride uneasy on brown horses, their chests slathered with white and red paint, their headdresses flopping ridiculously as blue and yellow feathers fall loose behind. In their best impression of Pocahontas’ father, they charge into West Town toward Deputy Gibbs. Townsend levels his rifle at the men, blam, blam, blam, and the savages fall dead from their horses.
One Appalachian Injun™ survives and leaps off his horse. Tucking his head down, he tramples clumsily toward Townsend and Gibbs. He’s Chief Watchapoo™ who killed the latest rangers in the north plains, but he looks more like Juan—my friend—with an emaciated frame, bleary eyes that see nothing clear without glasses, and incredibly advanced writing skills. At our community college, he’s the top of the class, but here he attempts a stuttered war cry that betrays his fear. As he rises his tomahawk to Gibbs, the deputy swings a fist. Wap, right in the jaw comes that good-ole cowboy justice. Down goes Juan. The audience rises to their feet, their voices raucous with the joy of victory, a win in which they too are implicated. Again, for the second time that day, the frontier cowboys killed the outlaws and savages.
Applause sounds like the thud of corpses as they drop into a mass grave.
I didn’t know who the narrator is. He’s describing a tourist show, but why? At the end of the page, I have no idea who narrator is, why he’s at the show, or more importantly why I should care. Then I get to “Applause sounds like the thud of corpses as they drop into a mass grave.” Huh, what?
Because so little is going on here, it’s hard to figure out how to fix this, but I’d think if you insert your narrator’s opinions earlier, it would be better. As in “Smokey’s a horse-thief and stage-coach robber, but better that than a pansy-assed deputy stuck in a dead-end town,” or “Gibbs shoots, Smokey goes down, and the town was safe, that’s the role I want.”
Present tense is awkward and you can’t just leave out “is” because you don’t like it. “Coughing, hacking, the children ARE waving at their faces. Then Smokey IS lying dead in the dust.” Without the helping is/are, you have a gerund, which acts as a noun, making it read like a sentence fragment.
What’s more, simple present is used for repeated actions, like “Usually, they banter for a minute or two” and “Every day, Gibbs and Smokey face off.” We use is-verbing for actions in progress, like “That children are waving/fanning their faces.” This makes your scene more confusing, because you start off using simple present for an action that is happening in your scene, “the outlaws stampede down the street” and then to talk about repeated actions “Usually they banter.” Yes, I can figure out the switch and that Smokey IS lying in the street, but it’s a pain.
Following on from what SAO said, first person present tense POV is difficult to write. You might consider trying this scene again in third person. Maybe play around with it a bit and see what is the best fit for your story. As I reader I prefer third person, but that is entirely personal preference. If you keep first person, perhaps find a way of identifying your narrator sooner. I want to know who I am routing for. Good luck!
What they said. I’m very suspicious of present tense in novels; I have to read more carefully for some reason (takes off book buyer/reader hat and dons writer hat). What’s with the TMs? They threw me right out, as though the piece is ad copy or something equally suspect.
Hello Author,
Thanks for having the courage to submit this. Taking into consideration the excellent critiques above, which will help you tighten this story up even more, I think your strongest and also the most controversial parts of your story are in the last two paragraphs.
That’s where I see the heart of your story and get a glimpse of what you’re trying to do. I think your early descriptions can still be used, but only after the changes suggested by the other posters on present tense POV. Please understand, it wasn’t quite such a deal breaker for me, but based on your talent as a writer (highly evident on your first page) by doing this, your first page will be even stronger than it is. Another suggestion would be to come up with your own names for the Native American performers instead using trade marked characters, but I understand that you wanted some of this grounded in real history.
I’d read on, because I enjoy Lit fic. However, I did have a level of unease with the very paragraphs I enjoyed the most.
I’ll tell you where I was pulled out of the story. The last paragraph, where this morphs into another era with terms and characterizations that I found offensive. Please understand, its your book and you have every right to create characters as you see fit.
But please also remember that your readers will be diverse. I have an idea of what you’re attempting to do. I see that you’ve added the irony of Hispanic characters who end up playing Native Americans for the enjoyment of those who frequent the western shows. You’ve even got your narrator stating that “Juan is my friend.” But the observation includes terms like “savages” and “injun” that gave me pause.
So as the writer, ask yourself if the minority character would define himself in those terms (savage and injun) if they were the narrator. In short, there’s another way to do this, especially to show that its not something the narrator condones. As it currently reads, there’s not enough division (for me) between the narrator’s passive observation regarding what’s wrong with this whole picture.
I like the suggestion of this being third person instead of first, simply because of the direction your book appears to be taking. Imho the gravity of your last paragraph deserves to be told in the voices of the people experiencing it, not the narrator, who may (or may not) be used as a “guide” to the other side AKA explaining how Juan and others feel, when the middle man/woman could be cut out.
I’m not sure why this continues to be a popular method of adding diversity, where readers get to “see” minorities through the eyes of the non-minority character (if this isn’t the case, then I apologize in advance, but it read that way for me). My advice? Trust in your writing and let your minority characters speak for themselves.
My best to you and your novel. Your first page is intriguing and the setting is original. I think after you work out a few things, you’ll have a powerful story to tell. If you could include a short blurb, it would be most helpful.
Hi Author,
I echo the above. I’m intrigued, I’m also shaking my head. I understand the device of the trademark symbols (after I read far enough along to get the gimmick) but it was unsettling to see the terms “…Band of Ruffians” and “Appalachian Injun” used. Check pre-Civil War Kansas history for the term Border Ruffians, a pro-slavery group, for a very similar use. Injun is pejorative, and Appalachian is inaccurate for Wild West town. Granted, the developers of Wild West town probably don’t know, or care, but I do.
SAO hit the nail on the head regarding present tense. I agree with her critique 100%.
I’m not sure I’d read on. I might, just to find out who the narrator is, but unless that happened fairly quickly, I’d probably put this aside.
Hey, y’all, I guess I should clear up something. I appreciate the comments, though. The first page describes a daily show at a Western-theme park, and the names are purposely offensive. That’s why the narrator points them out (also, they’re trade-marked due because the fictional theme park trade-marks the names, not I.
The narrator himself is Native American, and he’s being rather cynical about the cultural appropriation of the theme park. It explains this in the next few paragraphs (not included, this is a rather cold opening). This takes place in NC and the Mexican men are playing Native American men in this live-show.
I am interested especially in the comments about present-tense (this is my third novel but the first I’ve written in present tense), and would not the use of so many “is” and “are” words weaken the writing? That’s the advice I got off-the-bat, for writing present tense, that you could use active rather than passive verbs.
Thanks all for the advice. Keep it coming.
Regarding the grammar:
1) when in the sentence, “the children are waving at their faces,” the verb is ‘to wave’ and “are waving” is how you say the present progressive tense of ‘to wave’ in third person. English makes many tenses with auxilliary verbs. For example, I have waved, I was waving, I had been waving, I will wave, I will be waving, I will have been waving for an hour. Fundamentally, this is no different from languages that change endings to make those differing tenses.
So, the “are” in ‘The children are waving’ is part of the verb ‘to wave’ (note verbs are always named in the infinitive form, which in English has the auxiliary verb ‘to’). It is not the verb ‘to be.’ To illustrate, let’s change the sentence to “by the time the show is over, the children will have been waving for over an hour”. The word “have” here only exists as a way to express the meaning of wave in “will have been waving.” It is not expressing any sense of owning, which is the meaning of the verb, “to have.” And you can’t make the future tense in English without the auxiliary verb, “will” (or “shall.”)
The sad thing is that people aren’t taught grammar any more, but they learn simple rules like “was” is weak and apply them in the wrong place because they’ve never been given a hint about the many complex rules of grammar (and they are complex for most languages, because forms like “will have been waving” are complex expressions of where in time the verb’s action takes place (as in the waving will happen in the future after some unspecified event which has not yet finished, has finished). I’m sure you can appropriately use all these forms in normal speech.
Why is “was” weak? The most obvious place is passive voice. “Smokey was killed:” he had something happen to him, but he didn’t do anything. Next is statements of fact: “It was windy” “He was tall” Again, nothing is doing anything. If you eliminate these, you get more interesting description “the wind rattled the window panes,” “he towered over her”. But in “the children are waving” someone is doing something.
Verb forms like “waving” are participles, and in English, can be used as adjectives, as well as verbs. “The waving flag,” is a sentence fragment because ‘waving’ is used as an adjective, leaving the fragment without a verb. “The flag is waving” is a sentence with a verb. So, when you say “children waving at their faces” we need to mentally fix what you’ve written to understand it.
But if you eliminate the instances of is/was as auxiliary verbs, you are either misusing English at the risk of confusing people or sounding like you’ve made a typo or you are limiting the ways you can express actions in time.
2) You start off with what is happening now, what our narrator is seeing, using simple present. Okay, I don’t like it, I think it’s wrong, but it’s a trend. But here’s where the problem is: you promptly switch from specific events happening to repeated events (for which the normal usage IS simple present), because there’s no switch in tense, as there would be with past tense (“Every day Smokey and Gibbs face off . . . Smokey turned, bam, bam, he dropped dead.”) It was hard to me to recognize your shift between what happens every show and what is happening in front of the unnamed narrator. (Now, as you may have guessed, I’m sensitive to grammar, perhaps more so than the average English speaker).
@SAO: @SAO:
I’ve never learned this before. Whoa. Alright, well, I am gonna be applying this lessons from now on. It’s all good to be obsessed with grammar. Otherwise, how else could others learn lest ye point out errors when they occur? Much, much appreciated.
I will strive to make the tense less confusing.
Hello Author,
Thanks for the information.
All I can go by is what’s shown on your first page. Sometimes readers close a book sooner than the opening few paragraphs, or your first sentences are enough to hook them. A strong blurb can have some readers continue on because the premise is just that good.
I do recognize what you’re attempting to do, and I commend you for it. Your descriptions are vivid, so it may be the main character/narrator that I’m not connecting to, even though you’re giving him a first person “voice.” I wonder if the answer is to move the last few paragraphs up, whereby your other paragraphs that couldn’t be shown here also move up? I honestly don’t know.
As I read your first page, the narrator isn’t coming across as someone cynical, but someone who has viewed this type of show many times and is unaffected enough to use the same words (savages, injuns) others do. So even if you’re Native American, you may get backlash from some readers. Right now he doesn’t read as conflicted, unsure, or even upset, imho.
You state “the words are purposely offensive” and “The narrator himself is Native American, and he’s being rather cynical about the cultural appropriation of the theme park.”
Imho that needs to be made clearer (and his cynicism stronger) a lot sooner. I don’t think having the narrator Native American is enough to give him a pass.
He’s not (or you’re not, as the writer) offering sarcasm or any type of rebuttal (whether nuanced inward thoughts or sly dialogue on his part) so I guess that’s where I’m at a loss to see where the character’s cynicism is, especially on this first page.
It’s possible that I’m not explaining myself regarding my issue with this (I can only speak for myself, that’s why I’m stressing my personal unease), and its true that other readers may have no such problem. And I do understand, based upon your later post that this may be a case of the page ending before other pertinent info comes out.
This is just my opinion. Again, I wish you all the best with this. In any case, you may want to check out this excellent blog by Debbie Reese:
http://americanindiansinchildrensliterature.blogspot.com/
@wikkidsexycool:
No, this makes a lot of sense.
You lost me at the first few sentences. I paused and said to myself- who the hell is the narrator? Is this omniscient? Oh no, yuck. Then I glanced back up at the genre description that it was lit fic, sighed and tried to carry on, but I couldn’t. For me, not knowing up front what MC I’m taking this journey with would be like me trying to climb a wall of rock without hand holds.
So now I’m skimming, frowning over the dense paragraphs of description and no dialogue I see before me and finally, in the fourth paragraph I see the pronoun I. Hallelujah! LOL Wait a sec? This is first person? When? But okay, I finally have a character I can connect with…oh wait, no I don’t. Back to the distant description. I just couldn’t continue, sorry, you totally lost me there.
Maybe this will make it more clear. I’ve cut and pasted here the only bit of time in the whole scene where we are with the MC – “I sit on a barrel next to Rory, peering over tourists’ heads. Grit my teeth.” The rest is distant description that reads like nonfiction.
I read first person present tense done really, really well all the time because I love NA, erotic romance and read lots of self pub. It’s a powerful device used to bring the reader as close as possible to the character’s journey. But here, you’ve distanced me.
I think you started in the right place, this could be really exciting, you just need to really bring this scene to life by making it happen through the MC’s eyes. In a real way. More dialogue, characters thoughts and reactions. Also, why is the character there, watching this? I need some sort of story question to be answered. As someone else suggested, I think you just need to go back in and rewrite this in different povs until you find the one that sticks. Also, super important, start the first paragraph (first sentence!) in a way that immediately roots the reader to your MC. Help me out here, in the beginning scene I’d like to know who the MC is. The gender, the age…I need something to hold onto or I slide down that rock wall! :)
Although, I don’t read lit fic anymore. My brain is wired for genre romance, so I am seeing this through that filter. BUT, NA readers want emotionally intense, don’t forget your audience.
Thank you so much for posting this for us. It was really interesting!
I agree that the first person present is a difficult tense to write in – mostly because, I think, it’s too easy to slip around between tenses in subtle ways (eg. using a past participle as a descriptor – “black bandanas wrapped around their faces” – throws the sense of time, even though it is grammatically correct).
Also, I get the racial dynamics here (or guessing the subtext, I suppose), but this is dicey territory: done well, this is satire/social commentary, done poorly it’s preachy. Fine line there.
I do like this line: “Usually, they might banter for a minute or two before getting down to business, but Gibbs just drank half a liter of rye-whiskey.” But then, I do like rye whiskey!
i was confused from the first word. I think a little background on the narrator (if you are going to use fisrt person) or a complete change over to third person would fix that issue. However, there was no context for the western -style showdown with the leader of the bandits. If they are running from the law, why come into town to face the sherriff; only tp get shot down in the street? Where did the band of indians come from and why are they barreling through town. I understand, this is a first page galley, but there needs to be some scene staging. Without context, this is very confusing.