Opinions Please - short paragraph

femur61

I'd love to hear people's opinions on this opening paragraph. Is it well described so that a picture is painted, and is there enough in to make you read more. All comments appreciated.

---

I reach for the dial and turn up Shawn Mendes
“Got a feeling I’m going down under,” each note of the song massaging my brain, kneading the temporal lobes with the hope the imaginary massage will decrease the pressure inside my cranium.
“I know I’ll make it out alive,”but I don’t know if I will.

I rock back and forth, closing my eyes, the blackness dragging me into a deep abyss of safety. The song finishes and a squeak of rubber of the window wipers dragging across the now dry window screen causes me to snap my eyes open. I stare out the window. I don’t know when the rain stopped but the now blue sky is reflected in the pond in front of me. The sunshine rays bounce off the glass building to my left sending a kaleidoscope of colours onto the group of office workers rushing home. I look up at the 6th floor. I know he is in there, sitting at his desk, probably with his tie loosened leaning back in his Lazy Boy chair laughing with ease to someone on the phone.

Chatter to my left of the car. A young woman talks on a mobile phone. She is wearing a classic short signature skirt of an office temp, coupled with a smart blouse reminds me when I was a young medical secretary in that very building. Once I was smart, now I look at my mirror and sigh pushing back the straggly wisps of hair.

A tap on my passenger window. It’s a woman I don’t recognise, she taps again.
‘Martha. I didn’t recognise you,’ I say as I roll down the window. I smile, ‘That’s a risqué haircut, very nice. Very nice indeed.’
She sweeps a fallen piece of platinum blonde hair of her bob behind her ear, ‘What are you doing here? Are you not collecting wee bobby from school?’

echo beach

It got my attention and I want to read more but I had a few small issues.

I'm sure Shawn Mendes is well known but I'm not familiar with his work and it doesn't immediately summon up an image for me so perhaps think of exactly what age group you expect to read it.

"I know he is in there, sitting at his desk, probably with his tie loosened leaning back in his Lazy Boy chair laughing with ease to someone on the phone." That is the strongest image but although you talk TO someone you don't laugh to them. The difficulty is if you use the more natural 'with' then you repeat the word but I'm sure you could get a way around it.

"It’s a woman I don’t recognise, she taps again.
‘Martha. I didn’t recognise you,’ I say" The repetition here might be for effect but to me it jars.

I'm not sure 'risque' is a good adjective for a haircut, but maybe my hairdresser isn't adventurous enough! 'Striking' or another word could be equally effective.

"She sweeps a fallen piece of platinum blonde hair" contrasts well with the narrator's "pushing back the straggly wisps of hair" but I'd try to get a little more elegance into the movement and a little more shabbiness into the other to emphasise the difference between them.

I would reconsider the name choice 'Martha'. I know names convey different images to different people but to me it is old fashioned and that doesn't seem to be the image you want for her.

Those are picky things because overall I did like it. Have you written more or is it just an idea at the moment?

femur61

Hi Echo Beach

I agree with you about Shawn Mendes. I had quite a major trauma last summer and he had been on the radio a lot. It's how I felt listening to loud music in the car while trying to get on with my daily life.

I have started an online fiction writing course. an observation I made from some comments I received for this piece. The positives ones were from people in the Uk, and any negatives were from the US saying they couldn't understand what I was trying to say.

Do we on this side of the pond use flowery words with a more indirect way of writing? So we have to paint a picture in our heads. And is the US type of writing a more spoon-fed type of writing? I read a comment on Amazon about Donal Ryan saying that he is another example of Irish writing - overwritten and flowery.

Personally, I always look to see where the author is from. Some modern US books I feel like I am being spoonfed and I get bored.

echo beach

It could be cultural, whatever people are used to. American culture is more based on cinema, it is the home of Hollywood, while in ours the written word is to the fore.
In the end you have to please yourself and find your own style.

alfa beta

It's good, but I think you need to look at each sentence and each phrase closely, read them aloud maybe and make sure everything flows just the way you want it.

One example that jumped out at me was 'the blackness dragging me into a deep abyss of safety.'

That jarred for me. Deep, dark abysses don't conjure up a feeling of safety for me - rather the opposite.

What about: 'I rock back and forth, close my eyes and welcome the darkness as it envelops me in a cocoon of safety.' ... I dunno .... that mightn't be any better, it's just the first thing that came to my mind.

I guess what I'm saying is you need to polish each sentence now until you can polish it no more. Look at adjectives and adverbs - see if they're necessary - drop some words out - see if they're missed - chop longer sentences into two maybe - try everything!! Sometime's you'll find improvements. Sometimes you won't. But that's the fun of editing.

Das Kitty

I even think there's a difference between Irish and UK sensibilities when it comes to writing. I thought it was a very evocative beginning, and I'm already getting a good feel for the narrator's character. I would agree with e_b on naming the singer without describing the music. I'm not familiar with him, so his name evokes nothing of his music style.

pickarooney

For my tastes, there's way too much unnecessary and repetitive, even contradictory description, particularly at the beginning. It gets better towards the end.

Try rewriting each paragraph in ten words, stripped of everything but a skeletal description of what's happening. Is it clear to the reader? For every word you add back in, make sure it's contributing something.

The last thing you should be aiming for is a reader going back over the opening lines trying to decipher it. Don't fall into the trap of trying to wow the reader with an elaborate display of prose. Chances are they won't read the rest of it.

What we've got so far from this excerpt is that the MC is sad and ageing, with a headache, and there is a woman called Martha. This alone wouldn't draw me in. There doesn't need to be helicopters and explosions but there does need to be more than a dodgy haircut.

What's going to happen in this story and, importantly, when is it going to happen?

For modern readers the tendency is towards some kind of cold open, a hook to encourage them to spend some time reading your work rather than the millions of other things they could be reading. It's a daunting task, no doubt.

I had never heard of Shawn Mendes but 10 seconds on YouTube shows you've misquoted the line. He's not in fact off on an unexpected trip to Australia. Honestly you have to do some basic research. A fan reading that will get annoyed. Everyone else will, with luck, skip past it.

femur61

pickarooney wrote: »

I had never heard of Shawn Mendes but 10 seconds on YouTube shows you've misquoted the line. He's not in fact off on an unexpected trip to Australia. Honestly you have to do some basic research. A fan reading that will get annoyed. Everyone else will, with luck, skip past it.

Thanks. I don't know whether to laugh or cry (sorry that's a bit of an overstatement) When it says "I feel like I'm going down under" I wasn't referring to Austrailia. What I was trying to convey was the woman was falling deeper into a black hole of despair. When each note was massaging and kneading the brain is. Massage to me is used for stress release and this person is under stress.

Funny the way different people get different meanings. I assume your male, (sorry could be wrong) but I know a woman who read it and she could understand where I was coming from.

Appreciate your input. I really have to put myself more into the eyes, and mind of the reader.

looksee

Laughing easily to someone on the phone - I liked the 'to' - it creates someone confident and self absorbed imposing his rather jarring personality, rather than sharing a joke, although I would prefer easily to 'with ease'. It appears to be the most important sentence in this introduction; is it?

Cranium in the first paragraph is off-putting in a 'trying too hard' way. Why not just 'head'?

I think you could omit the whole 'sunshine rays' sentence, just have the workers going home, though why are they going home at a time when 'wee Bobby' would be waiting to be picked up from school?

'Wee Bobby' - is Martha Scottish? She knows the main player well enough to know what she (?) should be doing, and commenting on it, while the main player barely recognises her.

alfa beta

femur61 wrote: »

When it says "I feel like I'm going down under" I wasn't referring to Austrailia. What I was trying to convey was the woman was falling deeper into a black hole of despair. When each note was massaging and kneading the brain is. Massage to me is used for stress release and this person is under stress.

The line in the song is 'I feel like I'm going under' (not Down Under).

That's what Pickarooney meant.