 
I must confess at the outset: I don't really get dragons. As a genre, I mean. But then, I don't get vampires either. However, I can't help but note that both genres seem to be enjoying a healthy run in the marketplace with neither my understanding nor my participation, so maybe I'll just focus on what I do understand and leave my personal preferences out of the mix.
What I do understand is that genre means nothing if the writing stinks. Yours is good. So much so that I'm tempted to wonder, given that your novel is, as you say, "moving along nicely and the end is in sight," why you would bring in a jerk like me and risk muddying both the waters and your focus, when you too appear to be doing just fine on your own. But since you asked, there are three points I'll raise, issues you might keep in mind as you go back through this, after the first draft is finished, and tighten, fine-tune and rework those elements that call for it.
You're quite good at descriptions; your characters all stand out as individuals, both in appearance and in their personalities. You also manage action well, deftly juggling the who, what, where and when so that the reader usually knows what's going on. In fact, I'd say you've paid close attention to the old adage, Show, don't tell. That's the good news. Now the bad news: that old adage is misleading and offers a host of expository traps just waiting for the unwary writer to stumble into. You manage to avoid pitfalls more than most, but as you reconsider and revise this or that passage, remember the full version of that "rule:" Show what needs to be shown, tell what needs to be told."
Telling has gotten a bad rap over the years, and indeed, many take sloppy, lazy shortcuts that convey information but leave the reader wanting for an actual experience of what's taking place. On the other hand, telling can be efficient: it's how you move from summer to autumn without describing each leaf as it changes color. Telling is how you effortlessly dispose of back story, when called for, without resorting to cludgy solutions like flashbacks. And telling is what separates prose narrative from a screenplay. Screenplays can't really tell anything without the awful convention of the voice-over which never works (okay, Dexter is the exception that proves the rule). Most important, the split between showing and telling is an effortless way of signaling to the reader those scenes that are crucial, as opposed to those that are supplementary.
Not every scene requires a close-up camera and microphone transcribing every wave of a hand, every eyebrow arched, every sound of boot heels clacking across the floor, every dust mote illuminated by sun beams and every word of dialogue. Yet many writers feel they are obligated to provide precisely this level of detail in service of the most mundane of scenes. Sometimes it's perfectly fine for a room to go silent when a character walks in, sits at the table and calls for a pitcher of beer. Sure, a lot of details are glossed over in such a compressed telling, but the question you must always ask: do they really contribute to the actual narrative?
I bring all this up as I consider the opening scene of this chapter, one that is quite nicely rendered, by the way. On the movie screen in your mind, I've no doubt that the story would open this way, with rich visuals to establish time and place, as well as a sense of urgency. But I question if such a close-up portrayal serves your readers and their efforts to make sense of the universe they've just entered. Keep in mind, they'll trust you completely at the outset. They'll give you the benefit of the doubt in all instances, assuming that whatever is presented is important enough for them to file it away in one of their memory registers to be retrieved at the proper moment as the story progresses. But if they begin to suspect that some of the stuff they're filing away isn't all that important, they'll stop trusting you.
I think they'll file a lot of unnecessary material away in the opening, until Ordric Forkbeard returns to his cottage. For my money, that's where your story truly begins. It is there that the emotional tension is most appropriate, and there that the narrative requires a fine-detailed rendition. I'm not suggesting that you junk the opening passage; clearly it's important. But you can certainly collapse many of the details into broader expository strokes that paint the picture, set the scene, introduce the important characters and then move on to the crucial interactions.
This brings me to the second issue. Actually, it's a special variant of the first. I refer to that movie screen in your mind. Too often writers imagine their stories unfolding as they might were they playing out as a movie, certainly a valid way of imagining the story. But too often they simply transcribe the scenes as they envision them on the screen, which is not quite the same as simply showing us things that could be told. Truth is, you can't show everything on the screen simply by transcribing the action and dialogue. Think of all that's left out. In your opening, we might see the crows set loose, perhaps hear a cryptic comment letting us know that they are searching for something; we would see torches in the fields, men dressed rudely, carrying primitive tools, and without any effort at all, we would find ourselves firmly established in a time and place. Details would come, but we'd already have a broad category within which to organize them.
None of those visual and sound cues are present in prose that simply describes action and dialogue, in the order that they might appear in a movie scene. You need, again, to fall back on the unique language of prose, rather than attempt to come up with translations from the language of cinema. Unless you have a specific reason to do so, you never want your reader left in the dark, particularly about such basic elements as who is speaking, where they are and what they are doing. You mention Forkbeard in the second paragraph, but we still have no direct connection between him and his daughter, who is cryptically mentioned in the opening paragraph without actually being identified. In paragraph four, as Forkbeard trudges home, we still don't know who he is. Maybe, by this point, we can make an educated guess, but don't make your reader work so hard on such small elements.
In the same vein, you have two lines of dialogue that, on your movie screen, make perfect sense, given that we would easily know who spoke them, and to whom they are speaking. One is when Gwynneth says "I should go." The other is when Forkbeard asks Mertha Mirkwood "Why did you come?" In both cases there is no indication who is speaking and, given the assembled characters, multiple interpretations suggest themselves. Furthermore, we don't even know Mertha's name until after Forkbeard speaks to her. The correct time to identify her was when Forkbeard first enters the cottage, at which point you could also have indicated, without breaking a sweat, his disdain, or at least, his mistrust of the woman.
Please don't get me wrong here. For the most part, I think your prose does exactly what it's meant to do, which is to convey a narrative without getting in the way. The only time you ever want your words to call attention to themselves is if they break the reader out of their willful suspension of disbelief long enough for them to think, "Gosh, I wish I'd written that." Otherwise, such moments will slowly erode that willingness to suspend disbelief, reminding the reader that it's just words, after all, and probably not the best words at that. In your case, these are infractions both small and rare. But stack up enough of them in chapter after chapter and they'll rob your story of its emotional impact. You never want to do that, particularly when, as is the case with your prose, it's so easily avoided.
The third point, given that I only have the first chapter to work with, may well be totally off the mark. The issue is still worth considering. Keep in mind that problems are your stock in trade. No problems, no story. A short story will probably be fairly restricted in the scope of its problems, likely confining itself to one specific issue that needs attention. In a novel, chapters are very much like short stories in that they each require their own narrative arc as the characters begin at one point, move through a transition and then reach the conclusion. Unlike a short story, which calls for a resolution, you want each chapter to set up the next and provide a seamless transition into it. What's clear about your opening chapter is that by the end, all is well. The problem has been identified, addressed, and overcome. Along the way we've learned valuable information about the various characters, but in terms of a narrative arc, you have reach the end and, whatever is to come, you will be starting over in chapter two.
Don't discard your problems so easily. If you do it right, you can turn anything into a problem that requires a solution. With the proper narrative approach, crossing a street can be a problem, fumbling for keys in the dark, looking for something to eat in a barren kitchen. It is the transition between the point that your character identifies a problem and the point that it is solved that will keep your reader wonder what's going to happen next. Keep them wondering that, they'll keep reading. Your willingness to set up your opening problem as dire, only to dispose of it with such a minimum of effort, tells me that you may well be selling your story short elsewhere as well.
Your chapter should properly end when the dragon covers Forkbeard's daughter with his wing. You've already alerted your reader to the relationship between man and beast and between father and daughter and you have created an intolerable imbalance in the status quo, such that decisions and actions will clearly be required. You need to give your reader more of a payoff than, He issued the ancient command for release in a voice dripping with menace. His stance dared the beast to disobey. And that's it. After all the torchbearers in the fields, all the angst, the gnashing of teeth, the emotional turmoil, the threat of violence—one word is all it takes? Are you kidding me?
After the set up you've provided, you could get away with an entire second chapter devoted to Forkbeard having to call on all his resources to bring this beast back under his control. You have to learn to recognize the resources that you yourself have engineered into your narrative, and exploit them to the fullest. Unless...
Unless that bit about dragons being dragons, after all, and how even a dragon master like Forkbeard couldn't be certain of his control over them wasn't a prelude to an upcoming plot point but, rather, one of those irrelevant elements that your reader will file away, never to be used again. In which case, I would wonder why you bothered with the first chapter at all.
I don't think that's the case, however. There's too much here that suggests that you know what you're doing, you understand your genre and you have a real story to tell. Just keep in mind: you never want to let a good problem go to waste. |
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