My chosen opening.
Out of the four options I chose the third opening, Dracula by Bram Stoker. I liked how Bram Stoker built a contrast between how much information he gave out about the scenes setting and atmosphere and how much information he let out on the actual scene and what was happening. I also liked how tension was built up; not much was told but at one point I could quite easily picture my self in the narrators position and see what was happening.
Do Lights Have Shadows?
It wasn’t too long before we found ourselves on a clearly deserted road; quite easy to tell it was deserted anyone could tell simply by looking for a source of light, there wasn’t any. Other than the full moon’s somewhat surprisingly bright light and my Golf GTI’s headlights (which now seemed to be either rapidly dimming or less effective for some reason) there weren’t any other luminous sources. To my left I had the person I had decided to travel with; my wife to be. Not very lively of course, she hadn’t made much of an attempt either, simply took the opportunity to fall fast asleep and snore repetitively at perfectly timed intervals (around 6 seconds). My only hope of any entertainment was the stereo, unfortunately I hadn’t quite mastered it yet, this meant I had to listen to whatever I got; a couple of tedious men who conversed about nothing significant.
My biggest fear at that moment was falling asleep, to such an extent that though blinking was inevitable it seemed nothing less than an ambition not to. What happened next can only be remembered as a vague memory. Fatigue overwhelmed me, yet I fought with all my might against it; a fight not worth fighting; as my efforts resulted in mere failure. I opened my eyes in a somewhat flustered motion. Still in panic; I struggled to pull the car back on track. Unaware at the time as to how long I had dozed off, I tried hard to make sense of whatever I could. I believe that perhaps it wasn’t by sheer indolence, but rather by accident, that I had committed this act which of whose outcomes I would scarcely remember. At first, once I’d relaxed slightly, I realized that the incident seemed to have gone without any consequence, yet something did still feel awkward, I concluded it was the silence. Why was there silence?
Fizzy
(Apologies for the lateness)
You have pointed out how successful Stoker is at “showing not telling”, which is so important when writing in an epistolary form. Your correspondent would know the circumstances you are in, so would not require any reasoning behind the events happening at present. Just as equally so when you are writing a diary. This, as you say, builds up the tension by withholding information from the reader. I am also a fan of Dracula, and felt exactly as you did; I lost myself in the great descriptions he sets up.
ReplyDeleteI really like this opening, I only wish it was longer, it has raised so many questions that I wish to know the answer to! It would be interesting to see how you would proceed with the narrative. I was glad to see that you had modernised the story by introducing a car into the scene. I would be careful about using clichéd storylines, such as driving late at night through a deserted road when there is a full moon overhead. However, you do seem to use it in an original way, by introducing human weakness to the story, rather than something supernatural instigating the drama.
You have cleverly limited the use of conventional horror techniques in your writing, which really hits the reader when you begin to sense that something is not quite right at the end of the story. You have talked about the mundane things that would send people to sleep at the wheel, avoiding building obvious suspense. Your story works in a more subtle sense.
I would advise to be careful about some of your phrasing, sometimes it sounds a little as if you have redrafted the story with a thesaurus in hand. This is obviously not necessarily the case, but I just wanted to emphasise the efficacy of writing to the point, sometimes riding the piece of adjectives or unnecessarily long words if they appear to hinder the rhythm of the sentence. Also, I had a slight problem with the line “a fight not worth fighting”, as surely fighting to stay awake when driving is a very good fight to fight! I understand what you are trying to say, that it was a fight that you were never going to win, maybe try rephrasing it.
I also detected a hint of satire in the first paragraph, it would be interesting to see if you could play on this, giving the narrator depth to his character. Vvery interesting work!
Hiya, Firstly let me apologise for two things; my absence over the past few weeks and my lateness in commenting. I am notoriously bad at organising myself...
ReplyDeleteInteresting that you chose Dracula. Althoguh I didn't particualrly like the book, this exerpt is, as you say chilling in it's admittance of information. Is there anything else you found interesting about the piece that you could aply to your own work? I particularly like the trapped feeling created by describing the horrible weather conditions and the rocks and trees "guarding" the marrator. Weirdly enough, you didn't mention this but still used it in your piece.
The mention of being deserted trapped the reader with the narrator, as there was nothing else to engage the imagination, you provided nothing to give insight into what the surrounding were like, and so the reader was forced to only know what the narrator was describing. This was very effective in your aim to withold information t create a chilling effect.
In your piece I very much liked the repetition at the beginning of the darkness, and the light being faded, it created an eerie feel that continued throughtout the rest of the piece. POssibly breaking up the sentences would have meant the reader could focus more on each indivual piece of information, and would also have created a feel of suspence.
The way that you quantified everything made the narrator almost clinical, which in some ways added to the isolation felt, and therefore the horror of it, but in other ways made the narrator seem inhuman. In the second paragraph the narrator seems to be more panicked, and so therefore more human.
I loved the ending of this piece. what seemed like an unimportant piece of information at the start of the exerpt turned out to be full of meaning. I loved how it made the reader 'double take' with the sudden realisation that something had happened.
A good piece of work, one that made me want to read the rest of the story.
Kat
Hi, Fizzy
ReplyDeleteThought I would drop in here since you only had two comments so far this week.
Firstly, I think you should aim for a little more detail with your analysis (Part One) on the next task, as I was crying out for some examples to back up your points.
As for the piece itself though, there are some fantastic touches: the details about the car stereo, for example, and the description of the narrator's wife. But you need to retain more control over your syntax (sentence construction): some of your sentences seem overlong, or their clauses awkwardly placed; and, at times, the grammar is rather shaky.
All in all, it all needs tightening up, I reckon. Let me know if you don't know what I mean?
As for the ending - I like that it leaves us guessing, but you might need to do more actually make us feel the fear...