by Debbie Burke
Today, let’s welcome another Brave Author who submitted a first page entitled This Uneasy Place. The genre is described as speculative with horror elements. Please read then we’ll discuss on the flip side.
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Lennie was about to give up sifting through the book from the Dwyton estate when she found it. A stray envelope. Fountain pen writing and a green halfpenny stamp, dated close to a century ago. But empty, by the looks of it.
She picked up the envelope to set aside for the customer who’d been searching for that very stamp for years – he’d be tweedy, about seventy, with smeary glasses and a smile of yellowed teeth, and he’d have fluttered into her bookshop on a whim, shaking his mammoth umbrella and hee-hawing gamely about British summers – and a letter lay folded beneath it.
A squeak escaped her. Tweedy old guy vanished. Crowds materialised instead, salivating over the letter and its illuminating contents, or important writer, or… Lennie picked through two pages covered with spikes and curls of Edwardian handwriting.
…I cannot impart to you by words alone how unshakeably (and rather unnervingly) Loweheaf village believes in old superstitions…
She called past antiquated spines of calfskin, sheepskin, goatskin, aged hardback, paperback, musty velvet, on rows of bookshelves bathed in low-watt fluorescence, to where Ollie, her boyfriend, stood, his cigarette hand suspended out of the bookshop’s open door. Traffic hissed through pools of rain from the latest deluge of June’s utter drenchfest. The smell of wet London pavements intruded on the chocolatey fragrance of her mother’s shop. Her shop, now, yes. But her mother the silent partner in her head. ‘Hey, look at this letter.’
‘Letter? Savill’s making you a reasonable offer, again? Foxton’s? Or is it John D. Wood you’re turning down this time?’
Hilarious. No estate agent was going to get its claws her mother’s shop. She still had time, still had enough money to keep it going. Before that ran out, there’d be a turning point.
…old superstitions…legendary creatures included…Surely not in 1909? Not when the industrial age had seen off phantoms of old beliefs, shone electricity into dark corners, sent behemoths roaring and seething on rail tracks to upstage childhood monsters.
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I found this piece intriguing yet frustrating. The mystery of a century-old letter caught my attention. So did the humorous, somewhat caustic voice. But I got lost in long, convoluted, parenthetical sentences and wandering descriptions that held promise but led to dead ends.
There were wonderful turns of phrase and descriptions like:
“he’d be tweedy, about seventy, with smeary glasses and a smile of yellowed teeth, and he’d have fluttered into her bookshop on a whim, shaking his mammoth umbrella and hee-hawing gamely about British summer.”
This character leapt to vivid life in my imagination, yet it turned out he wasn’t even the point of the sentence. Maybe he’ll reappear later in the story. I hope so. But for now, he was a disappointing dead end.
I had to chop through bramble-bush narrative to find the actual point: Lennie found an old envelope with a rare, interesting stamp and a letter, tucked inside a book from an estate collection.
“A squeak escaped her. Tweedy old guy vanished. Crowds materialised instead, salivating over the letter and its illuminating contents, or important writer, or… “
Now I’m thoroughly lost.
Was the tweedy guy physically present? Did he vanish in a poof of smoke? Or was he only a memory?
Where did crowds come from? Are they pushing inside the bookshop? Why are they salivating? What illuminating contents? Which important writer?
The visual detail about the letter is lovely: “two pages covered with spikes and curls of Edwardian handwriting.”
But the mysterious warning about “old superstitions” gets buried under a rambling 37-word sentence about “calfskin, sheepskin, goatskin, aged hardback, paperback, musty velvet on rows of bookshelves bathed in low-watt fluorescence…”
As a description of the shop, it’s vivid, sensory, and beautiful. I’d like to get lost in this cool old bookstore.
But a reader shouldn’t get so lost that they’re unable to follow what’s happening.
After three readings, I finally got the gist of this page. It’s a rainy June in London. Lennie’s mother died and left Lennie a store full of antique books from estates. Her boyfriend Ollie smokes but is thoughtful about holding his cigarette out the door. His jibes about estate brokers indicate he thinks she’s being unrealistic about the business’ prospects, but she doesn’t want to sell the shop because it’s her mother’s legacy.
Apparently, Lennie has a fantasy that she’s going to discover valuable documents hidden among the musty old books. Then historians and collectors will offer her lots of money for the treasure, enabling her to continue to operate the store.
A 1909 letter about old superstitions in Loweheaf village may be the treasure she’s been hoping for.
At least I think that’s what’s going on.
The style has a distinct British voice that sets the appropriate tone and mood. However, style shouldn’t overwhelm the plot and make the reader work to decipher what’s relevant amid extraneous (although beautiful) description.
Brave Author, this page is frustrating because your writing has exquisite sensory detail and a lush style that should be preserved.
However, you need to shorten sentences so they’re comprehensible.
Journalists are warned: “Don’t bury your lede.” Unfortunately, you’ve done that.
I’m guessing you’re well into the story to the point where you’re so familiar with Lennie’s voice that she sounds completely natural to you. But a fresh reader needs to get accustomed to her voice before they can grow comfortable with it.
You may intend Lennie to be an unreliable narrator who drifts between fantasy and reality. If so, you still need to first ground the reader in reality. If Lennie engages in flights of fantasy, give the reader more clues.
Here’s a suggested rearrangement:
The spikes and curls of Edwardian handwriting in the letter made her squeak with excited curiosity. One particular sentence sounded compelling: …I cannot impart to you by words alone how unshakeably (and rather unnervingly) Loweheaf village believes in old superstitions…
Could this be the discovery she’d dreamed of? Tweedy old guy vanished from her imagination. In his place, crowds of eager historians and collectors materialized, salivating over the letter and bidding on the illuminating contents from an important writer, or…
Lennie called to her boyfriend Ollie, “Hey, look at this letter.”
Ollie stood at the front of the shop by the open door holding his cigarette outside.
Traffic hissed through pools of rain from the latest deluge of June’s utter drenchfest. The smell of wet London pavements intruded on the chocolatey fragrance of her mother’s shop. Her shop, now, yes. But her mother the silent partner in her head.
Ollie extinguished his cigarette and sauntered toward her, past rows of shelves lined with antiquated book spines of calfskin, sheepskin, goatskin, aged hardback, paperback, musty velvet. Low-watt fluorescence bathed the interior.
‘Letter?’ he asked. ‘Savill’s making you a reasonable offer, again? Foxton’s? Or is it John D. Wood you’re turning down this time?’
Hilarious. No estate agent was going to get its claws her mother’s shop. She still had time, still had enough money to keep it going. Before that ran out, there’d be a turning point. Her concentration returned to the letter.
…old superstitions…legendary creatures included…Surely not in 1909? Not when the industrial age had seen off phantoms of old beliefs. By then, electricity shone light into dark corners of ignorance. Fanciful childhood monsters had been upstaged by progress with iron behemoths roaring and seething on rail tracks.
Brave Author, as harsh as some of my comments sound, the fixes are easy.
Shorten sentences. Read the page out loud to someone else. One hint that a sentence is too long is if you run out breath reading it. Ask the listener if they can understand the meaning. Are they confused? If so, rewrite until it’s clear to them.
Most important, don’t bury the lede. Lennie’s excited about the possible answer to her dilemma. Fit the superb descriptions of the shop around that lede. Descriptions should enhance the story, not overshadow it.
You’re a skilful writer with a wonderful eye for specific details. You can make this story compelling without much rewriting.
Thanks for submitting This Uneasy Place and wishing you good luck with it.
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TKZers: what are your impressions of Lennie’s shop and the mysterious letter? Any suggestions for the Brave Author?
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Hi, Debbie! ‘Tis I! Thank you for your crit; great advice. Since I wrote this 1000th version, I’ve already shortened the descipts of the tweedy old fantasy, cut Ollie’s estate agent naming to just three, etc., but I get now that I have to do more, especially the free direct sentences.
I am having massive trouble with this scene and have re-written it a thousand times. I’ve actually gone between this scene and the first one of mine you reviewed, as choices of being the opening scene. However, even if I use the ‘Andy makes a coffin in the barn and Ruth visits’ scene the first one after all, this still needs to land as an intro to my MC.
I do have the tendency to expect readers to follow along when it’s – I’m told – unreasonable for them to do so. I have a horror of ‘telling’, which doesn’t help, which leads to things like, ‘he’d be tweedy…’ not informing ‘tweedy old guy vanished’ enough to place him as fantasy, and just dropping the lines from the letter and letting Lennie’s verbal responses inform how she feels.
I did have Lennie’s worries about her mother’s shop in the second paragraph at one point, can’t even remember now why I changed it!
This is all such helpful advice and I think you’re right. Thanks again.
Hi Tracey,
How wonderful to hear from you. First page submissions are anonymous so I’m always glad when the brave author comes forward. Esp nice to see a page from an author who comes back for more critique.
I don’t think you need to worry about “telling” too much. “Show, don’t tell” is one of those so-called “rules” that often needs to be broken. In a few short declarative sentences, tell the reader enough about the circumstances that they can understand where they are and what is going on.
Keep in mind the classic journalism questions of who, what, when, where, why, and how. In fiction, you don’t need to answer all of the questions immediately. In fact, you shouldn’t b/c you want to the reader to turn the page to find out more. But answer enough to ground the reader.
This trick may help: for each scene, make a separate note on an index card or sticky note. In one or two sentences summarize (TELL) what the scene is about and what the goal is. In the ms, fill in action, dialogue, and descriptions that SHOW how the character accomplishes the goal or fails to accomplish it.
I really admire your rich, sensory descriptions and wish you all the best!
Thanks so much, Debbie. I was trying to pin down that Lennie is a wishful thinker right off. Before this, I had her thinking the line ‘Please let this be the find that saved her mother’s shop – her shop now, of course, etc’ the moment she sees the envelope, and then her picking up the envelope because ‘someone might want to buy the stamp, right?’ , but on this go-round, I wanted to make her imagination and wishful thinking more vital, and her voice more vivid, so I popped in tweedy old guy! I’ll go back to the one-sentence. I keep trying to improve this but it seems I’ve gone backwards. I suppose I keep missing what’s really wrong with it.
I agree that the author has an eye for detail/description but also that I found the page confusing. Agree with the suggestions as well.
My confusion started with “She picked up the envelope to set aside for the customer who’d been searching for that very stamp for years – he’d be tweedy…” The he’d “be” tense threw me off & I never quite recovered after that because I had trouble following the story. But I loved the descriptive detail.
Thanks for submitting, Brave Author!
Thanks for weighing in, Brenda.
Yes, thanks, Brenda. I now definitely know what’s amiss with this version, as everyone seems to be in agreement. That’s so valuable.
Good morning, Brave Author!
You do have a way with words. That is both a good and bad thing. Tolkien could get way with two pages for ‘walking down the path 500 feet’. Here it is getting in the way. Take a hard look at the edits. Cleaned up, there may be something here.
She should have been able to tell if there was a letter in the envelope. As written, it is ambiguous and shouldn’t be.
When does this story take place?
Fountain pens replaced dip pens – 1800-1840.
Edwardian England – 1900-1910
Fluorescent lights – 1941
“Legend letter” is 100+ years old. When does this story take place?
Alan, good questions and notations about historical details. This is described as “speculative” fiction. One hundred years past1909 makes it relatively contemporary. For now, that’s enough timestamp for me but the author may want to refine that later.
Yes, I do pin it to 2006 later.
Well, it’s under the envelope because I wanted to track the absent-mindedness of the recipient, who doesn’t remember where he put the letter, but that can be changed. Thanks for that!
I truly never thought of readers being confused about the time period, what with a female shop-owner called Lennie who thinks someone might want to buy an Edwardian stamp – halfpennies haven’t been used since the 60s – and thinks of tweedy ‘guy’ but now I see I can date-stamp it clearer, sooner, without being too ‘tell-y’. Thank you for your suggestions and hints.
I found this intriguing and actually followed along with what TV Brown intended. 🙂 But Debbie is spot-on with her suggestions. Don’t make it so hard for the reader. You have a great voice, but don’t let it interfere with the story.
Excellent comment, Pat, that a great voice shouldn’t interfere with the story. Thanks for chiming in.
Thanks, Pat. But it seems you are in the minority in this instance! I think I try to avoid ‘telling’ too obsessively and just expect the reader to follow ( ‘He’d BE tweedy/ He’d HAVE just come into her shop, etc’ = that’s what she’s imagining this stamp-buying customer looks like, so when he vanishes and crowds appear instead, it’s also her imagination) , for eg. But it’s a thin line between ‘respect your reader’s intelligence and trust them to get it’ and ‘don’t confuse your reader’!
Thanks, all. This has been much less on the mark than my other subs, ‘Watch All Night’ and ‘Freets’. I was toying with making this the opening for ”Freets’ , so my main character starts off the story instead of Andy the Loweheaf villager in the barn.
CHEEKY ASK HERE:
I sadly never got to weigh in on the nice comments I got for ‘Watch All Night’, (crit here August 2024) as I was too late finding out it had been critted. I did ask for comments to be re-opened, but they weren’t.
I did want to say about that, many people are confused about why Joe doesn’t want to go in the building, thinking they must have missed something. What I intended was that the reader sees the building is ordinary, new, welcoming, with laughing workforce using eco-mugs, that there IS no visible reason that he’d not want to go in. Yet the feeling ‘I’m not going in there’ just hits him. But again, I think I was making the mistake of trying to do something which left the reader behind, so I’ve changed the beginning to:
‘Do not go into that place.
Joe’s scalp crawled with the feeling. The black ice it made of his blood had nothing to do with the weather, though just minutes before, he’d shivered his way down the cobbled alley lined with old Bankside warehouses. The February sun barely touched the first of them.’
Then carrying on to his journey to the building, description of it, and ending:
‘Two blokes in hardhats and multi-pocket work trousers crossed the floor, the taller man sput-tering laughter across one of those eco-mugs, printed with smiling golden giraffes, at some-thing his mate said.
And yet.
Joe stepped back. The heel of his trainer smacked into the unearthed bollard, and that was it, unearthed, yes, the feeling/thought unearthed from a chasm in his mind he didn’t know existed: Do not go into this uneasy place.’
It’s frustrating, though. There MUST be a way to SHOW the readers, ‘This a perfectly lovely building and the workmen look friendly and happy, yet for some reason, something tells Joe not to go in there.’ I’m just not a clever enough writer to make that land without loads of ‘tell’.
Anyone have any ideas? If I kept the original start, the one on here, and ended, instead of ‘I’m not going in there’, with ‘lovely place. Laughing workmen was a great sign’ (grrr, just the idea of this amount of telling, even as free direct interiority, is making me itch, but will do it if I must!) … And yet something in him, some disjointed voice that didn’t come from him but to him, said, ‘Do not go into that place.’ – : Would this be better?
Thanks! Hope I haven’t broken any rules!
Thanks Brave Author for your submission. There’s a lot to love about This Uneasy Place, and Debbie’s critique will certainly make it better read.
Btw, I can identify with rewriting a scene “a thousand times.” Gotta get it right. 🙂
Good luck!
Kay, that 1000th rewrite is something we can all identify with. That’s also why it’s hard to be objective about one’s own work. I hope suggestions from TKZ’s fresh eyes help Tracey.
As always, Debbie, extremely helpful. Back at it with a vengeance today. Thank you!
Glad to help, Tracey! You’re an excellent writer.
Thank you, Kay. That means a lot. I took a day or two and am now back at it, Debbie’s notes clutched in my hot little hands! Actually enjoying revisions this time!