[FFML] [SHnY] Later -- Prologue

[Brian Randall]

On Sun, Jun 26, 2011 at 1:13 PM, Henry Cobb <henry.cobb at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, Jun 25, 2011 at 12:58 AM, Brian Randall <durandall at gmail.com> wrote:
>>     That may be a bit of an excuse....
>
> You are seriously freebasing on ellipses. Perhaps you should consider
> going cold turkey on them entirely. The message I am seeing here is
> that you lack confidence in the power of your words to carry meaning
> and so you are forced to rely on non-standard formatting. Is that the
> message you were trying to convey?

Almost exactly, actually.

I'm trying to capture the voice of a narrator who presents himself
with a lot more confidence than he really feels, most of the time.
Beyond that, it's supposed to feel conversational -- elipses indicate
trailing off, and em-dashes indicate more abrupt interjections.
Admittedly, this is something of a projection of my own habit of
interjecting things into my own statement -- something I should
probably do less -- but I feel it generally works (even if I could use
parenthesis instead; I feel it's better be to be more consistent, and
sometimes I only want one of those pauses, not to offset a
parenthetical).

In my mind, em-dashes and parentheses can be used the same way, I just
imagine the parenthesis as more subdued (something you could
ostensibly remove from a line and have nothing changed), while I
consider em-dashes to be more important -- but still a nested clause.

I do get rather a lot of use out of those things, though....

Anyway.  All of that is style.  I've been doing it for a while.

Hmm, maybe it would be time to give it a rest....

...well, this story's pretty invested in it -- and completed already.
I doubt I'll be revising this story to remove those elements, but I'll
absolutely be keeping this in mind for the future.

But ultimately, yes, that's pretty much precisely what I was aiming
for; thanks for letting me know I captured it. :)

> This would be a good point to introduce some of the elements from
> above.  I suspect most readers could pick up on the narrator's job if
> they just see him in action.

Possibly, but the narrator doesn't have any intent to surprise you;
he's just trying to explain himself.  Mostly to himself, as it
happens.

>>     After that, around the back of the house to the traditional
>> garden. It's still in order, and the koi are fine -- no need to feed
>> them today.
>
> "After that" implies a series of actions, in this case the first
> person character in action. This is then comma-ed onto a phase of
> inaction on the part of inanimate objects.  In order to keep both
> sides of the comma balanced you would need to either have the
> character use some sort of observation verb in the second half or
> change the first half into a statement of location rather than
> sequence.

The other actions in that scene so far don't feel like they qualify?
How would you propose re-wording to address that?

>> I do, and I catch two familiar voices -- Tsuruya, and her
>> son, Kintaro.
>
> This would be sufficient to indicate the passage of time since the
> series, but the em-dash seems misplaced to me.

It's that interjection thing.  I wanted Kyon to feel/sound older, so I
think it worked, for the mostpart.  He's got more things distracting
him, but still tries to focus.  His mind still wanders, but mostly
into poetry and gardening analogies.

>> green, but he has her grin.
>
> With the two characters standing next to each other this is a little
> confusing. Inherited might be a better word.

Hmm, yeah, that could work.

>>     The other two stones I decided to treat differently, combing
>> lines to connect the two of them, and then giving those lines (and the
>> stones at their endpoints, naturally), another, intentionally
>> irregular form.
>
> I hope all of the above is somehow critical to the plot, because it
> really didn't tell me anything about the gardener. Perhaps if more
> trade-offs were mentioned it could be more illuminating.

As flattering as that repeated insistence is, I'm no luminary. :)

What trade-offs?

The sand garden is a major set piece of the fic.  It ties into a lot
of discussions, symbols for what's going on in Kyon's life, and so on.
 Once the pieces are in place, it's the renga Kyon (and Tsuruya,
Kintaro, and Haruhi) quote that tells you what he saw in those shapes
(it even specifically tells you which character on scene wrote which
lines!).

Long story short:

About a quarter of this fic is unabashed Scenery Porn.  (Emphasis on
unabashed.)  If you look deeper, there's some symbolism, but it's not
at all critical for the story.

That's not important, though -- I could write this story with none of
those embellishments in under 10k.  However, that's not what I aimed
to do with this one.  If it bothers you, later scenes involving that
same sand garden will have you screaming bloody murder!

> This should have been well enough, without the vast majority of the
> description above.

Hmm, not really sure what you're looking for from this one.  I
probably should have explained in advance that I was going for a bit
of a relaxed, kind of poetic style (not sure how well that came across
-- this is a weakpoint of my writing that I was hoping to use this
story to address).  Think of it as trying to be slice-of-lifey, and if
a plot comes out of it, well, there you go.

>>     Then her gaze sweeps to me, from her study of the garden that I'd
>> groomed, and she gives me a look I can't entirely read....  She's
>> slightly quizzical, I can tell that much.  Surprised, a little bit.
>> And ... I don't know ... I used to be much better at this.  Wistful?
>> Melancholy?  I can't say, because she's smiling anyway.
>
> Seriously overdoing the pronoun at this point. She would be fine, if
> she happened to be the only female there.

I'm just going to have to disagree.

Though, now that I look at it, that first line is a bit awkward, so I
will revise.

>>     "That's a story for another time," Tsuruya says with a chuckle,
>> shaking her head at Kintaro.  "Now, you change out of your
>> school-clothes, alright?"
>
> Is it a school uniform, or just what he happens to wear to school?

Hum.  Kintaro's not in middle school.  I'm under the impression that
they don't use school uniforms before middle school, but I don't know
that for a fact.  I'd been kind of lazy about researching that in
favor of all the other things I had checked out for this story.

That's a poor excuse, however.

Mea culpa!  (Remember, kids, this is Latin for 'my bad'!)

Let's find out which one it is; my narration is accurate, but evasive!

That was insanely easy to find out.  Man.  As much as I love research,
now I feel like I was unforgivably lazy.  Oh well!  I'm willing to go
with what wikipedia says, and it tells me:

Few public elementary schools in Japan require uniforms unlike many
Commonwealth countries.

So, yes.  It is correct.  He's wearing school clothes.  Hmm.  I wonder
if I typoed 'uniform' later anyway....

Anyway, sorry the style didn't agree with you (you also seemed to
really dislike the one I had chosen for OIF), but thanks for
commenting.

> -HJC

-- 
Brian Randall
--
I write fanfiction. Too much of it. You can read it here, thanks to a
kind grant from the Larry F foundation:
http://www.florestica.com/brandall/
--
Together. Allegiance or death. BIGFIRE!
--
Haiku of my lament:

Forgive my spelling,
my U.S. education,
is the source of blame.