Monday, July 24, 2017

More of an HTGP than a WIHPTS: "Raptor" by Charles Holdefer

I've been doing a lot of Would I Have Published This Story (WIHPTS) installments lately, while reading through the Puschart Anthology from 2017. The last story I read was so good, I'm not even going to do a WIHPTS for it. Yes, I would have published it.

Instead, I'd like to offer a quick HTGP (How to Get Published). Very quick, actually, because that's how this story introduced the main conflict. Here's two things any fiction writer trying to get past numbskulled first-line readers (like me) should do:

1) Get into the conflict in the first page. Here's how "Raptor" does it: The first sentence teases it, "Cody was the only one to see the raptor descend." We then get two quick paragraphs telling us who is involved and where we are, then the conflict literally descends into the picture:

With a swoop the raptor grabbed Ronny and the baby chair and then began to arc upward, pumping its wings furiously

We have a family that was on one arc now completely redirected by something not only tragic, but freakishly unlikely beyond all imagining. That gets us knuckleheaded readers past the first page.

2) When you need to go into a flashback or offer some kind of exposition, give another lead-in with as much force as your opening sentence to the whole story. You've established one kind of momentum, but when you shift on the reader, you risk losing all that if you don't give it another shove to overcome gravity settling on it.

Holdefer did this with three sections that begin with "even if not for the raptor..." Even if not for the raptor, the mother and father might have had marital problems. Even if not for the raptor, the mom was prone to substance abuse and depression. Even if not for the raptor, the father might have started cheating on the mom. This uses the inertia-defeating thrust from the first section to power the backstory, making the exposition as quick-hitting as the main action.

Here's something I'd like to emphasize to writers: this is really excellent writing, but it's not something writers of average talent can't emulate. This isn't the kind of verbal painting that only the greatest virtuosos of the English language can hope to achieve. It's just good, normal fiction writing. More and more, I'm seeing that it's possible to write a really powerful story without necessarily having to have access to language that's beyond the reach of all mortals. Just stand in there and tell your story your way.

3 comments:

  1. And this doesn't read to you like cliche? To me it sounds like a tired collage of threadbare tropes. Except the last time they made that into a movie, it was some mammal in Australia.

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    1. No, it didn't seem cliche to me. I would say that a synopsis where I say "it's a story about a family that loses an infant when a giant bird comes in and takes it" doesn't sound all that promising, maybe, but that the story gets a lot of mileage out of that simple premise.

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  2. If you're interested, Charles Holdefer just left a Reply (four years later) to my post, and your extensive comments, about this story, addressed to "Karen and Jacob".

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