|
Ok, so this is the opening of the current SF novel I'm working on. I moved the explanation, why I'm looking for feedback, below the excerpt because I want a reaction before I give away why starting the story this way might be a bad idea. At this point, the reader would know from the back matter that it's about an engineered humanoid trying live a normal life on Earth, and not having a good idea of what "normal" is. -- “Spaceman, are you for real?” said the man I came to call RipAss FuckForce—but not to his face. He would have liked it. I could say nothing, for the definite proof I was a “spaceman” would get me locked back in a lab. I huddled beside the bouncer in the doorway. RAFF, the club owner, leaned forward on a solid black desk I assume he only kept to bend people over, and pinned me with his gaze. “You have special powers?” The hulk to my left said, “Just looks albino to me.” “We’ll see.” RAFF motioned me to sit, the offered chair a speck before his desk. His throne would have dwarfed him the same were he not a black hole who bent surrounding space. Unable to escape the pull, I plunged closer to the event horizon. The bouncer parted, taking the air with him as he shut the door. The thin metal chair tipped beneath me, but RAFF didn’t give me enough time to stabilize. He asked, “What makes you think you can DJ?” I rubbed the back of my neck, growing as hot as my face under his radiation. The sweat made my dreads itch, which I wore back then so people assumed me a natural freak rather than engineered one—for once not helping. I said, “I’ve taken some music at the university.” I knew it pathetic the moment his eyes dropped the beat. “So you know jack-poo poo.” He rapped on the table. Then rose from that gothic chair and slid around the desk. RAFF, a man with greying short waves and wisp figure, somehow exuded masculinity that made him much bigger. A puffed up adder. Even leaning back, his crotch closed on my face with invisible force. He said, “I don’t care what you know. I want to know what you can do.” He pulled the yellow-lensed glasses, my shields, from my face. I braced for a blast of ultraviolet, wishing I’d worn the contacts instead. I looked in his soul-black eyes to avoid the white stains that crept around us. “So they’re not pink after all,” he drawled. My frames, spinning in his fingers, clinked against massive gold rings. “Tell me then, baby blue, what this lab rat can do?” I tried to swallow the gravel in my throat. Nadine assured me, when she’d told me about the job, an endless fountain of alcohol and sex. I thirsted for both without her. Head filled with fantasy, now so close to grasp it, I could hardly speak. “I have good reflexes?” I finally squeaked. “Ha!” He flipped my glasses at me, which I caught a centimeter from my face. “Not bad.” Nadine had told me he’d test me, that such a man not only played games, but made up the rules. I sought this man as my Sambia elder—hoping to lap up his commanding, virile force into my still-twinkish form. I folded my glasses away in a pocket. Waited, with the wary respect you give a cobra, for his next lunge. “What name do you want to go by?” Those words—shooting amphetamine into my heart would have had the same effect. I was in. It took me a while for the white heat to dim, before I could even think. I wasn’t authorized to take a job outside university, so I couldn’t use my legal name. Besides, I’d picked it to be unassuming—mundane. All my life names had slid off me. I was a number before rescue from an illegal clone lab at four, and changed my name at thirteen, when I turned out to be a boy. Those names faded along with the tattoo that once marked me a specimen. I still rubbed the removal scar on my left wrist when trying to find myself. Caught myself doing it again. “Duran.” I knew the name mine the moment I said it, though I’d never said it before. The name flew from an orgy on angel wings, from a film I’d watched for some course on feminism. Why it came to me then, I must have subconsciously known what was coming. RAFF cut me down with that seedy, reedy voice of his. “Ok. Duran it is. The dry season’s poo poo, so I don’t care if you are. You’ll learn the job as you go. Club’s empty. This place is too hot, and so am I.” Then, without another word, he opened his fly. Nadine, how I thought you’d stripped my naivety. You taught me all sex was good. Yet here this man stood with his counterpoint—but I get ahead of myself. I had no idea what I was getting into, hypnotized by the silver threads woven in his course black jeans. Because I was an idiot, without question I got on my knees. RAFF’s gold-toothed grin sparkled as he looked down his dick at me. My new name left a taste that overpowered the distaste. It lingered longer than the stink of that leatherman’s sweat. Oh, gently caress me gentle into that good night. To die a little and be reborn a whore. Such an ignominious beginning, but I own it now. Some names are unchangeable as the decisions that form our core. -- So, I know starting a science fiction novel with a blowjob (when it's not porn) is ill-advised, but I'd like to know just how bad an idea it is, or if I can actually pull this off as distinctive character development and have not have readers say, "gently caress this dude, I'm out." I'm more concerned about that than line edits at the moment. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Mar 14, 2016 |
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 03:28
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 14, 2024 02:49 |
|
|
Dr. Kloctopussy posted:I don't have a huge problem with this conceptually, but I don't quite understand what is going on in the situation. That makes the blow job feel a bit abrupt and sensationalistic, because I don't quite get the why of it. Like, I gather that the protag is trying to get a job, but between the DJ-thing, and the "Nadine assured me, when she’d told me about the job, an endless fountain of alcohol and sex" I'm not sure exactly what kind of job he is trying to get. I guess he wants to be a DJ and thinks that will make people want to have sex with him? To me the build-up wasn't quite right, but it didn't turn me off so much that I wouldn't keep reading. Done. Edited the last post so whoever reads it next is as prepared as the reader would be. Thanks for the crit. I've definitely been struggling to convey the level of motivation he has for getting this job in one scene, and why he doesn't think giving a blow job to get it is such a big deal because his sense of what's socially acceptable is so skewed from first his lack of experience, followed by way too much of it--layered with his more self-aware voice as he's telling the story. This is after writing his whole history chronologically, as a draft 0, and finding earlier points too disconnected or weak to put in the story in a form other than brief flashbacks. The actual story begins here, or so I found after organizing it all in a proper outline, but holy poo poo it is a hard sell. My instinct to drop the reader in the deep end always seems to backfire on me. I've so far written enough material for four novels (out of six planned), because I keep starting too far in and have to write my way backwards to a point I think the reader can better latch onto after yet another false start. I always know where it's going, but don't have a clue where to begin. I may have to keep working backwards, to at least show how he got to this point, moving this scene to the end of the first chapter. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Mar 14, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 14, 2016 06:12
|
|
|
You've both hit on the weak points in what I posted here. My character starts out timid, but instead I decided to start with him breaking out of that mold, and then had to flashback to how he got that way, which on second outline was a big red flag. I rewrote it with the flashback as the first scene instead and it's already improved, even though I'm stuck figuring out what scenes I need to bridge the new beginning to the bj scene. I'd be more brazen if this weren't the first book in a series, that I've been writing so long this character's later POV has infected the earlier stuff as I rewrite it. It took a big perspective shift to remember how the character starts out. The blow job scene definitely sets the wrong tone for that.
|
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2016 00:08
|
|
|
Nah, the rest of the story isn't sexualized in the same way, it's just that scene. The character's voice and choice of metaphors are intentionally odd (to establish he's not normal but he also has a sense of humor), but making them internally consistent is best left for a later editing job. My new opening is intended to ease the reader into the story so that hopefully the character's odd metaphors can be distinguished from world-building details. As for your first story attempt, there's not much there to critique. It's barely even a scene—more like a rough sketch of one, so yes more detail is necessary. It's not filler if it establishes character or plot, and filler can always be cut if it turns out not to serve either. I will say a character with phantom limb pain is interesting enough to build a story on. Now you have to decide whether you want to figure out your story before continuing and outline it, or write the actual scene in detail and see where it goes from there. Plan or pants. Most would tell you to plan: figure out why you want to write, what you want to say, why that story, and outline it first. But if the scene alone grips you and gets you writing, then do that. There's no shame in wasting a little time when trying something new. It's not a waste of time if you're learning. Stuporstar fucked around with this message at 23:41 on Mar 30, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Mar 30, 2016 23:38
|
|