The picture on your right is entitled Willow and is by Edvvc and is used here in accordance to its Creative Commons license.
As I mentioned, I’m putting Fathom Five through its paces, workshopping the heck out of it so I can get it into submittable shape to show to my editor near the end of May or the beginning of June. There are actually three separate people or groups who are having a look at my novel. One is an online critique group operated on Compuserve by fellow author Marsha Skrypuch, another is by Erin and my friend Cameron, and a third is a weekly writing group run by author Kathy Stinson.
You can never have too many opinions about your writing — well, you probably could. But I’m finding the suggestions offered here to be quite valuable.
Yesterday, I workshopped the fourth chapter of Fathom Five, including a segment that had given me much trouble until Erin leant her assistance. To prep it, I also read the opening scene to chapter one, since it contains a flashback that repeats itself as a changing dream that haunts Peter until he gets to where he is in chapter four. Erin was pleased to hear that the modified section went over extremely well, but unexpectedly, I got a lot of comments on the opening of chapter one, and that took the bulk of the workshopping. From that, I decided to make changes.
Here’s the opening scene of Fathom Five, as it existed until last night:
It had been beautiful, the day Peter’s parents died.
He was nine years old again, and sliding across the ice in the wading pool in the middle of the deserted park. Fiona, his babysitter, shivered on the bench. The sun shone through the frozen willow tree. Ice coated its branches, and it clicked like a wooden wind chime as it shifted in the breeze. A towering purple cloud approached from the northwest.
Fiona stood up. “Peter! Storm’s coming! Probably more freezing rain. Come on, Peter, let’s go home.”
“It’s still sunny here.”
“Peter, come home, now!”
Fiona took Peter’s hand. They walked along the crusty snow, avoiding the smooth and slippery asphalt path.
As they approached the street, Fiona looked up. “Your parents are home!”
Peter saw his parents climbing down from a streetcar. Dad took mom’s arm as he helped her to the curb.
A horn blared. A pickup truck slid forward, its wheels locked. His father looked up.
There was a sickening thump.
Fiona screamed and ran, skidding and slipping on the ice.
Peter fell on the ice-hardened asphalt. A pain shot up his arm.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
Kathy had greatest issue with the opening line, which immediately set us into the fact that this was a flashback and backed us out of the immediacy of the story. As good as the juxtaposition of the elements “beautiful day” and “parents died” was, things didn’t get interesting for her until I started describing the scene.
I’d been struggling with this scene for a while, looking for a good opening hook. Without much success, it seems. But when one of the participants suggested starting with Fiona’s dialogue, my wheels started turning.
Here’s the scene now, after my first go-over this morning:
“Peter! Storm’s coming!”
It was a beautiful day. Peter slid across the ice in the wading pool in the middle of the deserted park. The sun shone through the frozen willow tree. Ice coated its branches and it clicked like a wooden wind chime as it shifted in the breeze.
Fiona sat shivering on the bench. She pointed to a towering purple cloud approaching from the northwest.
“Come on, Peter, storm’s coming. Probably more freezing rain, so let’s go home.”
Peter slid up to her, beaming. “But it’s still sunny, here.”
“Not for long,” said Fiona. She reached out. “Come home, now.”
The nine-year-old took his babysitter’s hand. Together, they walked along the crusty snow, avoiding the smooth and slippery asphalt path.
As they approached the street, Fiona looked up. “Your parents are home!”
Peter saw his parents climbing down from a streetcar. Dad took mom’s arm as he helped her to the curb.
A horn blared. A pickup truck slid forward, its wheels locked. His father looked up.
There was a sickening thump.
Fiona screamed and ran, skidding and slipping on the ice.
Peter fell on the ice-hardened asphalt. A pain shot up his arm.
In the distance, sirens wailed.
Thoughts?
On another issue, a couple of weeks ago, some of my workshop colleagues questioned the blasse attitude Rosemary’s father has to how close Peter and Rosemary are, teasing them about being on a “hot date”. That question didn’t lead to changes because others pointed out that the story shows Peter and Rosemary having been best platonic friends for nearly three years. Rosemary’s father trusts them, and so can tease them. But as Erin and I talked about this, we realized that Rosemary’s father’s attitude would change the moment he realized that the relationship between Peter and Rosemary had changed. And being one to play up the cliches of being a father of a teenaged daughter, he might call in Peter for a man-to-man talk.
Unfortunately, there’s no room for such a talk in Fathom Five, though I might write up the scene as a funny little extra to put up on the book website, should Fathom Five be commissioned. In the meantime, read this piece of Harry Potter fan fiction I wrote almost four years ago while I considered Ron’s possible reaction to a developing Harry/Ginny love interest.