Welcome to another Death Of 1000 Cuts – making you an awesome writer, one cut at a time.

Every week I suggest ways we can make our fiction suck slightly less. Sometimes I write little mini-essays on one specific improvement you can apply to your work, and sometimes I put an aspiring author’s first page ‘In The Barber’s Chair’. Yep, scare quotes and caps. I am fully adhering to the 1000 Cuts brand guidelines, my friends.

If you want to submit the first page of your novel or short story to this here blog, first off make sure you’ve read some previous posts to get a sense of how things work. I want the first page of your novel or short story, (250 words max), as polished and brilliant as you can possibly make it. Please don’t send me first drafts of works-in-progress. I don’t want to be pointing out things you already know. We’ll all benefit the most if we’re grappling with the highest possible quality work.

Submit via the ‘Contact Me’ link on the right. Hey, and why not spread the love by letting your writing friends know about this blog? Maybe they’ll find it useful. Cheers to all of you Cutters who have been so diligently promoting my posts around the internet. We’re getting more readers every week, which I guess will continue exponentially until everyone on the planet is reading my sweary – but ultimately well-intentioned – grousing.

As always, read the extract below, decide what you think about it, then read my thoughts under ‘The Cuts’.

Koppelberg Hill (by Sue)

“No one else ever needs to know about this.” John cracked his back, crouched at the edge of a potato field on a damp wood-wormed style, his neck squirming from his collar bones like a tortoise. “I think it was in assembly, when they stopped laughing. It must have been then. After those – people – came bursting in with their guns. Or after they cut off Miss Tess’ fingers. Christ. Either way, these lot had the change around the same time.”

“Surely it’s only normal after all that,” I said. But he was right of course. At first we’d tried to convince each other that they were simply traumatised, but something else was wrong.

Seeing the field was clear, I lifted each of the kids over the style and onto the boggy turf. They’d seen so many terrible things – even before yesterday, but now the little ones weren’t even speaking. They hadn’t eaten since noon on Wednesday, but wouldn’t even eat the pick n mix I had scavenged from the Barby Road bus shelter. Nor would they point at squirrels and rabbits in the road as they had when we used to walk them to Pat’s farm. All the same little faces and legs and muscles and brains trampled along beside us, but now without a thought between them. Just vacant, children-shaped cartoons. Like the small dead army of gummy bears in my pocket.

The thought of abandoning them was horrible. So the bodies of Class Four followed their limping teacher and me through Warwickshire’s damp sticks. At least we would not be heard.

We were being hunted, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

The Cuts

“No one else ever needs to know about this.”

Nice provocative snatch of opening dialogue. Hooks our interest, introduces a question. Not sure about that ‘else ever’ snarl-up. I’d suggest ‘else’ is redundant. It’s not like the speaker needs to specify ‘no one ever needs to know about this – excepting, of course, us, who already know by virtue of being present’. Remember H. P. Grice’s conversational maxims. A-Level English Language – boom!

And does the modifier ‘ever’ really add much? I suppose it might be permissible as an intensifier, but ‘No one needs to know about this’ already implies ‘ever’.

John cracked his back, crouched at the edge of a potato field on a damp wood-wormed style, his neck squirming from his collar bones like a tortoise.

Ugh. This sentence just keeps coming and coming, like pus out of a huge throat cyst.

At the very least, I’d start this on a separate line to the dialogue, otherwise we can’t help but read the parsing the opening as a dialogue tag, i.e.

‘No one else ever needs to know about this,’ John cracked his back.

I know you didn’t write it with the comma, but on a first pass it’s ambiguous enough to bring us up short and make us restart the paragraph. I don’t mind action used as sneaky dialogue attribution – in fact I’d say it’s an invaluable arrow in the writer’s quiver – but every time an action is used as if it were ‘said’, God deflates a soufflé. Distance yourself from such crimes by making your layout unambiguous.

‘crouched at the edge of a potato field on a damp wood-wormed style,’

Right. Firstly, the word for a wooden step allowing a person to traverse a fence is ‘stile’. This makes it sound as if he crouching ‘in a damp woodwormed fashion’. (NB: ‘woodwormed’ is all one word) Secondly, there’s no need to pair the location and the action in a single sentence. Having his location pop-up mid-sentence like this feels bizarre and confusing. Better to separate the clauses into discrete sentences, even at the expense of introducing a couple of redundant grammatical words, i.e.:

‘John cracked his back. He was crouched on the edge of a potato field, beside a damp, woodwormed stile.’

Thirdly, crouched ‘on’ a stile? Do you mean ‘sitting’? Why would you stretch your back by hunching down, and why would you perch your feet on a tiny peninsula of slippery wood while doing it? John sounds like he’s doing a weird crow impression. Why wouldn’t he just be standing on the ground?

‘his neck squirming from his collar bones like a tortoise.’

No, his neck squirms like a tortoise’s neck, not an entire tortoise. There’s too much going on in this sentence. He’s cracking his back, but also his neck is doing something odd – it’s impossible to tell at this point how emphatically you mean ‘squirming’. It might be a fruitily idiomatic way of saying ‘his neck came out a bit’ or we might be witnessing some SF-style transformation.

The writing is too clumsy for us to understand what you’re trying to show us. I suggest dialling back the similes. Just the facts, ma’am.

“I think it was in assembly, when they stopped laughing. It must have been then.

This is confusing, and not in a good way. I suspect what has happened is this:

You want to install John in the role of Mr Exposition-Shitter. But you’re savvy enough to understand that you can’t just start a story by having a character drop metaphorical trou and poo out a load of backstory. So what you’ve done, in an attempt at compromise, is have John state stuff that both characters know, summarising past events, but you’ve tried to disguise it by having him be incoherent and vague.

Hooray! We get the worst of both worlds! Your characters are still swapping exposition, thus they sound unconvincing and leaden, but we’re not getting any viable information out of it. Everybody loses!

After those – people – came bursting in with their guns. Or after they cut off Miss Tess’ fingers.

‘You remember? We were both there, after all. Oh, what the hell, I’ll just recap. It was after those… mysterious antagonists… came bursting in with their guns. I thought it was worth specifying that they were carrying guns, in case you confused them with those other… mysterious antagonists… who came bursting in, without guns. Remember when they cut off Miss Tess’s [NB: extra s after double s plurals, e.g. ‘princess’s’] fingers? Wow. I’m surprised you’d forget that. It was pretty harrowing and grotesque.’

Christ. Either way, these lot had the change around the same time.”

“Surely it’s only normal after all that,” I said. But he was right of course. At first we’d tried to convince each other that they were simply traumatised, but something else was wrong.

Why have you chosen to start the story here? With two characters dryly speculating on the plot? Why aren’t you letting us observe the children ourselves? And what are the kids doing while they’re having this conversation? Are they just standing there? Are the two characters having to whisper?

Seeing the field was clear, I lifted each of the kids over the style and onto the boggy turf.

So they’re being hunted, but they just thought they’d stop and have a little chat? A little chinwag?

The way you’ve phrased this, the two characters have their chat (at the edge of an open field) and only then check if the next field is clear. Rather than finding somewhere more secluded or, y’know, checking the coast is clear before stopping.

Where’s the sense of urgency? Where’s the peril? Why have you started the story in the most boring place, when nothing surprising is happening, when the most dramatic events have taken place, when the coast is clear and the kids are mute and unresponsive and they’re all just walking through a field? What about this struck you as dramatically rich?

They’d seen so many terrible things – even before yesterday, but now the little ones weren’t even speaking.

Show, don’t tell. This is so abstract and lifeless.

Look, I concede, sometimes one can construct a really compelling narrative while – for a lot of the time, at least – keeping the horrors at one remove, creating interest by not allowing us to experience them up close. If you’re going to do that, the burden falls on your first-person narrator to create compelling moments in the narrative present. We need crunchy specificity, and emotion, and a strong sense of place, and a clear, compelling voice, right here on the first page.

At the moment, this narrator feels so bland. We don’t have any sense of personality. He or she doesn’t offer a clear point of view or an interesting lens through which to view the world. They don’t seem particularly engaged with their role as storyteller. What’s the point in picking a first-person narrator if you’re not going to exploit the opportunities the mode offers?

They hadn’t eaten since noon on Wednesday, but wouldn’t even eat the pick n mix I had scavenged from the Barby Road bus shelter. Nor would they point at squirrels and rabbits in the road as they had when we used to walk them to Pat’s farm.

Again, you’re abandoning the narrative present to fill in backstory. I can confidently say you have started this story in the wrong place. You keep wheeling round, through dialogue and narrative, to things that have happened prior to this moment. No. Incorrect. That dull slap is the sound of me closing your novel, never to be reopened.

From the very first line, we need a problem facing the group here and now. It could be as mundane as a swollen river they need to ford. Maybe it rained heavily recently and the stream they planned to cross is actually quite deep and dangerous for young kids. I don’t know. Maybe one of the kids is refusing to move.

Or maybe it’s not mundane at all. Maybe you decide not to be coy and waste your reader’s time. Maybe you start with something big and dramatic, like the pursuers catching up, or this apparent attack at the school. Whatevsies.

Conflict is not a dirty word. Bullshit is. More of the former and none of the latter, please.

All the same little faces and legs and muscles and brains trampled along beside us, but now without a thought between them.

I’m assuming it’s important that we care about these kids. In which case, I drag you kicking and screaming back to prostrate yourself before the great idol specificity. An undifferentiated mass of limbs is not exactly guaranteed to tug on your reader’s heart strings. Names, specific clothing, individual habits, hair colour – individual kids, in other words – are what we need.

Treating them as a group is lazy and unevocative. It doesn’t excite the reader’s five senses, it doesn’t give us anything to hang onto, it doesn’t build our faith in this world or make us feel as if you have done the work imagining it and making it authentic. It’s a bunch of stickmen drawn in crayon. Not even that. It’s a circle with the word ‘KIDS’ scrawled in the middle.

You need to have imagined every last damn kid in this class. Picture yourself as each child’s parent. What makes that kid special? I feel like you could easily and productively invest an entire day or more creating a file where you name every child, work out an appearance and give a quick backstory. So, so, so useful for you as an author. You’d never transcribe it all into the story, of course, but bits and pieces would leak out here and there.

And you’d believe in these kids. At this stage, I don’t feel like they’re individuals to you.

Perhaps if you believed in these kids, the narrator’s relationship to them might change. He or she might evidence some more investment in their welfare. The narrator might worry about individual children, rather than treating them as a big aggregate.

Then maybe we’d give a shit too.

Just vacant, children-shaped cartoons.

Well yes. Precisely. Here’s that ‘Signal From Fred’ again. Even your narrator worries that these children are bland, empty caricatures. I think your subconscious is trying to tell you something!

The thought of abandoning them was horrible.

See, here’s the first moment that my interest perked up a bit. It’s not clear whether John and the narrator actually plan to abandon the kids, or whether the narrator is simply stating the obvious – but if it’s the latter, it’s a creepy and morbid thing to contemplate, and it makes the narrator immediately more interesting. A bit like having a protagonist pick up an orphaned kitten, then reflecting:

The thought of feeding it tail-first into a woodchipper was horrible.

Even if the narrator does not have any intention of doing so, just to mention such a thing is disturbing and off-base. So, you know. I liked this line. I really hope that the narrator is a bit darker (and thus less retina-clawingly dull) than he or she first appears.

So the bodies of Class Four followed their limping teacher and me through Warwickshire’s damp sticks.

So from this phrasing, are we to understand that the kids have somehow had their personalities or souls or essences sucked out of them? In which case, don’t you think it would be better to start by showing us the kids when they had all their personalities, when they were a collection of individuals rather than this lifeless glob of cadavers? How can we be expected to feel any sense of loss when we never knew them? It just feels like bad characterisation.

We were being hunted, but I couldn’t stop smiling.

This feels odd and unmotivated. It feels like a twist for the sake of being tricksy, rather than an earned bit of character development.

Look, it feels like you’ve definitely started in the wrong place. The potential premise of your piece, and the implied story around it, actually sounds quite interesting, but watching two characters walk through a field with a group of personality-less children is dull as balls. Look at how much of this first page is devoted to backstory. Almost all of it.

You need to drastically rethink the most compelling, resonant moment where the reader can join this story. Don’t hold back. Don’t be coy. The reader isn’t driven through a story by what you keep back. The more you give us, the more invested we are in the outcome, because we know the characters and we understand the stakes.

You remember show, don’t tell, right? Then don’t force us to encounter your story’s most dramatic moments through drab summary. Let us experience them. Play to the strengths of the medium.

–

Need a book for the aspiring writer in your life? Try my award-winning memoir on writing, publishing, and crushing disappointment, We Can’t All Be Astronauts.

If you’d like to know when I’ll be appearing live in your area, sign up to my monthly mailing list.