Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

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Guardian
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Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Guardian » June 24th, 2011, 3:46 am

I'd like to hear some opinion regarding the opening of my short, not so serious Noir story which plays in 1936.
Pale Moonlight
(Part of the short story collection, 7 Post Meridiem)
By Istvan Szabo, Ifj.

The silver knife glints in the dim light as the sharp edge cuts deeper and deeper into the soft, white body that slowly opens in my hands. A wide grin envelops my face; the zipping sound is music to my ears. I enjoy every moment as I cut and open the envelope. I’m holding my first income for my first private job... only half of the cash we agreed on. Not what I imagined a few moments ago. A hastily written note slid out of the freshly killed envelope while I searched for the other half of the money in its empty belly… without any success. The ugly angry letters of the note cry distant fury to me.

Kelly. I deducted the price of the stock. Frankie.

Bowl-face Frankie. Somehow, his name never rang good to my ears. But it sounds much more awful as I read the note. Personally, I named him Bowl-face as he had a depressed, flat, but also wide face. When I first met him, I already realized his parents hit him hard with a silver bowl on the day when he was born. And now Bowl-face wants me to feel guilty because I hadn’t stopped the bullets with my body to save his precious inventory. But I won’t. Personally, I would suggest he deduct those bucks from Tubby Tommy. Just would, because poor Tommy is not with us anymore.

Tubby Tommy. He was a funny person… for the eyes. A real four foot nine fighting machine in a bright yellow suit, it was his trademark, like his Tommy gun. I’ll never forget the moment as his tubby body was thrown back in the air with each burst, while the muzzle fire of his machine gun lit his grinning freckled face. But I still can’t decide why he grinned. Maybe he enjoyed the shooting like every psycho criminal used to do. Or he simply loved to fly short distances backward without wings. Who knows? This is the question Kelly can’t answer. That idiot’s grin froze on his face and his secret flew to the grave with him and his yellow suit.

My mind still circled around the injustice of the world. The job sounded so easy; the dream of any private investigator. And it truly was a simple job; learn who is tapping Fisherman Frankie’s stockpile. No one ever said anything about shootouts. Tubby shot Frankie’s stock to pieces when his cramped fat finger stuck on the trigger when he saw me. He was the one who started the shootout, not me. Anyway, who the hell thought that Mr. Fancy Suit and his thug companions, Buzz and Knuckles would greet me with the barking of their machine guns?

I glanced at grandfather’s clock. Like a tired heart, it slowly ticked just a little bit more than 7 post meridiem. A soft sigh and back at the message on the greasy brown paper. Price of the stock, it says. Many would ask; what precious stock an Irish fisherman might have. Many may think of some rare exotic fish for the white collars. Others with more imagination, like me, would think of mermaids, of illegal mermaid slavery. But everyone would be far from the truth.

Matt_X
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Re: Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Matt_X » July 5th, 2011, 12:14 pm

Hi there Guardian,

Thanks for sharing your work! I think you have colorful characters and nice, noir-y tone. My humble comments are below.
Pale Moonlight
(Part of the short story collection, 7 Post Meridiem)
By Istvan Szabo, Ifj.

The silver knife glints in the dim light as the sharp edge cuts deeper and deeper into the soft, white body that slowly opens in my hands. A wide grin envelops my face; the zipping sound is music to my ears. I enjoy every moment as I cut and open the envelope. I’m holding my first income for my first private job... only half of the cash we agreed on. Not what I imagined a few moments ago. A hastily written note slid out of the freshly killed envelope while I searched for the other half of the money in its empty belly… without any success. The ugly angry I'd pick one, ugly or angry letters of the note cry distant fury to me.

Generally speaking, I think it is hard to pull off 'tricks' like this without risking annoying your reader. I wish I could remember the publishing blog where this was articulately argued, but it's best to avoid describing an object or a scene in a way that the reader believes something totally different is going on than they would if they were in the room, watching it with their own eyes. Reader feels a little cheated--to take this case as an example, it would be more exciting if it were a person being cut than an envelope.

Kelly. I deducted the price of the stock. Frankie.

Bowl-face Frankie. Somehow, his name never rang good to my ears. But it sounds much more awful as I read the note. Personally, I named him Bowl-face as he had a depressed, flat, but also wide face. When I first met him, I already realized his parents hit him hard with a silver bowl on the day when he was born. This reads as though, at the time the narrator first met Frankie, he already possessed prior knowledge that Frankie's parents had literally hit him with a bowl. Is this what you want to convey? And now Bowl-face wants me to feel guilty because I hadn’t stopped the bullets with my body to save his precious inventory. But I won’t. Personally, I would suggest he deduct those bucks from Tubby Tommy. Just would, because poor Tommy is not with us anymore. If he's dead, how is there any money to deduct from his payment?

Tubby Tommy. He was a funny person… for the eyes. A real four foot nine fighting machine in a bright yellow suit, Nice! it was his trademark, like his Tommy gun. I’ll never forget how his tubby body was thrown back in the air with each burst, while the muzzle fire of his machine gun lit up his grinning freckled face. But I still can’t decide why he grinned. Maybe he enjoyed the shooting like every psycho criminal used to do. At this point I'm curious as to what Tommy was shooting at. Was this a moment from their recent caper? Or he simply loved to fly short distances backward without wings. Who knows? This is the question Kelly can’t answer. Who is Kelly? The narrator? If so, why does he refer to himself in the third person? That idiot’s grin froze on his face and his secret flew to the grave with him and his yellow suit.

My mind still circled around the injustice of the world. Too vague, I think. A job going wrong isn't really to be chalked up to the injustice of the world. It will be more interesting if he's angry at someone specific. The job sounded so easy; the dream of any private investigator. And it truly was a simple job; learn who is tapping Fisherman Frankie’s stockpile This is a different Frankie from Bowl-face? One Frankie is probably enough, and if it's the same one, having two different nicknames is confusing. . No one ever said anything about shootouts. Tubby shot Frankie’s stock to pieces when his cramped fat finger stuck on the trigger when he saw me. He was the one who started the shootout, not me. Anyway, who the hell thought that Mr. Fancy Suit and his thug companions, Buzz and Knuckles would greet me with the barking of their machine guns?

I glanced at the grandfather clock. Like a tired heart, it slowly ticked just past 7 post meridiem I think you have to have an excellent reason for spelling PM out...will the reader know what it is?. A soft sigh and a verb missing here? back at the message on the greasy brown paper. Price of the stock, it says. Many would ask what precious stock an Irish fisherman might have. Many may think of some rare exotic fish for the white collars. Others with more imagination, like me, would think of mermaids, of illegal mermaid slavery. I don't know what it says about the narrator that he would think of illegal mermaid slavery. Your character is maybe like Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun? But everyone would be far from the truth.
[/quote]

Again, I enjoyed reading it and thanks for sharing!

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Re: Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Guardian » July 5th, 2011, 1:18 pm

Thanks Matt. Here are my answers...
I'd pick one, ugly or angry
Both stays. I love modifiers. Those thingies are my trademark and my readers love them. :)
Generally speaking, I think it is hard to pull off 'tricks' like this without risking annoying your reader. I wish I could remember the publishing blog where this was articulately argued, but it's best to avoid describing an object or a scene in a way that the reader believes something totally different is going on than they would if they were in the room, watching it with their own eyes. Reader feels a little cheated--to take this case as an example, it would be more exciting if it were a person being cut than an envelope.
This opening is an imagery. And if the reader feel cheated because of it, that's good. That's the point. Imagery is expanding the imagination of the readers and it's also used to give a good atmosphere. It's an old writing element, what I love to use. Nowadays it's a rare element in stories, especially in mainstream stories. I could use the mainstream approach, but that would be very dry.
If he's dead, how is there any money to deduct from his payment?
That's a cynical statement and a conditional sentence. That's why the character is saying "Personally, I would suggest he deduct those bucks from Tubby Tommy. Just would, because..."
I think you have to have an excellent reason for spelling PM out...will the reader know what it is?
Yes. It's the title of the story collection. It's title is 7 Post Meridiem. It's a short story collection of seven stories and all seven plays around 7PM.
I don't know what it says about the narrator that he would think of illegal mermaid slavery. Your character is maybe like Frank Drebin from the Naked Gun?
Nope. He is just cynic and sarcastic with some imaginaton.
Again, I enjoyed reading it and thanks for sharing!
And I'm glad you like it. I'm going to check these things what you mentioned. Thanks for your review. It's really helpful. :)

Matt_X
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Re: Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Matt_X » July 6th, 2011, 6:21 am

Hi Guardian,

Fair enough! It's your work, and you know what you're going for better than anybody else does.

But there is one point I'd like to discuss a little further--I think it could even spark a lively discussion on the All Things Writing board--and that is the question of cheating the reader. I have to say I can't agree with your statement that it's good for the reader to feel cheated. Surprised, transported, even pleasingly deceived, great. But feeling cheated is by definition not enjoyable. I also think it is a completely separate issue from imagery. Imagistic writing can be about something that is happening, or something that is not really happening. The question of the style of prose is totally distinct from the question of what is described. My reaction to your first paragraph was not about it having a lot of images, or being abstract in some way. It was that I was lead to believe a person was being cut with a knife, and then it turned out to be an envelope. I think this kind of thing--like the character waking up and realizing it was all a dream--is never as clever to the reader as it is to the writer.

On a whim I decided to see if I could find the blog where I'd read someone more eloquent than me writing about this, and it turns out the blogger was quoting Raymond Carver. Take it or leave it, if you're interested here's the link. It's five or six paragraphs down: http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/01/21/s ... ptalk.html

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Re: Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Guardian » July 6th, 2011, 7:16 am

I have to say I can't agree with your statement that it's good for the reader to feel cheated. Surprised, transported, even pleasingly deceived, great.
Surprising, transporting, deceiving are all different forms of cheating the readers.
I also think it is a completely separate issue from imagery. Imagistic writing can be about something that is happening, or something that is not really happening.
Yet, it's still imagery. :) It's happening, it's there. It's just not a dry description.
Imagistic writing can be about something that is happening, or something that is not really happening.
I would agree with you if I would do this deceiving for more than two or three paragraphs. Here, it's only three sentences which is capable to grab the attention. If you read those sentences carefully I don't lie to the readers, I'm not even deceiving them. I just simply describe the process of the envelop opening on a strange, yet completely legal form.

And thank you for the link. I would gladly check it out, but it's asking for some sort of login. Do I have to register to view this content? Or do you have any other source for this? I'm curious for it.

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Re: Pale Moonlight - Noir opening (1st edition)

Post by Matt_X » July 6th, 2011, 10:37 am

Hi Guardian,

You're absolutely right, it is a short-term cheating of only a few lines, not a whole story, which is not so serious. I would definitely maintain that there are massively important differences between transporting or surprising a reader and cheating them, but let's leave that for another time.

Here's the full Carver article from the New York Times. Enjoy!

A Storyteller's Shoptalk
By RAYMOND CARVER

hen I was 27, back in 1966, I found I was having trouble concentrating my attention on long narrative fiction. For a time I experienced difficulty in trying to read it as well as in attempting to write it. My attention span had gone out on me; I no longer had the patience to try to write novels. It's an involved story, too tedious to talk about here. But I know it has much to do now with why I write poems and short stories. Get in, get out. Don't linger. Go on. It could be that I lost any great ambitions at about the same time, in my late 20's. If I did, I think it was good it happened. Ambition and a little luck are good things for a writer to have going for him. Too much ambition and bad luck, or no luck at all, can be killing. There has to be talent.

Some writers have a bunch of talent; I don't know any writers who are without it. But a unique and exact way of looking at things, and finding the right context for expressing that way of looking, that's something else. ''The World According to Garp'' is of course the marvelous world according to John Irving. There is another world according to Flannery O'Connor, and others according to William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. There are worlds according to Cheever, Updike, Singer, Stanley Elkin, Ann Beattie, Cynthia Ozick, Donald Barthelme, Mary Robison, William Kittredge, Barry Hannah. Every great, or even every very good writer, makes the world over according to his own specifications.

It's akin to style, what I'm talking about, but it isn't style alone. It is the writer's particular and unmistakable signature on everything he writes. It is his world and no other. This is one of the things that distinguishes one writer from another. Not talent. There's plenty of that around. But a writer who has some special way of looking at things and who gives artistic expression to that way of looking: that writer may be around for a time.

Isak Dinesen said that she wrote a little every day, without hope and without despair. Someday I'll put that on a three-by-five card and tape it to the wall beside my desk. I have some three-by-five cards on the wall now. ''Fundamental accuracy of statement is the ONE sole morality of writing.'' Ezra Pound. It is not everything by ANY means, but if a writer has ''fundamental accuracy of statement'' going for him, he's at least on the right track.

I have a three-by-five up there with this fragment of a sentence from a story by Chekhov: ''... and suddenly everything became clear to him.'' I find these words filled with wonder and possibility. I love their simple clarity, and the hint of revelation that is implied. There is a bit of mystery, too. What has been unclear before? Why is it just now becoming clear? What's happened? Most of all - what now? There are consequences as a result of such sudden awakenings. I feel a sharp sense of relief - and anticipation.

I overheard the writer Geoffrey Wolff say ''No cheap tricks'' to a group of writing students. That should go on a three-by-five card. I'd amend it a little to ''No tricks.'' Period. I hate tricks. At the first sign of a trick or a gimmick in a piece of fiction, a cheap trick or even an elaborate trick, I tend to look for cover. Tricks are ultimately boring, and I get bored easily, which may go along with my not having much of an attention span. But extremely clever chi-chi writing, or just plain tomfoolery writing, puts me to sleep. Writers don't need tricks or gimmicks or even necessarily need to be the smartest fellows on the block. At the risk of appearing foolish, a writer sometimes needs to be able to just stand and gape at this or that thing - a sunset or an old shoe - in absolute and simple amazement.

Some months ago, in this Book Review, John Barth said that 10 years ago most of the students in his fiction writing seminar were interested in ''formal innovation,'' and this no longer seems to be the case. He's a little worried that writers are going to start writing mom and pop novels in the 1980's. He worries that experimentation may be on the way out, along with liberalism. I get a little nervous if I find myself within earshot of somber discussion about ''formal innovation'' in fiction writing. Too often ''experimentation'' is a license to be careless, silly or imitative in the writing. Even worse, a license to try to brutalize or alienate the reader. Too often such writing gives us no news of the world, or else describes a desert landscape and that's all - a few dunes and lizards here and there, but no people; a place uninhabited by anything recognizably human, a place of interest only to a few scientific banned word.

It should be noted that real experiment in fiction is original, hard-earned and cause for rejoicing. But someone else's way of looking at things - Barthelme's, for instance - should not be chased after by other writers. It won't work. There is only one Barthelme, and for another writer to try to appropriate Barthelme's peculiar sensibility or mise en scene under the rubric of innovation is for that writer to mess around with chaos and disaster and, worse, selfdeception. The real experimenters have to Make It New, as Pound urged, and in the process have to find things out for themselves. But if writers haven't taken leave of their senses, they also want to stay in touch with us, they want to carry news from their world to ours.

It's possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things - a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman's earrings - with immense, even startling power. It is possible to write a line of seemingly innocuous dialogue and have it send a chill along the reader's spine - the source of artistic delight, as Nabokov would have it. That's the kind of writing that most interests me. I hate sloppy or haphazard writing whether it flies under the banner of experimentation or else is just clumsily rendered realism. In Isaac Babel's wonderful short story, ''Guy de Maupassant,'' the narrator has this to say about the writing of fiction: ''No iron can pierce the heart with such force as a period put just at the right place.'' This too ought to go on a three-by-five.

Evan Connell said once that he knew he was finished with a short story when he found himself going through it and taking out commas and then going through the story again and putting commas back in the same places. I like that way of working on something. I respect that kind of care for what is being done. That's all we have, finally, the words, and they had better be the right ones, with the punctuation in the right places so that they can best say what they are meant to say. If the words are heavy with the writer's own unbridled emotions, or if they are imprecise and inaccurate for some other reason - if the words are in any way blurred -the reader's eyes will slide right over them and nothing will be achieved. The reader's own artistic sense will simply not be engaged. Henry James called this sort of hapless writing ''weak specification.''

I have friends who've told me they had to hurry a book because they needed the money, their editor or their wife was leaning on them or leaving them - something, some apology for the writing not being very good. ''It would have been better if I'd taken the time.'' I was dumbfounded when I heard a novelist friend say this. I still am, if I think about it, which I don't. It's none of my business. But if the writing can't be made as good as it is within us to make it, then why do it? In the end it's all we have, the only thing we can take into the grave. I wanted to say to my friend, for heaven's sake go do something else. There have to be easier and maybe more honest ways to try and earn a living. Or else just do it to the best of your abilities, your talents, and then don't justify or make excuses. Don't complain, don't explain.

In an essay called, simply enough, ''Writing Short Stories,'' Flannery O'Connor talks about writing as an act of discovery. O'Connor says she most often did not know where she was going when she sat down to work on a short story. She says she doubts that many writers know where they are going when they begin something. She uses ''Good Country People'' as an example of how she put together a short story whose ending she could not even guess at until she was nearly there:

''When I started writing that story, I didn't know there was going to be a Ph.D. with a wooden leg in it. I merely found myself one morning writing a description of two women I knew something about, and before I realized it, I had equipped one of them with a daughter with a wooden leg. I brought in the Bible salesman, but I had no idea what I was going to do with him. I didn't know he was going to steal that wooden leg until ten or twelve lines before he did it, but when I found out that this was what was going to happen, I realized it was inevitable.''

When I read this some years ago it came as a shock that she, or anyone for that matter, wrote stories in this fashion. I thought this was my uncomfortable secret, and I was just a little uneasy with it. For sure I thought this way of working on a short story somehow revealed my own shortcomings. I remember being tremendously heartened by reading what she had to say on the subject.

I once sat down to write what turned out to be a pretty good story, though only the first sentence of the story had offered itself to me when I began it. For several days I'd been going around with this sentence in my head: ''He was running the vacuum cleaner when the telephone rang.'' I knew a story was there and that it wanted telling. I felt it in my bones, that a story belonged with that beginning, if I could just have the time to write it. I found the time, an entire day - twelve, fifteen hours even - if I wanted to make use of it. I did, and I sat down in the morning and wrote the first sentence, and other sentences promptly began to attach themselves. I made the story just as I'd make a poem; one line and then the next, and the next. Pretty soon I could see a story, and I knew it was my story, the one I'd been wanting to write.

I like it when there is some feeling of threat or sense of menace in short stories. I think a little menace is fine to have in a story. For one thing, it's good for the circulation. There has to be tension, a sense that something is imminent, that certain things are in relentless motion, or else, most often, there simply won't be a story. What creates tension in a piece of fiction is partly the way the concrete words are linked together to make up the visible action of the story. But it's also the things that are left out, that are implied, the landscape just under the smooth (but sometimes broken and unsettled) surface of things.

V.S. Pritchett's definition of a short story is ''something glimpsed from the corner of the eye, in passing.'' Notice the ''glimpse'' part of this. First the glimpse. Then the glimpse given life, turned into something that illuminates the moment and may, if we're lucky -that word again - have even further-ranging consequences and meaning. The short story writer's task is to invest the glimpse with all that is in his power. He'll bring his intelligence and literary skill to bear (his talent), his sense of proportion and sense of the fitness of things; of how things out there really are and how he sees those things - like no one else sees them. And this is done through the use of clear and specific language, language used so as to bring to life the details that will light up the story for the reader. For the details to be concrete and convey meaning, the language must be accurate and precisely given. The words can be so precise they may even sound flat, but they can still carry; if used right, they can hit all the notes.

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