TITLE: House of Cards
GENRE: Creative Nonfiction (Memoir)
My wife, Holly, who has just entered the third trimester of her pregnancy with our daughter, Aurora, needs help climbing the steep stairs leading from the sidewalk to the courthouse in this small Massachusetts town where you live. Three men stand on the steps of the courthouse, smoking. One man
This is interesting--I have enough here to make me go "Hmmm, why are they headed to the courthouse?" And that's good. But the opening sentence is pretty long and requires a fair amount of thought to unravel. I question whether we need to know at this point that it's a girl or what her name is; not knowing what's coming, it seems to me like 3rd trimester pregnant is enough. And I'm confused about the "you" at the end of that sentence, too, but I reserve judgment on that since I don't know what comes next, which hopefully would illuminate why you're speaking 2nd person.
ReplyDeleteI, too, was thrown by the use of so many names - Holly, Aurora, Massachusetts - in the first sentence. You can likely cut this down to, "My wife has just entered her third trimester and needs help climbing the steep stairs to the courthouse in the town where you live." I think this would give us a hint of what the story is and interest us to read on. Then you could weave in the other details.
ReplyDeleteYeah, that second person really threw me. I don't live in a small town in Massachusetts, so that doesn't make sense. If you're trying to place me in the scene, I think sensory details would do the trick without stating the impossible.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the names. IF you need HOlly, leave it, but when you mentioned Aurora I was thrown. I'm also not sure of the "you". Good Luck : )
ReplyDeleteAgree with the comments about the "you". It definitely seems odd. I'm also unsure about the rest of the POV here. Unless the main character is speaking to a stranger, he would not refer to his wife as "My wife, Holly" (nice name choice by the way...*cough*!) He would just think, "Holly..." And he wouldn't tell himself the details of her pregnancy or the baby's name as he already knows this.
ReplyDeleteNow if he is speaking to someone (the "you" in this case), this is probably fine but I'd still eliminate the second name.
I agree with everything everyone has already said. I would also add that this reads like a report. It may be a memoir, but you can still use the same techniques of story telling. SHow her struggling to get up the stairs, show him or someone else helping her. Add some atmosphere.
ReplyDeleteAnd I wonder why you introduce 'you.' A memoir is someone's personal story, and the 'you' makes it seem as though you're trying to make it the reader's story. It doesn't seem like it's working.
I agree with other commenters, the second person would make this really hard for me to read. The details are really good, but there's a lot of telling...not so much showing.
ReplyDeleteI was definitely thrown by the POV in this. Is the memoir directed at a specific person? I'm intrigued by the story here - woman, pregnant with her third child, and husband are walking into a courthouse. But the tense and POV are making me more confused than hooked. I agree with others that you could cut down on the names. We don't need to know the unborn baby's name at this stage, or that the courthouse is in Massachusetts.
ReplyDeleteThe earlier comments are all spot on - I agree that the names of the wife and the gender / name of the baby are all irrelevant at this stage. That's info that can come in later, easily. I think Massachusets can stay, but like they said, the POV does toss me out of the narrative.
ReplyDelete