with a BIG smile...
"I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I was sent to a public school, I wasted two years doing my national service, I went to Oxford; and there I began to discover I was not the person I wanted to be.
"I had long before made the discovery that I lacked the parents and ancestors I needed. My father was, through being the right age at the right time rather than through any great professional talent, a brigadier; and my mother was the very model of a would-be major-general’s wife. That is, she never argued with him and always behaved as if he were listening in the next room, even when he was thousands of miles away. I saw very little of my father during the war, and in his long absences I used to build up a more or less immaculate conception of him, which he generally – a bad but appropriate pun – shattered within the first forty-eight hours of his leave."
The opening lines from The Magus by John Fowles, published in 1966 but begun in the 1950s. It’s a fascinating story of physiological illusions that can and do become increasingly dark and serious.
I read it so long ago, it must be time to pick it up again. I will probably have an entirely different reading experience at this stage in my life than I did when I was 15.
Funny how life changes your perception of things... ;) :)
It's always very easy to be kind to you Welby. You are kind to every one as well. Hugs and loves! :) :)
The opening sentence of George Orwell’s "Animal Farm":
Mr. Jones, of the Manor Farm, had locked the hen-houses for the night, but was too drunk to remember to shut the pop-holes.
A protagonist's character and an impending plot development is implied with the first sentence. We want to know what happens next.
A good story has a least one major theme which is not overtly stated - but the unfolding events allow the reader to perceive it by inference. It uses words to evoke and to show, but it does not report or tell; it is a water-color or an oil painting, not a photograph.
It uses language that sounds natural and is easy to read and yet is uniquely poetic:
"He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory." (from Chickamauga by Thomas Wolfe) It's prose, but it unfolds in a series of phrases that could be put into lines. It has a natural cadence if one reads it aloud. It uses imagery and simile. And it leads where one least expects - in this instance, from the small, intimate, simple and safe... to the vast, ominous, tragic and ironic.
Good stories may be either character-driven or plot-driven, or both, but the key is change; at least the protagonist is changed by what occurs in the plot - preferably all the main characters.
Timing counts, though it varies with taste, epoch and culture. It should never drag, except perhaps briefly to express boredom (perhaps as a motivation for action) or as the prelude to surprise or sudden change. It should hold the reader's interest so well that it's hard to put down.
That said, great literature is often really hard to read and can take four or five chapters to adapt to the author's style. The reward comes from sticking with it to the end. It is as if just seeing the brush strokes up close is somewhat frustrating, but in stepping back to see the entire picture, everything falls into place with the most wonderful sense of ah-ha! ah yes! now I get it - and now I understand something about humanity that I never knew before. For me, it's that something that makes it stand out from all the rest.
"He had slept through it all, grasping his little wooden sword with perhaps a tighter clutch in unconscious sympathy with his martial environment, but as heedless of the grandeur of the struggle as the dead who had died to make the glory."
This post was edited by inky at November 21, 2018 5:11 AM MST
Pearl 