Today we see that an odd layout can lose a reader as fast as a poor opening paragraph.
What I gleaned about the stories: People feel emotions. They might do something about them at some point.
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Note: This is a short story collection, so the rules are slightly different from standard Immerse or Die: instead of reading on every time I lose immersion, I stop reading that story and move on to the next one. As usual, I stop reading after the third WTF.
Analysis: The first story opened with:
‘The oak-panelled walls were gloomily black where the sunlight had all but left them, though on the white ceiling of the state bedroom a wondrous texture of gold remained to whisper of the transient glories of life, of the laughter, the tears, the tragedy, the ecstasy, and in the state bedroom especially, the majesty.’
I am fond of a poetic turn of phrase, so enjoyed the emotional undertones in this description of the light.
Analysis: Each paragraph was indented between 4-5 em and had 4 blank lines separating it from the next. While I am not always distracted by combination of indents and blank lines, the extent here was sufficient to break my usual eye tracking at the end of the first paragraph.
Fully in a typesetting head-space instead of the story world, I moved on.
Analysis: The second story opens with:
‘Lauren had to work in the morning and she was not looking forward to it. The reason why I am at university is to study in order to avoid ever winding up in such a position, she protested to herself.’
As there were no indications the second sentence was speech, I assumed the ‘I’ referred to was a separate narrator from Lauren. So, discovering the second sentence was actually Lauren’s internal monologue brought me juddering to a halt.
Since this occurred in the first paragraph, the problem carries full weight, so I moved on.
Analysis: Part way through the first paragraph of the next story, the narrator says: ‘But I was appalled, furious, and took it on myself to become infuriated further on a daily basis.’ Fury is a powerful emotional state, exceeding anger, not an exercise you can practice; therefore, the idea of someone deciding to be furious tomorrow and even more furious the day after, and so on, tripped me. And again, since it happened in the first paragraph, I pulled the plug. Take the Pepsi Challenge: Want to know if my own writing measures up? Download one of these free short stories, in the format of your choice, and decide for yourself.
