Today we see that when a plot hole shows up on page one, it can have a chilling effect on the reader’s willingness to suspend belief any further.
What I gleaned about the story: Liam can run fast. Especially when he’s carrying stolen bread that has magically avoided mold and dehydration during the several years since society collapsed.
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Analysis: I was only half way down the first page having already chosen to ignore two small editorial issues when a third happened along. To begin, the first two paragraphs echo on the headword, but it’s only a single occurrence, so I kept going.
Then in the middle of the second paragraph, I tripped over a mismatched verb tense.
He was amazed what a few years of neglect can do…
There’s a common tendency to express universals like this in the present tense, but it doesn’t really work when it comes within a broader sentence that is already in the past tense. Given the trickiness of the situation though, I gave this a pass as well.
But then, at the bottom of the second paragraph, I tripped over a typographical issue.
The package he was clutching almost got away– he shifted his grip and sprinted to the fence across the yard.
The intended em-dash was only given as a hyphen, and then, instead of following either the British or American conventions (spaces on either side vs. no spaces) the author opted to create his own standard with a space on the right but not on the left. Ick.
Each of these is an issue that I would normally have let slide on a first occurrence, but finding all three before reaching the end of the second paragraph was too much, too soon. With my irritation rising, I wrapped them together and threw the first flag.
Analysis: Here’s the passage that tripped me up as the protag reaches a doorway:
Not seeing anyone, he pushed it open and peered out.
“Wump!” A heavy ham of a hand connected with his shoulder and back, swatting Liam like a bug from the other side of the door…
How does that work? A guy opens a door and looks out. Then somebody on the other side of the door punches him in the back? Was he standing in the doorway with his back facing out and peering over his shoulder? Upon reading further, I think he was hit from behind, by somebody who had been chasing him and was therefore inside the building behind him. Not “on the other side of the door,” as reported.
Proprioception is that innate sense we have of how our body parts are positioned relative to each other. If you close your eyes, you can probably “feel” that your right arm is bent, your left is stuck out like a traffic cop, and your knees are folded beneath you. That is proprioception. In the context of writing, I use this term to encompass the reader’s sense of where they are in the story world, and where other characters and objects are in relation to them. Conveying this well is just one of many concerns an author must juggle if the reader is going to stay fully immersed in the unfolding tale—especially if it’s an action scene being described. But when it fails, it creates true WTF moments like this one, with people or things seeming to appear out of thin air.
Analysis: So it turns out that the running boy was running because he had stolen loaves of bread from the turf of a rival street gang. These all seem to be boys, early teens, living in the burned out wrecks of their once thriving town. But where did the bread come from? Did the other gang set up a bakery? That doesn’t sound at all consistent with the bleak dystopia being described, so I have to assume that “gang of bakers” is not where the bread came from. So did these kids have a stockpile of pre-collapse bread in some old abandoned warehouse? Maybe. But the collapse was three years ago. Even if we posit a pile of bread large enough to have lasted for three years, there’s no refrigeration and no electricity. Yet we see the protag and his cohort chomp into these loaves with wild gusto, tearing it easily into chunks. In my world, bread that dares survive for even a week past its date stamp is either rock-hard, bright green, or both. So even if this old bread somehow managed to avoid going moldy, I just can’t conceive of it still being soft enough and fresh enough after that length of time to provide this kind of princely feast.
I’d forgive him the bread, at least temporarily, until I knew more. After all, bread can be baked in a wood-fired oven. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be made with the wheat that we’re familiar with. Crude forms of bread existed long before our sophisticated versions. But that many problems in such a short space sets some kind of record. I’ve been known to drop books after reading the first paragraph, and even the first sentence.
Even wood-fired bread implies a certain level of social organization, cooperation, CIVILIZATION. If there is recently-baked bread available, that implies the presence of responsible adults, or at least of children responsible enough to get everyone to work together for a productive goal. Which begs the question, why are these young boys living in squalor and violence when they could join up with whoever baked the bread?
The typographical issue is probably due to the coder being from a different county (I’m just guessing). The dash in question clearly is an en-dash, somewhat shorter than an em-dash. It is used in many countries instead of an em-dash (for example in Germany). The same goes for the rules for blanks around dashes. But I agree that if a book is aimed at the British or US market, the proofreading and coding should adhere to the conventions of the target country.
Actually, it’s a hyphen, not even as wide as an en-dash. I checked.
I very much appreciate your candid opinion. This was my first try at a very involved story and I know I need to spend more time editing. However, after you have read the same text for 4 years, you stop seeing many of the details. Also. my word processor did not convert the em-dashes correctly and I missed that. Sorry.
About Liam walking through the door- When he “peered” through the door, a portion of his body was sticking out. The assailant was standing by the door, on the back side and hit him from the side. The same move you see in a about a billion cop or action dramas.
Again, thank you for your critique, I am taking your points to heart and book two in the series will be released very soon.
Oh, and they still had a functioning, if not medievalized society.
IF you had read more, you would know that the story has nothing to do with chapter one. Sorry I made it so painful to read! :-) The actual story starts an airship that falls through the rift that has caused the destruction, plummeting our characters into a world inside our Earth. Much more interesting than fighting over bread. That was just the setup for how bad Liam wanted to leave.