The Second Fly Caster: Opinions Please On Description

[randyflycaster]

Here's a draft of a description of my estory. Any opinions?

Thanks,

Randy

Erik, a young boy, is proud that his father, the winner of several state championships, is probably the greatest long distance fly caster on earth, but then an old stranger proclaims that someone he knows, a Shane Riley, is the greatest fly caster and will the next tournament.

Scared that the stranger might be telling the truth, Erik anxiously awaits the day of the tournament. Finally it arrives, but then events take an unexpected turn that leaves Erik full of unanswered questions, questions that linger and then, years later, deepen when Erik’s idealistic plans and actions are crushed by a horrific reality.

And so, Erik follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes an alcoholic.

He struggles, unsuccessfully, to become sober, until, almost by accident, he comes to see his father and fly casting in a different light. Finally, Erik is able to overcome his demons.

[queentess]

Originally Posted by randyflycaster

Erik, a young boy, is proud that his father, the winner of several state championships, is probably the greatest long distance fly caster on earth, but then an old stranger proclaims that someone he knows, a Shane Riley, is the greatest fly caster and will the next tournament.

That is a very very long sentence with a lot of commas. Do "fly casters" wave their hands and flies shoot out of their fingertips and attack enemies?

Originally Posted by randyflycaster

Scared that the stranger might be telling the truth, Erik anxiously awaits the day of the tournament. Finally it arrives, but then events take an unexpected turn that leaves Erik full of unanswered questions, questions that linger and then, years later, deepen when Erik’s idealistic plans and actions are crushed by a horrific reality.

And so, Erik follows in his father’s footsteps and becomes an alcoholic.

He struggles, unsuccessfully, to become sober, until, almost by accident, he comes to see his father and fly casting in a different light. Finally, Erik is able to overcome his demons.

This tells me everything about the story... what incentive do I have to read it? Also, a lot of commas. Makes it difficult to read and understand the sentences.

[Worldwalker]

What Queentess said. That's not a teaser, that's a synopsis. Also, you're missing the word "win".

[randyflycaster]

Great points. Thanks so much. I will shorten the sentences and take out some of the commas.

Also, I could change the last sentence to: With his new perspective, Erik again tries to overcome his demons. Or to: Again, Erik tries to overcome his demons.

[Worldwalker]

That sounds better for a last sentence.

The problem, as always, is that you have to balance giving people enough information to make them want to read the story without giving them so much information that they don't have to read the story. The exact point differs not only among stories but among readers. For example, two people looking at the exact same story might think, respectively, "wow, this is different" and "ho-hum, I read something like that last month", depending on their particular reading experiences. The more they've read, though, the higher the odds are that they fall into the second category (having read something more or less like that before) so you have to take that into consideration when you're trying to sell it to them.

Remember that sentence length is one way you communicate pacing. Look at my forum posts, for instance. I generally write them when I'm relaxed, feeling kind of mellow, etc., and the posts reflect that. I'm kind of notorious for paragraph-long sentences so complex that trying to diagram one would be almost as bad as trying to flowchart Windows. Short sentences would be different. They'd be sharper. More active. I'd write like Spenser talks. The private eye, that is, not the poet. That's not really me, though. I suspect I have this fear of not being properly understood unless I explain things at such length that nobody reads them and I am not, in fact, properly understood.

Anyway, for a teaser you don't want to mischaracterize your story -- that is, write like Spenser when the story is written like Worldwalker -- but you also want the teaser to be fast-moving and briefly summarize what you want to say, even if you do normally write like me. Again, it's a balancing act. Nobody can point to a particular spot, or particular style, and say "there!" because it differs so much for every story and for every reader. We can (and will, loudly) give suggestions, but the final decision has to be yours, because you know your writing and your audience the best.

[Nada y Nadie]

Something you might want to try is to rewrite your description and keep all the sentences under 10 words, or use some other arbitrary constraint (like no comma usage, or every sentence has to start with a preposition...). What this does is force you to be creative in your writing and try something you wouldn't usually do. It may not give you your final draft, but I'll bet you'll come up with a description that is quite different from what you have now. Then you can synthesize the two.

[randyflycaster]

You folks have also helped with the article I'm writing. After reading these posts I noticed that I had too many long sentences.

Randy