The Cracked Bell

 

Now that I've made 38 posts about first sentences, I thought I'd take a look at one of my own. 

Uh oh. 

Well, I now know more and would have more ability to do better. But let's take a look and see what's working and what isn't. 

We start with a name: Jehaima. It's not a name in common use in our world. It has a form similar to female names of our world, in three syllables and ending in a, like Jemima or Katrina or Lucinda. So it suggests a female in another world or another time. 

Next, we have "could feel the distant hum" – there's a bit of sensory confusion here. "Feel" usually refers to the sense of touch, but hums are more often heard than felt. There's also something unusual about "distant" – touch only works at very close range, and hums are usually quiet, so having either one noticed at long range is odd. 

The hum comes from a duel. Somewhere, two people are fighting, and Jehaima knows it from a distance. This brings some conflict into the sentence. 

The next few words, "in her farsense," confirm that Jehaima is female and that this is an altered world. "Farsense" is not in the dictionary. It is a made-up word. "Far" goes with "distant" and "sense" goes with the mixture of touch and hearing from the words "feel" and "hum" earlier in the sentence. Farsense appears to be something Jehaima experiences a bit like touch and a bit like hearing, but that works at a distance. Jehaima has a power that people in our world don't have, and there is a word for it that we don't use. The word "farsense" by itself would signal that we are in a fantasy or science fiction story. 

So far, the sentence has given us a clue to the world, a protagonist, and the tension of a fight in the distance. This opens a story fairly well. I might have been well-advised to stop there, on the intriguing word "farsense," and give the reader a moment to engage. 

The next part of the sentence does not work as well. "An ongoing discordance" brings in some long words and the more difficult time stamp of something that is continuing to happen. "Discordance" is uncommon and awkward without being as interesting as "farsense." "Normally melodic" is another phrase that is hard to speak, with many syllables, a rough rhythm, and uncommon words. It also creates three time spans in the sentence: the current moment, shown by the simple past "Jehaima could feel," a slightly wider span created by the duration word "ongoing," and an even wider span indicated by "normally." That's a lot to convey in a single sentence. 

Finally, the sentence ends with "sounds of the kingdom." These are four words that don't carry as much information as they could. "Sounds" are more generic than any of these other words: songs, voices, rattles, barks, drumming, heartbeats. "Of" and "the" are extremely common words, that serve a function but do not add flavor. "Kingdom" does tell us that we are in a world with countries governed by hereditary leaders, which makes this more likely to be fantasy than science fiction – but what kingdom is it? Does it have a name? How large is it? "Kingdom" is almost generic for the location of a fantasy novel. It's not precise or flavorful or surprising enough to take advantage of the strong last word position in the sentence. 

The last half of the sentence is trying too hard, to do too much, and cover a wide span of time, and it lets the focus of the first half of the sentence dribble away in tongue-tripping phrases. 

I do like the abundance of hearing words in this sentence: hum, discordance, melodic, sounds. That suggests that Jehaima approaches the world through what she hears, and that sound will play a large part in the story. However, these words play against "feel," undercutting the idea that "farsense" is part touch, part hearing, and only "hum" is specific and strong. It might be better to change "feel" to "hear," leaving "farsense" entirely related to hearing. 

I published The Cracked Bell in 2014. I'd learned about self-publishing, and when I reread the book I'd finished some years before, it struck me as good enough to share. I gave it a light edit and sent it into the world. 

Graphic design and cover image from The Cracked Bell by Ken Silbert