Why doesn't this work?

[AG31]

I recently read a snippet in a detective story that just didn't seem to work. Since it had to do with sex as well as writing skill, I thought I'd bring it up here.

Set up: The MC, Packard, is a deputy sheriff in rural northern Minnesota. He's out to dinner with his ditzy mother. Kyle, the attendant at the table is the owner of the restaurant, and the two had interacted briefly some time ago at an event at the restaurant. Kyle has just finished letting the mother taste the wine.

"Kyle took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kyle--a handful of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip. He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>."

This is our introduction to Packard's sexual orientation, but that doesn't figure prominently in the book. Just another characteristic. It caught me up short and kept intruding on my reading. I wondered if it was relative lack of familiarity with gay culture, so I tried making Kyle female.

"Kylie took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kylie--a handful of her dark hair, the softness of her velvety cheek, the texture of the slight scar on her upper lip. He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>."

I think I would have reacted the same way. Is the phrasing "things he wanted to sample on Kyle" just too awkward? Is it too over the top somehow? Too arbitrary, as there's no development on this front, at least for the first 3/4 of the book.

What do you think?

 

[ElectricBlue]

"wanted to sample" is a bit clunky to my eye. Makes Kyle sound like a piece of food - which might be the effect the author is after, but without the rest of the context, difficult to really say.

 

[NotWise]

It didn't bother me at all.

 

[StillStunned]

"Sample on" is a weird combination. But the whole paragraph is clunky. Kyle asks a question, and Packard just goes into sexy dreamy mode, and then a reflection of what went wrong. Are Kyle and the mother just sitting there watching him? It might work in a sitcom, but if the novel is supposed to be serious, it feels out of place.

 

[ChuckWolf]

In the book it's referring to wine and in that instance it works, but tasting would be more common than sampling in that context.

Tasting would actually have been a better choice, except for all the hair and scar on the upper lip stuff.

 

[PennyThompson]

Specifically the phrase "Sample on him/her," is just a little awkward to me, but I don't know that "sample from," is better...

But other than that, I kind of like it. The Packard character is horny for Kyle and wants to nibble on him like a charcuterie board

 

[StillStunned]

Specifically the phrase "Sample on him/her," is just a little awkward to me, but I don't know that "sample from," is better...

I might have written as "If Kyle was offering, Packard thought, there was a whole list of things he'd like to sample."

 

[BeechLeaf]

(I wish the full stops and commas were a bit more distinct here. I read that opening as:

The MC, Packard, is a deputy sheriff in rural northern Minnesota. He's out to dinner with his ditzy mother, Kyle. The attendant at the table is the owner of the restaurant . . .

And that confused me for quite a while: he's fantasizing about his mother's five-o'clock shadow?)

So, once I'd worked that out, yes 'sample on' is clunky, but there's also something odd about 'had a list of things' in this gritty, realist setting. Does he, would he, really have a list? Something he's thought of before? This would be fine in the whimsical style of bi_cathy or norafares, but not so likely in a hardboiled detective story.

 

[PennyThompson]

Does he, would he, really have a list? Something he's thought of before?

... doesn't everyone? Have an easily accessible mental list of features and body parts of people they know that they wouldn't mind nuzzling?

Right, no, of course not. That would be weird. Nobody does that, definitely not me...

 

[IWroteThis]

Here's my first take on it.

"Kyle took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kyle--a handful of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip.

Kyle took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard did want to sample something — Kyle. The silken feel of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip, …

 

[CalBishForNow]

Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kyle--a handful of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip.

IMO the weirdest thing is what he wants to sample. Maybe this is just because I'm a cishet guy, but I'm having a hard time imagining how sampling that stuff would even work, and it wouldn't seem enjoyable if he did. I guess you could sample the feel of the hair but sampling the hair itself sounds like eating it, and I assume sampling the feel of five-o'clock shadow would be unpleasant, and straight or not I don't even think I'm sensitive enough to even feel a scar on lips unless it's very big. It makes me imagine that Kyle looks like Jonah Hex.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

"sample of Kyle's -" would be more idiomatic to me - the 'on' is clunky.

The rest of it is adequate telling.

 

[Britva415]

I think I would have reacted the same way. Is the phrasing "things he wanted to sample on Kyle" just too awkward? Is it too over the top somehow? Too arbitrary, as there's no development on this front, at least for the first 3/4 of the book.

Personally, I find the phrasing about wanting to sample Kyle's stuff to be kind of suitable and objection-free regarding gay male attraction, but would find it crude, charmless and borderline creepy regarding a man's hetero attraction to a woman.

Creepy as in, if it weren't very very clear that the author were deliberately imparting that trait specifically upon the characater, for creepy-character characterization reasons, then I might project the unselfconscious creepiness onto the author.

 

[Britva415]

Are Kyle and the mother just sitting there watching him?

This is kind of amazing to me. Readers know that thoughts happen at the speed of thought, and, the other characters present don't have to wait for them or even be aware of the thoughts at all.

It might work in a sitcom

I don't see how, unless it's one of those echoey voice-over things so we, the audience, hear what he's thinking... While the other characters unnecessarily and unrealistically sit and wait for it.

 

[AG31]

Personally, I find the phrasing about wanting to sample Kyle's stuff to be kind of suitable and objection-free regarding gay male attraction, but would find it crude, charmless and borderline creepy regarding a man's hetero attraction to a woman.

Creepy as in, if it weren't very very clear that the author were deliberately imparting that trait specifically upon the characater, for creepy-character characterization reasons, then I might project the unselfconscious creepiness onto the author.

This is very interesting. I think I agree, but don't know exactly why. What makes it OK for a gay interaction?

Edit: Well, I should refine this to say that I agree that it plays differently with a female character, not as believable. I still think having the scene at all at this point in the story is disruptive.

 

[Britva415]

This is very interesting. I think I agree, but don't know exactly why. What makes it OK for a gay interaction?

Because the "creepy" scale between two gay men is calibrated very very differently than the "creepy" scale between a man and a woman.

Should it be? That's a hard question, but, the practical reality is, it is.

 

[AG31]

Because the "creepy" scale between two gay men is calibrated very very differently than the "creepy" scale between a man and a woman.

Should it be? That's a hard question, but, the practical reality is, it is.

If I started a thread to explore this idea, do you think I'd get any joiners? I once posted a thread asking if there were (or why there weren't.. I forget) gay men in AH. Some bi men, like yourself, responded. I find this fascinating. I prefer to read stories about men interacting than hetero couples. But I'm definitely plain old vanilla straight female.

 

[Britva415]

If I started a thread to explore this idea, do you think I'd get any joiners?

Couldn't hurt to try and see! I'd probably post something to it.

 

[TheLobster]

What makes it OK for a gay interaction?

It doesn't. In fact it much more creepy than the non-gay version, unless there has been some indication beforehand that Kyle is into men and that at least in principle he wouldn't object.

 

[yowser]

See, I took this as a riff off the practice of 'wine pairings' - what kind of cheese goes with this Pinot? The 'sampling' then works because the 'pairing' automatically launches into a list of sensations the guy is conjuring up to go with the wine.

YMMVSMIB

(Your mileage may vary so much it's bizarre.)

 

[Britva415]

It doesn't. In fact it much more creepy than the non-gay version, unless there has been some indication beforehand that Kyle is into men and that at least in principle he wouldn't object.

If you had said "equally creepy," I'd have potentially considered there might be something to it, but this sounds like "gay panic" to me.

It's only between the MC's ears, it's just his thoughts. Kyle isn't aware of it. It isn't in his face. Nothing is being done to him.

And even if it was, the idea that gayness makes this more creepy than when the same thing involves a woman is indefensible.

 

[anthrodisiac]

I recently read a snippet in a detective story that just didn't seem to work. Since it had to do with sex as well as writing skill, I thought I'd bring it up here.

Set up: The MC, Packard, is a deputy sheriff in rural northern Minnesota. He's out to dinner with his ditzy mother. Kyle, the attendant at the table is the owner of the restaurant, and the two had interacted briefly some time ago at an event at the restaurant. Kyle has just finished letting the mother taste the wine.

"Kyle took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kyle--a handful of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip. He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>."

This is our introduction to Packard's sexual orientation, but that doesn't figure prominently in the book. Just another characteristic. It caught me up short and kept intruding on my reading. I wondered if it was relative lack of familiarity with gay culture, so I tried making Kyle female.

"Kylie took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kylie--a handful of her dark hair, the softness of her velvety cheek, the texture of the slight scar on her upper lip. He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>."

I think I would have reacted the same way. Is the phrasing "things he wanted to sample on Kyle" just too awkward? Is it too over the top somehow? Too arbitrary, as there's no development on this front, at least for the first 3/4 of the book.

What do you think?

Yeah, same issue with "sample on." It didn't necessarily catch me up totally, but it plinked (and, like @StillStunned said, the whole thing is kinda plinksville).

"Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample — a handful of Kyle's dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip."

Moving the reference to Kyle as the first part of the list, then moving on from there without it, I think flows better, and has a bit of a better punch by waiting until after the em dash to reveal that it's Kyle that Packard wishes to sample. Why is that? Well, it keeps the first part of the sentence normal, like he's considering menu items, but then you get the second half, and the reveal is that it's Kyle. It pairs the reveal with the list of things he wants to sample. Minor shift, to be sure, but you have the intrasentence twist that does a better job at giving a keen reader that brief moment of "oh I know what's coming" and a regular reader the delight of "oh, I see what you did there." The pause is doing a lot of work in this instance. Most people, when reading, take natural pauses at punctuations, which can be incredibly effective tools for providing that tiny little blip for creating micromoments of tension, suspense, and twists even within the same sentence.

If you read it aloud, it hits harder, because reading aloud is slower, so you have even longer than ingesting it mentally. And if you had someone reading it for an audiobook, I'd instruct them to draw out the pause even longer to really enhance the effect.

 

[Britva415]

"Kyle took her glass and asked Packard if he wanted to sample anything. Packard had a list of things he wanted to sample on Kyle--a handful of his dark hair, the scratch of his five-o'clock shadow, the texture of the scar on his upper lip. He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>."

There's more in this that's even more super clunky besides just the "sample on" phrase. The "sample on" phrase barely blips on my radar at all.

What was the expression I think it was @anthrodisiac who coined for this? Was it "plink?"

No - what's quite a lot more artless and clumsy to me is the segue to thinking they had had a moment at the party.

Maybe that would be less clunky if I had read the whole story and already known about a previous moment at a party. Maybe not. At the very very very least I think it needs a paragraph break: New idea. More effective would be some connecting words, like maybe saying how this came up for Packard in his mind because of the previous moment. Like, maybe that's kind of obvious? But this looks to me like a case where making the reader read between the lines just isn't as good as providing the words to connect the dots.

That just has to do with the segue. Another non-sequitur is "investigate." What do you mean, investigate? Investigate what?Again, this is forcing the reader to try to read the author's mind, and, what's worse, maybe the character's too? How are they even supposed to know? Is "investigate" a thought in Packard's mind or just the author's? Is he supposed to flash his badge and use his authority as a lawman to make Kyle let him "sample on" him? It just isn't a very good word to use unless you're going to spell out what the parameters of "investigate" are supposed to be. In the author's mind or in the character's mind - whichever. Fuck if I even know. It's ambiguous and it's not an easy transition from the previous idea to this one.

Same thing with the "list of" idea. Is that just the author's idea or did Packard actually organize them into a mental list, while or after he noticed those things? Is it the character's list or the author's list? If it's the character's list, when did he develop it? Just now, while looking at Kyle? Previously, during the party? After?

I'm not saying the reader shouldn't ever be expected to do any of their own work to figure stuff out. But this strikes me as an author who didn't have any awareness of whether the reader was going to get plinked (or whatever the expression was), and, didn't have any deliberate thoughts about deciding what to leave unspoken and what to let the reader deduce or construct.

Reading between the lines should also not (generally) be something the reader has to do just to figure out what the thread of the narrative even is. It should be something the reader does to deduce facts of the story which the author has a reason to want to show but not tell.

 

[anthrodisiac]

There's more in this that's even more super clunky besides just the "sample on" phrase. The "sample on" phrase barely blips on my radar at all.

What was the expression I think it was @anthrodisiac who coined for this? Was it "plink?"

No - what's quite a lot more artless and clumsy to me is the segue to thinking they had had a moment at the party.

Maybe that would be less clunky if I had read the whole story and already known about a previous moment at a party. Maybe not. At the very very very least I think it needs a paragraph break: New idea. More effective would be some connecting words, like maybe saying how this came up for Packard in his mind because of the previous moment. Like, maybe that's kind of obvious? But this looks to me like a case where making the reader read between the lines just isn't as good as providing the words to connect the dots.

That just has to do with the segue. The other non-sequitur is "investigate." Investigate what? Again, this is forcing the reader to read the author's mind. The author's, and, maybe the character's, too? Is "investigate" a thought in Packard's mind or just the author's? Fuck if I even know. It's ambiguous and it's not an easy transition from the previous idea to this one.

I'm not saying the reader shouldn't ever be expected to do any of their own work to figure stuff out. But this strikes me as an author who didn't have any awareness of whether the reader was going to get plinked (or whatever the expression was), and, didn't have any deliberate thoughts about deciding what to leave unspoken and what to let the reader deduce or construct.

Reading between the lines should also not (generally) be something the reader has to do just to figure out what the thread of the narrative even is. It should be something the reader does to deduce facts of the story which the author wants to show but not tell.

I agree a paragraph break is probably in order.

Also had a bit of a plink (there you go ) at investigate — similar reaction as to investigate what. This is especially necessary since the MC is a sheriff, and context clues around this snippet and from the rest of the book might make it clearer, but investigate could mean a lot of things; he'd been too busy to investigate something about Kyle being a suspect, that Kyle was into him, that Kyle was gay at all? The litany of Packard's exploits might also have made it more clear, but why leave it this ambiguous and make the reader do extra work when you could easily fix it with something like:

He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party but there hadn't been time to investigate that since then on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>.

Literally "that" makes it substantially clearer. Maybe still a little ambiguous, but most readers probably have enough context to know "that" is the moment mentioned at the top of the sentence.

Even still, this is rather a clunky sentence trying to do too much. If it were me, I'd split it into two sentences:

He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party. However, there hadn't been time to investigate if they'd clicked, on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>.

Or, if the litany of things is a long list, split it differently to pair it better:

He'd thought maybe they'd had a moment at his party, but there hadn't been time to investigate if they'd clicked. Mostly on account of <a litany of what Packard had been up to>.

 

[Britva415]

Literally "that" makes it substantially clearer.

No, we all know that "that" refers to "the moment."

It doesn't clarify at all what "investigate" means, or whose mind "investigate" is in between the author and the character.

But I agree, it's possible that previous narrative already established that this is what the lawman's thoughts sound like between his own ears. Maybe he does think about stuff like this in terms of "investigating" instead of more conventional ways to connect, approach, create opportunities, or even just admire from afar.