Avoid the “record scratch freeze frame” voice (page critique)

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Now then. Time for the Page Critique. First I’ll present the page without comment, then I’ll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer your own thoughts, please be polite. We aim to be positive and helpful.

Random numbers were generated, and thanks to jshdoff, whose page is below:

TITLE: What I Did For Love
GENRE: Memoir

First ~250 words

CRAP

I’m three when I learn to shoot crap.

“Don’t you take the kid’s money,” my mother yells from the kitchen.

“If the kid’s gonna learn to gamble, the kids gonna learn to lose.”

Lesson Number One. I’m three when I learn don’t risk anything you’re not willing to lose. A tender father-daughter moment and not a camera in sight. I have his full attention and we’re shooting crap against the white brick of the fireplace. My father takes my three pennies when I lose. I’m three. Of course I lose. I lose a week’s allowance. I don’t think I mind so much, because I really do have his attention and it’s his way of teaching me to count. His way of giving me an edge. One plus three is four, two plus two is four the hard way, one plus one is Snake Eyes. One and six? Craps. You lose.

My father was a photographer.

He could look right into you. There was no place to hide. His story: Fred is a teenager when he walks into a gypsy tearoom and reads the gypsy’s tea leaves. She puts him to work pronto in her gypsy storefront—this handsome kid from the Bronx, reading fortunes for the gadje. Gadje, that means Americans, and anyone who is not a gypsy, which technically, meant my father as well.

There was a meme that made the rounds a few years back mocking the movie storytelling technique where there’s a record scratch and freeze frame and than a voiceover narrator says something like, “You’re probably wondering how I got here.”

When I read this opening page, I couldn’t help but hear a record scratch in my head followed by, “Yup, it’s me. Three years old and playing craps. You’re probably wondering how I got here.”

There’s a particular type of zoomed out voice that I often see, particularly in memoirs, where we’re not really immersed in a particular moment and seeing a scene unfold, but instead it’s a narrator coming over the top and adopting a tone of, “Let me tell you everything you need to know.” Then we’re just told a bunch of things. It feels less like a scene unfolded than a shouted monologue.

There are some good details here (I can picture the white brick fireplace), but the voice feels so overbearing I was never able to immerse myself in these scenes. I mean, “I’m three” is repeated three times in the first few paragraphs. Does the author not trust us to grasp that the first time or the second time?

Tastes absolutely vary and a distanced perspective can work, but I tend to prefer when we’re a bit more immersed in a moment rather than having a narrator pre-packaging everything for us and telling us what everything means before we’ve had a chance to experience it ourselves. For instance, here we start with the lesson the kid is about to learn in the scene we’re about to read.

Your mileage may vary, but I prefer to be immersed in a story, not a pre-summarized “here’s everything you need to know” monologue.

Here’s my redline:

TITLE: What I Did For Love
GENRE: Memoir

First ~250 words

CRAP

I’m three when I learn to shoot crap.

[Set the scene]

“Don’t you take the kid’s money,!” my mother yells from the kitchen.

“If the kid’s gonna learn to gamble, the kids gonna learn to lose.”

Lesson Number One. I’m three [We know] when I learn dDon’t risk anything you’re not willing to lose.

A tender father-daughter moment and not a camera in sight. [I’m struggling to grasp how this goes together] I have his full attention [Show this] and we’re shooting crap against the white brick of the fireplace. My father takes my three pennies when I lose, a week’s allowance. I’m three. [WE KNOW] Of course I lose. I lose a week’s allowance. I don’t think I mind so much, because I really do have his attention [Struggling to believe this as a three year old’s perspective] and it’s his way of teaching me to count. His way of giving me an edge [An edge on what? The other three year olds?]. One plus three is four, two plus two is four the hard way, one plus one is Snake Eyes. One and six? Craps. You lose.

My father was a photographer. [This feels like a non-sequitur. What does that have to do with this scene?] He could look right into you. There was no place to hide. [Show this. And why would the narrator need to hide playing craps? It’s not poker.]

His story: Fred [Why is he suddenly referred to as “Fred?” And why do we need to know this right now?] is a teenager when he walks into a gypsy tearoom and reads the gypsy’s tea leaves. She puts him to work pronto in her gypsy storefront—this handsome kid from the Bronx, reading fortunes for the gadje. Gadje, —that means Americans, and anyone who is not a gypsy, which technically, meant my father as well.

Thanks again to jshdoff!

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Art: Jungen beim Würfelspiel by Josef Wenzel Süss