I agree with you Marvin, especially when it starts on page three, between characters we don't even know yet. Occasionally, though, it is critical to a story (Ian McEwan's masterful Atonement comes to mind). Perhaps the most difficult question I'm wrestling with in my current WIP is that I've brought two couples to page 140, and how those couples work or don't work is important to the story. I've also come this far under the dilusion that the book could go either way, ABA/CBA, and this issue means I can't straddle the fence any more.
Currently, my read is Edith Wharton's (1905) The House of Mirth. Wow. I just want to stop the story occasionally, slap the protagonist, and say, "Get a clue!" Recently I finished Ruby K. Payne's non-fiction Crossing the Tracks for Love, about social class differences in marriage. Wharton's Lily Bart illustrates Payne's characteristics of weath, point by point.
--Brian
Currently, my read is Edith Wharton's (1905) The House of Mirth. Wow. I just want to stop the story occasionally, slap the protagonist, and say, "Get a clue!" Recently I finished Ruby K. Payne's non-fiction Crossing the Tracks for Love, about social class differences in marriage. Wharton's Lily Bart illustrates Payne's characteristics of weath, point by point.
--Brian
