: Re: How can I convince my reader that I will not use a certain trope? Imagine a fantasy story in which there once was a very powerful evil divine being, but it was defeated long before the beginning

@Jennifer354

Vote Up Vote Down

Example. In the first four paragraphs of A Christmas Carol, faced with a similar problem of stretched narrative credibility, Dickens begins by reinforcing the fact of Marley's death, absent-mindedly rambles on about similes, then reminds us, lays more exposition, reminds us again, and shows how such doubts would ruin Hamlet:

A CHRISTMAS CAROL.

STAVE ONE.

MARLEY'S GHOST.

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.
The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the
undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge's
name was good upon 'Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to.
Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don't mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there
is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined,
myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in
the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my
unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country's done for. You
will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as
dead as a door-nail.

Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?
Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. Scrooge
was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his
sole residuary legatee, his sole friend, and sole mourner. And even
Scrooge was not so dreadfully cut up by the sad event, but that he was
an excellent man of business on the very day of the funeral, and
solemnised it with an undoubted bargain.

The mention of Marley's funeral brings me back to the point I started
from. There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly
understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to
relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet's Father died
before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his
taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts,
than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning
out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul's Churchyard for
instance—literally to astonish his son's weak mind.

After which it's all story...

(0)

Login to post a comment!