h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: La Quinta del Sordo - A23171429
Author: Pinniped - U183682


I'm struggling a little bit with this one, and so have decided to post the half-cock version.

Anyone up for collaboration? Any good ideas for improvement?

Pin

This is excellent - well written and informative.
Whether you could improve it depends on your intention in writing it. If you're keen to combine factual information about Goya with an exciting story about the discovery of the pictures, it's difficult to see how it could be improved.

Actually, on second thoughts, I can see this as a film. Young man, with some information on Goya's earlier life and career, arrives at the posada. He can't understand why the old man seems reluctant even to talk about some of the pictures, let alone show them to him by candlelight. Then he arrives at the house.....

Wow. Great descriptions. Well done.

*Wipes sweat from forehead*

Only...I don't like the conclusion. Wraps it up too neatly.

I'd either leave it with the man on the bed, or, if you need something else, just a brief note about where the painting are today.

After the power of the images themselves, I think less would definitely be more.

Thanks. It's not intended to end like that. It's a work in progress, and we don't have a suitable collaborative workshop any more, so I tried AWW.

I've got a scene draft with an unhappy Rojas in bed with the light on at both the beginning and the end of the story, one time before he's seen the paintings but after he's been spooked by Olvarez, and the other time after confronting the farmhouse. I've tried it both ways round, ie each bed-scene at beginning and end. (So it's getting the fractured timeline treatment at the moment. Most of my writing seems to have to go through that stage). I think this one might finish up sequential.

The trouble is, so little seems to be known about the farmhouse and what it was like. What was once rural Spain is now Madrid suburb, with a Metro station on it. The paintings themselves are in the Prado now and, yes, they are powerful, but they're well lit and no longer concentrated in a tiny space, so they don't really feed off each other.

I bet they were terrifying in their original setting, particular in a society that feared both God and madness.

In this first shot at the writing I wanted to see if I could build some tension without the paintings, and without the farmhouse, even. There is potential in it, but it needs fresh ideas.

Thanks for all the wise comments above.

I've had several attempts at improving this, none very successful. The original has meantime grown on me.

There are some slight changes, mostly of sequence, with the main one being moving the explanation that was originally at the end to the beginning in a slightly altered form.

What does anyone think now?

I think this is a superb piece of writing

I think it has been improved by moving the explanation to the beginning. At the end, it diluted the sense of horror which you had so successfuly built up.

I don't know that I'm competent to offer any suggestions - but I'm going to anyway! I wondered if it would improve the ending if you moved the two sentences beginning 'The young man was enjoying his last day of innocence' suitably amended, to the end.

What this is is an excellent lead in to looking at the paintings themselves. I don't know how anyone could read this and not go looking for them.

I did wonder if you'd set out your stall just a little too clearly in the intro. I did wonder if Olivarez' reticence might be demonstrated a bit more in the 'It's just a farmhouse' paragraph, and if there'd been enough to have made Rojas hair stand upright before Olivarez' blank look, but those are nitpicks and this isn't a story - it's a setting, a context for going to look at the paintings and all it needs is a link to them. It does need that though.

A question - the farmhouse just had two rooms, right? I hadn't realised that they didn't know the original positions of the paintings. From the website I found, I just assumed they did.

There was a programme on Channel 5 tonight, featuring a guy who painted all over the walls and ceiling of his home. A very claustrophobic thing - you have these images inside your head then you paint them all round the walls you live within.

Thanks both

I've tried moving the last day of innocence, mVp, without finding a good outcome. There's a contradiction I think. His innocence ends with Olivarez rather than the still-to-come trip to the Quinta.

Waz's comments too. Sure, the piece has lots of clunks and rattles, but tinkering feels futile. I'm still looking for a step change but I don't know what it is yet.

Yes Waz, just two substantial rooms, one up, one down. No record was made of the layout. The original disposition of some of the paintings is uncertain. I think they are probably more sure than I make it though. I tried reading something in Spanish, and it seemed to be about forensically matching plaster.

The main source for this incidentally is Robert Hughes' biography. The guy is painfully vain, but I admire his writing. The beginning of the book, where he talks about researching Goya as he recuperates form a serious car crash, is a great hook.

Olly and Roger are completely made up, of course.

Pin, I'll have to this one. Looks very good at first glance.

I don't normally like stuff with Spanish headings, but hey !

Olly... It's never going to read the same again.

A third character with more freedom? Olly's constrained by the fact he's working.

Tried that, sort of.

There were two Ollies, one wanting to go that night, the other not. A more passive Roge was at first confused and later disturbed by their arguing. These Ollies were obviously raving lunatics and rather Macbeth witch-like. It all got very surreal and detracted from the paintings, so got abandoned. Parts of it will probably get used for something else, Frankenstein fashion.

There was also an abortive attempt at a version where Roge comes out from the city to sort a strike among the men contracted to remove the paintings. I wanted to move him from anger at their refusal to work, to realisation that they were too scared to work and then on to just as scared himself. It wasn't gelling and was turning out too complicated and distracting, so I tried Roge the Realtor instead.

Part of the attraction of the plot used here is the earlier point about incomplete knowledge of what the Quinta was like. If you don't actually go there, you don't need to describe it. Making up the setting of the paintings (rather than merely making up people to act in the story) would have defeated the object, don't you agree?

On another tack - which are your most fearful famous paintings?

I take your point about making up the setting. And yet, to get the effect of the paintings in that setting, you (the reader you) have to imagine them there. There are some general things that must have applied, even though we don't know the detail... you know all that though.
I was thinking of an Olly2 that was silent and brooding until storming out refusing to go near the farmhouse again.

Most fearful famous paintings is proving difficult to answer. It's not a word I'd readily use.

There is a memory nagging but I can't place it. Keep seeing those black and white drawings of stairs that go up round a square and yet the four sides join up, instead. Another painting that sprang to mind was Blake's Nebuchadnezzar. Fearful's not the word for it now but I certainly found it so as a child.

I could add Goya's Dog to the list of most fearful paintings, the one you find least so here.

Hey, and , Sealboy.

I know you think this is short of its target, but others of us think it's clearly a gem. For myself, I can't see how anyone could read this and not follow up, find the paintings, and be better able to see them in context. A worthwhile end in itself, no?

You know the issues the Italics have with a couple of words, and it'll be your choice whether it goes frontpage-ward with alternatives or into the UnderGuide's very distinguished 'Under the Counter' section.

Here . Pass those on to Olly and Roj. They shouldn't go viewing those paintings on empty stomachs. And congratulations, and thank you,
UGeds

Thanks.
I don't feel inclined to pander to bowdlerising idiocy.
Those words are the right ones, even if other parts are flawed.
Under the Counter it goes, then, whenever that poo-poo-head of an Archivist gets round to it.