In Which I Read Twilight: Chapter 3 -- Phenomenon · 3:52pm Dec 23rd, 2017
It’d rained in the previous chapter, but Bella wakes up to find the weather cold enough freeze the rain solid, coating everything in a layer of ice and turning the roads into an ice rink. Naturally, school’s cancelled; there’s no way the school’s going to let students drive out in those conditions.
No, wait. School’s not cancelled. Students have to drive out in those conditions.
I live in an area that can have pretty bad weather in the winter. I once experienced this exact situation: heavy rain during the day, frozen overnight, everything’s icy the next morning. Everything was cancelled. You do not want to go on the road in those conditions. Heck, Bella struggles simply walking to her truck. But no one thinks about having a snow day. Why? Because that’d prevent the next plot point from happening.
Side note: I’m actually liking Charlie a lot. He’s doing his darndest to make Bella feel comfortable, even though it’s hard for him. Remember how he got her a truck for free? Not only that, he got snow chains for it. Not only that, he got up early to put them on the truck so Bella didn’t have to. Father of the year.
Bella slowly drives to school, thinking about Edward and how he’s so frigging hot like whoa. She gets there no problem, but another student, Tyler, loses control of his van and nearly hits her while sliding around. Edward saves her by stopping the van, and somehow Bella’s the only one who notices the fact that Edward ran down four rows of cars in less than a second to get to her and stopped a van with his bare hands. She hits her head in the process, so he takes her and Tyler to the hospital where his father works. We get to about everyone fretting about her.
After some checkups, Bella confronts Edward about the incident, but he keeps dodging her questions, being cryptic about how “it’s better this way”. It bounces back and forth a while but never goes anywhere. That night, Bella dreams of Edward, and the chapter ends right there, as if that’s some sort of cliffhanger.
I’m gonna ramble a bit, because this was a short chapter when it comes to content: it might be realistic, but we don’t need to hear about everything that happens in a story. Yeah, I know, “show, don’t tell”, but there are times when telling is fine if it skips over unimportant stuff. We get at least four different people worrying about Bella after the van nearly hits her, and we hear every one of those conversations. They all even follow the same pattern:
Person: Bella! Are you alright?
Bella: I’m fine.
Person: You’re sure?
Bella: Yes, I’m fine.
[extend for five or six lines]
It doesn’t add anything to the story and really pads out the page count. It’s annoying and slow. If I’d been writing this, I would’ve sliced out two, maybe three of those conversations, and put in a line about Bella getting increasingly annoyed by the repetition of people asking her if she was okay.
Then again, if I’d been writing this, school would’ve been closed.
Everything's coated in ice, so much it's hard to walk a couple feet to a car..... and they still have school...... what kinda
ing idiots run this place...
For reference, I live in Wisconsin, it gets bad here. And there's a very clear line between ok to drive, and close everything.
When I was in grade school in eastern Connecticut, we almost never had snow days, even if there was ice everywhere. Why? The superintendent of schools was from Northern Maine, and he lived next door to the city snowplow depot, so his roads were always spotless.
Oh my gosh this. Show don't tell is a piece of advice I wish more people would take with a grain of salt rather than applying blindly, for exactly this reason. The repetitive stuff can probably be glossed over, unless the goal is to irritate the reader or the like.