Review: WhiteSpace, Episode 1
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 1, 2014
When Sean Platt and David Wright decided to start self-publishing together and formed their group Collective Inkwell, they wanted to take a different approach.  Not content to release a book or two a year and hope their fans stayed interested in them during those 6-month lulls when nothing was coming out, they decided to keep their names in their readers’ minds by giving them a constant stream of new material.  They released their titles on Tuesday in the hope that, on Wednesday, people would have discussions that began with questions like, “Oh my God, did you read the new White Space episode?”  See, they didn’t approach their fiction as books, but as a television series, in prose form.So while the work, as a whole, is called WHITESPACE, the first release was WHITESPACE, Episode 1, followed a week later by episode 2, and on and on until, 6 weeks later, the full, collected story, called WHITESPACE, Season 1 would be completed.And they start off with a bang as a high school teacher shows up late to class one morning, and unloads, killing half a dozen students and accidentally taking out a teacher in the next room.  This event sets the stage for what follows as Wright and Platt introduce their characters slowly, a chapter at a time, a scene at a time, to give the reader the time to become acquainted enough with them that we feel invested in their journey.  And all the while, the characters are tied together by this common thread of the killer teacher who then turned his gun on himself, leaving his motives an even bigger mystery for this small town.This first episode has the makings of an excellent story and I’m curious to know where things go from here.  My problems, however, with this episode both stem, I believe, from the rapid fire approach to publishing that the authors adopted.First, since the story unfolds like a television pilot, we’re supposed to meet our characters in a very natural way, an introduction that makes them feel like real people, so we see them doing mundane things like talking to their friends or lying in bed or making lasagna.  The overview approach to character introductions in WHITESPACE is very cinematic in scope.  It’s also sort of dull in prose, especially in something that’s only 1/6 of the full story.  This is the danger of a “pilot”, we need to know the characters enough to care about them, but in this instance, I think a little too much character was included and not nearly enough plot.  Granted, I know--or HOPE--that a lot of the details that came up in the course of introducing these characters, like the Paladin guards who always just happen to be on the scene, are going to be important later.  But for now they’re not that important, or they don’t SEEM that important, and these finer things take away from the advancing of the plot the reader--as of this first episode--wants to know more about, like why this teacher slaughtered so many of his own students, including one of his son’s best friends.  And the sad part is, by the end of Episode 1, I haven’t found a character I’m rooting for.  I’m slightly curious about Cassidy, but the actor whose name I’ve already forgotten I have no interest in, nor am I THAT invested in the kids who survived the shooting.The second problem is one that could have been solved and, hopefully, was addressed in later episodes.  That’s the prose.For the most part, the prose flowed really well and I enjoyed the detail that went into it.  But as I got further along into the first episode, it started to feel sloppy and unedited.  Not unedited as in there were lots of typos--I only found 2 or 3 and they were earlier in the story--but sloppy as in it felt like first draft writing, the part where the author is just trying to get down on the page what happened, but containing none of the nuance that makes for good prose.  Here’s an example:“But the baby monitor wasn’t in here.  So she opened her eyes, and was about to get up when she noticed that the light in the fire alarm wasn’t lit green.  It wasn’t lit at all.“That’s weird.  Did the battery come loose?“She got up from the desk and dragged Roger’s chair over to a spot beneath the fire alarm and reached up and twisted the bottom cap.  Two objects, hidden in the fire alarm where the battery should have been, fell from the alarm and to the carpeted floor before she could reach out and catch them.”Sloppy.  The word alarm is used four times in seven sentences, draws attention to itself and distracts the reader.  Maybe it’s not a big thing, but it interrupts the flow, even if the reader doesn’t consciously realize it’s happening.One more;“Cassidy reached her hand out again, finding her way to the bedroom door.  Her hand lowered, found the knob, then opened it.  The moment she opened the door, a bright light in the hallway blinded her, as if someone had placed giant spotlights at either end of the hall, then flicked them on the moment she stepped into the hallway.”Again, that distracting repetition, this time multiplied.  “Hand” is repeated, then “opened”, one flowing into the next with “door” bringing up the rear.  But the real problem child was “hall” or “hallway” which was used THREE times in one sentence.  And, really, is the giant spotlight a necessary part of that sentence?  Isn’t it enough to say she opened the door to a blinding light?  It seems like nitpicking, but I have to believe these are issues that could, and would, have been addressed with more time and another edit or two.  Sure, the story is relatively free of typos, but the language itself feels rushed.  And in feeling rushed, it comes across as clunky and yanks the reader out of the story.Overall, I am intrigued and very curious to know more about the murderous teacher and what happened to him, as well as what is this darkness that seems to be falling over this small community.  I definitely want to check out, at least, the first full season.  But if the rest of the story feels as clunky and rushed as the latter half of this first episode did, I don’t see myself going past season one.