Post the first three sentences of your work-in-progress!

Fable1327

Sir Macullen awoke with a start; as he sat up quickly, urged to action by his nightmare, pain flared in his ribs. He placed a hand on the fresh linen wrap that covered his healing wounds and felt tenderness with his every touch. He slowly breathed in through his nose and out through his mouth as he closed his eyes.

bigrickcook

Dresden: I almost feel the note should come first and foremost. It's by far the most interesting bit of what I see there.

Donny read the crumpled note again: Distinguished gentleman seeking liberation of item of interest from estate of disgruntled former business parter.

The rest about O'Malley's is pretty busy. "O'Malley's Pub was barren, as empty as it normally was full. Had to be the rain keeping people in."

And in general, "thought to himself" is pretty redundant. Unless people are telepathic, all thoughts are to themselves.

Quoth

I would like to draw everyone's attention to how many of these stories begin with people waking up. Knock it ooooooofffffff

tapeslinger

Agreed. Seriously, I think we all do it every now and again, but it's such a bad habit to be in.

WORSE THAN ENDING SENTENCES WITH PREPOSITIONS

Wank

The two policemen across from John on the metro were turning off their shouldercams. That was never a good sign. He tried not to notice their heart rates, but his body’s sensors were calibrated for any hint of arousal and the accelerating beats felt loud as war drums.

bigrickcook

Terrence woke up, as was natural. But his exhaustion from a night of sleeping tore him down to a state of slumber once more. And then surprisingly enough, he woke up again.

Big Dookie

Abraham stared up into the heavens and pondered the end of all things. He wondered if it would be like the movies, a blinding flash of light before the wall of fire washed over him, burning away skin and muscle and hair until a charred skeleton was all that remained. He hoped that it wouldn’t hurt; he knew that it would.

DouglasDanger

A huge, ugly, lumpy plane-shaped object sits in front of him. It is complete... "-ly not capable of flight." His logical part sighs, the resigned disgust accompanied with a slow shake of his own skull.

Xagarath

Fable: The rhythm's not quite right. The first sentence feels like two sentences, and all the others each have at least one more adjective than they need. You're introducing the character and the situation, which is good, but it needs a little polishing.

Xagarath

Wank: excellent, but I can't help but wonder if you're trying to fit too much information in at the beginning. I'd maybe leave the fact it's on the metro for the next paragraph- you've already got multiple characters and several bits of tech in there.

Xagarath

And thanks for the comments on mine. It has to start with waking due to the dream-logic context and subtext and all that malarkey of the larger story, but does it work better if I make it less passive, like so:

A keen woke Mary that morning; a high, sharp wail that bounced off the walls, rattled down the hallway and shot up the stairs.

dresdenphile

The rain pounded on the car as Michael re-read the two text messages: “U got 2 do it; u wanna b w/me don’t u, baby?”

He looked up at his house, illuminated only by the lightning strikes that were coming more and more frequently.

“Call me when she’s dead. I love u.”

Trying not to spam the thread, but I haven't written in a long time, and I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. This thread seemed like a good sounding board.

Baron Dirigible

tapeslinger wrote: »

You always forget something, before a hard wipe. There's always some lingering folder of missing vidrefs unnoticed until its deletion can be verified. Finality draws a line where data is not missed until it is severed; some helical confabulation.

I love, love, love the first line, and then you lose me. I'm picking up some sort of cyberpunk thriller where identities are treated like hard drives are now, being transferred from one shell to the next as the 'hardware' gets older and more dilapidated? And you can never be certain you've carried all of your memories across? But your second and third lines jolt me away from that a little bit, since I'm not entirely sure what you're saying, and 'helical confabulation' honestly means shit-all to me.

tapeslinger

Yeah, I worried about that, Baron. It isn't completely gelled yet, but. it's gearing up to be something about the breakable qualities of digital "memory" and mechanical/technical objects like hard drives, yeah, versus the breakable qualities of an organism; the helical confabulation comment could be made more plainly about dna. I am not really in love with the core of it yet, so it is interesting to get feedback on a tiny chunk of it.

Xagarath: the new line is a huge improvement.

Big Dookie

Alright, I'll try to catch up on a few of these that haven't been commented on already.

Dresden (your two posts on the last page and on this one) - The first entry feels a little actiony-generic. If I picked this up and read it quickly I'd probably drop it back on the shelf. It needs something to give me a reason why I should care about this guy busting into this lobby. For the second entry, I liked it better. I might clean up the wording on the note so it feels a little less muddled and possibly lead with that instead of the bar. The third entry is great except for the text-speak. I can't stand reading abbreviated words like that in texts normally, much less in literature. I'd shorten the first message, maybe just to something like "You have to do it." The second text implies the relationship already, so no need to spell it out just yet.

Douglas - That second sentence is a little weird. I'm not sure I get why he transitions into a spoken thought mid-word like that. Otherwise though it definitely caught my interest.

Xag - I like the edit you made, grabs me much more quickly.

Xagarath

Big Dookie: structurally spot-on. Your imagery's a bit hackneyed, but I get the sense that's maybe deliberate?

And thanks everyone!

CptHamilton

We never used our real names inside. I haven’t thought much about why. Julia, my therapist, would probably have something to say about that.

DouglasDanger

I was attempting to "Guy's" uncertainty. He's second-guessing himself. He's built a plane from a bunch of parts-planes found in hangers. He's built it in the only way he could, which is with zip-clamps and rivets, and he's just figured out the bombed out runway is too short, so he needs to find rockets to blast off-- in a machine that may shake itself apart under normal operation.

chiasaur11

I was born to the sound of sirens. The first thing I saw in the world wasn’t my mother, my father, or even a doctor. My eyes opened to a lizard the size of a skyscraper tearing away the walls.

bigrickcook

Man, I thought the first sentence was about the creature, not the alarm.

Quoth

CptHamilton wrote: »

We never used our real names inside. I haven’t thought much about why. Julia, my therapist, would probably have something to say about that.

This introduces a bit of character but it doesn't do more than hint at the plot and setting. I'm not sure whether this is okay, but you could try giving a bit more detail about other stuff first, see if it's more of a hook that way.

Big Dookie

chiasaur11 wrote: »

I was born to the sound of sirens. The first thing I saw in the world wasn’t my mother, my father, or even a doctor. My eyes opened to a lizard the size of a skyscraper tearing away the walls.

I like it!

Quoth

chiasaur11 wrote: »

I was born to the sound of sirens. The first thing I saw in the world wasn’t my mother, my father, or even a doctor. My eyes opened to a lizard the size of a skyscraper tearing away the walls.

I think "My eyes opened to" is actually awkward in this context. "It was" might work better, and you could combine the two sentences.

CptHamilton

Quoth wrote: »

CptHamilton wrote: »

We never used our real names inside. I haven’t thought much about why. Julia, my therapist, would probably have something to say about that.

This introduces a bit of character but it doesn't do more than hint at the plot and setting. I'm not sure whether this is okay, but you could try giving a bit more detail about other stuff first, see if it's more of a hook that way.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll give it some thought.

Lilnoobs

"Freeze!" Ash declared, pivoting around the cold steel pillar, the muzzle of his sidearm pressed firmly against Luck's forehead. The following rush of Ash's trench coat snapped the air like a lizard's tail, while two suns flooded the Telemer wharehouse with light, revealing Luck's alabaster grin. Luck's black hair looked like a maze of spikes spreading out and sprouting down his back.

DouglasDanger

Now, I just need to write three more sentences.

Baron Dirigible

Quoth wrote: »

CptHamilton wrote: »

We never used our real names inside. I haven’t thought much about why. Julia, my therapist, would probably have something to say about that.

This introduces a bit of character but it doesn't do more than hint at the plot and setting. I'm not sure whether this is okay, but you could try giving a bit more detail about other stuff first, see if it's more of a hook that way.

I disagree. Reading those three lines, I'm immediately intrigued, and want to keep reading. Seems as good a definition of 'hook' as any other. I'm fairly certain that adding any more detail would take away from that.

The only criticism I can offer is that the third sentence is a bit ambiguous: is it referring to the first or second sentence? If it's referring to the first, you could probably excise the second line altogether without losing much. That way you can use the third sentence to describe the futuristic sex dungeon in detail for the impatient types like Quoth.

Quoth

Baron are you closely following my New Weird BDSM brainstorming in the other thread because carry on.

CptHamilton

Baron Dirigible wrote: »

Quoth wrote: »

CptHamilton wrote: »

We never used our real names inside. I haven’t thought much about why. Julia, my therapist, would probably have something to say about that.

This introduces a bit of character but it doesn't do more than hint at the plot and setting. I'm not sure whether this is okay, but you could try giving a bit more detail about other stuff first, see if it's more of a hook that way.

I disagree. Reading those three lines, I'm immediately intrigued, and want to keep reading. Seems as good a definition of 'hook' as any other. I'm fairly certain that adding any more detail would take away from that.

The only criticism I can offer is that the third sentence is a bit ambiguous: is it referring to the first or second sentence? If it's referring to the first, you could probably excise the second line altogether without losing much. That way you can use the third sentence to describe the futuristic sex dungeon in detail for the impatient types like Quoth.

The third sentence is referring more to the situation than to either of the statements. The following couple of lines clarify that, but Jeffe was very clear about how many sentences one can post in here

CptHamilton

I've got two WIPs (WsIP? WsIPs?) so here's the other:

I think the ghost showed up before the lady in red started killing people. It was hour four of standing out in the cold, watching my quarry nurse cup after cup of coffee. My whiskey flask had run dry two hours in and I’d burnt my last smoke by hour three so you’ll understand that my attention span was pretty well shot.

CptHamilton

Lilnoobs wrote: »

"Freeze!" Ash declared, pivoting around the cold steel pillar, the muzzle of his sidearm pressed firmly against Luck's forehead. The following rush of Ash's trench coat snapped the air like a lizard's tail, while two suns flooded the Telemer wharehouse with light, revealing Luck's alabaster grin. Luck's black hair looked like a maze of spikes spreading out and sprouting down his back.

The word that comes first to my mind here is 'overworked'. You've got 5 adjectives, an adverb, three unfamiliar proper nouns, and two similes in three sentences. Your first line is dialog and uses a non-standard assignation that I'm not sure actually works in context ('Freeze!' might be shouted or commanded; declaring it connotes something distinctly different). I'm not really even clear on what is happening. Is Ash following Luck around the pillar, keeping the gun to his head? Or is he whipping around a pillar and putting the gun to Luck's head on the other side? Is Luck's hair spiked, or actually spikes? The two suns tell me sci-fi, so it could go either way. At this point I'm picturing a lizardy dude (thanks to the earlier lizard simile) with spines growing from his forehead down his back (since 'sprouting down his back' seems to imply that the hair is growing out of his back, not just hanging that far).

I don't mean to be super critical here, it's just too much. If I picked up a book and saw this I'd put it back down. It's just too much work for me to read for what I assume is a rollicking sci-fi adventure. If you cut down the word count by like half to two-thirds you'd have an interesting and actiony scene.

The Ender

Broadly speaking, perspectives on the past 400 years and their moment of genesis can be categorized as some permutation of one of four widely held opinions: the EETI narrative, the dying breath narrative, the Derleth narrative and the candid savagery narrative.

The more or less undisputed, agreed-upon facts of the 27th of August are as follows: there was a sovereign body of unknown size that was called 'Canada'. An explosive disaster of unknown origins occurred in an urban center housing Canada's governing cabinet, producing enough heat and kinetic force to form a glass-rich oval crater that was 390m deep at it's nadir with a 3,000km long diameter and 2,600km short diameter.

tapeslinger

CptHamilton wrote: »

I've got two WIPs (WsIP? WsIPs?) so here's the other:

I think the ghost showed up before the lady in red started killing people. It was hour four of standing out in the cold, watching my quarry nurse cup after cup of coffee. My whiskey flask had run dry two hours in and I’d burnt my last smoke by hour three so you’ll understand that my attention span was pretty well shot.

I quite like this and can't really seem to figure out why, but I'd keep reading.

tapeslinger

The Ender wrote: »

Broadly speaking, perspectives on the past 400 years and their moment of genesis can be categorized as some permutation of one of four widely held opinions: the EETI narrative, the dying breath narrative, the Derleth narrative and the candid savagery narrative.

The more or less undisputed, agreed-upon facts of the 27th of August are as follows: there was a sovereign body of unknown size that was called 'Canada'. An explosive disaster of unknown origins occurred in an urban center housing Canada's governing cabinet, producing enough heat and kinetic force to form a glass-rich oval crater that was 390m deep at it's nadir with a 3,000km long diameter and 2,600km short diameter.

this is engaging, but a little dry. I'd probably take some of the quibbly bits out but leave the implications that the events of that day are unclear or disputed.

CptHamilton

The Ender wrote: »

Broadly speaking, perspectives on the past 400 years and their moment of genesis can be categorized as some permutation of one of four widely held opinions: the EETI narrative, the dying breath narrative, the Derleth narrative and the candid savagery narrative.

The more or less undisputed, agreed-upon facts of the 27th of August are as follows: there was a sovereign body of unknown size that was called 'Canada'. An explosive disaster of unknown origins occurred in an urban center housing Canada's governing cabinet, producing enough heat and kinetic force to form a glass-rich oval crater that was 390m deep at it's nadir with a 3,000km long diameter and 2,600km short diameter.

I am interested. Assuming the book jacket had engaged me to begin with, I'd forge ahead. A couple of somewhat-to-very persnickety things:
* Oxford comma, damn you! (I kid, I kid (actually I don't kid (okay, it's a choice (but there's only one right choice))))
* its nadir, not it's nadir, and I'd probably have chosen epicenter
* 'explosive disaster' doesn't fit with the rest of your style here. Given that the origins and conditions were unknown, I'd suggest either just 'explosion' or something more technical-sounding like 'thermogenic event'
* similarly, I'd expect either 'ovular' or, more likely, 'elliptical' as a description of the crater
* the terms you want are either: diameter and width, or major and minor radii. Any convex shape has a diameter defined by the longest chord through its interior and a width defined as the shortest such. For an elliptical shape the diameter and width are twice the lengths of the major and minor semi-axes (the major radius and minor radius), respectively. But probably nobody who isn't into geometry is going to know that, so if you actually want clarity instead of technical specificity I'd go with diameter and width

Magell

@The Ender I'd say the beginning is way too dry, although the situation you are proposing is an interesting one, it's just not shown in an interesting way. That kind of description would be fine as a later clinical diagnosis, but at the beginning it needs to feel immediate to the reader.

chiasaur11

Magell wrote: »

@The Ender I'd say the beginning is way too dry, although the situation you are proposing is an interesting one, it's just not shown in an interesting way. That kind of description would be fine as a later clinical diagnosis, but at the beginning it needs to feel immediate to the reader.

Not sure I agree. I mean, it didn't work for me either, but I think a dry and clinical tone isn't the problem. That part gets across a narrative voice that doesn't give a rat's ass who lives and who dies early, which can be useful.

Problem is it's too damn wordy. "More or less", "undisputed" AND "agreed upon" all in a row? Yeah, that doesn't work.

Magell

How dare you disagree with me, I'll KILL YOU!

Or maybe you're right, but I don't feel good saying that.

tapeslinger

get it all out of your system, man

Oghulk

I like this, this is a good thread.

I attended my first school while my father attended his last. I don’t recall much of what I actually ‘learned’ during my time there, ‘learned’ being a verb to describe the retention of information delegated to a subject, but in all honesty it was probably unimportant. The two schools were right across the street from one another; mine a small church with a playground and two patios, his a mire of tall buildings and intersecting paths.