Thank you one and all for your feedback. I am amazed how much I missed in those three lines, everything from the body in the tank to the turtle in the Serman tank was spot on.
~N
~N
Lmao I should have caught that .... to the edit button!
No no no no.... not the edit button. If you must revise a submission, then submit it in a new post. Otherwise people reading the thread fresh will be confused because the conversation will no longer make sense in sequence.
All the guy had to do was pick up a briefcase at point A and drop it off at point B. Simple as that. But he got greedy, decided half a million dollars was worth the risk.
Give the guy a name* and it's perfect (at least to me).
* On second thought, not necessary a name. A nick or job title (the "transporter" or something) will do as well but then you may need a transition/intro into his name.
All the guy had to do was pick up a briefcase at point A and drop it off at point B. Simple as that. But he got greedy, decided half a million dollars was worth the risk.
Alright, I came up with a new opening spot for my novel and, after writing a new page or so, a new first three. Hopefully an improvement.
After a few minutes hangingwith his feet stretched, the tips of his toes dangling a few inches from the floor, Jack thinks to himself, this isn’t going to work. I’m not even really choking here—and I can still breathe.JackHe gives the silk necktiestretched above his heada few short tugsat the nape of his neck.he hearsThe shower shuts off in the bathroomjust outside the walk-in closet.
Ok here are my three.
Hank watched the guppies flit away from his hungry turtle. In a beaten man slowly awoke to a world of pain. Hank smiled and whispered, "I think I'll call you guppy."
First three lines of my current WIP:
I still remember my exact thought when I met my first alien. It wasn’t the fact that I had to carry the weight of being the first human contacted by another race. Hell, I wasn’t even thinking about how scared I was. No, my first thought was "damn, I can’t believe I have to picture this nasty thing having sex."
That second sentence makes absolutely no sense. The syntax is garbled. Something is missing.
Great voice. This is good. I would keep reading.
No quotes around the thought, though. Quotes are only for dialogue.
I only quoted this because I wasn't sure if the italics would translate to the forums from the copy/paste, but thanks! haha
Technically this is the first three lines of the book I'm editing, but it's currently got all my attention.
“Forty percent unemployment,” said my dad to my mom as he read the paper. He held up the headline so that she could see. “Look at that.”
I think it would be difficult to hold up a headline. Maybe this:
"Forty percent unemployment," said my dad to my mom. He held the newspaper up so she could read the headline. "Look at that."
Thanks for the input and kind words, Neporsche!
The rain does play a part in the scene. I did try and integrate it into another sentence, but it ended up sounding way too cluttered.
He's got a wound and it's bleeding—a lot.Damn it, now I want to know why Nathan was screaming. ~N
The heavy rain slides off my chin. I remove my t-shirt and push it against Nathan’s wound as he screams in agony. I’ve never seen so much blood in my life.
Maybe it's just me, but when I think of something sliding off of something else, I think of it as no longer where it was. As in "The hammer slides off the roof." The hammer is no longer on the roof.
I know you don't mean the rain slides off the chin and now the chin is dry, right? I assume it's raining hard and the "sliding off" is continuous, and maybe you're trying not to use a simple verb like "runs."
You might say a waterfall cascades off the rocks above, but I doubt you'd say it slides off.
Am I making sense?
Edited to say: Oh, yeah, forgot to say I like it, though. It's a grabber.