Post the first 3 sentences of your WIP!

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BethS

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First three sentences of my WIP.

No tracks, no vultures, and no hacked up remains. Police Chief Clark tossed his wide-brimmed hat on top of the file cabinet and slumped in his desk chair. At least Royce would be pleased that he hadn't found a severed head or a pile of entrails reeking in the hot sun that day.

The first sentence gave me the impression that the scene is set outdoors. Then Clark is introduced and he's obviously in an office. The third sentence refers back to the outdoor scene that we haven't seen. And the most vivid visuals are of something that didn't happen.

In all, this opening feels stuck in a trough between events. Maybe you've started it too soon?
 

lastdefense

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Here are the first three lines from my current WIP. This is my first attempt at a novel.

“Ichabod!” said a booming male voice from each of the four speakers in the corners of the large freight elevator that was taking us farther and farther down below the world above. “Do not think of it as a punishment for your heinous crimes - or if you’re here because of someone else - do not think of it as your own fault for loving the wrong person or being born to the wrong parents! Think of it as an opportunity to help serve your fellow man in the world above!
 

cleaverton

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Okay, I'm game. This is more like the first 5 lines, but they're short. **note: very rough draft as I try not to read/edit until I am completely done. (sometimes I get caught up in editing when I should be getting the story captured).

There it is again. That little tickle in the back of my brain. Or is it an itch? A nudge? I can’t remember what they called it. I only know I’m not supposed to have it.
 

Ms_Sassypants

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From one of my WIPs - "The Prince Killer"

The rush of wind swept her hair creating ripples down her back. Curled lashes embraced unrelenting air as her eyes narrowed into focus. Somewhere in the horizon masked by the stretch of sky and sea, lay her glimmer of hope.
 

BethS

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There it is again. That little tickle in the back of my brain. Or is it an itch? A nudge? I can’t remember what they called it. I only know I’m not supposed to have it.

I like it; I'd keep reading.

One suggestion: since an "itch" is similar to a tickle (a tickle itches, after all), maybe you could drop "itch" and simply say "Or is it a nudge?"
 

BethS

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From one of my WIPs - "The Prince Killer"

The rush of wind swept her hair creating ripples down her back. Curled lashes embraced unrelenting air as her eyes narrowed into focus. Somewhere in the horizon masked by the stretch of sky and sea, lay her glimmer of hope.

Beyond the punctuation issues*, I find the descriptions a little on the purple side for an opening. The way the wind creates ripples in her hair (though I have a hard time imagining wind doing that to hair; in my experience hair just gets tossed about and tangled in the wind) or the fact that her lashes are curled and embracing the air (odd phrasing) are unimportant and distracting visuals.

What does she see on the horizon? That's important. Why does it matter? That's also important.

A name would be nice. And maybe this is meant to be omniscient, but if not, being inside her POV would also be nice.

*needs a comma after "hair." No comma needed between "sea" and "lay." And shouldn't it be "on" the horizon?
 

Ms_Sassypants

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Beyond the punctuation issues*, I find the descriptions a little on the purple side for an opening. The way the wind creates ripples in her hair (though I have a hard time imagining wind doing that to hair; in my experience hair just gets tossed about and tangled in the wind) or the fact that her lashes are curled and embracing the air (odd phrasing) are unimportant and distracting visuals.

What does she see on the horizon? That's important. Why does it matter? That's also important.

A name would be nice. And maybe this is meant to be omniscient, but if not, being inside her POV would also be nice.

*needs a comma after "hair." No comma needed between "sea" and "lay." And shouldn't it be "on" the horizon?

Oh thanks. It's only 3 sentences... the rest shows she's in a speedboat to an island.. that's why there's strong wind and whatnots.

Thanks for the unexpected suggestions! I'll keep in mind for the commas and all.
 

sarrahhakim

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I'm almost certain this will change, but here is the current beginning:

Ruba took a deep breath. She always felt a bit nervous before her show, even though she performed it several times each day. As she stretched, she looked at the few people wandering around the square, stopping to watch the musicians tune their instruments or the vendors set up their merchandise.
 

BethS

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Oh thanks. It's only 3 sentences... the rest shows she's in a speedboat to an island.. that's why there's strong wind and whatnots.

Maybe start with that, and work in hair and wind descriptions later, as incidental background information rather than placing it in the all-important first few sentences.
 

Buffysquirrel

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Curled lashes embraced unrelenting air as her eyes narrowed into focus.

To me that reads as if her narrowing her eyes makes them come into focus in the sight of someone who's looking at her. Narrowing your eyes doesn't help you focus anyway; it just reduces the amount of light entering the eye.
 

Mr. Breadcrumb

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To me that reads as if her narrowing her eyes makes them come into focus in the sight of someone who's looking at her. Narrowing your eyes doesn't help you focus anyway; it just reduces the amount of light entering the eye.

Not sure if the imagery works. (I think I'd need more to tell.) But looking through a smaller aperture definitely does help things come into focus by increasing depth of field. When I take my glasses off I squint all the time, and if were trying to eek out a bit more detail on a distant object, I definitely would find myself squinting as I tried to do it.
 

Motley

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This is first draft stuff.

Maudrey had passed the back-hoe on the way into the cemetery. It idled behind a row of junipers near the side gate, far enough out of sight of the mourners to not remind them of the mechanics of it all. The Pines cemetery would never do anything to upset its clientele.
 

Anna Spargo-Ryan

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This is very much a first draft!

Our story begins at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit sat barefoot in the darkness. In one hand he held six yellow pills with scores on the back and in the other hand he held a glass jar with a single beating heart inside. To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, he thought, because not only did he have no job and no fiancee, he had lost his shoes and they were the really nice pair from Italy.
 

BethS

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This is very much a first draft!

Our story begins at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit sat barefoot in the darkness. In one hand he held six yellow pills with scores on the back and in the other hand he held a glass jar with a single beating heart inside. To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, he thought, because not only did he have no job and no fiancee, he had lost his shoes and they were the really nice pair from Italy.

This is, on the one hand, fascinating, and on the other, just a tiny bit of a trainwreck. :)

The fascinating parts are the voice and the details, and the character himself, who appears to be on the brink of some dire action due to dire events, yet he spares a moment to be sad about losing his nice Italian shoes. I love that contrast; it instantly made me want to keep reading.

The "trainwreck" part is the handling of POV. It's not a major trainwreck but it did derail the story for me.

It starts off in a very self-consciously omniscient POV. (Our story, etc.) This is clearly an outside narrator speaking directly to the reader. It's old-fashioned, but you still occasionally find it in modern novels (Phillip Pullman used it in his Victorian thriller novels, Ruby in the Smoke, et al.).

The omniscient narrator describes the young man, and then we get to this part:

To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, he thought

And that's where the train went off the tracks. Because the phrasing "To say things hadn't turned out..." is clearly still the omniscient narrator's voice, commenting on the story, explaining it to the reader. But then that commentary is abruptly presented as something the young man is thinking. To have the narrator's voice suddenly become the young man's voice was (for me, anyway) so weirdly disorienting that I instantly lost connection to the story.

It's a simple fix. Just eliminate "he thought" and keep the POV consistent. Or if you really want to delve into the young man's thoughts, make them distinctly his thoughts, not something the narrator would say.

One other thing that made me stumble was the shift in tense in the first sentence. It starts out present tense (our story begins) and then switches to past tense (the young man sat). You need to make it consistent, either--

Our story begins at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit is sitting barefoot in the darkness.

Or--

Our story (or The story) began at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit sat barefoot in the darkness.
 

Anna Spargo-Ryan

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This is, on the one hand, fascinating, and on the other, just a tiny bit of a trainwreck. :)

The fascinating parts are the voice and the details, and the character himself, who appears to be on the brink of some dire action due to dire events, yet he spares a moment to be sad about losing his nice Italian shoes. I love that contrast; it instantly made me want to keep reading.

The "trainwreck" part is the handling of POV. It's not a major trainwreck but it did derail the story for me.

It starts off in a very self-consciously omniscient POV. (Our story, etc.) This is clearly an outside narrator speaking directly to the reader. It's old-fashioned, but you still occasionally find it in modern novels (Phillip Pullman used it in his Victorian thriller novels, Ruby in the Smoke, et al.).

The omniscient narrator describes the young man, and then we get to this part:

To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, he thought

And that's where the train went off the tracks. Because the phrasing "To say things hadn't turned out..." is clearly still the omniscient narrator's voice, commenting on the story, explaining it to the reader. But then that commentary is abruptly presented as something the young man is thinking. To have the narrator's voice suddenly become the young man's voice was (for me, anyway) so weirdly disorienting that I instantly lost connection to the story.

It's a simple fix. Just eliminate "he thought" and keep the POV consistent. Or if you really want to delve into the young man's thoughts, make them distinctly his thoughts, not something the narrator would say.

One other thing that made me stumble was the shift in tense in the first sentence. It starts out present tense (our story begins) and then switches to past tense (the young man sat). You need to make it consistent, either--

Our story begins at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit is sitting barefoot in the darkness.

Or--

Our story (or The story) began at the edge of a lake, where a young man in a grey suit sat barefoot in the darkness.

Thank you! This is truly useful advice. I often think I have POV figured out, then realise I absolutely don't.

What if it was more like ...

A young man in a grey suit sat barefoot at the edge of a lake. In one hand he held six yellow pills with scores on the back and in the other hand he held a glass jar with a single beating heart inside. To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, because not only did he have no job and no fiancee, he had lost his shoes and they were the really nice pair from Italy.
 

RobertEvert

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Well...it isn't good, but this is what I've got:

"Edmund sprinted between the trees, their bare whip-like branches leaving stinging welts as they slapped across his face and chest. Wrapping his arms tighter around his tiny grey puppy, Becky, he forced himself through thick hemlock bushes and scrambled up the steep rocky slope. Gasping in the darkness behind him, Pond fell further behind."
 

BethS

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What if it was more like ...

A young man in a grey suit sat barefoot at the edge of a lake. In one hand he held six yellow pills with scores on the back and in the other hand he held a glass jar with a single beating heart inside. To say things hadn’t turned out the way he expected would be a huge understatement, because not only did he have no job and no fiancee, he had lost his shoes and they were the really nice pair from Italy.

That's fine. The voice and POV are consistent. And I'd for sure keep reading.
 

BethS

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"Edmund sprinted between the trees, their bare whip-like branches leaving stinging welts as they slapped across his face and chest. Wrapping his arms tighter around his tiny grey puppy, Becky, he forced himself through thick hemlock bushes and scrambled up the steep rocky slope. Gasping in the darkness behind him, Pond fell further behind."

You started with immediate action, but then sabotaged the urgency and tension by over-describing (bare, whip-like branches...tiny grey puppy, Becky...thick hemlock branches...steep rocky slope...).

It's not that there's anything wrong with those phrases in themselves, but Edmund appears to be running from danger and probably isn't thinking in adjectives.

Also, you've got one of those "as" constructions, which seem to be ubiquitous among learning writers. The problem is, they often put the action out of order. In this case--

their bare whip-like branches leaving stinging welts as they slapped across his face and chest.

--we need to see the branches slapping his face and chest before we're told they left welts.

There are ways to rewrite that convey the same information but without adjective salad. You can say the branches whipped across his face. You can stay he forced himself through a stand of hemlock. You can have him holding a tiny puppy and introduce her name later.
 

Shika Senbei

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One two three, one two three, Chika counted as she made steady progress up the old flight of stairs. The cherry trees flanking the stairway seemed to be intent on tearing the stone barrier in their midst to pieces, and Chika found a waltz to be the best rhythm by which to jump over the roots that burst through the steps at random intervals.
 

Buffysquirrel

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One two three, one two three, Chika counted as she made steady progress up the old flight of stairs. The cherry trees flanking the stairway seemed to be intent on tearing the stone barrier in their midst to pieces, and Chika found a waltz to be the best rhythm by which to jump over the roots that burst through the steps at random intervals.

See, I like the idea, but what you've done is show us what's happening, then tell us. If you show the character counting, you don't need to tell us she's counting. You could also show us Chika using the waltz to jump over the roots, rather than telling us. However, if the roots are random I'm not sure how a regular count helps, tbh.
 

Sonsofthepharaohs

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See, I like the idea, but what you've done is show us what's happening, then tell us. If you show the character counting, you don't need to tell us she's counting. You could also show us Chika using the waltz to jump over the roots, rather than telling us. However, if the roots are random I'm not sure how a regular count helps, tbh.

I totally agree with the squirrel. You can pare down that para a lot by cutting the telling:

One two three, one two three, Chika counted as she walzed up the old flight of stairs. A walz was the perfect rhythm to avoid the cherry tree roots that burst through the stone steps as if in angry protest.

Then, if really needed, you could describe how the cherry trees flank the stairway - something about their branches overhanging or the leaves making the steps slippery. But I don't think you NEED to have that description unless it's significant to the action.
 

aixsponsa

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(First draft) :)

"Tell me about the Deeds of Lekehta again, Grandmother," Roem said, her head tipping back a fraction from the pull of the bone comb through her hair. She sat cross-legged in front of the old woman, who was perched on the edge of the bed. Nearby, the fire crackled in the center of the floor, casting dancing shadows on the walls of the circular cabin.

Jenny
 
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