Opening Paragraphs: Hit me with one.

zenpotato

Digging through the text files in my ideas folder, I noticed that every once in awhile I'll get a sentence or paragraph that could be the start of a new story. Sometimes it's just something that kind of develops in my head for a bit, or maybe it's just the result of a quick writing session that never leads anywhere.

I assume I'm not alone in having these. Besides, since the opening paragraph is usually the first "No thanks" point in a story sale, we all could probably use some practice and critique.

For critiques, approach this like an editor/publisher/agent reading queries with no context. Does this opening paragraph work for you, and if not, why?


Something to get us started:

Some snowy days are beautiful and serene, the snow like a blanket covering a slumbering world. This snowy day was gray and hostile; the snow hid patches of ice and a fierce wind sliced through the young man's long coat. This world wasn't sleeping. This world was dead.

DirtyDirtyVagrant

So I critique yours and then post one of my own?

I can't really offer much except to say that there isn't much action here. All I see is a snowstorm and a guy in a coat. I'm not sure what I would do differently, but if he could trudge through the drifts...you know...shielding his face from the whipping sting of the ice? Or something.

--Pretty big edit --

Fear. Cold, sweaty fear, gripping her heart and squeezing, sending terrible shakes through her limbs with each beat. Before her stood something she'd never beheld. A young girl, perhaps as old as her own sixteen years, and as naked as the day she was born. Her eyes looked animal - big and bright. And innocent, like the eyes of a puppy. Certainly not human eyes. Hair that was less hair and more mane, curling wildly about her face and shoulders- parted at her forehead by a pair of short, knobby horns. She was gentle in stature and in gesture. And she was the most terrifying thing Erudia had ever seen.

Just seconds ago the wide-eyed girl had climbed through the wall, her arms, face - her presence wisping through the moss covered brick in long licks of fog. And then she'd materialized, smiling sweetly and flicking her little doe tail anxiously through the air behind her. As she made her way through the wall her cloven feet clopped loudly on the floor, defying her incorporeal nature.

(I'm just gonna keep typing this here for a while, if that's okay. See what happens)

The Scribe

Both of your opening paragraphs attract my attention. I want to read several more paragraphs in order to find what each story is about. As one who was trained in journalism I understand the importance of a strong beginning.

zenpotato: I want to learn more about your young man. I assume that the bleakness of the landscape he is in is mirrored by his attitude toward life. He is obviously not a cheerful person about to do something he has been looking forward to for a long time.

DirtyDirtyVagrant: Your paragraph seems like the opening paragraph for a fantasy story. Those are not my favorite, but obviously others like them. In reading your story further I want to learn how a girl who is described as innocent and gentle can also be so terrifying. If you do not convince me that these incongruities are consistent in your character I will lose interest in the story. If you convince me, I will respect you enough to finish reading your story.

Here is the beginning of my story:

Fog covered the top of the Washington Cathedral that Sunday afternoon in fall, so many years ago, as I climbed the steps beneath the North Rose Window. I remember hearing the Cathedral bells, high above, lost in fog, announcing the beginning of the Evening Worship Service. I was also aware of the wound left by an AK-47 round when my platoon was nearly overrun in Vietnam. That sounds heroic. It felt differently. During most of my time in the field I was tired, uncomfortable, and afraid. I tried to survive. I also tried to remember why I had gone. What I went over to prove about myself did not matter when I came back. What I went over to escape from was waiting for me when I did.

Edcrab

Interesting activity, but lone paragraphs rarely do a work justice. First pages is where it's at- I'd never judge a work off its first paragraph alone when deciding whether to pick it up. That said, I like what I've seen so far- particularly the closing impression given by the ends of zenpotato's and Vagrant's efforts.

Opening paragraph of my older project:

Eternity is a long time to plan- to consider, to prepare, to analyse. This wasn’t eternity. Eternity is an abstract concept, and lost on a being of pure logic. But when you’re capable of dealing with the logistical nightmares facing an entire civilisation in a single second, then perhaps twenty-seven million years of unthinking oblivion could pass for eternity.

zenpotato

DDV: I like the idea of introducing both your protagonist and the object of fear through contrast, but I'm not sure you're pulling it off.

A young girl, no older than her own sixteen years, and as naked as the day she was born.

This line in particular bugs me a little. The "no older than" construction seems like it's only there to put an upper boundary on the demon girl, without actually being more precise. Is she 5? 10? 15? 15 and 11 months? I like the idea of comparing her to your protagonist, but I think you should be less specific and more specific at the same time. Also, "young girl" immediately conjured, well, a young girl and not a teenager. Sixteen ain't as young as it used to be.

The Scribe: The repetition of fog and a time in the first two sentences gave me the illusion you were repeating the same sentence, just progressing a bit more. I tend to think repetition is bad when you do it once, but shines when you do it twice.I'd say either repeat it a bit artistically to set the scene some more, or change the second sentence so it isn't so reminiscent of the first.

The third sentence starts a new paragraph. If you want to be one, the shift should be a little more gradual from description to narration. This is kind of a double flash back, since you start out so many years ago and then flash back again to Vietnam. There's some present tense in there as well ("That sounds heroic.") which adds to the time complexity. I beat on that a bit and see if you can't make the various times clearer or a little more harmonious. Three distinct time periods (present, church, and Vietnam) make for a complicated opening.

The Scribe

zenpotato wrote: »

The Scribe:
Three distinct time periods (present, church, and Vietnam) make for a complicated opening.

Most of the story takes place around 1978 with brief flashbacks, and the indication that it consists of contemporary reminiscences. A man in late middle age is looking back on one of the most important events in his life.

DarkHawke

Zenpotato: I like the use of landscape and weather, but think there's a little too much repetition of the word snow(y) - maybe go for something like '

Some winter days are beautiful and serene, the snow like a blanket covering a slumbering world. But this day was gray and hostile; the snow hid patches of ice and a fierce wind sliced through the young man's long coat. This world wasn't sleeping. This world was dead.

Of course that all depends on context - if you're story is set in Antarctica in the summer the change might not work so well.

DDV: Maybe tighten up the fear a bit: say 'something she had prayed she would never see' instead of just something she'd 'never beheld', so you'd have three points to really hammer home the girl's fear (the first few introductory lines, that description and the final words of the paragraph). Also maybe add another animal metaphor into the eye description, make it more vague before hitting the reader with the 'certainly not human' phrase.

Scribe: I agree with Zen on this one, although I'm not personally such a big fan of repetition.

Ed: Nice, although I think there could be better metaphors for vast computing power than the 'logistical nightmares facing an entire civilization' - or if it's a key part to your story, maybe tying it down to a timeframe or something - do you mean the nightmares of a civilization's entire term of existence, or the pressing issues at any given moment, or what?

Here's one from the novel I'm editing right now, which I'm not really happy with as there's not much character:

Hooves tore into fertile earth as the cavalry passed southwards along the lee of the Dragonback mountains. The old hives stood as impossible silhouettes, sudden sheer cliffs stretching up to sharp points like a child’s drawing.

Here's one from the novel I'm writing at the moment (all first draft and really needs some tuning)

I fly through this prison, this city. It is too high up, too far from my home, too close to the coldness of the black and the stars. I long for the deep skies, where my lungs are filled with wyrd and I care only for the raising of my kin and their protection from those that would mean harm.

And here's one from a story I never really finished writing as it went in an odd direction:

Like most low-altitude islands, Korae had its fair share of problems. Nigh on twice a year a dark wyrm or a gang of mermaids would rise from the toxic clouds deep below and attempt to raze the settlement to the ground. But the Gorgon was the worst.

That one I actually like.

Mitchforth

Here's one:


The night before, he'd laughed when the waiter warned him the 'xxx-tra hot' salsa would burn all the way down, but David Anderson's morning shit had been like passing a flaming wad of thumbtacks. He dabbed tentatively at his ass, and thanked the Good Lord, Jesus Christ that he'd sprung for a nice hotel that used the soft paper. His head felt heavy and dizzy; the tile pattern on the bathroom floor seemed to crawl. He was nauseous, and he tried not to think about how it would feel or taste to throw up the stuff that was sloshing around in his guts. He vowed to stay the hell away from habanero peppers and tequila for the rest of his life. Actually, he thought, things might be best for all concerned if he just stayed the hell out of Texas.

Edcrab

Hawke: Good point. Would be best making it explicit as solving all the issues across a society's lifetime. You can tell I haven't edited that in a while...

As for your excerpts, they're prime examples why single paragraphs should never been seen as an absolute sample or hook- although yeah, that last one is pretty damn intriguing fantasy. Even then the first two examples with their "hives" and "wyrd" establish a mysterious and interesting future element.

If anyone wants to see a really weak first paragraph (why else would I champion first pages so much otherwise? ):

The rain battered against the windowpane, but it also battered against Cerrekk’s bare face, running in rivulets down the nape of his neck and generally confirming that his jacket simply wasn’t made for this climate. Anything with a hood- and possibly a built in gasmask- would’ve been more suitable. His cheeks stung from the cold and his nostrils stung from the offensive-smelling fog that engulfed the lower sectors.

Quoth

Mitch: I can't say I'm too keen on reading a story that starts with a discussion of bowel movements. It's certainly a memorable opening, though.

Ed: Shut up your face, that's fine. Except where is this mystery windowpane if Cerrekk is getting rained on?

Here's my contribution, in a totally different style that may not actually work:

My name is Winnifred, and I am in a bit of a pickle. Not literally in a pickle, of course, because pickles are small and I'm rather tall. It's worse when I'm wearing my school uniform because the hat is also rather tall, and pointy, and makes me look like the steeple of a church. But that's not important now. What's important is that I am currently being pursued by no fewer than three persons who are intent on ensuring my imminent demise.

zenpotato

The Scribe: I see what you're going for, but off the bat I'm confused because you order the introductions of the view points 2-3-1 (church, Vietnam, present), which kind of initially casts the 2 time period as the frame for the story when in fact it is number 1. You only indicate that with a tense change, which may be a little too subtle considering how clearly and specifically you lay out the other two times.


Quoth: That one grabs my attention. Not only is it interesting with a unique voice, but it lands me right in the middle of the action. It would be pretty hard to write a chase story in the present tense though. If it works, it could really work.

ruzkin

Quoth - actually, I think a chase story in the present tense is the best way to write it. The pickle pun doesn't work for me though, because when reading about a dire situation I think it makes the situation much less intense and involving to throw in humour.

Something I am working on:

The sandstorm wails and scratches and tries to tug away the kaffiyeh pulled tight over my face. The soldier ahead of me is a dim silhouette behind the howl. I can hear nothing but the winds; not the slap of my gladius against my leg, nor Officer Slope shouting at me from behind. I know what he is saying, because he always says the same thing: Keep pace! Keep pace! It’s wasted breath. Keeping pace is the only option I have. If I tire I’ll lose sight of the line, and the desert will dry me out until I am a shrunken corpse, empty sightless sockets forever staring at the sky.

There are five of us: Captain Brales, Officer Slope, Richard Swift, myself, and the magician.

The magician leads the procession. How he picks his path I do not know; I have not seen him since we broke camp at dawn. The sand comes up early most days; sun up to sun down, we walk bent over against the wind, eyes open only to slits, doing our best not to breathe in sand. We each wear a white burnouse in the style of the Moors to hide our armour; it keeps off the sun but does not stop the heat. My armour is heavy and hot and the leather sticks to my skin. I would shuck it off but there are raiders in the dunes, and they are not above attacking their own.

I follow Richard. He follows the Captain. The Captain follows the magician, and the magician leads us to the Ant Tower.

The Scribe

zenpotato wrote: »

The Scribe: I see what you're going for, but off the bat I'm confused because you order the introductions of the view points 2-3-1 (church, Vietnam, present), which kind of initially casts the 2 time period as the frame for the story when in fact it is number 1. You only indicate that with a tense change, which may be a little too subtle considering how clearly and specifically you lay out the other two times.

zenpotato,

In Casanova's Memoirs he occasionally reminds the reader that he is an infirm old man even while recounting events that happened when he was a virile young man. When reading his Memoirs I had no trouble understanding that I was reading a book written by an old man about his life when he was much younger. When writing about events that happened when he was younger he occasionally aludes to even earlier events.

I have two questions. Do you really find my opening paragraph difficult to understand? After reading it do you want to read further into the story?

Operator-C

ruzkin wrote: »

Quoth - actually, I think a chase story in the present tense is the best way to write it. The pickle pun doesn't work for me though, because when reading about a dire situation I think it makes the situation much less intense and involving to throw in humour.

Something I am working on:

The sandstorm wails and scratches and tries to tug away the kaffiyeh pulled tight over my face. The soldier ahead of me is a dim silhouette behind the howl. I can hear nothing but the winds; not the slap of my gladius against my leg, nor Officer Slope shouting at me from behind. I know what he is saying, because he always says the same thing: Keep pace! Keep pace! It’s wasted breath. Keeping pace is the only option I have. If I tire I’ll lose sight of the line, and the desert will dry me out until I am a shrunken corpse, empty sightless sockets forever staring at the sky.

There are five of us: Captain Brales, Officer Slope, Richard Swift, myself, and the magician.

The magician leads the procession. How he picks his path I do not know; I have not seen him since we broke camp at dawn. The sand comes up early most days; sun up to sun down, we walk bent over against the wind, eyes open only to slits, doing our best not to breathe in sand. We each wear a white burnouse in the style of the Moors to hide our armour; it keeps off the sun but does not stop the heat. My armour is heavy and hot and the leather sticks to my skin. I would shuck it off but there are raiders in the dunes, and they are not above attacking their own.

I follow Richard. He follows the Captain. The Captain follows the magician, and the magician leads us to the Ant Tower.

I really like this-- it makes me want to keep reading. I'm curious to know about what Ant Tower is, though I secretly hope it has something to do with giant ant warriors (that's what I conjure in my imagination when I first read it).

I'm not too sure about the second paragraph, how you just list the characters like that. I think, maybe, if you were to use the last paragraph in its place, and then follow up with the third ("The magician . . . ") it would have worked better.

Here's mine, but I should state right away that I've never actually written a story, and I'm just now aspiring to do so. In any case, don't go easy on me-- give it to me straight. Here goes:

I couldn't tell what was trembling more: the bound up raider sitting before me, squealing in undoubted terror through the fabric used to gag his mouth, or my hand holding a pistol to his forehead. Now that I think back on it, the only thing that really mattered was the raider's brain as it raced his life-less body to the sangria-stained concrete.

Edit (added):
It's violent, but the angle I was going to go with was that that man holding the weapon was being coerced into executing the man bound up in front of him. I don't want anybody to read that and think, "Wow, this OperatorC guy is fucked up in the head... he needs help."

shutz

So... what am I supposed to critique? Since this isn't the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest most of these opening paragraphs are competent, since they weren't written to be intentionally bad.

Maybe we can discuss opening sentences and paragraphs in general?

For instance, I'll often open my stories on a line of dialogue, which is supposed to ensure that the reader is placed at a moment where something is happening. If I have to do some description, I'll do it in subsequent paragraphs, after I've shocked the reader into wanting to read more (or so I hope.)

Here's one such opening from one of my (as of yet unifinished) stories:

"I just don't know what to believe anymore!" she said, exasperated. "My world is crumbling all around me... I..."

Don't you just want to learn what's happening to that poor female? Since the story has to do with that (young, we learn later) woman's crisis of faith, among other things, I feel that that opening line goes right to the heart of the matter.

Another of my openings, to a finished, but unpublished story titled "Astronomical Proportions":

Professor William Tremblay nervously checked his data one last time, before the presentation. A tuft of white hair sprouted from the top of his otherwise bare cranium, giving him a cartoony look, and often causing people to take him less seriously than they otherwise would.

Most of the story happens during and right after his important presentation, so it's somewhat important that that item be mentioned in the original paragraph.

Here's one more, from a very short story I originally wrote years ago, in French, and recently rewrote, from memory, in English. The story is titled "Spooky Pizza":

There we were, bunch of guys, hanging out, watching late-night TV, when the UFO Pizza commercial came on.

That doesn't tell the reader much, but the seed for most of the story is there, in that first sentence: since the story opens by mentioning a commercial for a pizza place, and the main characters are "a bunch of guys", you can probably expect them to order pizza. With a name like "UFO Pizza", you can probably guess that "something extra-terrestrial" is bound to happen (and it does.)

But all these are from short stories. In some cases, short-shorts. For longer forms, such as novellas and novels, the opening sentence or paragraph doesn't have to pull as much weight. The first chapter, or at least, the first few paragraphs can do that.

matisyahu

I started this a couple months ago, and I'm a little bit embarrassed by how graphic [and wordy] it turned out, but I like the characters and think there's a decent seed for a story. The prompt was "rock and roll."

Disclaimer: sexual content. Carry on.

"Rock and roll," he said as he slid out of his wife. She felt embarrassed for him; he had always been prone to making awkward remarks in the bedroom, but she knew there would be unpleasant repercussions if she made it an issue. He was a timid man, and she couldn't imagine how much effort it took for him to overcome his insecurity, however briefly, and say something that he thought people were supposed to say in such a situation. So she let it slide; no matter how poorly he thought of his own talent as a lover, she was always satisfied. She would have put his entire body inside her if she could. Warm ropes flung across the small of her back, and she thought for a second about throwing spaghetti against the refrigerator as a child. She had something to tell him, but it would have to wait until morning. He fell asleep in a matter of minutes.

The Scribe, it is a bit confusing, I'll try and number some line edits in here.

Fog covered the top of the Washington Cathedral that Sunday afternoon in fall, so many years ago, as I climbed the steps beneath the North Rose Window. I remember(1) hearing the Cathedral bells, high above, lost in fog, announcing the beginning of the Evening Worship Service. I was also aware(2) of the wound left by an AK-47 round when my platoon was nearly overrun in Vietnam. That sounds heroic. It felt differently. During most of my time in the field I was tired, uncomfortable, and afraid. I tried to survive. I also tried to remember why I had gone.(3) What I went over to prove about myself did not matter when I came back. What I went over to escape from was waiting for me when I did.(4)

1) Seems clumsy to write "I remember" here. Might be more efficient to say something like "The bells chimed high above, lost in fog..."

2) Again, "I was also aware" is an uninteresting way to introduce the gunshot wound, which introduces Vietnam. "When my platoon was nearly overrun in Vietnam" contributes to the confusion because you're adding another complex memory to the flashback and then going on to speak generally about the war. Try and focus it a bit more.

I'm not trying to be a 'show vs tell' fascist here, but you don't have to rely on phrases like these to show that the narrator is speaking from a later point in his life.

3) This line leads to some of the time frame confusion. "I tried to survive, I tried to remember why I even went there" might be less confusing. The word "also" seems tedious, and the story is getting more and more lost in the "I remembers."

4) I think you mean for these last 2 lines to present a mysterious, interesting element to draw the reader in. You're flashing back to a flashback, which is tough enough, especially since you don't spend much time establishing the initial flashback. He's remembering remembering vague notions, which can be a little off putting. You're setting yourself up for a lot of explaining, and maybe even removing to another flashback: "Before I went to Vietnam I thought..."

To answer your questions that you asked the other guy, it is not that difficult to understand, but it is more difficult than it should be. Do I want to read more? With a few changes, yeah! The subject draws my attention, but I think it's hampered by the muddled multiple flashbacking.

Mitchforth

Spaghetti against the refrigerator? Dude, either you are eating entirely too much dairy, or you are not drinking your eight glasses of water a day.

ruzkin

Okay, another opening scene for you.

Boston in mid winter is a Disney-On-Ice extravaganza of pine-forests coated in crystal and storefront eaves groaning under the weight of powder snow. Boston in summer is a sweaty jockstrap left unwashed so long that hookers wearing plastic tiaras and schoolkids on coke have started to grow in the creases.

The only good thing about the two weeks I spent in Boston last January was that the bullet passed straight through my left pectoral and hit a kid on a skateboard. He had pre-torn denim’s and a strawberry mullet, and was mid-way through some obscure trick when his knee exploded. He hit the ground face-first and started screaming. There were chunks of gristle spattered all up his shirt. I hadn’t heard a kid howl like that since Saigon.

I don’t remember the ambulance or the first day in hospital. The nurse told me later that I talked in my sleep pretty much non-stop, except for when they gassed me to sew my left lung back up. I asked the nurse what I’d been saying. “Lots of stuff,” he said. “You talked about Maria a lot. And some numbers.”

“What numbers?”

He shrugged. “I didn’t write them down.”

“Anything else?”

“Yeah.” He grinned, and affected my voice – quiet, smoky, tired. “‘That’ll teach him to skate on the sidewalk.’”

It was four days before they let me out. I didn’t sleep much. Too many things to think about. Too many questions. Police turning up at all hours. They didn’t know much. I told them I was a freelancer. It was close enough to the truth.

I gave Boston the finger through the porthole window of an Airbus A300 and swore never to go back. It didn’t work out that way.

The_Scarab

I'm going to write a crime thriller where I reveal who the murderer is, how the murder took place and what happens to them in the first paragraph.

No fucking clue how it is going to work but I always wanted to expand on the ideas raised in that John Travolta monologue at the start of Swordfish. Very meta.

zenpotato

The_Scarab wrote: »

I'm going to write a crime thriller where I reveal who the murderer is, how the murder took place and what happens to them in the first paragraph.

No fucking clue how it is going to work but I always wanted to expand on the ideas raised in that John Travolta monologue at the start of Swordfish. Very meta.

Classic Columbo. The fun is in watching a detective put the clues together, not in figuring it out yourself. If you read most Sherlock Holmes stories, you'll notice that Doyle never gives you enough clues to figure it out for yourself. There's always something held back. The fun is in watching Holmes do it, or Watson figuring it out, regardless of whether you know what happened or not. Columbo gave it all away at the beginning of every episode. And it was a damn good detective show.

One more thing...

Horsecalledwar

I really enjoyed the "rock and roll" opener. That is a keeper.

---

Here's my stab:

He walked tall and proud. It was an attitude that said smugly “Look all you like… I like it like that.” He wore an eight inch neon green mohawk like one of the many other calculated accessories. They were all there: ripped jeans, raucus leather jacket, studded belt, combat boots… the works. The look unyieldingly stated Punk Rock from head to foot.

shutz

I have a sort of "fetish" for opening a story with "When the aliens came..."

Some of you who were there about a year ago (I can't remember when, exactly) but I posted a short-short story that was mostly hated by whoever cared to comment on it, mostly because it was so threadbare.

Actually, it's such a fetish of mine that I'm going to try starting a new thread with it. Watch for it in a few minutes.

avatare

I think if you use when the aliens came to open all your writing it's going to be hard to make stories that don't have to do with aliens.

My own line:

Everything happened the way it was meant to be. Yet we had never dreamed that it would end up like this.

logogog

Well, this is something I recently made.

I was surrounded. Every way I looked I saw enemies. All sorts of enemies. Demons and hellhounds and a plethora of infernal beasties. They were all snarling at me with an obvious bloodlust. In unison, they advanced.

I don’t think my story will have a happy ending.

Thats all I got.

shutz

avatare wrote: »

I think if you use when the aliens came to open all your writing it's going to be hard to make stories that don't have to do with aliens.

My own line:

Everything happened the way it was meant to be. Yet we had never dreamed that it would end up like this.

I'm not saying I use that line for everything I write. I just said I have a sort of fetish for it. It's the first opening line that pops into my mind, unless I'm already going into another direction when I start writing a story.

You just have to look at many of my previous posts (especially the 50-word stories thread!) to know that I don't always use that opening line.

SAW776

I guess I'll throw something out there, now that I've actually got access to some of my stuff:

He lowered the young girl onto the bed, making sure the descent was as gentle as possible. Silent, he stood observing, for a moment that stretched out into many, as if he were waiting for something that did not come. Her youthful features were pale and still in the dark, her body lit by the only beam of moonlight that managed to pierce the curtains which guarded the window.

The light fell across the curve of her breast, causing the small pearls of water that beaded upon the naked skin to sparkle and shine--her chest, however, showed no sign of movement, not the rise and fall of even the shallowest of breaths, nor even the unbidden quiver of anticipation of things that might have been to come.

In the dark hours after midnight, she seemed nothing more than a life-size china doll--beneath that soft, porcelain-pale flesh, every thing was quiet and still.

She was such a pretty girl.

The_Scarab

D:

Which I guess is what you were going for. Or perhaps I have interpreted it in a massively wrong way.

SAW776

The_Scarab wrote: »

D:

Which I guess is what you were going for. Or perhaps I have interpreted it in a massively wrong way.

lol. No, that's about right.

matisyahu

You don't have any real action or unique imagery. The subject is intended to shock, but it's presented in a somewhat dull way and is thick with obtrusive language.

Silent, he stood observing, for a moment that stretched out into many, as if he were waiting for something that did not come.

The bolded part doesn't really mean anything. This whole sentence is kind of agonizing, actually. I think you need to change "did" to "had" or "would" to keep your tense consistent. The sentence is saying "He stood in silent anticipation" which is a boring enough observation by itself. What does it mean to stand in anticipation? What do you look like when you anticipate? Why don't we know anything he's thinking about, so that we might infer that he is anticipating something?

The light fell across the curve of her breast, causing the small pearls of water that beaded upon the naked skin to sparkle and shine--her chest, however, showed now sign of movement, not the rise and fall of even the shallowest of breaths, nor even the unbidden quiver of anticipation of things that might have been to come.

You describe many things "as if" or in the negative (bolded). This is sometimes useful, but not when it dominates your work. You might try focusing more on things that are actually present in the world of the story. She's young, she's [porcelain] pale, she's not moving, it's night, everyone's quiet. What else? The bit you've posted is redundant in many places, and these places have more of a "thesaurus" feel than a "motif" feel. By this I mean you're saying the same things a lot without adding much, as opposed to creating an interesting thematic element.

You really have to earn your shock value or it will ring false. So far there are people but there are no characters, words but no drama.. The reader will think "ahh, it's one of these" and lose respect for the story.

Sweety

I liked it... the first few paragraphs don't necessarily need to teach the audience about the characters... And, while I'm sure it was meant to shock... if the words were softened a little, it could be some sort of romance novel.
I don't know what you were going for, but I could definitely see reading on, if that's what I was given.

So my sentence from much older work, that never went anywhere.

She woke up and stared at the clock next to her bed; it just blinked 12:00... 12:00... 12:00 as if time had stopped. If only it had, she wouldn't have to get up today. Jordan had no sense of the time and nor did she care, today she was either going to get it over with... or get over it! Jordan had it mostly planned out, a will she had written on the back of a wallmart reciept; the will was filled with useless junk that only meant anything to her, like her biggest, best, most loved stuffed animal to be left to her brother.

matisyahu

Sweety wrote: »

I liked it... the first few paragraphs don't necessarily need to teach the audience about the characters...

Maybe, MAYBE you could get away with that in a novel. I don't mean "teach about the chracters" so much as "provide some distinguishing information about the characters." We don't need to know their background or anything right away, but it would be nice if they would do something besides exist in a very passive, lifeless way.

I'm looking through my bookshelf and I can't find one story where the characters aren't particularlized in the first paragraph.

nhrn

I was going to post something from a novel I start three or four years ago, but unfortunately my files for that are on another computer. So I am instead going to post the completely awkward and stupid first paragraph to something I wrote earlier this year. You may ask yourself why I would post something I know is awkward, the answer is I like to see what people thing of my writing.

As the sun reaches its zenith in the sky the light from it hits a barrier, the canopy of a vast and ancient forest, it finds a way through but has lost most of its strength leaving the forest cool and dim. A slight breeze causes undergrowth to rustle and branches to sway. A being that had watched over the forest for as long as it could remember paused to sniff the scents that were carried on the air, it had no need to do this since as guardian of the forest it had been granted the ability to know where every living creature in the forest was, but it liked to rely on the old ways occasionally.

The_Scarab

I wouldn't use zenith right there. I know this isn't the case but it looks like you just upsed a thesaurus right off the bat. Technically that is the correct word. But I would reword it a little. Then again, sometimes I do the same and make opening paragraphs really punchy. Setting the tone of the narrators voice.

matisyahu

As the sun reaches its zenith in the sky the light from it hits a barrier, the canopy of a vast and ancient forest, it finds a way through but has lost most of its strength leaving the forest cool and dim. A slight breeze causes undergrowth to rustle and branches to sway. A being that had watched over the forest for as long as it could remember paused to sniff the scents that were carried on the air, it had no need to do this since as guardian of the forest it had been granted the ability to know where every living creature in the forest was, but it liked to rely on the old ways occasionally.

The bolded part seems awkward to me. I like the rest, and it's an interesting character detail, but try and see if there is a way to either reword this sentence or rearrange this information. It's a bit unweildy as it stands. At the very least, there should be a period after the word "air."

Also, you have one spot of tense confusion. The action is in present tense (The sun reaches...finds...a breeze causes), but you write "A being that had watched over the forest for as long as it could remember paused to sniff the scents that were carried on the air."

nhrn

matisyahu wrote: »

The bolded part seems awkward to me. I like the rest, and it's an interesting character detail, but try and see if there is a way to either reword this sentence or rearrange this information. It's a bit unweildy as it stands. At the very least, there should be a period after the word "air."

Also, you have one spot of tense confusion. The action is in present tense (The sun reaches...finds...a breeze causes), but you write "A being that had watched over the forest for as long as it could remember paused to sniff the scents that were carried on the air."

I see what you mean and I may give it a rewrite when I have some free time tomorrow. If I do I may be inclined to post the full story in a new thread and see what people think.

Freshman

Some good stuff so far. Here's one from a short short story I wrote.

If you saw Jack Munroe on the street, you’d probably think he was hung over. Maybe it’s because the world keeps dealing him bum hands, maybe it’s because his body got so used to actually being hung over it just decided to stay that way, but most likely it would be because he got himself good and sauced the night before. That’s just the kind of guy Jackie is, but it’s not the kind of guy he used to be. Now, granted, Jackie was no saint to be sure. And even if you caught him a few months earlier you probably still would have figured he was recovering from the night before, there’s just a better chance that a few months ago you would have been wrong.

Iriah

ban yourself from using the word granted. right now.

Eat it You Nasty Pig.

Now turn the engine off, come on. We're just fillin' up. It's fine, there ain't another living soul for five hundred miles. You worried about the scrub and the coyotes hearing? Just be cool (Cool. Good advice, channel a fucking cucumber.) Man, you ain't even doin' the hard part. Just wait outside, won't be but five minutes.

"Come on, come on! Tim! Start the fucking truck!"

Shit.

slacktron

Lewie held up his right hand and squeezed, holding the fingertip close to his eyes. A single drop of blood oozed out. They had broken his skin. He was dead. His mind raced through options. Amputate the hand? He had the guts for that, he was sure, but he had been running full tilt for at least five minutes after exposre. Self-surgery would be as useless as antibiotics and prayer. There was no doubt. He was fucking dead. The only question now was how to spend his last eight hours.

takyris

When the demon-cultists burst into the bar, Michelle was listening to a ham-handed country song on the jukebox with a chorus that was obviously going to have some kind of powerful meaning come third verse while trying to find a gentle way to brush off the well-meaning former college jock who'd ignored her subtle hints of not being interested.

shutz

Even though she'd never fired a gun before, Mara squeezed the trigger and the gun belched out a burst of bullets that mowed down her closest assailants, but also caused her to fall back down due to the recoil. So now she was down on her ass, with more of them coming at her. She fired her weapon again, and held the trigger down until she ran out of bullets. That still wasn't enough; more of them were pouring in. Today's the worst day for a zombie apocalypse, she thought. Only hours before, she was stepping out to go get her hair done, and then she was going to pick up her date. Ass hole never showed up. Then she saw him, in the back of the zombie crowd: just about as dead as the rest of them. Men, they're all the same. She used her gun to club her way out of the convenience store, making sure to pulverize her non-date's brains along the way. Picking up another belt of ammo that was conveniently left on the floor near the exit, she thought, I'm not going to let it end like this. I'm going to fucking do something about this. I'm going to find out who's responsible, and crucify them! Little did she know, this was all her fault...