The following is the first thirteen lines of my most-recently completed novel, The Beast. If anyone is interested in reading the entire first chapter (roughly ten manuscript pages), please let me know.
Thank you in advance.
* * *
I should’ve jumped.
But someone could’ve warned me. Someone surely knew about it. Someone. Something so monstrous couldn’t go unnoticed. Why didn’t they tell me? If I only knew, I could’ve prepared myself -- I could’ve changed everything.
Yes, I know it sounds bitter to complain now, but I am bitter. And mad. My whole life was wasted -- a life that had such great promise.
I didn’t have a choice. I swear I didn’t! It drove me against my will; I was a puppet -- a toy.
So naïve, I was. I had just graduated college and looked onto the future with eyes aglow. Four years of drunken bliss had cured me of my intellectual curiosity, . . .
[This message has been edited by ColinCohen (edited February 11, 2007).]
Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :
What is the narrator talking about?
Posted by rickfisher (Member # 1214) on :
I liked the first sentence when I read it, but I was under the impression that his situation would be described immediately, and in a few words (described enough, that is, for us to make sense of the immediate situation; more details could be filled in later). That didn't happen, and if it's not possible--if you MUST have the flashback you're promising us by the end of the passage--then you're starting too late.
[This message has been edited by rickfisher (edited February 12, 2007).]
Posted by kings_falcon (Member # 3261) on :
The first line got my attention because I expected to be thrown into action. The next paragraph lost me because I was in vague exposition rather than action or anything concrete.
This is too much of a tease to keep my interest. You introduce about a half dozen or more points and don't explain them. Take me to the moment in time that matters and keep me there. Please just tell me what's happening.
Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :
It is a tease, but it's pretty good for that.
Still, not good enough to overcome being a tease. I think that if you tell us just a tad more about the circumstances in which the narrator should have jumped and the circumstances in which he has found himself as a result of not doing so, this opening could work.
"I should've jumped" from/off/at [noun]. Then I wouldn't be [place/condition/noun?].