posted
Ok, here we are again. First 13 lines of a short story in progress. Does this work? **** For years we gave the hearts of maidens to the corn-man to awaken him, but on the day I came to him I was no longer untouched by man. The priests were careless; they had checked the previous morning, and did not check again. Their mistake, and mine, for I had made love to a temple soldier on the evening before, out of pique, out of a strange desire to defy them for the last time before they took my innocence away. I was not thinking of the consequences at the time.
When they had stretched me out on the altar, and cut the bleeding heart from my chest, after they had placed it, still dripping red, into the corn-man's mouth, after they said the healing-spells over me, I saw his eyes open for the first time. ***
[This message has been edited by Silver3 (edited October 05, 2004).]
[This message has been edited by Silver3 (edited October 05, 2004).]
posted
The first sentence of the second paragraph is awkward with all the comma phrases. They almost seem out of order like a cut & paste error. You're trying to say a lot in just one sentence. Perhaps shorter sentences will do.
I must say my attention was immediately grabbed and locked onto the story! That's quite a beginning!
posted
Thanks. At least I got the opening right this time (grin). Now all I need to do is work on the rest, which is still in a very rough draft form.
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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posted
I'll vote for interesting. I found some of the phrasing to be a little muddled but basically, the situation intrigued me enough that I didn't care much.
Posts: 3567 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
I had to read this twice to fully understand what was going on, but I'm quite intrigued and would probably just keep reading. I think the only thing that really threw me were all the commas.
The last paragraph is what really hooked me, but I think it needs a use of semicolons in place of some of the commas. When you are listing phrases that contain commas, the list should be set off with semis. http://www.bartleby.com/68/73/5373.html
quote:When they had stretched me out on the altar, and cut the bleeding heart from my chest{;} after they had placed it, still dripping red, into the corn-man's mouth{;} after they said the healing-spells over me, I saw his eyes open for the first time.
[This message has been edited by Robyn_Hood (edited October 06, 2004).]
posted
Yup, the last sentence is awful because I added something at the last minute. I've changed in the current version of the draft, cutting it into two (simpler than semi-colons, which I do know how to manage but don't like to use)
Posts: 1075 | Registered: Sep 2004
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