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I watched the glowing orange ball of the sun hang low in the western sky, like it was afraid of what I would do while it took a slow spin through the dark solar system before emerging in the East.

Here's to another night of madness and mayhem in Hidden Hills.

I toasted the sunset, then tipped back my paper-wrapped bottle. The raw alcohol burned a path across my tongue and down my throat.

From up here, surrounded by the shabby mobile homes huddled together to form Hidden Hills, it looked like some mad scientist had built a powerful Shitty-Little-Trailer Magnet, dragged it out here to the outskirts of town, and fired that sucker up.

Most of the trailers were at least twenty years old, and many of them had seen better days. Faded paint, grimy windows, and peeling porches were the most popular decorating scheme.

[This message has been edited about a million and one times by Three Minute Egg (edited April 28, 2005).]

--Mel

The second paragraph began to hook me, but the third turned me off again, because of the frequent use of "was".
I was, I was, It was, the average age was. Could you restructure those sentences to make them a little stronger or pick stronger verbs.

Better?

Right. That first sentence, besides being unclear, has a redundancy issue to address. Let's look at it and the sentence as a whole and see what we can do:

quote:

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The glowing orange ball of the sun hung suspended low in the sky, afraid to let this place take another slow spin through the dark solar system before emerging on the other side.

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The two words in bold are synonyms -- they mean precisely the same thing. You only need one.

The italicized bit is the part that makes this passage somewhat unclear. If you tell us the place, we'll have a better idea of where you're going.

Even still, consider rephrasing this and taking just a little more time on the setting to make it all clear. Not too much time; people get antsy about waiting to know what's happening. But just enough time to clearly define your milieu.

The later paragraphs help with the milieu, especially the "pathetic mobile homes" (which, if I recall correctly, "pathetic" is the word you used in your other story to describe Main Street's buildings. I mention it so you don't find yourself in a descriptive rut.)

So, here's the thing about introductions. There should be at least one thing that is going to hook us into the story. You can do it with milieu, or you can do it with action, or you can do it with a character, or you can do it with all of them. You can also opt for something strange or abnormal. Or you can just tell us up front where the story is going overall.

As it stands, there's nothing really that draws me in. The small amount of character development is a good start, but it's missing the hook factor that is going to help me realize that something is about to happen -- maybe not immediately happen, but that something should happen. Does that make sense?

Nevertheless, some introductions start off slow. If this is novel-length, you could get away with a slow start. If it's short story-length, well... you need to reel us in a bit quicker. Since you haven't told us the length (or I missed it), then it's difficult to say how best to handle this.

All I can say with certainty is that I'm not drawn in to the story by this fragment... yet.

Good luck. I hope this helps somewhat.

Also, if this is past tense, change "these" to "the" in this sentence:
Most of these trailers were at least twenty years old, and many of them had seen better days.

The character's attitude is more evident with the changes, and that has my interest, but like HSO suggested, we still need a hook to answer the question "Why do I want to read about this guy?". It needs to show-up soon.

How long is this story?

these are just the minor chages i would make personally

i would change "and fired that sucker up." to "and fired the sucker up." Neither is more correct, i just think the latter flows a little better.

I also would change "peeling porches" to "peeling trim (or other specific noun)" the alliteration feels a little out of place with the mood you have set up so far.

quote:

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i would change "and fired that sucker up." to "and fired the sucker up."

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Respectfully disagreeing. Having read the whole thing, "...fired that sucker up..." fits better with the narrator's voice, IMO.

In the first line of the opening, the was used three times. A bit of re-wording can eliminate two of the the's..

I watched the glowing orange ball of the sun hang low in the western sky....

to:

I watched the sun, a glowing ball of orange fire riding low in its westward descent....

The same imagery without repetition of an overused word. The narration remains fresh if we can avoid overuse of even the most common words.

Now that you've pointed it out, Salimasis, it's bugging me. But is that ONLY because you pointed it out? Or is it really because it's a problem?

I like the tone. My main issues were redundancy (AND repetition). I suggest another name than "Hidden Hills" which sounds like an upscale resort -- unless you're trying to be ironic, in which case the narrator could sneer at that.

I am hooked by the implication that the narrator will be up to no good tonight.

I took so long to comment because whenever somebody starts with the way the sun or the weather looks -- unless it's a storm or an eclipse! -- I think, oh, Lord, here's a writer in love with his own voice, and it'll take forever to get to the good stuff. I was wrong, but it is a bias you may need to get past in others.

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I watched the glowing orange ball of the sun hang low in the western sky, [like it was] AS IF IT WERE afraid of what I would do [while it took a slow spin through the dark solar system before emerging in the East] DURING THE NIGHT.

Here's to another night of madness and mayhem in Hidden Hills.

I toasted the sunset, then tipped back my paper-wrapped bottle. The raw alcohol burned [a path across my tongue and] down my throat.

From up here, surrounded by the shabby mobile homes huddled together to form Hidden Hills, it looked like some mad scientist had built a powerful Shitty-Little-Trailer Magnet, dragged it out here to the outskirts of town, and fired that sucker up.

Most of the trailers were at least twenty years old[, and many of them had seen better days]. Faded paint, grimy windows, and peeling porches were the most popular decorating scheme.

But prose narratives are more popular than lyrical narratives. Having prose in your narrative isn't always bad, it's only bad when you kill the poetry of a powerful line.

TME, I failed to mention that I like your story thus far. You've received sound critique, I have nothing to add that hasn't already been said. I do wonder what is going to happen this night, though....

OOPS! I do have one thing to add.

In your last paragraph, you write that most of the shabby, grimy trailers are 20 years old. Unless your story is set in the 80,s or 90's, 20 year old trailers will not be small or shabby. For the past 25 years, mobile homes have been made more like stick built houses, at least 14' wide and usually 70' or more long. A lot of your potential readers might pick up on that, so you may want to clarify your date of setting, or make your trailers 30 or more years old.

[This message has been edited by Salimasis (edited May 01, 2005).]

I watched a glowing orange sun hang low in its western descent, as if afraid of what I would do while it took a slow spin through the dark solar system before another eastern ascent.

wbriggs - I hear ya about a weather forecast as a starter, and unless it means something I don't use it. In this case, sunset does mean something.

"Hidden Hills" is a shot at irony. Kind of like the scum-filled pond in my old development in FL that meant half the place qualified as 'waterfront', and the rest of us had 'water access'.

I watched as a glowing orange sun hung low in its western descent, as if afraid of what I would do while it took a slow spin through the dark solar system before another eastern ascent.

Here's to another night of madness and mayhem in Hidden Hills.

I toasted the sunset, then tipped back my paper-wrapped bottle. The cheap whiskey burned a path across my tongue and down my throat.

I was sitting on the roof of the burned out community center, a charred monument to good times last week. I was surrounded by a collection of shabby mobile homes huddled together to form Hidden Hills. It looked like some mad scientist had built a powerful Shitty-Little-Trailer Magnet, dragged it out here in the desert, and fired that sucker up.

I'm afraid I like the opening sentence better with the 'the's. To say "a glowing orange sun" makes me think that it is one of several, which is quite possible in f/sf. And the way it "hung low in its western descent" just sounds contradictory. Is it hanging, or descending? There may be ways of cutting down on the use of "the", but I don't think you've found them.

Also (different problem) the terms "western descent" and "eastern ascent" sound too poetic for the voice of the character--a matter of overwriting.

Just goes to show you can't please everyone, right? This is why it's generally considered a good idea not to rewrite based on every little comment (in other words DON'T change it back because of THIS comment), but to save them up, think about them, and do your rewriting after a month or so has gone by. (I think the only reason you've avoided getting my last comment from someone else is that you did most of your edits on your original post, rather than reposting the entire edited frag each time.)

The problem is that they represent a conscious choice on the part of the presumptive author, which in this case is an identified character. Yet they're being used more the way a third person narrator would use them. First person narrators tend to use italics for selective emphasis, to italicize an entire sentance indicates extreeem emphasis. But that level of emphasis doesn't work with the line until we know more about the character's feelings about "madness and mayhem in Hidden Hills." So we default to the third person style reading, then sort of wonder why a first person narrator would do something like that.