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Operating the ice-mining rig was a two-man job but Leon struggled with it alone at the bottom of the shaft. He skinned his knuckles, cursed and checking his watch, peered up the metal ladder toward the tunnels. Where is she? ‘Julie!’ he called but there was no answer.

Downing his tools, he clambered up the ladder and stalked through the tunnels looking for his wife. Every inch of this place he'd carved from the red rock. Every pick mark in the walls was his.

He found her in the kitchen, sitting beneath the only skylight, nursing a bottle of sweet potato gin. Where the hell did she get that?

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[This message has been edited by hoptoad (edited November 16, 2005).]

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Operating the ice-mining rig was a two-man job but Leon struggled with it alone at the bottom of the shaft

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Disjointed. Start with Leon.

I'm a bit confused by the ice mining rig mention then the shift to say the caverns were cut from red rock.

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He skinned his knuckles, cursed and checking his watch, peered up the metal ladder toward the tunnels.

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quote:

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Downing his tools, he clambered up the ladder and stalked through the tunnels looking for his wife

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He found her in the kitchen, sitting beneath the only skylight, nursing a bottle of sweet potato gin

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The "hardly" in the last sentence is very weak. I'm not sure what to replace it with, but it could be better.

Just a suggestion or example may help me know what to do to fix it. The whole piece may be riddled with them.

Does this correct it?

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He found her in the kitchen where she sat beneath the only skylight and nursed a bottle of sweet potato gin.

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It doesn't have the feel that I'm trying to produce, but is it technically what you meant? I can play around with it to get it right AND make it feel right.

And how about this rework of the second line

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The wrench slipped and skinned his knuckles. He cursed and checked his watch. Where is she?
‘Julie!’ He waited, but there was no answer.

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Thanks Calligrapher!
I will send it through tonight.

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Downing his tools, he clambered up the ladder and stalked through the tunnels looking for his wife. Every inch of this place he'd carved from the red rock. Every pick mark in the walls was his.

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The two sentences seem disconnected to me. First we have someone stalking through the tunnels looking for his wife. Then we move into a description of the pickmarks on the tunnel walls.

I wanted more thoughts and feelings about why he's stalking? What is he thinking? Why is he mad/upset/stalking?

The sudden interrupt describing the marks on the tunnel wall pulled me out. I LIKE the description, mind you. Just not at that point, as you are launching into his stalking after his wife.

I'll read if you don't mind waiting til next week for me to turn around a crit. We Americans are coming into the national "Eat til you puke" day, and my family is celebrating our holiday this weekend instead of next because my daughter needs to work on Thanksgiving weekend.

Some comments:
-I like the first sentence just the way it is. Editing comment: you need a comma after 'job.'
-The second sentence does sound odd. Your structure is right, but when I first read 'checking' my mind screamed "parallelism!" Putting a comma after 'cursed and' would fix this, but then there'd be too many commas. Could you divide this up into two sentences perhaps?
-'Downing' (which, if I'm not mistaken, isn't a gerund) sounds weird. Something like 'Setting aside' would come across more naturally and I wouldn't do a double-take.

Aren't gerunds verbs that are used like nouns? As in, "Running is a healthy hobby."

Operating the ice-mining rig was a two-man job. At the bottom of the shaft, Leon struggled with it alone.

"Sonofabitch," he said, skinning his knuckles. He checked his watch. Where is she?

Peering up the metal ladder toward the tunnels, he yelled, ‘Julie!’

No answer.

He put down his tools and climbed the ladder, stalking through the tunnels trying to find his wife. Every inch of this place he'd carved from the red rock. Every pick mark in the walls was his.

When he found her sitting in the kitchen beneath the only skylight, he wondered where she go that bottle of sweet potato gin she was nursing.

She could barley lift her head. "I can’t work today," she said.
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So basically my problem with your piece is the sentence structure which ruins the suspense. Adding words like 'but' destroys tension because the reader immediately know that the following is going to contradict what came before.

You also try to fit too much into a single sentence. You don't have to always put the cause and the effect of something in the same sentence. Space it out. It adds to the suspense, which, as far as I can see, you don't know how to generate well.

Also, I'd recommend showing whenever you can. Don't say things like "he cursed." That's very meek. It's shows an author that doesn't know his characters well enough to offer them a curse word that's suitable to them.

Sitting in the chair

Drinking the beer

Laughing all the way...(ho,ho,ho)

These are good for mixing up the rhythm of a piece but can be overused, especially at the beginning of a sentence.

Hmm--time to ask almighty google. Check out this link: http://www.edict.com.hk/vlc/clauses/participleclause.htm

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Students also tend to mistake participle clauses with gerund clauses, as in the following:

X: Reading at night, it is my hobby. (Participle Clause)

*: Reading at night is my hobby. (Gerund Clause)

The above mistake arises because the student may have forgotten the fact that if a sentence begins with a participle clause, the two verbs must refer to the same subject. In this sentence, the verb "read" is not performed by the subject "it", and so the sentence is wrong. In this case when the subject of the sentence is an activity, a gerund clause should be used.

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Back to the story.

There are a lot of -ing words in the story. Both from that long, complex sentence in the first paragraph, and then 'downing' in the second.

I disagree about using an explicit curse word. Right at the start of a story, it can be off-putting. If you say someone's cursing, nobody thinks twice, but a specific curse word glares at you from the page. It stands out and seems to appeal more to shock value when used so early on.

It would take twice as many words to tell you how I would rearrange than to just rewrite it in my own voice. I will make one comment. If you are going to use an atomic bomb in the first paragraph, you might as well start the story with it. That way, readers that are put off won't have to waste any time reading past the first word.

example:
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F!$!$%!
Scraped his knuckles yet again.
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That has impact and will draw in readers with at the expense of turning off other readers. So what. The readers that don't like it dont have to read it.

But, that's not how I would present this particular opening. Here's how I might present it:
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Where was she?
He sighed and took another stab at getting the two-man ice rig going. His hand slipped, and his knuckles scraped across the red stone wall of the tunnel yet again. He wasn't going to have any knuckles left to scrape if she didn't arrive soon. Where was she?
He checked his watch, then shook his head. What was keeping her? He stowed the rig and headed into the complex of tunnels between the rig and the house. She couldn't get lost. She helped him dig it, and knew every inch of the tunnel as well as he did. He found her back at the house, sitting in the kitchen and nursing a bottle of hooch. Where'd she get that? The last sweet potato still was shut down three months ago, and they didn't have the cash to lay out for one of the few remaining bottles.

"You're drunk."

She burped. "I can't hep you today, sweetie."
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Take what works and discard the rest.