Okay, for feedback, I would like any feedback at all whatsoever, be it comments on my style, on grammar, spelling, word choice, character development, hook construction, and whatever else you can think of. I can't offer a full manuscript yet, since what I have is currently being revised and it might take a few days for me to finish it all, but if anyone is hooked and would like to read the rest, I will contact them by e-mail after I finish the revision.

So, without further ado, here are the first 13 lines I have ever posted on Hatrack.

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EDIT: I have updated my 13 lines. They are in the 5th reply post.

EDIT: I have updated my 13 lines again. They are in the 10th reply post.

[This message has been edited by BlakeR (edited May 05, 2008).]

Here are my two humble appleseeds:

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I woke up that morning with a heavy feeling in my bones.

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quote:

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I woke up[I awoke] that morning with a heavy feeling in my bones. As I rolled out of bed, I felt my bones[Repetitive] creaking and groaning, as though they were the boughs of an old oak tree.so far this seems wordy I didn’t have time to waste coddling myself, though, because I had to get to work. Such was the life of a Colonist, after all. From the moment we were born, life was just a massive lump of hardship. For a child to even survive, they had to be tough. On occasion, children would have to wait out their mother’s entire eight-hour shift in order to suckle at her teat.This didn't work for me Mothers had to work, after all, in the same fashion as all the other Colonists did. Maternity leave was a nonexistent amenity, unheard of if you weren’t a Blue Boy.

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This starts off telling a story. Perhaps a cliche beginning. Try thislink For heated discussions on waking up.

Then the story strayed into exposition. It felt like summary. I didn't feel the story. I want to see it through the Eyes of the Character. What does he see?

I didn't feel the lure of a hook. I got a glimpse of the harsh colony,not sure if it is a space colony or an old earth colony.

Overall, I want the story.

edited to fix code

[This message has been edited by His divine eminence(edited May 05, 2008).]

My bones creaked and groaned as I rolled out of bed. The baby wailed. “I’m coming, Paulie! Wait a damn minute!”
I sighed then got moving. I didn’t have time to waste coddling myself. I had to feed Paulie and get to work. This would be the only time he would get to eat until I finished my shift; such was the life of a colonist.
I pulled out my breast and planted Paulie on my teat. “Hurry up, damn you.” I hated my child, and hated myself for hating my child. He made things so much harder for me on a planet where life was already hard. Hard for everyone that wasn’t a Blue Boy.

Just one way to start such a tale.
Wjy don't you check out the 13 line challenge in the Writer Challenge section? It's open to all and can be quite insightful to learn how others will chose open a story with the same outline.
Hope this helps. Oh and put a steak on that thing. It'll help bring the swelling down.

It might be an idea to lurk a little to see how things work here, and maybe as snapper says, try the first 13 challenges.

New to this thread, I was confused. I read a first 13, then crits to something entirely different. It's usual to post a revised first 13 as a new post in the thread, and edit the first post to indicate that a new first 13 is x posts down. Then everyone can see what's going on.

Neither version hooks me at the moment, because I can't see anyone specific to sympathise with. The second version seems to me to be an infodump. The first version, with not feeding the babies, is hard to believe--how would a remote colony sustain such self-destructive behaviour? Why not use artificial milk?

Oh, and it's helpful to mention the story's word count, "rather long" being, um, rather vague.

Hope this helps,
Pat

At the moment I'm still revising the very first short story I wrote in the "series" which is now going to be a single story, so I have quite a way to go.

Also, thanks for the welcome to Hatrack.

EDIT: New 13 lines...again. Decided to break it up a little, make it more fun.

“Damn gravity…why did you have to take your toll on me so precisely?” I walked around my sleeping quarters tenderly, as pain shot through my legs.

Thirty years ago, after a long night of my mother laboring under the intense mid-atmospheric Jupiter gravity, I had been born in this very room. I was Ichabod Apollonius Black V, the General Overseer of the Tanner Foundation’s Jupiter gas-harvesting colony known as J10 Helium-3 Harvesting Colony. I ran a tight ship on J10, didn’t take any guff from my workers, and worked longer, harder, and faster than anyone else on the colony. But against gravity, even the most powerful Harvesters become weaklings.

However, "I was Ichabod Apollonius Black V, the General Overseer of the Tanner Foundation’s Jupiter gas-harvesting colony known as J10 Helium-3 Harvesting Colony." still sounds like an infodump, and it's rather long, and repetitive (harvesting colony twice). Perhaps all we need to know is that you were Ichabod. Maybe the rest could be fed in as we need to know it.

Also, "I was Ichabod ..." can't be right. "I was borne Ichabod ..." or "I am," if you still are Ichabod? If you're not Ichabod now, and somehow have undergone a personality transplant or something, maybe "Then, I was known as Ichabod ..." to make it clear.

But more seriously, it's all about what MC was. We seem almost to have missed the story. There's no hint as to what is to come, what MC wants and why we should want to read about it.

First person is difficult to write well.

This felt like too much of an info dump. This exposition can be woven into the story as it progresses. I still want to kno the story, or at least catch a glimpse of what it may become.

DOes he know something? Did he find something? Is somebody out to get him? Or does he just wake up one morning and decide to tell us his life story?

At what point does he engage into the plot? This is the moment you want to paint.

Corny example:

Any way, the way the document is set up, I first have two lines that say:

--From A Life of Chaos: The Memoirs of Ichabod A. Tanner
-Published in 2492 by Ares Publishing House, Aquila, Mars

After that is the title of the story. Basically, right from the beginning, you know that the story is part of a bigger story (not one that I'm writing at the moment, but one that the reader at least knows exist) and that the writer's name is Ichabod A. Tanner.

The hook would have to be very strong to get me to read a memoir, and the only memoirs I'd normally consider reading would be written by real, inspiring people.

With Ichabod, all we know is that he managed gas harvesting on Jupiter for a while, and he's suffering from an excess of gravity. No story--no problem, no conflict, except by implication. From the tone of the piece he sounds full of himself, inclined to lecture, not someone I want to spend a great deal of time with.

Maybe try taking an episode from his life and turning that into a story?

Hope this helps,
Pat

But, with that in mind, I decided that perhaps I would be better suited to telling the story in portions. Smaller portions than I had initially decided to do, but good portions nonetheless. I've also adapted the plot a bit, and I'm planning on making a story that revolves around the time period that Ichabod is telling his story in. With all that in mind, I have changed the title a bit as well and edited those two lines that I posted earlier.

Since I changed a lot of stuff and the first 13 have changed as well, I decided to post the new ones here. Sorry for all the changes I've been doing, when I revise, I try to really clean house, especially since I'm going to make an attempt at getting this thing published.

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Canton Wilde’s feet struck the concrete rhythmically as he ran down the unpopulated alleyways of Aquila.

“Damn it, I’m late! That client said he had a good story for me…who knows what he’ll do if I’m tardy!”

quote:

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“Damn it, I’m late! That client said he had a good story for me…who knows what he’ll do if I’m tardy!”

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