The Principle Scion of the Yang Corporation was handler of all that his billions of electronic eyes could apprehend.
Arcs of scorching plasma pulsed all around him in rhythmic ribbons of bluish white light, tracing jagged coronas like electric butterfly wings in the open sky of the stadium as he descended the solid gluon glass stairs from the Throne and walked along a small crystal path toward the center, where his voice would be best heard.
The path before him was trimmed with bright green tufts of monkey grass and winded its way across the water of a large pool in the middle of the stadium. Small, floating fruits hinted at flavors that could spark to mind memories of hallucinatory fervor and a small bite of juicy pulp which might create anything.

Now let's see what you got.

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The Principle Scion of the Yang Corporation was handler of all that his billions of electronic eyes could apprehend.

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Is this the opening line of your story? What exactly is a Principle Scion of the Yang Corporation? A person? computer? alien? metaphor? slogan? Do you mean to put in a ‘the’ between was handler? Does he (she, it) really have billions (plural) of electronic eyes? How could they apprehend anything? Did you mean comprehend?
You introduced a character in your first line and I have no idea who (or what) he is, what his job (or purpose) is, what he looks like (that billion eye thing), or what that all important last word means. Your Principle Scion could be a powerful deity, low paid security guard, and about a million different things in between.

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Arcs of scorching plasma pulsed all around him in rhythmic ribbons of bluish white light, tracing jagged coronas like electric butterfly wings in the open sky of the stadium as he descended the solid gluon glass stairs from the Throne and walked along a small crystal path toward the center, where his voice would be best heard.

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I am imagining Walt Whitman rolling over in his grave right now.
Arcs of scorching plasma pulsed all around him makes him sound like a welder.
rhythmic ribbons of bluish white light is too much, especially that duo R rhyme.
tracing jagged coronas, is this supposed to be star matter or broken bottles of cheap beer? like electric butterfly wings in the open sky, what is an ‘electric butterfly’? Is this a neon sign? of the stadium, he is in a stadium?
as he descended the solid gluon glass stairs.I had to look up ‘gluon’. Did you mean plasma? How could plasma be solid?
That entire sentence is one long run on. It isn’t clear and looks like it was written simply to impress.

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Small, floating fruits hinted at flavors that could spark to mind memories of hallucinatory fervor and a small bite of juicy pulp which might create anything.

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This sounds like a hallucinatory fervor.

Here is the short of my assessment of your opening. It is not clear at all. Because I have no idea what is going on, it does not draw me in. It appears you attempted to make your character impressive by making your prose impressive. It didn’t work.

I suggest you tone down your poetic overreaching, make your opening less telling, and paint a picture we can see, not interpret. If writing is a painting, this was a poor Picasso imitation.

thanks for the criticism. I posted all the entries because I'm trying to put what I have out there to see what works. If nothing works, then I'll try something new.

first, and I'm not trying to be rude, I thought that Principle Scion was self-explanatory. First Heir. Inheritor. Head-honcho of Yang Corporation.

second, you're right. Sentences are too long and probably too flowerey. I'll trim those. BTW, could you trim the sarcasm? My brilliance? Walt Whitman? no offense, but I don't know you like you that. if your joking, there isn't enough context in your text to get that across. maybe try emoticons?
more importantly, it gets in the way of serious criticism. you can't help people if you're pissing them off.

third, the absence of the article "the" before the word "handler" was a typo. I hope that didn't offend you too much as this is a site for workshopping and editing and not for submitting polished drafts.

fourth, no, I did not mean "comprehend". I meant apprehend. It means to seize, which the eyes do shortly into the story. However, if you look further, it also means to percieve or understand a thing. so either way, I think it works, but as you are the ostensible reader, I'll consider changing it but not yet.

What is gluon glass? I can't explain it AND the character AND introduce the setting ALL in thirteen lines, but I'm working on it. I do it explain it in the story itself, but I'm still trying to get the hang of this opening thing. everyone has different ideas about what goes into an opening. If you have any positive feedback or constructive criticism, let me know.

again, thanks for the feedback.

waterchaser

As he descended the solid gluon glass stairs from the Throne to the small crystal path before him, arcs of scorching plasma pulsed all around him and traced jagged coronas in the air.

A glass path led him out onto a pool in the middle of the stadium. On the water here and there were small, floating plants grown only on the moons of Jupiter. The smells of burgeoning fruit only hinted at the hallucinatory fervor that could be induced from just a small bite of any one these unique and valuable plants.

So I am intrigued by the first two paragraphs in your revision. The sentence at the end of the first paragraph hints at character which is good. There is still a lot of hard to visualize stuff in your first two paragraphs, but after the trimming I don't think they are too much. It makes me wonder about the scion and how he could have billions of eyes, etc.

I think the last two sentences about the plants put me off a little. I was trying to comprehend what this scion is all about, then something else that is new and strange to me is introduced. I don't know how important the plants are going to me in the story, but if they are not that crucial, I would suggest putting some more about the scion before getting to that.

Hope this helps.

Still struggling with what to keep, what to move in the intro thing. Thanks for your advice. Let me know if you want to read more.

you can email me at waterchaser@msn.com

I will do a full text reading of something of yours in exchange.

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thanks for the criticism. I posted all the entries because I'm trying to put what I have out there to see what works. If nothing works, then I'll try something new.

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first, and I'm not trying to be rude, I thought that Principle Scion was self-explanatory. First Heir. Inheritor. Head-honcho of Yang Corporation.

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second, you're right. Sentences are too long and probably too flowerey. I'll trim those. BTW, could you trim the sarcasm? My brilliance? Walt Whitman? no offense, but I don't know you like you that. if your joking, there isn't enough context in your text to get that across. maybe try emoticons?
more importantly, it gets in the way of serious criticism. you can't help people if you're pissing them off.

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third, the absence of the article "the" before the word "handler" was a typo. I hope that didn't offend you too much as this is a site for workshopping and editing and not for submitting polished drafts.

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fourth, no, I did not mean "comprehend". I meant apprehend. It means to seize, which the eyes do shortly into the story. However, if you look further, it also means to percieve or understand a thing. so either way, I think it works, but as you are the ostensible reader, I'll consider changing it but not yet.

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What is gluon glass? I can't explain it AND the character AND introduce the setting ALL in thirteen lines, but I'm working on it. I do it explain it in the story itself, but I'm still trying to get the hang of this opening thing.

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If you have any positive feedback or constructive criticism, let me know.

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The Principle Scion of the Yang Corporation was master of all whom his billions of gluon glass eyes could apprehend and could afford to be arrogant. He could afford anything.

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The girl jerked up as if controlled invisibly by sharp twists of the strings of dark-energy as the Ancestry possessedher.
A voice both terrible and distant rang out from the small, inadequate mouth.
“YOU SUFFER A PLOT AGAINST YOU,”
“And so we must overcome,”
“THE YANG WILL LIVE ON WITHOUT YOU THEN,”
Never shaken, the Prince rose with a small grin and strolled purposefully toward the small bush in the center of the pool.
The Prince ceremoniously took the stem of the uppermost flower that was centerpiece of the dark ceremony. He slowly peeled back one layer of petal at a time to reveal a small, crystallized strawberry, damp and shimmering in sheets of sucrose.

Just a few comments on POV in the version above.

(BTW....why don't you edit you original post, putting newer labelled versions below the original version. Then, people have a single place to view the versions of your intro and each intro has a name.)

We start with something happening to a girl...'dark energy' and 'Ancestry' (capitalised) and 'possessed' clue me into genre specific words...but little else. I don't know who I (the viewer of these events) am, or where I am. I think your first line is a mistake. In fact the only clue in the whole piece about the environment was the line '...strolled purposefully toward the small bush in the center of the pool.' (-can he walk on water?)

I read from your comments that you were concerned too much is being asked of you with regard 13 lines...perhaps you are trying to do to much. In the intro version above, you have the prince recieving a prediction from a seer and then he takes some strange fruit--that's quite a bit. Were it me, I would have spent the intro recounting the possession, leaving the hook as her comments.

As it is he has little reaction to the comments, which makes me not care either.

Who speaks the line “...And so we must overcome.” I only ask because you change the tone (lack of capitalisation) and paragraph--also after it you paragraph. It appears to me to be another speaker. If so, you'll need to tag it somehow.

POV vaguely appears with the line '...Never shaken, the Prince rose...'.

However an earlier line is crying out for POV so we know who thinks this...otherwise it is telling. ('...A voice both terrible and distant rang out from the small, inadequate mouth.')

I think you need to establish the POV and the environment (broadly) and earlier on.

Your simile (jerked as if controlled by sharp twists of the strings of dark-energy as) uses a lot of words for very little ompff. The 'as if' gives away that it's a simile and suggest that something else is responsible for her jerky movements. Also you used 'of' twice; something of something of something. Doesn't work. It's like using 'and' twice in a sentence...something to be avoided.

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I try to follow Heinlein's rules so my question is: with all these 13 line starts, are you finishing what you write?

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Then I guess you have finished what you wrote. On the other hand, I suspect there is not a great demand out there for 13 line stories. lol

Trying out 13 lines before writing the story can be a dangerous way to approach writing, because while the 13 lines should hook, they are not necessarily a true indication that a story is worth writing. Nor are they a good way for a writer to decide what to write next.

The best thing to write next is the thing that is at the very least the most exciting to you as a writer, and at best is absolutely eating at your brain so that you HAVE to write it.

I agree whole-heartedly with your post, but I do feel this forum can be used as a tool for simply improving the level of your prose--never mind hooks and starting points.

Many people who come here have never been critiqued before and their prose usually contains a range of basic mistakes--stuff that can be ironed out by posting a number of intros and getting feedback on what worked and what didn't. This is beneficial to the writer whether they decide to complete the story or not.

skadder, I suggested calling it "idea testing" because I suspect thats how newer writers might think about it.

Those who have more experience would of course recognize it as prose refinement as well as idea testing.

Maybe calling it something like "Refiner's Fire" could cover all such bases?

On the other hand, though (come to think of it), the original intention for "Fragments and Feedback" in tandem with keeping it short was the "brainstorm how to write/finish it" approach (for which those areas haven't been used very much).

Edited to add: I think these current F&F areas help with the prose refinement fairly well. I just wonder if we could use an area for the kind of "idea testing" I've been talking about.

I feel that this is very productive.

I think that an idea for seeing if an intro hooks, to be followed with reading the whole story, would be a good way to host this blog.

This way, you could take a story, even one intro-ed and workshopped on other threads here, and then search for feedback from random members. You work through a whole story by either starting with intros to iron out ideas and pov and character dev. and prose, or you could post what you thought was a solid story, maybe one you workshopped on the intro thread first, and people would be able to read knowing their purpose for reading: to see if I want to read more.

I think reading for purpose is inevitable and when you are new to this site, the purpose for reading at this thread is not so clear from the title of the thread.

If you know before looking at the posted threads that the purpose for reading that is to see people's ideas in progress as opposed to people's ideas after some work, and fleshed out, would give an added dimension of depth to this site as a whole, which surely has room for one more way for writers to beneifit from participating here, not just as writers but also as readers.