They had been ignoring him all day. An unhealthy silence had permeated the room despite being filled to the brim with people. Sixteen of the smartest, most capable minds on the planet were hard at work monitoring and adjusting the chair but there wasn’t one among them whose stomach wasn't twisted with disgust.

It had been hours since they began, and after an exhaustive day there was a sense of relief bubbling up with the realization that they were only minutes from completion.

Let me ask you this ... if I give you the next 4 lines, does it pique any interest or is it still too slow?

You are allowed to repost and edited version of in fact a totally new start.

If you can't hook people in 13 lines then I would suggest you re-think your intro. Of course you may not wish to hook people within 13 lines--some don't.

Your intro is vague and has elements of witholding. The POV character knows what is going on but the author--you--is deliberately withholding this from the reader--me--in order to create a desire to read on. It doesn't work.

The POV is unclear.

-twisted with disgusted-?

[This message has been edited by skadder (edited May 27, 2010).]

I did seem to wander in my pov. I guess it's because I was trying to set up the scene without delving too much into exposition, and failing apparently.

The disconnect and apparent apathy on Revis' part was intentional though. Revis is in the process of being executed or something similar (I won't give away the whole story in case anyone cared) for his crimes but it doesn't bother him, meanwhile the people executing him are disgusted, maybe with what they have to do, but more so with just the nature of his crimes.

I thought the idea of someone being essentially prepped for a futuristic electric chair was as good a jumping on point as any. Execution seemed like a good hook to me but the setting isn't fully realized for a few paragraphs. I guess I was just hoping that the potential of someone being punished for a crime and their apparent ennui about it would be enough to draw a reader in and want to know more.

Anyway, beginning with an execution is a pretty good hook, (or attempted execution/whatever it is) the problem is that's not what you have written here. I have no clue what's going on, the whole time I was wondering if it was brain surgery, dental work, a spaceship launch, or something I've never heard of. For some reason execution wasn't on the list.

And yeah, it was supposed to be "disgust" as opposed to "disgusted," I altered that sentence from what it was as I posted it but didn't have the foresight to spell check.

Getting all this pertinent data in to the first 13 lines is tough, I mean the hooks are all in the story, plot wise, but the meat hits 10 lines past this. I've never focused on the first few sentences like this before, I've always thought in scenes and arcs. I guess I just decompress too much. It's like writing flash fiction and I don't kill enough of my darlings.

There is a reason these specific people have to do "the execution" and there is a reason that it takes all day. There is a payoff of sorts. It's not really "an execution" either; I just paint it like it is something similar in the first page and a half. I kind of like that people aren't getting what's up though. At first I thought it was a negative, but in the context of the whole this actually might play into what it's all about, I just have to hook it more. I think I overestimated the draw of the "will it hurt?" as the opening line.

I'm going to take the part out about the scientists altogether though, it's an interesting caveat and comes back in the story later on, but on the whole of the story it's impact seems minimal. It's more of a theme related thing than a plot point.

For me at least, if you made it clear that he's being prepped for execution, but doesn't really care, it would definitely be interesting.

"Sixteen of the smartest, most capable minds on the planet were hard at work monitoring and adjusting the chair but there wasn’t one among them whose stomach wasn't twisted with disgust over the execution(or transmorgrification or whatever the heck it is)." We need some noun to eliminate the other possibilities.

Don't worry too much about packing everything into the first thirteen. All the first thirteen are is just a sample of what is to come. (If all that sample gives us is confusion then we don't want to read on.) It's good to think in scenes and arcs. We don't need everything up front, we just need to know what's going on.