9/26/2207 5:45 pm
Pain….
…That’s the first thing that was on my mind as I opened my eyes. In fact, it was the only thing that was on my mind. As I began to realize my surroundings, two things became abundantly apparent: one, my right arm was hurting severely; and two, I had no clue who I was or where I was. Looking at my body for some kind of clue, all I was greeted with was a black skintight outfit covering my body.

A few things I'd say on the writing.

"was hurting severely" comes across as a bland description.

"Looking at my body for some kind of clue, all I was greeted with was a black skintight outfit covering my body."

This reads awkwardly, and could be rephrased, especially losing the passive verbs and cutting out a lot of nonessentials. "all I was greeted with was" is the biggest bloated portion, I'd say. Don't mean to be harsh, just pointing it out.

quote:

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9/26/2207 5:45 pm
Pain....

...That’s the first thing that was "that was" could be omitted on my mind as I opened my eyes. In fact, it was the only thing that was "that was" could be omitted on my mind. As I began to realize my surroundings, two things became abundantly apparent: one, I think everything in this line up until now could be cut. my right arm was hurting severely; and two, I had no clue who I was or where I was. Looking at my body for some kind of clue, I think this could be shorter and easier to read, like, "looking down" all I was greeted with maybe something like "I saw" to keep it simple was a black skintight outfit covering my body.

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A black skintight outfit sounds a bit overused, to me. Maybe if you gave us some specifics. Is it leather? Spandex? Latex? Some kind of made-up material?

quote:

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Using the wall I had been leaning on for support, I started to pull myself up, most of the muscles and joints aching to do so. Luckily, the smoke that was filling my view began to dissipate, giving me a chance to collect myself.

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Was this a literal smoke, or some kind of haziness? The smoke kind of lost me.

It think the opening has potential if it were made a bit tighter and more efficient. For example, you don't need to tell me you're going to tell me two things. Just tell me the two things.

I bit more of a setting could help with this. Should we feel a sense of urgency? Without seeing more of the surroundings, it's hard to tell.

1. You don't realize your surroundings. You recognize or examine your surroundings, or you realize your surroundings are something.

2. Lose abundantly and severely. Both try to express a large degree of something that is better dealt with in a sensory way, showing me how much something hurts, showing me how there are only two components to your existence as you wake up. The way it is now, you're telling, which is worse.

3. The black outfit. It is a little overdone in the sci-fi genre, but the way you put it here, it sounds like he wasn't expecting to see it, like it's the suit some scientists in a lab put on him, rather than the uniform or clothes he had on before he got himself in this mess. This could be cleared up.

4. I get no sense of setting at all here. I'm going to add a few exclamation points to lehollis's call for more details in the setting, particularly sensory details. An anonymous man waking in essentially a black void isn't interesting. He leans against the wall. Is it smooth metal? Cold wet stone? Does the air smell like smoke? Like a sanitized hospital ward? Like the inside of a giant red clown's shoe? Is it cold? Hot? Use your imagination and flesh out this scene, because if you don't, my imagination is going to make me put your book down and go find something interesting to read.

Don't take my comments too harshly - this is good and shows a lot of promise. If I could offer you one point of advice, it would be to worry about finishing your novel rather than worrying about perfecting the beginning. You can always fix the beginning later because it isn't going anywhere. If you don't hurry and work on your novel, though, it might tuck tail and run and then you'll never get finished.

By the way - welcome to Hatrack.

One difficulty with dwelling on a starting point before you've gone very far into story is that your starting point may change. This point of waking up bewildered does seem mysterious, and I have to admit, I'm drawn in. When you get to remembered flashbacks or the like, will it still be the right place for you?

Something I find disturbing, and books on writing caution about, happens when images I form from early descriptions turn out to be incorrect. Your character's self-description has me picturing a man in a matte-black spandex catsuit. If I continue reading and discover a woman in a shiny rubber wetsuit, I'll have to mentally return to the beginning and picture all the action with the new image - or maybe I'll just feel betrayed and put it down. Of course, the black suit could be leather with straps and studs, but that would be another genre completely. You're going to the extent of describing the character's clothes because that's what (s)he can see. As it is, I think the description could be more complete. I also think it's difficult to do more of a self-description when narrating in the first person and your character is temporarily bewildered or has amnesia. That's a risk and cost you have to weigh - revealing the character slowly from first person POV vs risk of jarring the reader who gets the wrong impression.

"The Timehiker"

A man wakes up in the distant future, not knowing who or where he is and finding nothing familiar about his surroundings. However, there was also an explosion around where he awoke, so now the authorities are after him for questioning.

Not long after, he meets a concerned scientist who apparently knows a lot about the man, his name is Tom Carrigan and he is from the past (our time). According to the scientist, Tom is a scientist who worked on developing time travel. History records that Tom is supposed to travel to the future, but is 5 years early for some reason. After getting his memory back, he realizes what happened and has to get back to his own time. The scientist, who has a replica of Tom's machine, attempts to send Tom back to the past.

However, something goes wrong, and Tom arrives in the wrong year. He finds out the reason has to do with what happened back in his present and why he arrived in the future earlier than recorded.

-> I arrived at the title because I thought of the main character as a sort of hitch hiker through time, another title I thought of was "Tom Carrigan: Time Traveler"

however, I love that he arrived five years early. Takes me out of Cliche and into mystery and intrigue. I dont usually suggest changing plot, but would it be possible if instead of trying to get back to his own time, he could be trying to get to the five years ahead? I would defiantly read a book like that.

please, if you want to, email me your ten pages. I'll gladly read them over for you.

-> Maybe there's an underlying conspiracy behind the actual recorded history, what actually happened is that a clone of MC arrived 5 years in the future who purpose is to go back and take credit for MC's work and make sure a secret organization gets a hold of the technology instead of it coming out into the open for everyone. Due to the organization abusing the technology, the timeline changes and the MC now takes a trip earlier than he's supposed to and arrives at a different point, stumbling in on the conspiracy.