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The room 403 of Little Saints Hospital, New York, was very peculiar. It wasn't perpetually so, but on the afternoon of 10th February, 1988, it was very. Not because of the fact that the room was numbered 403 even though it was on the 24th floor of the building. Not also due to the fact that it didn’t contain any patient and yet, a middle aged nurse, whose chest badge read Delilah, was bustling around the room, setting up the I.V. tubes and making room for the labor equipment which would be brought any minute now by the medical interns, and also hastily updating the medical chart of a certain Mrs. Jennifer Field: 20 years of age, 9 months into pregnancy, and an hour into labor. The room 403 was peculiar not even due to the fact that it was never used for delivery of any baby; it had been a storage room and only

[This message has been edited by mc1ate1mad1cow (edited April 06, 2011).]

[This message has been edited by mc1ate1mad1cow (edited April 06, 2011).]

Then trot on over to Next, Please Introduce Yourself and say “hi” to everybody. Don’t worry, everybody’s real nice, well except for the unicorn, but she has her reasons to be prickly.

It’s usually a lot of fun to read through some of the recent intros.

Best of luck, and I’ll post a crit on your 13 as soon as I finish it.

First off, don’t change the first version in your original post; just add new versions as you revise.

– Try to avoid using so many numerals, especially in the intro. People, i.e. readers, rarely care about numbers, and the whole point of the intro is to show them why they care about your story, to “hook” them into spending the time and money (hopefully) to read more.

– You spend a great deal of time telling us what it is not, it might be more effective to show us what it is.

– This needs to be severely tightened up. Each sentence, each phrase needs to serve multiple functions. It needs to propel the action, set the tone with strong verb choice, bring the reader in close with sensory details, and give us a reason to care about these people. Do we need to know that the nurse is middle aged? Or that she is performing her duties and setting up a room? Probably not, as there is nothing unusual about these things. There is an unusual birth about to occur in this room? Okay, that’s interesting. There is light coming from everywhere, seemingly without a source? That’s also interesting. Treat each word of your intro as if it is sitting on prime real estate, because it is; make each one count.

– POV, right now it is kind of like this is being told from the point of view of the room itself. If the room is somehow sentient, even temporarily, that could be quite interesting. However if that is not the case, then you should probably choose a character from whose eyes we will see at least this portion of the story. The POV character is not always the main character, but you, as the writer, hold the movie camera, you choose what we see. Ever notice the difference between a production movie, and say, security camera footage? Which one holds your attention?

I highly recommend investing in OSC’s own Characters & Viewpoint it is well worth it. However if you’d like some free advice in smaller bites, check out Writing Advice by Caro Clarke.

It is clear to those suffering from a similar malady that you are burning with a story to tell. All advice here is offered with the purpose of helping you to accomplish just that. But if your reader, or worse yet a potential publisher, doesn’t even make it past the intro, then they will never experience the whole of that tale you are yearning to share.

The one thing that you have done very well indeed is the title. It is creative, descriptive, and it has a hook all its own. It gives the promise of a great story; now all you have to do is deliver.

Good luck and happy editing,
-Jo

I think I agree too with the numbers thing, now that you've pointed it out.

Honestly, having to work with only 13 lines to hook someone is just plain tough! I'd just copied some 15 lines from my WORD document and posted them here.
I'll surely try to edit the parts which you found to have no purpose, but I wanted to know, does the hook necessarily have to be within the first 13 lines? I'd thought I'd start with describing a commonplace hospital room and then jump to the 'fantasy' part, which I think, is the hook.

I will certainly have to look closely into the POV thing. No, the room is insentient. Is it okay to have a narrative from the POV of an omniscient, anonymous witness and then switch, sometimes, to the POV of one of the characters ?
Thanks for the links. I'll check them before making changes.

The reason that you want your hook in the first 13 is twofold. First, if you want to be published your work is going to be read by an editor. They read so much that they may not even read any more of your manuscript than those 13 little lines. If the hook isn’t there to get them to turn the page, no sale. Second, many readers (I’ve been known to do this) will browse through the book store, pick up a book with an interesting cover, maybe read the back blurb, and turn to the first page. They aren’t going to read the first three chapters before they buy the book. If they are intrigued enough to turn past the first page in the store odds are good they’ll decide to take it home with them.

Now, the hook must fit the rest of the story, because if they like your hook but the next 150 pages are nothing like it then they will feel tricked and cheated. But if you have 150 really amazing pages that no one reads because they never made it past the first one…

I tend to be a fairly generous reader, which is to say that I’ll usually give a book with even a slow start two or three chapters to get going. But only if I’ve already decided to read the book. I make that decision based on a combination of things: if the author is one that I’ve previously enjoyed or if it has been recommended to me by a friend. I occasionally take a chance on an unknown if the cover art is amazing and I like the premise (as conveyed by the back blurb), then I’ll open ‘er up and read the first couple of paragraphs. At this point I can usually tell if I’m going to enjoy the reading experience or not. Then my budget weighs in (how many new books do I have in the crook of my arm?), and determines how many of my new friends I can take home with me.

All this is by way of saying, yes, you really do want to try to make your first 13 the very best little hook that you can manage.

And the things that I pointed out as unimportant don’t automatically end up in the discard pile. They might be best sprinkled in a little later, but if something isn’t vital to the story and serving three, four, or even five different purposes, then it doesn’t warrant your prime real estate. As you’ve already noticed, it’s really tough to cram everything you want to into those ity-bity 13. The good news is that you will get better at it with practice. Speaking of practice, check out the Challenges, you can see how other writers of varying degrees of skill approach this, and you can even join in with something a bit off the cuff. It’s great practice; it will really make you stretch and grow as a writer.

Aw, dang it! That means that I need to get off my mental duff and participate too. The current challenge closes tomorrow evening.

How to do this? Josephine has already said much of what I thought. I agree that showing what is would be more effective than playing tug-of-war with "reality" and potential expectations.

The narrator doesn't have to be one of the story's characters, but most people expect a character or few to tell the story and are likely to distrust the author if the identity of the narrator is anonymous--especially if the anonymous, omniscient presence is offering opinions. To the modern reader, this kind of narrator outside of a satire seems like a fallacy.

An interesting event might begin on the next page. Perhaps a more definite narrator arrives then? That could be a more effective place to start.

*Edited to remove an anagram.

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“Aaaie!” Natasha’s mother screamed in the very early morning. It wouldn’t have roused Natasha from sleep if she’d been sleeping in her own room. This is what she hated about sleeping in her mom’s bed.

On a school day, Natasha would be subjected to one, if not a combination, of these things: a glass full of cold water emptied on her head, quick successive slaps on her butt, getting one of her ears wrung or simply labor under the cold stares of her mom, standing near the head of the bed. Once, as an exception to this rule, her mom had almost sat on her head to get her to school.