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It's fantasy/romance/adventure. Word count is 53,916 words. I am bad at beginning stories and papers but I worked on this tediously. Can I please get some feedback?
In a small town on the outskirts of Oklahoma, a small town rests in between two large mountains. It looks like mixture of the modern era and the Dark Ages. While modern buildings consume most of the antique shops and homes, a few sentimental structures remain. One of these such structures is an enormous oak tree on the outskirts of the town and the old Parson house whose residents were murdered five years ago. Aside from these two ominous reminders, Cretice doesn’t stand out, though it is secluded. The mountains surrounding the town loom over it from all directions, giving it a more dreary appearance. Nonetheless, the citizens of Cretice are as pure as they come. However, they are sorely in for a rude awakening when a new family moves in and brings with them an unstoppable force of evil.
posted
Hey, the moderator is going to cut this down considerably, but you might want to do it yourself. I think the rules call for 13 lines.
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This opening reads to me like a jacket blurb summarizing and explaining the first chapter of a novel. The details are generic.
Note that the first sentence's two clauses more or less repeat each other: small town, small town. How does a state have outskirts? Outskirts are the remote edges of cities and towns, not states.
"rests in between" impies the town is taking a break from some labors. The term is a somewhat trite and overused idiom.
"It looks like [a] mixture of the modern era and the Dark Ages." Missing indefinite article "a." This sentence, though, contains the more standout shortcoming of the part and probably the parcel. The sentence summarizes what the town looks like by telling the contrast of modern and Middle Age in a generic manner without painting the scene; in other words, without showing modern and "Dark Ages" features of the town.
Use specific features for showing, specifics that relate to the novel's main dramatic complication as motifs. The complication is "an unstoppable force of evil" comes to distrurb small town Cretice's "pure" citizens. Portraying a specifically modern motif might be a cultural feature unique to the town, say a reverred, recently built church. Where something specifically Dark Ages motif-wise might be a hand-worked, abandoned gold mine burrowed under a mountain.
The narrative voice doesn't work for me: telling lecture, trite wording, generic.
The craft--structure and content, is average. A main dramatic complication is introduced but not strongly and clearly as developed as I feel it should be. If the new, evil family were focused on, the evil of at least one of them, that for me would imply what will happen at first.
Mechanical style--grammar and such, is on the low end. Tautology, missing function words, like the indefinite article, diction issues "rest," "consume," "sentimental," "one of these such structures" number agreement with two such features, a few logic issues like how any community can be pure, mountains giving a town a dreary appearance. Most mountain communities cherish their mountains as beautiful vistas.
Audience appeal-wise, the complication of a new family bringing an evil force to town has potential appeals, but as it is generically stated, I don't have an anchor to fix upon.
quote:In a small town on the outskirts of Oklahoma, a small town rests in between two large mountains. It looks like mixture of the modern era and the Dark Ages.
I'll just comment on these two lines. I guess my first question is why repeat 'small town' twice in the first sentence? Is there a small town *within* a small town in Oklahoma? I *think* what you're going for is that there's only one small town, and this town is in Oklahoma.
And secondly, I'm unsure what image I'm supposed to mentally create of the town when you write it "looks like mixture of the modern era and the Dark Ages". Modern era where, Oklahoma or New York or Atlanta? United States or Japan?
And, the Dark Ages lasted for several hundred years, depending on what timeline you're speaking of:
quote: Dark Ages (historiography), the concept of a period of intellectual darkness and economic regression that supposedly occurred in Europe following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire European Middle Ages (5th to 15th centuries AD), particularly: European Early Middle Ages Migration Period of c. 400 to 800 AD Saeculum obscurum or "dark age" in the history of the papacy, running from 904-964 Note: medieval historians today usually avoid the phrase "Dark Ages" for the above periods, see Dark Ages (historiography) for further discussion. This era is covered in the post-classical era article for areas outside of Europe. Bronze Age collapse (c. 1200 BC) Greek Dark Ages (c. 1100 BC–750 BC), a period in the history of Ancient Greece and Anatolia after the Bronze Age collapse. Dark ages of Cambodia (c. 1450-1863) Dark ages of Laos (c. 1707-1893)
Dark Ages, in Big Bang cosmology, the period between roughly 150 million and 800 million years after the Big Bang, about which we have little information because photons could not easily move through space at that time.
Now, I'm fairly sure you mean the Western, European dark ages, and I get a sense you probably mean what's commonly depicted as the Middle Ages, with knights and castles. I could be wrong.
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I see. I edited it a few times so a few words might have been left out or repeated. I have trouble with beginning a story or summarizing it. I was worried about being too descriptive so I wasn't descriptive enough. I will definitely rewrite it. Thanks for the commentary extrinsic and Denevius.
P.S. Yes, Denevius, the knights and castles depiction is what I was referring to.
Posts: 114 | Registered: Feb 2014
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Okay! I rewrote it! Hopefully, this clarifies and fixes it...somewhat. Bear with me! It's still a work in progress!
On the outskirts of Oklahoma, a small town is wedged in between two large mountains. The town itself looks like it was built in the Middle Ages, a time when knights and castles were common. Although, over time, most of the original houses and buildings were torn down because of instability or water damage, a few distinctive structures remain. One of these such structures is the old Parson house whose residents were murdered five years ago. Aside from this ominous reminder, Cretice doesn’t stand out. The landscape, however, is unique to the town’s appearance. Cretice is entirely secluded from the rest of the world. There is only one road to get to or from the town. The mountains surrounding the town loom over it from all directions, also giving it a more dreary appearance. Nonetheless, the citizens of Cretice are as
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You know, a writing exercise by one of my best, but quite un-nice, creative writing professors was one paged descriptive exercises. This comes to mind as I read these openings you've posted because I think you can do so much more with your words.
quote: The town itself looks like it was built in the Middle Ages, a time when knights and castles were common.
When you write a sentence like this, it's a bit problematic because I, as the reader, have never lived in the Middle Ages. I never studied the Middle Ages, but yeah, I've read books like "Game of Thrones", which had knights and castles. But for your opening, I have no idea what the town looks like from this description. Like, are there in castles in it, alongside Bank of America? Are there men in armor taking the local bus?
Your descriptions aren't doing their job because they don't really give your readers much to work with. And so this next sentence:
quote: Although, over time, most of the original houses and buildings were torn down because of instability or water damage, a few distinctive structures remain.
Doesn't explain much about the original or new houses and buildings, and it raises a question: what water damage, and why?
quote: The landscape, however, is unique to the town’s appearance. Cretice is entirely secluded from the rest of the world.
The second sentence about the town's seclusion deals more with location, but the sentence that proceeds it makes one think we're about to get a description about the unique landscape.
So anywho, if you're describing a place where you live, it might help if you go and sit down in the middle of town one day and write a one paged description, of the streets, the buildings, and the people.
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posted
Outskirts of a state? Maybe it could be the border of Oklahoma? something like, Nestled between mountains on the border of Oklahoma a small town... just my 1 c
Posts: 76 | Registered: Apr 2008
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I'm not from Oklahoma, but...does Oklahoma even have mountains?(Maybe that's my Pacific Northwest bias showing.When I hear "Oklahoma," I think, "where the wind comes sweeping down the plain.") And why would there be any Middle-Ages type buildings there if Europeans didn't come to the Americas until after the Middle Ages were over? I'm having a rough time suspending disbelief over the setting, and we haven't even met any characters yet.
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Well, Jesse D., you're partly right. I lived in Oklahoma for a spell and the highest mountain didn't come up to 5000 ft. There are 'mountain ranges' but nothing that matches the beauty of the Pacific Northwest. But, yes, there are mountains.
Posts: 195 | Registered: Jan 2011
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To Jesse - I lived in OK for a few years. The Arbuckle mountains, down close to TX, have a really gorgeous waterfall called Turner Falls. No, no one who has ever lived in the NW, or the NE, or the SE, or Colorado, or... well, pretty much anywhere but maybe SW TX or NM, which have mountains that reminded me of OK, would call them mountains, but they are definitely bigger than hills. :-)
To Brooke - I would specify that the town is in those mountains somewhere. If you aren't there (don't know where you are), look at Google with the satellite view. It may seem bad to put it in a specific area, but there is a lot of land for sale in the Arbuckles (or was a year or so ago) which you can't even get to without 4x4 - no roads, no utilities - I look at land a lot. So, for fiction's sake, there could be a town that time forgot out there somewhere. Using a specific location will get rid of half of the negative comments about location, and you can look at the pictures on google and use them to write your descriptions. I do image searches a lot. If you have an image in your head of a town that looks part dark ages and part modern, do image searches until you find photos or paintings that give you a lot of different images that at least come close to what you "see," and then either make a collage or fill a folder with them or something like that, and use them to write your descriptions. I do that. My rough drafts completely lack descriptions because I am writing so fast to just try and get it all out. It takes three or four edits to finally put descriptions in. :-)
And good job for writing so much! That's a lot of words you have written! I started writing again (after twenty years) in October. I have almost 70k written, but only 30k is on one novel. All of it is about one character, but I have about 15 different stories going...
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Huge trees aren't normally ominous, so I'm torn between wanting you to explain at the beginning why the oak is ominous or just add in something else hinting at an evil past for it which will be revealed later. I know I sent someone the first chapter of a suspense story once and her review was full of comments complaining that I didn't explain any of the things I introduced which were mysteries to be solved later in the book, so I don't know if that's the same thing with the oak.
The other thing is the old Parson house - and this isn't something that has to be explained in the first thirteen lines, I'm just curious. :-) Do you mean Parson house like as in Parsonage, near the church, or was it just the house of a family named Parson?
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quote:Originally posted by Brooke18: The landscape, however, is unique to the town’s appearance.
I'm having a hard time with this sentence. Is unique the word you're looking to use here, as in, unparalleled, having no equal? Or are you saying that the landscape gives the town a distinctive appearance, as in, having a special quality? I'm not sure where to go with this sentence. The whole thing is still intriguing, but I'm stumbling here.
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