-Is there a hook?
-If so, is it too obvious/obscure.
-Does the intro flow, stylistically and/or mechanically?
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Javir’s naked back hit the water harder than he had expected, driving the breath from his lungs and thrusting lances of white-hot agony into his body. The impact reminded him of falling on bedrock from ten feet, though the slight yield of the water had probably spared him a shattered spine.
The deep mere was quickly swallowing his body in its numbing embrace. It held his tense muscles in its frigid, unyielding grip like a child holds his mother’s hand while crossing treacherous ice. The burning lances were slowly overshadowed by a thousand frozen knives, all stabbing relentlessly into his flesh. Javir knew he was dying.
No air, no feeling, save the reaper's tightening grip. Even the light was failing him, falling away as he sank into the pool’s black depths.
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Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited September 09, 2005).]
The secondary problem with all the poetry is that I really don't know what is supposed to be real. For instance, is the mere actually alive in some sense, and really holding him with a childlike tenacity? I don't know. What about the frozen knives? The reaper? Is the substance of the pool actually black?
Since I don't know whether any of the fantastic imagery is real, I can't identify the hook, if there is one.
Perhaps I should push this forward and write the scene immediately before it as the intro...how/why he just fell into a pool of impossibly cold water (in that it's not completely frozen) with 'unusual' historical and mythological properties. Think of it as a rite of passage. I think I need to incorporate that particular 'feel' into the fabric of the exposition if I'm going to make this effective.
Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
I suppose my tendency of posting things late at night is not very smart (and obviously prone to error). Perhaps a change in lifestyle is in order.
*Goes in search of sleeping pills...*
Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
I highlight the text and copy it to my clipboard. Then I paste it into a manuscript template in MS Word, with Courier New font set at 12. Then I count the lines. If the sentence in the 13th line is only a little longer, I leave it.
Finally, I go back to the topic and delete all but the actual, MS-Word-manuscript-format-Courier-New-size-12-font 13 lines.
And I've stopped adding a note explaining why I've edited the post.
I plan to put a message area at the top of the forum that will explain this, so people will know what the 13-line standard is (among other things).
Inkwell
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"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous
In a fall against rock or even sand, on the other hand, clothing doesn't make much difference at all unless it incorperates quite a bit of rigid but form fitting armor. Where water tends to spread out the impact force very evenly across the entire surface of your body (as well as reducing the impact itself by only slowing rather than stopping you), a hard surface smacks the full impact into whatever happens to be in contact.
A fall into water that put you in danger of doing even slight injury to bone and cartilage would already be doing significant damage to your internal organs because of the hydraulic shock transmission. And, to me, the burn of a bad entry into water doesn't feel anything like a skeletal injury.
Which is part of why that passage struck me as simple hyperbole. The other part had to do with the fact that he already had felt "lances of white-hot agony" being thrust into his body. In any case, I didn't think that you really meant that his spine had nearly been broken.
Some thoughts:
-- If this is Javir's POV, I don't think he'd be reflecting on what the water reminded him of at the moment of impact.
-- Not everyone will know what a mere is, but the word tends to bring to my mind a small marshy pond -- not something you'd normally fall from a great height into.
-- I like the metaphor about the child, but I also tend to agree it's out of place here. And the lances and knifes are only helpful if the character turns out to be some sort of warrior type.
As to the effectiveness of it all: I think it works, if anything because I'm interested to see just how this person got in this situation in the first place; especially because it's cold and they have nothing on their back. It's kind of like watching a Houdini act. You don't know the magician personally, so you're morbidly curious if they'll die.
If you still want to kick it up a notch, however, give us a reason to care about this character -- or at least a way to experience his fear more directly.
Best,
Varishta