This is a first draft. I'm looking for readers for the whole thing, which is only about 800 words. Happy to swap for similar length!
Joey is my right hand man. Literally. My own right arm is buried somewhere in his back where the infant-sized bones have slowly been resorbing since the day we were born. I swear I would have been right handed if we hadn't been conjoined. It would explain my clumsiness in penmanship and pickpocketing.
We push open the heavy doors of the truckstop. I saunter and Joey lumbers in tandem, humming to himself and tapping his plump fingers against his shoulders. From behind the counter the clerk sizes us up. She has a black-market electronic eye and a semi-automatic in her belt that says "Ain't nobody gonna take it from me." People get out of our way fast as we make our way to the hotdog rotisserie beside the register. Joey licks his lips and his eyes dart this way and that over the quasi-meat, customers and expired potato chips.
***I hope I haven't gone over in length, Kathleen. The submission box doesn't appear to fit 13 lines anymore?***
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Yeah, I know. I've requested a change in the textarea box size. In the meantime, I'll copy and paste into a manuscript formatted document and count the lines that way.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Okay, I count 14, but that's within our "margin of error" because of browsers like Firefox, so you're good to go, Ethereon.
Posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (Member # 59) on :
Textarea boxes have now been resized.
Posted by OliverBuckram (Member # 9655) on :
I thought it was a pretty effective hook. Certainly got my attention.
Minor points:
My own right arm is buried somewhere in his back where the infant-sized bones have slowly been resorbing since the day we were born==this is a complicated detail that took me a while to process, i was thinking there was something magic/fantasy here. I would consider trimming or cutting this sentence.
I am not sure how many legs we are working with here, but is it possible for one brother to saunter while the other lumbers?
Joey licks his lips and his eyes dart this way and that over the quasi-meat, customers and expired potato chips==took me a while to realize the quasi-meat was hot dogs and not customers. a comma after customers would help
Posted by EVOC (Member # 9381) on :
Its a good hook, but I see a few things that throw me off.
"From behind the counter the clerk sizes us up. She has a black-market electronic eye and a semi-automatic in her belt that says "Ain't nobody gonna take it from me.""
These lines confuse me. Does the clerk have the eye and gun or does Joey? I know it says she and I assume Joey and your MC are male, but it just read awkward to me.
I think it is because it is followed by "People got out of our way." So I think its because you describe this intimidating character with a fake eye and a gun, but then go back to people getting out of your MC's way.
I just completed a Flash Piece. I'd be happy to swap stories with you.
Posted by Dame (Member # 8513) on :
Hi - I thought this a catchy start.
For smoothness, I might say instead of, "and a semi-automatic in her belt that says "Ain't nobody gonna take it from me," "and a semi-automatic in her belt that says ain't nobody gonna take it from her." This presumes that you are talking about the black market electronic eye. (Which I have no idea what it is.) If you are not talking about the eye, then you need to tweak the sentence.
The word resorbing threw me. Does it exist? It isn't the kind of thing I would want to look up at the start of a new story.
"Quasi meat," - how important is this? Unless quasi meat is essential to the plot, I might cut the quasi. It is hard enough to hook the reader into the mind of a conjoined siamese twin who seems to be up to no good in a truck-stop, without simultaneously layering on the sci-fi worldbuilding.
I think I am unclear if people get out of their way fast because of the twins' intent, because they are freaky, because they obviously want to hold up the store (how do they know?) or if it is something to do with the world.
I don't know what an expired potato chip is, and in the list of customers and quasi meat, it makes the sentence hard to be easy with.
I like the idea of conjoined twins. I like the sci-fi world. I think you could perhaps trust these more and work on getting the reality as seen by the MC into our heads. I love the opening para. The second one seems to try too hard. How does the MC feel about entering the truck-stop? Is there any way you can let us know ASAP what he wants to do, so we can follow along and enjoy the world you have created?
Hope some of this helps. Ignore the rubbish.
Damon
Posted by Ethereon (Member # 9133) on :
Thanks for the helpful comments, folks.
EVOC, I'll send it over to you as soon as I'm on my own computer.
Good point about resorb, Damon. For interests sake it is a real medical term(to break down and assimilate something previously differentiated)... not a first paragraph type word though.
[ November 07, 2011, 10:34 PM: Message edited by: Ethereon ]
Posted by EVOC (Member # 9381) on :
I sent my thoughts to you. Hopefully they help.
Posted by Ethereon (Member # 9133) on :
Got it EVOC, thanks!
Posted by C@R3Y (Member # 9669) on :
I will give it a look for you. I just finished a small piece about 1000 words. We could swap stories if you'd like. Just let me know if you're up for it.
Posted by Ethereon (Member # 9133) on :
Thanks for the offer C@R3Y, but I've already polished it up and sent it off.
Posted by C@R3Y (Member # 9669) on :
Good deal. Well, if anything else comes up that you post up here, I'll hit you up. x] Just trying to be more involved in Hatrack since I've been gone for awhile.
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