The title is a just a working title. I have about 13000 words so far and I'm still not anywhere with the story. The plot is
still vague and open, but I'm just trying to get down bits and pieces here and there when they come into my head. I need to
do some serious decision making and brainstorming to come up with a good plot skeleton, so far its only an idea. Here are the first thirteen lines.

________________________________________________________________
The moon hid behind the jagged peaks of the Aros mountains,
casting monolithic shadows across the plain. Beneath the these
shadows, three men entered the dark stone walls of Gasa
Vitoli.
They had been traveling for days, making just enough of a scene
so as to not seem conspicuous, but keeping quiet enough to go
unnoticed. They had traveled lightly and moved quickly,
stopping only to rest and have a small meal each night. Time
was critical and they could not afford to waste it on pleasantries.
"Buck up yer step Nelson! We've got to get this done, you know
what the deadline is!"
"Sod off Althus, we'll get the job done." snapped Nelson.
________________________________________________________________

[This message has been edited by KoDe Nichols (edited March 31, 2008).]
 

Glad you worked up the courage to jump right in.

My take:

quote:

---

The moon hid behind the jagged peaks of the Aros mountains,
casting monolithic shadows across the plain. Beneath the these
shadows, three men entered the dark stone walls of Gasa
Vitoli. [PoV? Is the moon afraid?]
They had been traveling for days, [making just enough of a scene so as to not seem conspicuous<--Eh? What does this mean? I can't picture this.], but keeping quiet enough to go unnoticed<--[I'm not sure, but I think this cancels out the other, so why mention it? In fact, what relevance does this have?]. They had traveled lightly and moved quickly[<--Not only is this "telling", but there are stronger verbs that can replace the adverbs.], stopping only to rest and have a small meal each night. Time was critical and they could not afford to waste it on pleasantries.<--[Distant and withholding something the characters all know (cheating).]
"Buck up yer step Nelson! We've got to get this[What?] done, you know what the deadline is!"[Then why don't we?]
"Sod off Althus, we'll get the job done." snapped Nelson.

---

This attempt at the cinematic omniscient (I assume) was too distant and withholding to draw me in. Since Nelson is the only one who is tagged, I feel [s]he is the protagonist. If so, why not tell it from his PoV? It would develop a clearer path for the story, too.

Any time a PoV character knows something, the reader should. Not only should we read his/her thoughts, we should know what [s]he's doing. Withholding does not create mystery, it tells the reader that to be interesting, your story must cheat.

What time (or planet/realm) is set in? I have no clue.

Also, what Genre?

The hook should be (from what's here) in the fear of them getting caught/injured completing their mission. Without knowing what that is, there's no expectation or tension.

130000 words is a lot! (Congratulations on that achievement!) Most publishers are looking for 80,000 to 100,000 words (some go as high as 120,000), so you may be asked to break it down. Even the established, bestselling authors--such as David Farland--have been told to keep their "Doorstoppers" down that low. These are established authors.

I hope this helps.

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited March 30, 2008).]
 

quote:

---

They had been traveling for days, making just enough of a scene so as to not seem conspicuous, but keeping quiet enough to go unnoticed. They had traveled lightly and moved quickly, stopping only to rest and have a small meal each night. Time was critical and they could not afford to waste it on pleasantries.

---

could be condensed to

quote:

---

They had been traveling for days, keeping quiet enough to go unnoticed. They stopped only to rest and have a small meal each night.

---

without losing any information. You don't have to tell us that they couldn't afford to waste time when you show it to us through their actions and subsequent dialogue.

Hope this helped.
 

Well, I'll give you my standard approach:

The moon hid behind the jagged peaks of the Aros mountains,
casting monolithic shadows across the plain. Beneath the these
shadows, three men entered the dark stone walls of Gasa
Vitoli.Nice imagery. I also like the names.
They had been traveling for days, making just enough of a scene
so as to not seem conspicuous, but keeping quiet enough to go
unnoticed. They had traveled lightly and moved quickly,
stopping only to rest and have a small meal each night. Time
was critical and they could not afford to waste it on pleasantries.You've spent a lot of time telling us the how of their traveling, but nothing of the why. Of the two, the why is much more important to me. Knowing why they are traveling might be enough to keep me reading. Being told the details of their method isn't.
"Buck up yer step Nelson! We've got to get this done, you know
what the deadline is!" Jarring--we're in cinematic. We don't even know who the people are, and suddenly we're given a line of dialogue with no attribution. I think the transition from cinematic might work better if you focus in on a character first, before you give us dialogue.
"Sod off comma Althus, we'll get the job done.comma" snapped Nelson. What job? You've given us no mission yet, but that they don't have a lot of time to waste. So far, I don't have a lot of info to hook me.

My main issue is that we're given a decent description of what's going on, but no sense of motive. This does not create suspense for me. What would create suspense for me is knowing what the characters are anticipating, what their mission is, how they are afraid they might fail. There's allusion to a job in the dialogue, but we're given no knowledge of what it is, or why its important. The cinematic opening worked decently for me (I think its tricky to pull off, and if you intend to settle into Nelson's POV why not just start there and ground us right away, and let us in on Nelson's thoughts?). Nevertheless, I feel like you're withholding information. But suspense isn't created in trying to figure out what the characters are up to; rather, it's in worrying about their wellbeing and whether they will succeed in their mission, or wondering what will happen to them.

[This message has been edited by annepin (edited March 30, 2008).]
 

I hope that taking the dialogue out hasn't removed any hook, but by doing so I think I managed to eliminate some of the questions about deadlines and what they are doing and a bunch of other explainations that I didnt have room for.

It was hard to punctuate though. I probably messed it up, heheh.

________________________________________________________________
The full moon cowered behind the jagged peaks of the Aros mountains. It watched as three men entered the dark stone walls of Gasa Vitoli. It hid its face from them and hoped that the monolithic shadows it cast across the plain might cause them to stumble and turn back, to abandon their mission and restore hope, but the three men continued onwards.
Three men brought together to pull off one heist, but each driven by a different motive.
Althus, the grizzled veteran, was driven by duty,
Nelson, the scabrous ruffian, was driven by greed,
but Ian, the unassuming mage, was driven by a loftier desire; The desire to save the world.
________________________________________________________________