-jon-

[1] "agony" is kind of an unavoidable mood-setting word, especially when it's used in your first sentence. Some readers, probably just a very, very small minority, may latch on to that as as foreshadowing, but the rest of us thinks it probably fits the scene of a ship coming into the atmosphere. Still, it may be worth thinking about. If agony and hard tension or conflict is the mood you're shooting for - excellent job. Otherwise, you could be poetic without the agony and get the job done just as nicely.

[2] It may make more sense to start the new paragraph one sentence later than you did, although you didn't really need to break the paragraph at all.

[3] "as it skipped into being outside" is just a convoluted bit of wording. "into being" can go.

[4] Don't you like how a person can nit-pick ANYthing?

[5] This is much, much better than the dialogue version. But if your dialogue version was unsuccessful it's because it was just the wrong conversation for a reader to encounter right out of the gate. It was like, "Wait a minute! There's too much stuff I obviously don't know!" This version gets rid of that problem.

Cameron

"XXXXX flipped A/THE switch, releasING a wide cylinder from the hull before the engines flared to life and dropped the small craft into the atmosphere."

That way, we get your protagonist's name (if it is your P) and it becomes a little more active.

Alternatively, you could put the name in the previous sentence: "...XXXXX's gilded eyes read..." then start the next sentence "S/he flipped..."

If you were to have used the one with dialogue, I would have wanted the names of the speakers (or titles or whatever) and maybe some descriptions of them doing stuff.

Lee

[This message has been edited by punahougirl84 (edited March 06, 2004).]

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[3] "as it skipped into being outside" is just a convoluted bit of wording. "into being" can go.

[4] Don't you like how a person can nit-pick ANYthing?

[5] ... But if your dialogue version was unsuccessful it's because it was just the wrong conversation ... There's too much stuff I obviously don't know!" This version gets rid of that problem.

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3: This is me trying to give an image of a ship coming out of my version of hyperspace, I was attempting to give an impression of it 'appearing' from nowhere, now given this thought, is 'into being' still as convoluted? or should I turn to something more generally associated with something appearing from nowehere

4: absolutely, its the best way to spot flaws

5: my only thought reagrding this is that you are getting lots of extraneous information here without anything concrete related to the story other than the fact that he's arriving on this planet where the first few chapters take place.

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... I'd like the name of the person flipping the switch to start the sentence ...

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I purposefully left out his name at this point. One of the threads in the beginning of the story is that when he actually tells his name to a government official, it ends up causing all sorts of problems for everyone involved. Dooes the lack of a name cause serious issues here, or is it meerely a 'it would be nice to know' king of thing? I felt leaving a name out would add a little flavor to it, but it could easily be added.

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... so you're at a POV crossroad here....

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My impression here was to simply go into decribing of the scene. I used the wording and POV as it is because I wanted it to be outside everything (there are others similar scenes planned for later in the story). This scene is intended to set up the opening act, as just after this open the scene switches to another character on the planet, I guess offhand I would compare it to OSC's conversations between adults in Ender's Game, where it was in different font and above the text. The idea at this point is the same, just incorporating it into the story.

ok, end incoherent rambling,, further thoughts?

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I purposefully left out his name at this point. One of the threads in the beginning of the story is that when he actually tells his name to a government official, it ends up causing all sorts of problems for everyone involved. Dooes the lack of a name cause serious issues here, or is it meerely a 'it would be nice to know' king of thing? I felt leaving a name out would add a little flavor to it, but it could easily be added.

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I do think that you need to name your protagonist for the reader. I know I read about this somewhere, and you don't really gain much (as you said, flavor) by keeping it a secret from the READER. However, this doesn't mean XXXXX tells his name to anyone else in the story until he provides it to that government official. And I am assuming (!) that he doesn't know giving his name will cause problems because maybe he would not want to give it in that instance. Plus, you don't have to play wordgames like "a flipped switch" to try to avoid naming the person - that can bother the reader.

I do think it works better to name him/her (and there is another word game, avoiding the gender) in the "flipped" sentence. If you really want to avoid it, you could use a nickname, or shortened version of the name. Let's say the sentence is that "Gus flipped..." Then the official can clue us in:

"Gus Borgshiremeister? As in Augustus Borgshiremeister? The same one that ran off with the head councilman's daughter? Guards!"

Of course, you can do whatever you like! But I think it would be more than "just nice to know" the protagonist's name.

Here is a quote from OSC, not exactly the info I was looking for, but all the same it bears on this. "Most novice writers imagine that this is how suspense is created - by holding back key information from the reader. But that is not so. Suspense comes from having almost ALL the information - enough information that the audience is emotionally involved and cares very much about that tiny bit of information left unrevealed. Usually the only information that you withhold is this: what is going to happen next." (pg 85, How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy)

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...The responses I had to the first 13 lines I submitted were invauable.

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Inside the tinted canopy, a pair of gilded eyes read information scrolling across a pair of dimmed consoles. A flipped switch released a wide cylinder from the hull before the engines flared to life and dropped the small craft into the atmosphere.

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Granted you get some free paragraphs at the beginning of a story, but these sentences effectively begin POV here. If you want to give simply a paragraph or two of description, you might get rid of the 'Inside the canopy' sentence entirely, and remove the entity from the next one, describing the departure of the craft only from the outside of the ship. If this is going to be omniscient POV or if each chapter begins with an omniscient POV vignette, leave it as is.

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I do like the 'gilded eyes,' though.

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If the gilded eyes are important because of what they can see, then now is a good time to establish that point by describing what the guy with the eyes is seeing. If they're important because of how others react, then wait till someone is around to react to them.

Extract that principle, generalize it, then write what the guy in the cockpit is exeriencing here. We don't care what birds see, what a bird sees or doesn't see almost never has an impact on the story (unless you have talking birds or something like that).

I liked the POV for a beginning. If the whole story were going to be told this way, I wouldn't like it, but it works as an introduction to the setting.

"A flipped switch" was jarring. I agree with the other commenters that you could give the name, but that's not necessary quite yet, because you are still maintaining a distant POV, and the pilot's name might personalize it too soon. Try "The pilot flipped a switch to release...."

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This is me trying to give an image of a ship coming out of my version of hyperspace, I was attempting to give an impression of it 'appearing' from nowhere, now given this thought, is 'into being' still as convoluted? or should I turn to something more generally associated with something appearing from nowehere

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I didn't get that meaning at all; I assumed that it started "being outside" in the sense that it had previously been inside. I would stick to the more familiar language for this kind of event, which can be confusing at the best of times

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I purposefully left out his name at this point. One of the threads in the beginning of the story is that when he actually tells his name to a government official, it ends up causing all sorts of problems for everyone involved. Dooes the lack of a name cause serious issues here, or is it meerely a 'it would be nice to know' king of thing? I felt leaving a name out would add a little flavor to it, but it could easily be added.

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I purposefully left out his name at this point. One of the threads in the beginning of the story is that when he actually tells his name to a government official, it ends up causing all sorts of problems for everyone involved. Dooes the lack of a name cause serious issues here, or is it meerely a 'it would be nice to know' king of thing? I felt leaving a name out would add a little flavor to it, but it could easily be added.

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First of all, POV is slung around on this site like cannon fodder. It seems as if people are looking for POV issues! Sometimes I agree with their analysis, but not this time. There is no reason that you cannot have an opening paragraph or section that is told in an omniscient POV and then switch to 3rd limited. This is what OSC called a "free paragraph" and boot camp and it is intended to set the scene even before POV is clearly established. It works particularly well if that pilot is going to be your POV character, and you just sort of slide inside his/her head....but it even works if you want to show that a ship is approaching the planet and you are about to switch to the surface of the planet to get inside someone else's head. In fact, with the dialogue opening, the second scenario is where I imagined it was going.

I looked at JB's comments on the other thread, and I think part of the problem with the dialogue might be that toward the end the dialogue became a little unrealistic. JB's suggestion was good for hwo to change that, and there are a few military people on this site you might be able to wave any revisions by.

My suggestion...marry the two. The last sentence I would actualy reword and switch with the second to last sentence. You have an exterior view of the ship, and I'm flying with you toward that ship....then show me the craft shooting out of it....then go insite to the cockpit. (The way it is you take me into the cockpit then spit me out again.) Then you could say something like about a radio crackling to life or the like and go into the dialogue....then a scene transition and where you were going before.