posted
Was wondering if anyone had any thoughts on this opening. It was 13 lines in word, but not here... (and why 13? is that a magic number to avoid legal trouble about something being "published" online?)
All Markus wanted was to escape. He wanted his family to escape. He was a successful trader, but he knew he could never be successful enough to buy his freedom; the price was too high - impossibly high.
His car was on autopilot and drove him to work while he remained lost in thought. The sun was out, but it provided no warmth. The world was white, the sea, the land, the buildings, and the air, all completely white. There were hints of blue, true, but those wisps of color were only teases, nothing more. Color deprivation the psychologists had called it. Markus had known it would be a risk, but still he chose to bring his family to Antarctica. There had been no choice really - the mainland was in chaos.
[This message has been edited by Random (edited March 20, 2004).]
posted
The first 13 lines are the most that should be on the first page of a properly formatted manuscript.
Limiting your post to 13 lines helps to protect your electronic rights to the work, it saves space for us on the website (we're not here to publish people's stories), and for many editors, the first page is all they "have to" read of a manuscript.
If you can get people to want to keep reading beyond that first page, then your first 13 lines have succeeded as a hook.
Damon Knight used to give people feedback on the first 13 lines of their stories when he was alive (this was on GEnie, a bulletin board system that was killed by Y2K), and I thought it was such a great help then that it was worth trying here at Hatrack.
posted
The first paragraph happens without a physical setting, which you could fix easily enough by putting the second paragraph first. Then we would have some idea what Markus wanted to escape from.
This sounds like an interesting beginning, though. How long is this piece?
posted
Its a little over 3,000 words. I didn't realize that I could switch the paragraphs and still have it make sense, I may do that, thanks. Posts: 10 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Oh yes, switch the paragraphs. The first paragraph will make a lot more sense if we read the second one first. With that in mind, very interesting. Living on antarctica, huh? I would personally love to visit but have no interest in setting up a permanent residence. How do people survive there? What is so bad on the mainland that forced people to move there, of all places? I take it humans have not manged to get permanent colonies into space (ie the moon or mars)?
These questions are good things, BTW, it means I want to keep reading. I would volunteer to read the whole thing if I hadn't just made 3 promises to give feedback this week already. I tell you what, though. If a week goes by and you haven't managed to get anyone to volunteer to look at the whole thing, send it to me anyway and I'll try to find some time.
posted
I usually have room for a sufficiently interesting short story ("sufficiently interesting" here meaning "interesting enough for me to make time to read a short story", hence my statement is not only tautological but a hedged tautology at that ).
I'll give it a read, unless a bunch of people I've offered to read stories for suddenly send them just before I get yours, and then it gets both lost in cyberspace and forgotten.
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