posted
The room was black, an inky, fetid darkness that had slithered over everything in its path. The smell was nauseating; the metallic, sticky smell of blood, feces and a left over residue of disinfectant. The doctor pushed a hand up toward his face, shoving the respirator higher. He tried to slow his breathing, to lessen the shaking of his trembling fingers. He moved further into the room, into a blackness that was stealing his breath. A figure lay on the bed before him in a puddle of dull yellow light. A thin sheet covered half of the body, but an arm and leg protruded from it, trying desperately to find a bit of relief from the stuffy oven-like temperatures.
*Would you keep reading? Any suggestions/comments? Thanks.
quote:The room was black, an inky, fetid darkness that had slithered over everything in its path. The smell was nauseating; the metallic, sticky smell of blood, feces and a left over residue of disinfectant.
I like the setup. I would check the second sentence for better parallelism, but that's about it. Maybe add another sense to the scene (sound, touch, etc) but that's optional.
quote: The doctor pushed a hand up toward his face, shoving the respirator higher. He tried to slow his breathing, to lessen the shaking of his trembling fingers. He moved further into the room, into a blackness that was stealing his breath.
I like this as well. I probably wouldn't use blackness again because it's too close to darkness, but I'm nitpicking.
quote: A figure lay on the bed before him in a puddle of dull yellow light. A thin sheet covered half of the body, but an arm and leg protruded from it, trying desperately to find a bit of relief from the stuffy oven-like temperatures.
Nice. You've used my favorite innocent vulgar word: 'protruded'. My only problem would be the part about the 'oven-like' temperatures. This is the first time the readers know that the room is hot. I would include this detail with the first paragraph since that is where you are describing the scene.
Overall, I like the flow of the story. Good tension. I would read on.
quote: The room was black[.] [A]n inky, fetid darkness [Delete: that had] slithered over everything in its path. [Move to the end,-->The smell was nauseating;] [T]he metallic, sticky smell of blood, feces and a left over residue of disinfectant [was nauseating]. The doctor[What doctor? Name? Is this his PoV? If not, who is the smell nauseating to?] pushed a hand up toward his face, shoving the respirator[What respirator?] higher. He tried to slow his breathing, to lessen the shaking of his trembling fingers. He moved further into the [Delete:room, into a] blackness that was stealing his breath. A figure lay[What figure? Is it human? Squid?] on the bed before him in a puddle of dull yellow light. A thin sheet covered half of the body, but an arm and leg protruded from it, trying desperately to find a bit of relief from the stuffy oven-like temperatures.[Eh? Is it moving? ]
I have no names or characters to follow into this. Were it cleaned up a little, I might venture on a couple of pages. This prose sounds dangerously close to cliche to The Blob-type of black-and-white horror movies.
It definately has a hook. That's sometimes hard to accomplish in such a short span. And it's got good imagery. I hope this is helpful.
[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited October 13, 2007).]
quote:The room was black, an inky, fetid darkness that had slithered over everything in its path.
This sounds like a very passive opening. I could go with that, but it is also vague and, well, not very interesting to me. To me, inky darkness that slithers feels rather trite. I'm looking for what sets this description apart from most other descriptions of blackness I've seen.
quote:The smell was nauseating; the metallic, sticky smell of blood, feces and a left over residue of disinfectant.
This gives me something more. I don't know who it is nauseating to, though. I'd rather just know the smell is metallic, blood, feces and disinfectant, etc. If I don't know the character its affecting, I'd rather just assume it must be nauseating.
"Was" appears in both of the first two sentences, which makes me see this as very passive so far.
quote:The doctor pushed a hand up toward his face, shoving the respirator higher. He tried to slow his breathing, to lessen the shaking of his trembling fingers. He moved further into the room, into a blackness that was stealing his breath.
This is the first action in the story.
Is there a reason to not name the doctor? If he's a lead character, or a PoV character, I would want a name as soon as possible unless the author has a good reason for withholding it from me.
quote:A figure lay on the bed before him in a puddle of dull yellow light.
This feel contradictory to me. The room was described as absolute black, giving the impression nothing else. It's a blank room. Just black. No furniture or color or anything. Now, we're seeing both a body and a puddle of light.
I don't mind if description is added to itself, but the blackness gave the impression that nothing else could be seen, which makes this rather jarring.
quote: A thin sheet covered half of the body, but an arm and leg protruded from it, trying desperately to find a bit of relief from the stuffy oven-like temperatures.
The oven-like temperatures (plural? Isn't there only one temperature in here?) might have worked better early on in the description.
I don't feel hooked so far. I might read a little more, but I'm looking for a strong or interesting character to sympathize with, an interesting setting, conflict, or a pressing question. Something to make me want to know what happens next.
I do enjoy stories that go in this direction, though. I would be going into it with a desire to be hooked, but its the characters in such stories that interest me, so that's where my attention is. It's not hard to imagine a dark, filthy room with a body in it and a doctor imagining it.
posted
Thank you for your review and comments. You each pointed out something that I hadn't thought of addressing yet, and I appreciate the time you took to look this over.
This is the prologue for a Chrisitian thriller, and the prologue is intentionally set in a very different setting/voice as the novel itself. The figure on the bed is a woman, and the doctor is someone who's identity I want to keep hidden.
I like the idea of adding in the temperature in the beginning, and cleaning up the vocabulary a bit to make it flow better. Also, I am going to work on the "inky darkness" vs. "puddle of light". It's true, in my mind I could see the darkness pressing against the sides of the room, but I can see where not adding something about their being some light early on might mislead the reader.
I will post a re-write later, or maybe the first 13 of the 1st chapter for feedback on that.
posted
Nice ... I can visualise the scene. I've only an aversion to "sticky smell", simply because for me a smell isn't 'sticky'. (Suskind's 'Perfume' works wonders with the sense of smell).
I've been reading a lot of first paragraphs. And, a name is not necessarily important in the first paragraph, let alone first 13. But, identification had better be in the second paragraph (in most cases). But, then this is the first 13 ...
posted
I'm pretty sure it's "farther into the room" and not further, I could be mistaken, but I've always associated "farther" with physical distance, and "further" with something more figurative.
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posted
I like your style of writing and it has a good hook, but you definitely need to find a better way of introducing characters into the story (Not that I'm very good at that myself). Perhaps if you want to keep the doctors identity a secret you should introduce him as “A Doctor” instead of “The Doctor,” at least at first anyway, but that’s just an opinion.
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But I don't think changing the article to "A" instead of "The" will solve anything.
I think the problem is that we seem to be in the doctor's POV, but he seems to refer-to/think-of himself as "The doctor," as if that was his deepest, truest identity. And unless he has no name, it isn't likely to work very well.
posted
Not bad - would be made even better by cutting every word not needed.
"...to lessen the shaking of his trembling fingers." This seems redundant. "...to still his trembling fingers." or something like that.
"A thin sheet covered half the body, but an arm and leg protruded from it, trying desperately to find a bit of relief from the stuffy oven-like temperatures." I'm confused by this. Is this body dead or alive? If it is dead how can it find relief from anything?
This is really good for me because I SEE my story happening in my head and I forget that others aren't seeing the same thing.
Sorry zotius but I like sticky smell! To me, a smell that is sticky is one you can smell long after you've left whatever caused the odor. Plus, it sounds gross-which I like in this instance!
I do agree though about a name, that is something a lot of you pointed out. What to do, what to do...What about if I gave more of a description of the doctor? For instance, he's working in a missionary position in __________ (not sure if this will be Africa or the Asia)? Or maybe as Helvorix mentioned, using "A" instead of "The"? Not sure, but will play with this. Or I could try to write it from the woman's PoV, have her conscious instead unconscious (she is alive by the way)...hmmmmm....
If anyone is interested in reading the rest of just the prologue please email me.
Thanks again for all the feedback, I will re-post it when I've re-worked it a little.
posted
I found it difficult to read through, The prose was all too flowery. I wasn't drawn into a character or action. If it continued to be so sticky I would put it down.
I like that it's raw enough to delve into offensive imagery.
What's most obviously missing to me is emotion. Why did the person in the scene act the way they did? What is the feeling behind the action, What is driving the scene?
It is intelligently written, and obvious prose, but it's a bit thick, And doesn't appear to have much narrative drive.
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To me, a smell that is sticky is one you can smell long after you've left whatever caused the odor. Plus, it sounds gross-which I like in this instance! 
