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Edited Snippet:

Magic coursed through Jol's fingers, warm, sweet, and vibrant, and he thought, this is life. He closed his eyes, swaying, while his catch rustled by his feet.

When the trap squeezed, it felt as if he touched the feathered-fox and not just its magic. The net burned, the feathers tickled, and the oak's leaves pulped beneath the creature's struggles. With each heartbeat, magic throbbed out of the creature, through the trap, and into him; pleasure and fire that flashed beneath his eyelids.

This is death.
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[This message has been edited by cicerocat (edited August 24, 2004).]

Thus, "Magic coursed through Jol's fingers," to avoid the deadly unreferenced pronoun.

I'll say it took a couple of readings to get a clear sense of what was going on here, so you should probably expand the POV to include a bit more explanation. Still, the basic idea was very interesting, and the prose is generally appropriate to the tone of this scene. I'll mark this text for points that cry for attention.

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Magic coursed through his fingers, warm, sweet, vibrant; and he thought, this was[is] what life feels like. The trap at his feet squeezed [what, exactly?] like a constrictor strangling its prey. Jol could feel [clarify the mode in which he "feels"] the burning bands of the net and the pulping of leaves beneath the creature's struggles. Feel the flattened feathers tickling his palm [same mode, or different?]. The blood and gushing magic, the warmth of [adjective, perhaps?] flesh. Its [what's, exactly?] magic [redundant term] throbbing through the trap, and into him. Its [unreferenced pronoun] heart strained; a quiver, a flash of fire beneath his eyelids.

This is what death feels like.

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There are a couple of places where your terms feel a bit off target. Mostly the issue is clarity. You've only got about half of thirteen lines here, so don't be afraid that you'll be too verbose. Put those missing words back

Italics are available in the UBB codes, you can access a page explaining them all by clicking the *UBB Code is ON link right next to your reply box.

And to answer your question unequivocally, yes, this already works as a "hook", though it could stand for a bit of improvement.

Darn bold codes.

And thanks for the info on the italics. I saw the note that html was off, and I thought for some reason I had turned off my ability to do italics.

It's when people use a lot of "like" or "seem" or "felt" or "could've been," instead of being definite. I don't like it in what I read or write, so it "cries out" to be changed. It WAS this, it WAS that, it DID this or that. Things happen. Things don't SEEM or FEEL in a vacuum.

The only time this is OK to me is when you're wrtiting first-person and the CHARACTER is timid.

I see what you mean. I've changed the first and last lines.

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So let's see 'em!

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Those two lines? Well, for an example, the last line I rewrote as: This is death. You and Survivor were both suggesting that, I think.

I also rewrote some of the passage after Suvivor's crit, but I think it's more than 13 lines.

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Magic coursed through his fingers, warm, sweet, vibrant; and he thought, this was what life feels like. [This sentence comes off a little awkward.] The trap at his feet squeezed like a constrictor strangling its prey. [A little overboard, I think. No need to use a metaphor/simile every sentence.]Jol could feel the burning bands of the net and the pulping of leaves beneath the creature's struggles. Feel the flattened feathers tickling his palm. [This fragment doesn't flow naturally from the previous sentence.]The blood and gushing magic, the warmth of flesh. [Perhaps you should simply slide this fragment into the previous one?] Its magic throbbing through the trap, and into him. Its heart strained; a quiver, a flash of fire beneath his eyelids.

This is what death feels like.

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Initial thoughts:

a) Too bad. I like this kind of idea, but I can't stand so much poetry compression into a paragraph.

Suggestions to improve:

a) Cut back on some imagery
b) Keep the sentences flowing together

Good luck!

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but I can't stand so much poetry compression into a paragraph

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Thanks for the comments. I don't want to sound defensive, but I'm afraid that my writing style and Jol's voice runs toward "poetry". I can't make it plain if I tried. Thanks for reading through it despite that fact. As for the flow, I'll take a closer look at that.

The power coursed through his body; warm, sweet, vibrant magic.

This is life, he thought, even as the burning bands of the net-trap twisted and coiled around the hapless animal he had caught.

He could feel it all in that struggle, so exquisite: the pulping of leaves beneath the creature's struggles, the flattened feathers tickling his palm, the warmth of flesh, the sight of blood and gushing magic.

Magic throbbing through the trap, the animal's magic, his victim's magic, thick bands of energy erupting from the writhing creature toward Jol's own body, giving him strength.

The creature's heart strained, trembled; there was a flash of fire beneath Jol's eyelids. He relished this feeling, too, the feeling of death.

(not what I'd write, but that's a "fix" of a lot of the problems I had with your work. Maybe it'll give you ideas).

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To be honest, the difference between the two pieces is increadable. One version is a heavy drag to understand and read; the other, a nice description of a necromantic wizard

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But there's a major difference too--they tell different stories. Mine starts the setup for a conflict between killing a creature to be something he can't be and letting it live and being himself, a microcosm event of the novel's major conflict.

The other tells about, like you said, a necromantic wizard.

I couldn't care less about the thematic structure and detailed, beautiful ideas being presented. My only point is that your writing is good, but that as is, it is a drag to read and that if you spaced it out a little more and cut back on some of the poetry, it would be better.

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I couldn't care less about the thematic structure and detailed, beautiful ideas being presented.

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Not thematic structure or "beautiful" ideas. It's a story, the plot. Like a character-driven plot.

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)(snip) cut back on some of the poetry, it would be better.

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What do you consider as poetic in it? Seriously, I don't consider my writing poetic--what about it makes it seem poetic? Something to do with the rhythm? Word choice? Mood? Use of metaphors/similies?

There were clarity snafus, but I don't think those should be mixed in with the reason it's called poetic.

Thanks,
Cya,
CC

As for clarity... well, I must confess that my "rewrite" interpretd the story as I understood it. What's more, and this is NOT meant to be rude, I didn't understand at all your description of what it WAS instead of what it wasn't. You said it wasn't a story about a necromantic wizard, which is what I thought the story was about in the first place.

Your statement that it was about killing an animal it can't possibly be (?) didn't make sense to me. That's not an insult. Clarify?

[Adjectives + fragments + similes in bold]

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Magic coursed through his fingers, warm, sweet[/b, [b]vibrant; and he thought, this was what life feels like. The trap at his feet squeezed like a constrictor strangling its prey. Jol could feel the burning bands of the net and the pulping of leaves beneath the creature's struggles. [b]Feel the flattened feathers tickling his palm. The blood and gushing magic, the warmth of flesh.[b] [b]Its magic throbbing through the trap, and into him. Its heart strained; a quiver, a flash of fire beneath his eyelids.

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As illustrated by the fact that WP's rewrite misses the target without directly contradicting a single word of your original, what you had was simply too ambiguous in form.

TruHero, thanks for the input. As for as starting it sooner and the creature, I'll see what I can do about that. Especially as my mc should well know by now the general description, even if he doesn't remember its name. Basically it's a feathered-fox.

Survivor, yup, I'm still working on clarifying it up :-) But your advice was great, it pointed out the clarity issues.

Again, thanks all for your help on this.

After that you lose me. I'm actually more inclined to want to clean up the original version than change it this much. And I'm not all that bothered by the poetic style. This is fantasy, after all. In many ways fantasy writers are in a whole different ballpark than the SF writers around here. Their writing styles cannot, as much as Phanto wants it to be so, be judged in the same way.

So Maybe:

[First line the same as your edited version above.] At his feet a trap squeezed a feathered fox, strangling it like a constrictor to its prey.

I'm going to stop here, because I am getting the image of Jol standing over the trapped animal, yet his hands are touching the trap? Should we really understand that he's hunched over it, or kneeling over it? Let's say he's hunched over it. So, rewriting:

{First line the same} On the ground before him a trap squeezed a feathered fox, strangling it like a constrictor to its prey. He grasped the bands of the net, felt them burning, felt the flattened feathers [??What do feathers have to do with this? The fox is a fantastical creature covered with feathers? That's not overly clear.] tickling his palms. The cushion of leaves pulped beneath the creature's struggles and its magic throbbed through the trap--the blood, the warm flesh, the life--into him.

The fox's heart strained, quivered, fire flashed beneath its eyelids [now make it clear that the animal has died or is soon to die. Maybe say that the flashbeneath the animal's eyelids went out?]

Jol [Use this opportunity to develop Jol's character by adding a physical reaction of some sort. Make him a sympathetic protag by having him show some sort of revernce for the death, or show him as an asympathetic antag by having him leer or coldly rejoice in the power he has gained from the death of another.]

This is death.

I REALLY don't often rewrite for someone like this--and very rarely this much. But I've gotten the impression that much of what has been said by others has gotten you a bit muddled. The best thing to do is to wait for as many responses as possible, then take and leave what you want. If you don't like what someone says about your work, ignore it. If it helps get things clearer in your mind, incorporate it. But DON'T make changes just because any old joe says to. Make them because they make sense to YOU.

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Their writing styles cannot, as much as Phanto wants it to be so, be judged in the same way.

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But I stand by what I say.

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After that you lose me. I'm actually more inclined to want to clean up the original version than change it this much. And I'm not all that bothered by the poetic style. This is fantasy, after all. In many ways fantasy writers are in a whole different ballpark than the SF writers around here. Their writing styles cannot, as much as Phanto wants it to be so, be judged in the same way.

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Well, if you must know, I have written only 1 science fiction story ever. Furthermore, I read almost NONE of it either.

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I am getting the image of Jol standing over the trapped animal

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Sorta. The way I envisioned it and tried to convey (without too much interruption of the flow and point of the paragraphs) is that he's literally standing, upright, and he is not touching the creature with his hand.

Also, I thought the "it felt as" line would convey he's not literally touching the creature, but if that didn't get across, I need to fix that.

Thanks for your crit.

Cya,
CC