quote:

---

Alex waited anxiously in Senator Robert Lopez’ anteroom. He hated being the one to bring this dismal report to the chairman of the Oversight Committee for Climactic Research. Since he had to be here, though, he wanted to get it over with.
Finally he heard the pretty secretary say, “Mr. Gray, the Senator will see you now.” She opened the door and stood waiting until he was greeted by the extended hand of the Senator. “Good morning, Mr. Gray,” he said, “ It’s good to see you. Please have a seat.”
“Thank you sir,” Before sitting, Alex opened the wallet-sized presentation unit he had brought with him and placed it on a table in front of the Senator’s desk.
“If you don’t mind, Mr. Gray, I’d like to get right into this."

---

Beyond that: the first paragraph is interesting, but the rest of it, I find dull. Easy solution: summarize the logistics of going in and saying hi, or skip.

The paragraph will pack more punch if we know why the report is dismal and distresses Alex.

We can also crank up the tension if Alex is nervous about meeting a Senator, *or* if the Senator is cranky or otherwise interesting.

wbriggs, there is a publisher I have in mind who only wants novellas. It's One-Flight Fiction. Their goal is a line of books that can be read in one airline flight.

Me agrees with wbriggs about skipping the hi-good morning dialogue, it adds nothing to the scene.

I feel this is a much better place to start your story/novella. I'm not feeling especially hooked, though.

If you want you can send the story my way when you are finished. I'm slow though, it takes me a couple of weeks to do a critique.

Nicole

quote:

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Alex waited anxiously in Senator Robert Lopez’s anteroom. He hated being the one to bring this dismal report to the chairman of the Oversight Committee for Climatic Research. Since he had to be here, though, he wanted to get it over with.
The people of the world were in a desperate fight for survival. The bickering and fighting of the first half of the century had given way to panic when the climatic change that had been a subject of concern for the last sixty years suddenly and unexpectedly began to accelerate drastically. A few months of finger pointing and explanations had quickly given way to a serious, almost unanimous, worldwide effort to deal with the growing disaster, leading to the Global Climate and Population Pact of 2076.

---

The "free paragraphs" discussed in your other thread will be aptly applied here with the ominiscient viewpoint first. If you spend one quick paragraph in Alex's head, and then go to omniscient, as you just have:

1. It's annoying as a reader to change viewpoints so quick.
2. It's an info dump, and only because it's dumped inside the story itself.
3. It says to me that Alex isn't important enough for the narrator to stay in his head for even two paragraphs before the suddenly more important background information.