Wednesday, December 3, 2008

F2S 21

The annual gathering of angels convened early one morning in a hidden valley, made inaccessible to the outside world by sheer vertical walls of tan, red, and purple rock. The Valley of Truth lay within a plateau large enough to be a small nation and was the one place where the angels could forego their usual discretion.

14 comments:

  1. There are a lot of words but not much beyond descriptions of a place. There's no one to care about. Sorry, I wouldn't read any further.

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  2. Too much setting information instead of raising story questions. Good details but can we wait a few more lines until we're hooked to get to them?

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  3. I thought of Ranch dressing when I read the first sentence. Couldn't really get past that. Sorry.

    :) Terri

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  4. This is all setup. Skip ahead to where the action starts, imo :)

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  5. This feels a little like an info-dump to me... I think some of the information could wait and perhaps find something with a bit more hook to start out.

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  6. Hmm. Anything with angels (and demons) tends to intrigue me, so even if I find the POV not the most gripping yet, and it feels a bit info-dumpy, I'd probably read on a bit to see what the angels are up to and if things pick up.

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  7. No... I'm sorry. :#

    This is mostly description, and you have to give me a really good reason not to have a mental image of glowing guys in togas with wings flapping en masse to this place. <- though that mental image actually does hook me.

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  8. Very poetic. I would read on to see if it picks up a bit and who the characters might be, hopefully you'll introduce intriguing ones soon.

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  9. "The annual gathering of angels convened early one morning " is your hook. Everything after that killed it for me.

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  10. I really like it. Angels, and canyons. Good scene setting.

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  11. Not hooked, sorry. This feels overwritten, and there's no clear POV or characterizations, nor tension/plot indicated.

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  12. Hm.... Those rock walls certainly stand out from the background, don't they? I got a visual similar to a colorful Fortress of Solitude. ;-)

    This is set dressing -- and it's good set dressing, but I can't help thinking it might be more effective later in the chapter. (Not a whole lot later, but later than the F2S, IMO.)

    Could you perhaps open with something that makes us wonder about the story instead of about its environs? :-)

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  13. Average Readability Level: 13.24
    Average of grade levels scores that follow.
    Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

    Specific Scores
    Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease (Wikipedia): 47.3
    Aim for 60 to 80. The higher the score, the more readable the text.

    Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (Wikipedia): 13.7
    Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

    Gunning-Fog Score (Wikipedia): 16.3
    Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

    Coleman-Liau Index (Wikipedia): 11.1
    Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

    SMOG Index (Wikipedia): 10.8
    Approximation of number of years of education required* to read text.

    Automated Readability Index (Wikipedia): 14.3

    Too educated, too wordy...simple it up for us. We don't want to work when we read for pleasure.

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