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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

25 Words #1

TITLE: Tunnels
GENRE: Middle Grade Science Fiction

Struggling to suppress her grunts, Prin pushed the wardrobe aside, revealing a gaping hole in the wall. She gasped in surprise.

12 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Along with the title and how secretive Prin is trying to be, I like the tone this first sentence sets up. The second sentence is a little more 'tell' than 'show' however.

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  3. This is good. My only quibble would be that you both start and end the first sentence with an "-ing" clause. Maybe you could replace "revealing" with "to reveal." Just a stylistic preference.

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  4. She's struggling to suppress her grunts before she starts pushing. Perhaps turn the sentence around.

    Prin pushed the wardrobe aside, struggling to supress her grunts, and revealed . . .

    You could also cut 'in suprise' from the last sentence since her gasp tells us she's surprised.

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  5. I like how Barbara (above) switched the sentence around. The original content of the sentence is fine, but it did seem odd to start with the character grunting.

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  6. I like set up of the first two sentences.

    A note: as I was reading, there seemed to be a lot of G's - grunts, gaping, gasped. You might want to change one of these for flow.

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  7. I'm definately curious what's beyond the hole. I also like Barbara's suggestions.

    You might want to think about showing the hole's size rather than that it's gaping. Gaping merely told me that it wasn't small. I'm seeing a hole the size of a beagle.

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  8. I'm guessing the hole is a tunnel, but your lead in doesn't make me visualize a hole big enough for your mc to go in. Why did she gasp in surprise? It seems that she must have been looking for something otherwise why would she have moved such a heavy wardrobe?

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  9. I had the same thought as Sharon - why is she moving the wardrobe if she doesn't expect to find anything? Though given this is the first sentence, I'm aware we may be enlightened in the very next sentence :-)

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  10. What concerns me has nothing to do with the way the opening is written. But freshness and originality are needed to hook us... And the wardrobe leading to a hole has been done before, and there's a bestselling book already called Tunnels. So...

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  11. I'm guessing the 'gaping hole' is the titular "tunnel", and if so, it's too much too soon. We don't know who Prin is, and why she's pushing wardrobes around, and why she's surprised. These things usually need to be established in exposition before we get into the meat of the story.

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