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Tuesday, June 22, 2010

25 Words #15

TITLE: Epona
GENRE: Paranormal

"Down the canyon," Joe barked. His galloping Appaloosa had gained distance ahead of me. The horse thief we had been tracking disappeared into the shadows.

8 comments:

  1. Sounds exciting. I love horses :D The horse thief tripped me up, though. What if you switched that around to the first sentence? Then I'd get that tension immediately. I'm still hooked, though!

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  2. You introduce 3 characters and a horse in the first couple sentences. It gets a little confusing to put them in order and get a clear picture. I agree with the above comment for clarity.

    Epona: reference to Roman goddess or horse from Zelda? Win either way!

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  3. Well, I'm intrigued but I found it a little choppy. I'm wondering if the first two sentences could be turned into one "Down the canyon!" Joe shouted over his shoulder, his horse pulling out ahead of mine.

    The 'His galloping Appaloosa' sentence seemed awkwardly worded to me as well. It seems as though within the larger context of the story we would already know that the riders were galloping and if the fact that Joe is on an App is important, I'd think you would also have already written that in, before the chase began maybe.

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  4. A paranormal involving horses really appeals to me, but these sentence were a little confusing because I didn't know who these people were. I'm still hooked by the concept, though. It's hard to get context across in 25 words, I know.

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  5. The title made me smile because I immediately thought of the horse in the Legend of Zelda games. But it also makes me wonder about how much originality I'm going to get in this story.

    I also thought Joe was the MC. Then I got to the end of the second sentence and the word 'me,' which made me realize it wasn't a third person story about Joe, but a first person story about the 'me' character.

    And if they're 'tracking' a horse thief (presumably not wanting to be noticed) why is he shouting?

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  6. Like it and I like the scene you've chosen to start with. I agree with all the comments that have been made so far.

    I suggest you change barked to shout. Further on into the story it wouldn't matter, but there are agents and editors that would be turned off by it. Why take a chance so early in the story? At least that's my 2 cents.

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  7. I'm not a fan of using dialogue tags such as "barked" as this immediately made me imagine a dog riding a horse. It's different to "bark out an order" but just to have "barked" sounds funny.

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