Tuesday, June 22, 2010

25 Words #26

TITLE: Thought Convictions
GENRE: Thriller

Freshly roughed up by three agents of the New York Neural Extraction
Unit, Nelson Deavers released a throaty, pathetic moan.

7 comments:

  1. My only comment is that you could probably do without the word "throaty" to tighten it up a bit. Either way I'd definitely read on!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I likdc the throaty pathetic moan (it had a certain visceral quality), but the start to this sentence is a dependent clause, and a long one filled with info that we have no context for yet - which makes reading clunky.

    IMHO, you should find a way to reverse it: "Nelson Deavers released a throaty, pathetic moan, as the agents of the New York Neural Extraction Unit..." (dropped him on the pavement and walked away, or other action of your choice).

    Also, while I'm happy to see the genres blending so much these days, I think that a thriller involving a "neural extraction unit" should still be labeled as "sf thriller" or "futurist thriller" or something like that.

    ReplyDelete
  3. This sentence reads odd to me. I think the previous person got to the reasons why - the dependent cluster coming after the second part of the sentence seemed strange. I'd rather it read:

    Nelson Deavers moaned.

    and then some nice gory details about how he's roughed up.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Somewhere along the line, I was told to never start a story, chapter or paragraph with a dependent clause. They could work in the middle of a paragraph, but that was about it. I've found that to be true most of the time.

    The info you have works, I think, but you might rewrite to make it clearer and stronger. Reverse the sentence as suggested or make it two sentences.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I think you've gotten some great advice how to strengthen this. I would read on because the details have made me curious.

    ReplyDelete
  6. The action is clear and it has an excellent image but try not to overuse dependant clauses, especially at the beginning.

    Even so, I am moderately hooked and would read more.

    ReplyDelete