Thursday, June 27, 2013

First Sentence #26

TITLE: SLANU
GENRE: YA/FANTASY

Katie had lost count of the days that she lay exhausted either in her bed or sitting in an old brown leather chair beneath the living room window.

37 comments:

  1. No.

    Way too much unimportant detail. If there were something worldbuilding-y about the chair or the bed, and with some trimming, that might work well, but it's too much in the wrong place for me.

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  2. No. Too long. I had to reread the first clause a few times.

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  3. No, but I think it could be fixed if you took out either the bed or the couch and made it more definite. "Or"s are hard to write about. It's too vague!

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  4. No. Bit of a run-on sentence, grammatically disagrees with itself for "lay either" and the second item of where she laid being her sitting. Exhaustion doesn't hook; perhaps what caused her to be exhausted would?

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  5. No, too long and run-onish. Imgo, a bit boring, it lacks a hook.

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  6. No. Starting on that much of a downer transfers to your readers. Although we want to connect with your characters in all of their ups and downs, we don't want to start off feeling exhausted or depressed.

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  7. No. I think the sentence is too long/too detailed and it makes me feel tired and dragged down, and not want to read on.

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  8. No. There needs to be a more emotion for this sentence to work. The only thing we know is she is exhausted, but not how she feels about it. Is she happy? Sad? Depressed? Defeated? Bitter? Bored? We need to connect with Katie for this sentence to work.

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  9. No, because I get no sense of the what or why here--nothing to draw me into why she's so exhausted.

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  10. No. Felt overly long. But if it was shortened to something like "Katie had lost count of the days that she lay exhausted" or something similar I think I'd change to yes.

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  11. Yes, but I'd prefer if you chose only the leather chair, which was more interesting than in bed and would also cut down on the heavy wordage.

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  12. No. You've raised questions but in a 'slow' way.

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  13. No

    Nothing interesting happens. A girl thinks about how she can't remember how many days she's been exahusted in bed or a chair. Not much excitement or mystery there

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  14. No. Someone laying around isn't interesting. I need something else to make me care about why she is a bit of a sloth.

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  15. No - there is a bit too much going on in the first sentence, and there wasn't anything that would make me want to read on unfortunately. As said above - I need a reason to care why she's lounging about.

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  16. No-- not enough of a hook for me--the story needs to start on the day things are different.

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  17. No (sorry)!

    It's lacking emotion. I want to feel her pain (whatever that pain may be)

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  18. No, you want to show someone else seeing her exhaustion and changing her story.

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  19. No. The character is bored sitting in a chair. She's not doing anything. So this makes me bored too. I don't want to read about someone who doesn't do anything. I want someone who's involved and not sitting in a chair beneath a window.

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  20. No. Doesn't make me want to know why she's exhausted.

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  21. No. Like the others said, if the character is bored and exhausted then so am I.

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  22. No. It feels heavy and tired. I'm not intrigued or excited by anything. I don't really care about the chair. Find something to hint at why Katie is so lethargic. Maybe that will help.

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  23. No. There's an inconsistency here. Because of the position of the 'either', you are saying:

    She lay exhausted in her bed
    or
    She lay exhausted sitting in an old brown leather chair

    You cannot lay while sitting.

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  24. No. I had to re-read it twice to digest it, since there were so many ideas (and no punctuation to help me digest said ideas). Interesting title, though!

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  25. No. This feels very passive to me. I'm not usually intrigued by exhausted characters.

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  26. No. This sounds too downcast to me. I don't know anything about her, but I'm not intrigued enough to read more to find out. Consider getting something a little bit hopeful into the sentence. I'll read depressing if I know there is hope.

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  27. No. Needs more details to make it special. (Sorry!)

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  28. No--sorry, this does not seem like the place to begin your story. If your character is depressed, I think you need to being the story in a way that focuses on what she wants, and then later you can show her exhausted/sad etc. The way this is presented just isn't interesting enough to draw me in. What makes today different than all these days where Katie lost count? Start there, with what is new and different.

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  29. No - Nothing interesting happening or promise of anything interesting coming.

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  30. No--Your MC is doing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing, so there's no reason for me to read on. Perhaps say she was exhausted because . . . . (whatever the reason is) That may be the thing that draws the reader in.

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  31. No, but maybe a mention of why the MC is exhausted could turn it around.

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  32. No. Sounds like a depressed character and there's nothing as draggy as following a depressed, lethargic character around. Maybe if there was a reason given, it might change the first impression.

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  33. No. Is too wordy for something that doesn't give me a lot of information.

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