TITLE: The Killing Moon
GENRE: Urban Fantasy
Atlanta's Piedmont Park was a place to commune with nature. The dead woman hanging in a tree ruined it for me.
Raw poisonous power infected her body, leaving a quicksilver shine to her skin and an angry shimmer in the air like a magic bomb had gone off in her heart. I breathed in death, tasting ashes and tears. She had been tortured.
Wow what a powerful opening. Right off the bat i'm drawn in wanting to know more about the dead woman and what led up to it.
ReplyDeleteThe first two lines are terrific - love their clean, spare style. The next line gets a little long, I think. If you pared out a few adjectives, it would flow better with the first two and the next two, which go back to your clean, strong writing.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I love the title and you get sense of place right away. A woman dead in the tree grabbed me-a powerful opening. 2nd to the last line I'd edit; it was confusing for me. After the powerful description on how this woman died, the "She had been tortured." falls flat. Great work!
ReplyDeleteWrite on!
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ReplyDeleteI love the wry humor in the opening paragraph. But in the third sentence, you lose that voice. It makes me worry that the humor in your opening paragraph is just a device to hook the reader, not the actual voice of your MC. So just be aware of that. Besides losing your voice, there are eight descriptive words in that one sentence, which is about six too many. Without that third sentence, you have a great opening!
ReplyDeleteThe first sentence in the second paragraph really gives it an urban fantasy feel. I think it would be better to break it up into at least two sentences.
ReplyDeleteThis is a very powerful opening. I get a very good sense of place, and I'm completely drawn in by the story. Not sure what "Raw poisonous power" means but maybe that's linked to the fantasy element and will be explained later.
ReplyDeleteStrong opening in the first two sentences and in the last two. The middle sentence was too long and confusing for me. The raw__power, quicksilver shine, angry shimmer - was just too much too soon. I reread the opening without it and I was more interested in reading on.
ReplyDeleteI am sure from the excerpt that this is urban fantasy. I'm not wild about the use of Atlanta--and by that, I mean Piedmont Park and commune with nature tell me enough about the place for now. I picture the woman hanging from a noose, so the "raw poisonous power infected" may be a little much--like a secondary cause of death? I have to agree that there may be too much going on in that long sentence. Overall, I like this and get a good sense of the mood and what's going on.
ReplyDeleteThe first sentence seems to be thrown out there. May I suggest combining the first two sentences for your opening hook. Something similar to, "The dead woman hanging from a tree in Piedmont Park ruined my morning commune with nature." I agree with the earlier post about the last sentence.
ReplyDeleteThe opening two sentences start the story off with a bang. While the 3rd sentence establishes genre, I agree that it's a bit too long. If you trim it back, the first five lines will sing. That small criticism aside, I think you've got a great opening that will hook readers.
ReplyDeleteLove the first two sentences, the wit was great. I actually laughed out loud. The 3rd sentence was a little long and could probably be broken up a bit but was interesting. I think the last sentence might work better (IMO) as a question. How is the narrator/MC so sure that the victim was tortured? Better yet, I think it might work nicely if you moved the last sentence about the vic being tortured and then have the narrator comment on "tasting death." Either way, I'm totally intrigued by your opening. Good job and good luck with this!
ReplyDeleteCreepy! This makes me think the narrator/MC is a detective maybe? It sounded more like a murder mystery than a thriller the way she was analyzing things.
ReplyDelete