[Critique Game] Post The First Three Sentences of your Short Story

Great first line in particular, autumnleaf. I agree with the others' suggestions.

Here's mine:

When my landlady went deaf, I enrolled in a sign language class at San Francisco City College, wanting someone to talk to. My older brother, who lived with me, had gone to prison, and I was lonely. My landlady’s name was Lyudmila, and she spoke loudly now, her voice a raspy boom, her Russian accent thick.

Hmmm...thanks for the thoughts...not sure why I post on these threads, I never take feedback given

Any time. To be clear, I'm poking fun at myself, not you.

flowerburgers said:

When my landlady went deaf, I enrolled in a sign language class at San Francisco City College, wanting someone to talk to. My older brother, who lived with me, had gone to prison, and I was lonely. My landlady’s name was Lyudmila, and she spoke loudly now, her voice a raspy boom, her Russian accent thick.

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Sorry to pile on, but I agree with mrsmig and dpaterso. It's tempting in this challenge to squeeze as much as possible into the first 3 lines, but that's rarely to the good of the story. It is an interesting setup with 3 characters (the narrator, the landlady, and the brother), but you need a little more space to introduce them.

My suggestion (as usual, take what you need and leave what you don't):
"When my landlady went deaf, I enrolled in a sign language class at San Francisco City College. My older brother had gone to prison and I wanted someone to talk to. My landlady’s name was Lyudmila, and her Russian accent was now a raspy boom."

dpaterso said:

I was reading/editing this yesterday and wondering how it might sound to other ears, it's originally from a flash story that got scribbled earlier this year, I'd like it to find a nice home in the big wide world:

Let me tell you about Timmy the T-Rex, Timmy the ferocious monster, Timmy the people eater. Let me tell you about the dinosaur who was the most intelligent creature I ever met in my life.

If you haven't heard about Doc Rawlinson and his time travel experiment by now, you must've been living on Mars or something.
​

-Derek

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I quite like it when a writer gets you started on a particular thread and just drops it to pursue something else for a beat.
I'm very interested in the curious world that's being created.

Let me tell you about Timmy the T-Rex, Timmy the ferocious monster, Timmy the people eater. Let me tell you about the magnificent dinosaur who was the most intelligent creature I ever met in my life.

How did a Tyrannosaurus Rex end up here anyway?

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I'm not so sure the buildup is interesting, or works. I would prefer to see all of this, not be told it.

This is a story I've been working on for about a year, and I'm hoping I can finally wrap it up and get it out the door.

Title: GOYANGI SOJU. Genre: Horror. Expected Word Count: 12,000

First three lines below.

***

Yang Won-Bo and Kim Sul-Li hated the English tutor.

“If we play a mean trick on him,” Sul-Li said, “I’m sure he won’t come back to Winding Lane.”

And she had an idea in mind to make the fat old foreigner cry.

Denevius -- first sentence I like okay. Second sentence? Not sure I'm feeling the voice of a young Asian child. Third sentence seems kinda tell-y. Maybe there's a way to re-write the third sentence to give more of indication of her character?

Here's mine. Not quite happy with the wording on the first sentence in describing the seeming dichotomy.

>>>
He had lived here all his life, but he hadn’t always lived by a desert.

The small two-bedroom cabin huddled on a hill between the encroaching wasteland and the battering waves of the sea. Tren gazed at the shifting, glinting sands, his darting eyes searching for his ride – searching for any sign of life.

From "Who Deserves a Meteorite?"

It was past bedtime, 11:00pm when Ester and her young son drove past a hitch hiker on their way to Meteor Alley, a spot in the desert destined to get hit by a meteorite, their local astrologist, Leon, had long ago predicted. It hadn’t happened yet, and no one really thought it ever would, but all the townsfolk found it as an excuse to attend the local party held in the middle-of-nowhere, Navada desert every 13[SUP]th[/SUP] of September.
“Wasn’t that officer Jim’s boy?” asked Ester, looking into the rear view mirror.

He had lived here all his life, but he hadn’t always lived by a desert.

The small two-bedroom cabin huddled on a hill between the encroaching wasteland and the battering waves of the sea. Tren gazed at the shifting, glinting sands, his darting eyes searching for his ride – searching for any sign of life.

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There's nothing especially wrong with this. But I am iffy on whether or not I would read on because there's nothing particularly compelling about these three lines, either.

This opening strikes me a bit as warmup writing, or the writer clearing his/her throat. I have a feeling that the story begins a little later on the page, and it might very well be a compelling narrative.

Right now, it's a bit too 'meh'.

It was past bedtime, 11:00pm when Ester and her young son drove past a hitch hiker on their way to Meteor Alley, a spot in the desert destined to get hit by a meteorite, their local astrologist, Leon, had long ago predicted. It hadn’t happened yet, and no one really thought it ever would, but all the townsfolk found it as an excuse to attend the local party held in the middle-of-nowhere, Navada desert every 13th of September.
“Wasn’t that officer Jim’s boy?” asked Ester, looking into the rear view mirror.

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The lines are overly long and muddled. My only suggestion is to simply the sentence construction.

Denevius said:

Yang Won-Bo and Kim Sul-Li hated the English tutor.

“If we play a mean trick on him,” Sul-Li said, “I’m sure he won’t come back to Winding Lane.”

And she had an idea in mind to make the fat old foreigner cry.

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The structure is clear, which is good, but I'm lacking a sense of place, i.e. white-room syndrome. Are they home-schooled? In a classroom? What or where's Winding Lane?
The characters definitely don't come across as likeable, especially as Sul-Li only seems to hate the tutor for being a foreigner, old, and fat. That's... ugh. Having unlikable characters isn't necessarily a bad thing, but I'd need a bit more in terms of prose, setting or conflict to keep me reading.

CindyRae said:

HeTren had lived here all his life, but he hadn’t always lived by a desert.

The small two-bedroom cabin huddled on a hill between the encroaching wasteland and the battering waves of the sea. Tren gazed at the shifting, glinting sands, his darting eyes searching for his ride – searching for any sign of life.

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Lots of -ing -- read it out loud. The action comes from the desert rather than from the MC, which is quite unusual, and might or might not be a bad thing depending on what happens next. Lots of gazing / eyes darting. Good descriptions, but I think you could probably tighten it a bit by getting rid of some of the adjectives.
For example: Cabin: small is implied, and we don't need to know how many bedrooms it has unless you're a real estate agent describing a house for sale. On the other hand, I think that "encroaching" wasteland is essential. It goes a long way towards explaining the first sentence.

Dallas said:

From "Who Deserves a Meteorite?"

It was past bedtime, 11:00pm when Ester and her young son drove past a hitch hiker on their way to Meteor Alley, a spot in the desert destined to get hit by a meteorite, their local astrologist, Leon, had long ago predicted. You have at least two sentences in there, maybe even three. It hadn’t happened yet, and no one really thought it ever would, but all the townsfolk found it as an excuse to attend the local party held in the middle-of-nowhere, Navada desert every 13[SUP]th[/SUP] of September. Same as above.
“Wasn’t that officer Jim’s boy?” Sounds stilted asked Ester, looking into the rear view mirror.

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Using a possible meteorite crash as an excuse to booze up? Yes, I can get behind that. You're cramming a lot of info in two sentences. It feels a bit like a London bus at rush hour. Let the story stretch its legs a bit.

Here are the first three lines of a story I wrote a long time ago:


A loud cheer echoed through the room as the man in the white shirt body-slammed the man in the blue shirt into the wall. The crowd at the bar watched intently as the fists began to fly. Both men grabbed the other by the jersey and began wailing upon each other with their free hands, slipping and sliding on the ice as they tried to remain upright.

Seaclusion said:

Here are the first three lines of a story I wrote a long time ago:


A loud cheer echoed through the room as the man in the white shirt body-slammed the man in the blue shirt into the wall. The crowd at the bar watched intently as the fists began to fly. Both men grabbed the other by the jersey and began wailing whaling upon each other with their free hands, slipping and sliding on the ice as they tried to remain upright.

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Doesn't grab me right off. So far, we've got a bar fight where the participants' shirts get more attention than anything else. Plus the POV is unclear--could be omni, could be 1st or 3rd. If there's a character watching, give us her/his reaction. If it is omni and will be this distant throughout, I probably wouldn't stick around for long. I don't hate omniscient POV if it's done well, but prefer to have a character I can latch onto, and experience the story through that person's eyes.

Marlys said:

Doesn't grab me right off. So far, we've got a bar fight where the participants' shirts get more attention than anything else. Plus the POV is unclear--could be omni, could be 1st or 3rd. If there's a character watching, give us her/his reaction. If it is omni and will be this distant throughout, I probably wouldn't stick around for long. I don't hate omniscient POV if it's done well, but prefer to have a character I can latch onto, and experience the story through that person's eyes.

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Thank you for your comments. It is actually a group of men in a bar watching a hockey game which is revealed in the next line. The POV is 3rd-close, and the MC is a woman who is watching this happening and questioning her friend why men find violence and competition so compelling.

mrsmig said:

Fixed your homophone up there.

Soooo...either this scenario is meant to be:

(1) people in a bar watching a televised hockey game, or

(2) something completely different, but you're trying to make the reader think it's a people in a bar watching a televised hockey game.

If it's #1, I'm bugged by the fact that you're taking the long way around to set the scene. If I had to work just to figure out the setting, what's this story going to be like when stuff really starts to happen? If it's #2, I'm bugged because it seems coy and tricky.

That big issue aside, I don't have a character to grab hold of yet, and the style is a bit overwritten for my taste, so I wouldn't continue on.

Your opening is precious real estate - especially so in a short work. Make the most effective use of it.

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Thank you for fixing my error. I should have known they weren't crying on each other but were harpooning, I mean hitting each other.

Yes, they are watching a hockey game and the female MC is trying to figure out why men are so drawn to violence and competition.