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Post by PigsnieLite on Feb 19, 2013 19:37:25 GMT -5
Hurmm, start wid a shipwreck? A murder? A plate of hot peppery nachos gone wrong? A parterre wrecked by a typhoon? If you want to write a book, do it in the first person becuz that is easiest if you are a novice writur.
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Post by Avril on Feb 20, 2013 3:20:12 GMT -5
S'what I's doin'.
Start in first person present tense. In the second book, I start with a fatal car smash.
Here's the first three paragraphs:
Comments welcome.
We round the corner and see the skew of smashed vehicles on the road ahead. Ron yells, ‘Shit’, pulls the emergency brake button on his dash and slams on the air brakes then lifts his foot and down again on the pedal and repeats that to bring his huge rig to a screaming shuddering halt a body length away from the Subaru. I hit the door open and jump down, heading straight for the driver’s side of the Subaru. The loud rocky beat of Joe Cocker fills the air from its dash, ending one song and beginning another: a cassette. The car’s front end is concertina’d into the left back corner of a Volvo sedan at right angles to the road. The dented front of a truck on the wrong side of the road is close, probably a head-on with the Volvo and behind that I can see another car has gone off the road in a skid probably to avoid the truck. The driver of the truck is sitting looking dazed behind the windshield and doesn’t connect with me as I look up.
Steam is coming from under the Subaru’s bonnet and there’s smell of fuel and hot rubber and metal. In the driver’s seat, a man is slumped over the steering wheel which is wedged tight against his chest, his face white, not in his body. I sense him hovering, shocked above his vehicle but he’s already on his way. There’s a kind of piercing wail from somewhere else. Ron is behind me.
‘Argh, he’s gone, love. I’ll radio for the ambos. Are you okay? Can you check the others?’ He’s heading back to the radio in his cab.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Feb 20, 2013 11:51:12 GMT -5
You haf 2 very long sentences you can tighten up a bit. Guess which ones! Hee.
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Post by Avril on Feb 20, 2013 14:21:34 GMT -5
The two very long sentences are intentional. When I break them up, the sense of urgency disappears.
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Post by PigsnieLite on Feb 20, 2013 14:29:55 GMT -5
Oh hokAY. but you might delete the phrase *from its dash* becuz most car music comes from the dash. Hurmmm ... long run-on sentences still bother me a bit, but that's just me, so ignore me please.
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Post by Avril on Feb 20, 2013 17:04:29 GMT -5
I put in 'from its dash' to indicate where the music was coming from, because it could have been somewhere else. I cut out 'I could see' though.
I don't use a lot of long running on sentences. Notably it's when something is happening so fast I want to give a breathless impression. So maybe I want to bother the reader a little bit.
Looking at it like this I think I need to indicate that they on a remote road, and that there is nothing but bush around.
I've been tossing up whether to make it happen at night, maybe in drizzle? Headlights spearing though diamond spits of rain? Then when Erin sees the astral bodies but not the physical ones, they lead her through pitch black to find the one thrown out of the other car down the embankment, and her baby.
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