A favour

[smokingboot]

Chums of mine will know that I have written a book, and am currently tearing my hair out over the synopsis. Part of my concern is the first paragraph. My original was fast enough, I hope, to pull readers into the action, but one person on reading it, found it too abrupt; he suggested a more introductory approach. I have written both beginnings below. If you have nothing better to do, I would appreciate your thoughts on which, if either, of these would induce you to read further.

Maybe the place for this is just_writing, only I've put stories up there before and fear to drown the community in my endless babblings.

Here's the opening quote:

ANNO 1670 not far from Cirencester, was an apparition; being demanded whether a good spirit or a bad? Returned no answer, but disappeared with a curious perfume and a most melodious twang. Mr. W. Lilly believes it was a fairy.

- John Aubrey (1626-97) Miscellanies


Here's the original paragraph:

Book 1.


Last night the doorbell rang. It was very late, far past midnight, and I walked down and opened the door to see a finger on the front door step. I bent down to take a closer look. It was clean cut and dry, no blood or decomposition. I looked up.

Here's the altered original:


Book 1.

It began with a severed finger. It began with a gift in winter. It began with a knock at my door, far past midnight on the coldest night of the year. I walked down and opened the door to see a finger on the front step. I bent down to take a closer look. It was clean cut and dry, no blood or decomposition. I looked up.

Comments

[smokingboot.livejournal.com]

Thanks for your thoughts! DT thought the same as you, and Russ liked them both. Thing is, you are bang on about the paragraph after, it does make a difference to the feel of the whole chapter. Here's the bit that follows:

'The night was clear, a pale full moon and stars everywhere. The craters on the moon's surface shone at me and directly below, not far from where Church Lane joins the park footpath, stood a hedge I had not seen before. It sparkled slightly with what I first thought was dew - 'So dawn will be soon,' I told myself - but dawn felt a long way away. I went to look at the hedge.

It was stiff with frost crystallised on the web of a spider, reflecting the light, intricate and symmetrical. I stepped back a little to notice that the whole hedge was a maze of jewels and sugar phantoms, iridescent webs of differing shapes and sizes, studded by the corpses of insects. Some webs were big enough to trap small birds and these did not shine, tiny bones and remnants of feather pinched between the wire and the wood.

I realised that the roots and twigs of the hedge were held together by myriads of webs, that the hedge had not grown at all but had somehow been placed there, built piece by piece by the spiders.'

Now you see, this left DT cold, and it is meant to be cold - the coldest night of the year in fact. But is it flat cold, or interesting cold?

[bad-moon-rising.livejournal.com]

I definetly prefer the second having read that. It makes the transition more seamless into the rest as the style seems the same to me.