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14 comments:
Ladies, thank you for your help. I'm having issues with these paragraphs - any help you can give me will be awesome!
As the stench of garbage poured into the vehicle through the open vents, Nathan groaned. Double locking his doors, he carefully drove through the cardboard box lined street, knowing the instant he stopped he’d find himself in a crowd of one too many.
“A GPS with the right directions would be helpful.” Nathan grumbled under his breath as he drove past the graffiti-covered warehouses. According to the GPS unit, the warehouse holding the supplies for his charity should be directly in front of him. Instead all he found at the end of this dead-end street was an empty lot.
“I knew I should have printed the directions.” Nathan muttered.
This is the opening paragraph of my Chick Lit Thriller and I think it's missing something. Can you help?
Have you ever had the feeling you were somewhere you really shouldn’t be and about to get busted? Well, I was having that feeling now – or rather it was smacking me dead center on the nose. Stinky, my pompous handler, always picked our meeting spots and this time he’d stepped in it big time – the doo doo that is. I am currently pacing the near empty loft of D.C.’s FBI headquarters, can you say ‘oh shit?’
With every step I took, the trepidation grew until I heard the lift open and whirled with gun in hand to pin Stinky with a pithy glare, “You’re late.”
You girls are awesome -- each post leaves valuable nuggets. Thanks for your work and for your hearts.
Here's opening paragraph for a chapter of nonfiction book.
On a chilly February night, four-year-old Daniel sucked in his last breath. After eight months of chemo, radiation, and surgeries which targeted the neuroblastoma in his neck, his weakened body failed the surprise attack of a staph infection.
“All I felt was the cold back of God,” Daniel’s mother, Alice, confessed.
“I kept going over it—again and again. It was a staph infection which entered his body that killed him. Not the cancer. Couldn’t God have prevented that?” Alice lamented. “Couldn’t something have been done to prevent that?”
We hear of miracles all the time. People with a diagnosis of imminent death yet they receive medical treatment and are healed. People in the same car accident—one dies and one doesn’t. “What is the fine line?” Alice struggled.
Finding Joy in the Journey
Many times as we go through different experiences in our lives we catch ourselves feeling alone and maybe even abandoned. It is hard to walk a road you were not intending to be on or you do not want to be on. When you are seeking the Lord’s will and direction it is hard to always just hold onto our faith. It is easy to say the Lord is faithful; it is another thing to truly believe the Lord is always faithful. What I love most about the Bible is that it is full of examples of times where the Lord’s faithful servants were seeking assurance from God of his direction, faithfulness and protection.
Thanks for your help!
The lady browsing the cookbooks sported unnaturally high eyebrows. Mia smirked. From behind the counter, she often speculated on strangers' lives, and occasionally, eyebrows.
Plucking session gone bad? Needle slip during botox?
Mia slipped out from behind the counter to snag a magazine. The feature article should grab Miss Eyebrows' attention: "The Natural: Looking Beautiful without Looking Like You're Trying".
Her target was walking toward the exit. Mia swung around, the magazine sliding from her hands. It swooshed across the floor like a hockey puck, until the stranger trapped it under her pump. The lady eyed the cover, then offered it to Mia.
"You may want to read this, dear," Eyebrows said gently.
I presumed that God was on the moon. Daddy tiptoed across the stars at night, resting on the brightest one, which was usually the star with the best view of our house. On this evening of my birthday, it was just the three of us. We never met together like this, and I was thrilled with the idea of speaking to both of them at the same time.
“You owe me.” I accused the moon, my voice filled with more anger than fear. “I only asked for one day – for one memory. It is the least you could have done.…” I was certain Daddy would have come to see me, if only God would let him.
Saying it out loud spilled tears from my eyes. For the first time I could recall, I allowed myself to cry over the Daddy Situation, relieved from the invisible burden of being brave.
Those heady days came to a screeching end during my sophomore year in college. My parents took a weekend trip to see the fall leaves up in New Hampshire. They were on their way home when a drunk driver entered the freeway going the wrong way, hitting them head on. Both vehicles disintegrated upon impact. My parents and the other driver were killed and all three bodies were virtually cremated.
There was little left of them to bury, but our parish priest insisted on holding a funeral Mass. My parents were both from huge Boston Irish families and my mother was very active in our parish. I'm sure that the church was packed. I don't know for sure. I wasn't there. I went to class instead.
~Thanks for this opportunity, ladies!~
Only two figures didn’t search for survivors. Two men stood in the middle of the field, watching. The younger man’s face twitched in anger, his gray eyes blazing. Slowly he uncurled his fists and raked his fingers through his shaggy, dark blond hair. Tears flickered in his eyes.
"How did they find this camp? It was one of our best kept secrets. Ruper shouldn’t have been able to find it."
The older man put his hand on the shoulder of the younger.
"It will be all right. Just remember this is one of the reasons I’m sending you on the mission. We’ll make Ruper regret this." He took a deep breath. "Never let hate dig its claws into you."
Thank you for the read-through on this opening paragraph from my Women's Fiction book. I sure appreciate it.
By this time next month, Miss Jewel Webb Whitaker fancied herself anywhere but across the kitchen table from her sister Frances. Smack dab in Florida, three states and a world apart from Kentucky, sounded a whole lot better. Frances, poor thing, stared at the darkness creeping through the window above the high splashboard sink. Next thing you know, she would be seeing faces in the rust stain that split the porcelain below the faucet. Mercy. If word ever got out, there would be no shortage of fools believing a miracle occurred. Jewel imagined them flocking to the farm, shouting alleluia while peddling t-shirts and homemade fried pies.
Daddy’s deathbed words circled in her mind like flies on a hot August afternoon, “I trust you Jewel Webb. You might be the least daughter, but she needs looking after and you’re the one to do it.”
Jane Wells
The first two paragaphs of the prologue to my book "Quantum God".
Eleven year old Peter Grossman sat in shock, his cheek on fire, as if just stung by a bee. His heart pounding, he slowly raised his head with shallow breath. The Pastors angry eyes stared down at him, his face distorted in utter contempt. "How dare you question God?" The words hissing from his lips with menacing focus.
Slowly panic rose in the boys tightening chest. His eyes darted around the room, glancing at his class mates, some looking shocked, most of them smirking. He jumped up, unable to breathe, his small chair cluttering to the floor. As tears formed in his eyes, he just ran. The classroom door slammed against the wall, echoing like thunder, as he ran down the hall, out the gate and through the parking lot. He didn't hear the angry blare of car horns, only a loud buzz in his head, repeating over and over: "What did I do? What did I do?"
Thank you, Theodor Domay.
Prologue to first book of new series--while I am waiting on word from the first. :) not enough space for full paragraph.
Missouri Territory 1815
Leeza Dey arched her back as familiar pain coursed through her body. She had been through this before, but never so alone. Lightning snaked across the sky and for an instant lit the small room enough to reveal the faces of four little ones huddled next to her. She waited for the crash of thunder before releasing the scream which helped, for a moment, to relieve the anguish of birthing.
I'm so glad to have found your site, thank you!
Outside my window, friends taunted me with their yelping to and fro in preparation for the light show about to commence. Mason jars were gathered, nails carefully driven into lids, and strategies laid out. When the sky turned deeply orange with only moments left of light, the mysterious beetles made their appearance and lit up the night.
From my bed, within the frame of my window, I saw the swarm sparkle past. A trail of flailing Mason jars came next, seemingly propelled only by laughter and an occasional bobbing head breathless from the chase. I was motionless, not only did I wish desperately to be in their midst, I was incredibly humiliated that I wasn’t. I surely didn’t want to be caught bathed and in bed while every other kid gallivanted about.
Thank you so much for giving your time in this way! The following is the opening (159 words) of my work of speculative Christian fiction. I've just reached the point of querying (oy!), so I'll search your site for tips on that as well. Thank you again!
If one more person offered Marcus a drink, he just might drown them in it.
“But your hands are empty.” She pushed a dripping beer bottle toward him, and Marcus focused on her face instead. She lifted a second, open beer, and the tip of her tongue caressed the bottle’s mouth. Why would any woman buy lipstick that purple?
“No, thanks,” he said.
The woman’s lips pursed, then curved. “Something you want to hold instead?”
“No.”
She sipped her drink, then trailed her lips over the bottle’s neck. “Your loss.”
The woman brushed shoulders with strangers and acquaintances as she crossed the furnished basement. She picked up the cue she’d left leaning against the pool table and re-joined the careless game. Marcus had played through two full games and started a third, but when the ever-tipsier group announced a new rule—drink a shot every time you scratch—he’d bowed out unnoticed. Well, almost unnoticed.
He shouldn’t be here.
This is from a section midway through the 2nd chapter of my fiction book titled Saving Grace...Incorporated.
Here I sit, the one time most feared corporate raider and job eliminator on planet earth being asked to spearhead an employee buy out of one of the biggest companies I tried to dismantle!
My initial response was, “You got to be kidding me, even if I wanted to do this, how could I possibly garner the confidence of those who’s jobs I personally threatened a few short years ago!” All I could do is look right at Paul and burst into laughter. I couldn’t believe my ears; spearhead an employee buyout, what a novel concept. I was absolutely the wrong person for this job. There was no way this would work.
“With all due respect, Mr. Reed and Mr. Smith, this is your problem. I am retired and love it this way. You are kidding me right?” With that said I promptly excused myself from the meeting and started out towards my car.
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