I already feel the love, Teaser/rough. Comments accepted

[Flashand]

Here goes this is just a rough/teaser and i need some help with fine tuning. I have roughly 30k words and have been turned down once , but not on this one.
::::
I awoke, I shouldn’t have. That’s the kicker, I shouldn’t have survived the blast. The area around me for two hundred feet was nothing but charred remains of people trees and  whatever that thing was. I don’t want to remember why I was here, hell I don’t want to remember anything that happened, but I did. I am an enforcer to the Council of wizards, well that’s the long version the short version being I was one of the fourteen strongest wizards on the planet. From the looks of it I had just moved up a notch or two on that scale, and there were only at most thirteen of us now.

I shook my unruly long brown hair out of my eyes it was a few inches shorter thanks to the flames. I crawled up onto one elbow an looked around the area and I was horrified.

Eight of the most powerful mages in the North America had assembled and we were discussing how to remove some of the most powerful crime lords and their politicians. Then thirteen other wizards showed up, one even had nice legs. I noticed that when she tried to kick my head off.

Slowly I came up onto my hands and knees, my head pounded like a drum. I had never used so much magic in my life. After I blasted through leg’s shields and made her a corpse, this thing materialized and started taking out everyone. After it killed four mages indiscriminately and started towards another of the enemy we all pounded it out of existence, and when it went everything went blank.

I thought I was as dead as Carmen over there, her flesh slumping into the white residue good wizards left behind on death. It did help however that I wore an illegal rhino hide trench coat loaded with enough magical and physical protections to stop a phantom train. Even as I thought that the damn thing fell off me into pieces. As I stood up I noticed the other charms that I had, had all crumbled to dust as well.  I was mad as hell now, it had taken most of my adult life to come up with those things, not to mention the cost for the items and the time to gather the regents to create them.

[belial.1980]

Interesting. I'm intrigued. Honestly though, I think it would be more effective if you described the attack outright rather than the fallout. I wouldn't worry about the narrative about the mages' political agenda at this point. I think readers would really be pulled in if you started your first sentence describing the slathering monster coming towards the narrator.

Show. Don't tell. As cliche' as this sounds I think it's sound advice. (I'm only echoing it from much, much better writers than myself.) Remember that the human being has 5 senses. Is there a lingering smell of the blast? What about the dead bodies? (Or the residue that the good wizards turn into) How does the character's body feel? Sore? Numb? After using so much magic do his arms feel limp or achy? Are there car alarms or sirens in the background? Can he taste blood or gravel or dust in his mouth?

As a reader, I feel like quite a bit of information has come my way in regard to the character's station as one of the most powerful wizards on the planet, the Council of wizards, their political plans, etc.

Yes, the readers want to know this, but I don't necessarily think it needs to come in the first few paragraphs. I read a really good paragraph on characterization. (Can't recall who wrote it, sorry) But the writer said that meeting the main character is a bit like dating. You want to eventually know the character through and through and fall in love with him or her, but, just like with dating a person in real life, it's best to unveil bits and pieces and get to know them at a comfortable rate. I felt like this intro slapped a lot of information down in my lap. Just for my own personal tastes, I'd slow it down a bit. Reveal bits and pieces through dialouge, flashbacks, etc. Gradually indoctrinate your reader into your world.

Think about Storm Front. You find out that Harry's a wizard very early on, but the White Council, the soul gaze, etc. and other things are gradually revealed in the first few chapters.

That being said, I think you've got a good premise and it sounds like there's some interesting stuff going on. I hope my comments have been helpful to you. Good luck!


 

[LizW65]

Ditto much of what Belial said.  Also, from a purely technical standpoint:  watch your tenses!  Specifically, a couple of transitions between past and present tense, espeically in paragraph 2, sound awkward.  It can help smooth the transition by starting a new paragraph when you want to switch from past to present.

[Flashand]

Thank you i appreciate the input and will address these things.


I shook my unruly long brown hair out of my eyes it was a few inches shorter thanks to the flames. That was a mistake my vision throbbed and pulsed as the world shifted to the beat of my heart. My brain attacking the insides of my skull with a pile driver.  I crawled up onto one elbow an looked around the area and I was horrified. I swallowed the bile and tried to make out the surrounding area once more, the smell of scorched flesh and burned trees wafting through the air.

:: a little better on feeling?

Ditto much of what Belial said.  Also, from a purely technical standpoint:  watch your tenses!  Specifically, a couple of transitions between past and present tense, espeically in paragraph 2, sound awkward.  It can help smooth the transition by starting a new paragraph when you want to switch from past to present.

AAACK no space oops my bad i see it thank you.

[Flashand]

OK aftera little fidgeting and a lot of typos here is the new beginning and the fixes are posted above as noted above/ below whateva .
:::
The phone rang after a long night of attempting to create a new shield spell, one that would not only bleed off any excess heat or cold but absorb some of the energy from the spell being cast at it. I had almost gotten it to work the way I wanted, but I had gotten too tired to continue. A light headache made me grind my teeth a little as the klaxon of a phone rang again.

I stood and walked to the phone in the hallway, as the dang thing tended not to want to work for very long if it was in close proximity to me.

With a  mouth full of gravel, I answered it. “Hrello” my voice was normally slightly above a medium pitch far from being deep it is almost girlish.

“Rick? It’s Sam can you meet us somewhere we have been having problems and there is something big going down.” Samantha said in her overly sexy com hither voice.

She wanted something she always did, and I am a sucker I always fall for it. We dated fifty or sixty years ago, but that was then. She hadn’t like me pointing out to her that her drive to be on top was unhealthy at best. She has never been a powerful wizard, and she was a conniving wench, but she was almost always honest with me.

I rubbed the sleep from my eyes and pushed my long hair back over my shoulder, where it fell around the middle of my spine. I always slept natural, when I looked into the mirror across the hall I flinched at the scars on my chest. The scars were from a slide down a shale hillside a few years back . My spookily pale blue eyes looked tired, my sharp native features stuck out almost as much as my pride. Even though I was born albino and it took until I developed magic for my hair color to change to its light brown, my eye color remained the same. I stand around five foot nine and I weigh close to one seventy, I am not muscular in the powerhouse kind of way, but in the farm boy fashion built to go the long haul although I couldn’t beat a church mouse in a foot race.

Still a little out of it, “Sure k where?” I asked, the alarms in head blaring at me for some unknown reason.

“Hey take a shower and I will call you back in an hour alright?” Her voice snapped from the seductress to her normal no non sense.

“K see ya then.” I said with a yawn and hung up the phone. I looked at the phone starting to come awake, and all I could remember was that Sam had called. I shrugged trouble again, well its been thirty years since I have been in the thick of it, I don’t get out much as I hate to do stuff with magic that involved any thing that wasn’t inanimate. Very simply I believed that I might like causing damage too much, and that would be bad, very bad.

[meg_evonne]

Yeah, okay....never sure how to respond to requests like this.  Everybody keep their heads as I work my way through this.  I have spent a lot of time doing crits, then find out that my precious time is rarely reciprocated.  I've only found one extremely serious crit site, which I love.   And your 'already feel the love'? subject---giving the love is just as important.  LOL

So here's my questions to Flashand:

1. Are you asking as a learning for fun crit or as a marketing/teaser serioius crit, or an editing crit?  There is a difference.  If it's a learning experience this is easy.  If it's a serious request for marketing or editing then it gets difficult. 

2. Are you willing to reciprocate on the crit time if you are serious?  A two minute thumbs up, thumbs down--no problem. However, think carefully before answering, tell me if you want my honest, gut reaction, and will you hate what I have to say?  If you want a blow by blow, line by line--PM back and forth, (and in my opinion this belongs in PM's) that again is more difficult, needing your reciprocal time and attention.

3. Are you really wondering what an agent might think?  If so, how tough skin are you willing to be?  Agents are tough, so if you want the hard line opinion---is that what you really want?

So for a learning experience--i ditto what Belial said and you should THANK BELIAL in PM!  Good crit.  If you want me to go after it like I do my own stuff with a razor, a hack saw, and an occasional grenade....will you reciprocate with the same ferociousness and time commitment?

[Flashand]

Thank you Meg, i will do so. First off this is all of the above.  IF i do not learn it is not the teachers fault!!

Secondly 1) Yes, it is a seriose request for aid. as you have read i have attempted and failed x1 i am not a quitter there for i will succeed! even if it causes much greaf and many gallons of tears. I AM A MAN AND HEAR ME SAY I WOULD PROBABLY CRY MY EYES OUT! damn that was tuff LOL

2) Sweets if i did not reciprocate and be brutally honest GOD would probably strike my stupid butt down. NO JOKE.

3) i am not woundering what an agent would think at this time, (.) period, as this is a rough not a high level almost finished draft.

4) i placed my email on my prof and explicetly asked for and hope to recieve Nukular holokost (half drunk forgive please ) so any one interested i would willingly beat the snot out of a draft keep in mind yahoo has a 2 mb limit so only 3 per day TY

(this is so people dont think im a donkey) 5) if so interested please make sure to include a self addressed stamped envelope!

[Flashand]

i am actually debating wether or not to undo the changes that i had made, well the added stuff at the beginning anyway.

Bear with me a sec.

First off there are a number of published novelists that start simular to what i did, see to Ride the Chimera by Kevin Killiany, to name one.

Second although his critique was dead on in my oppinion, i also realise that this was only the first half page or so of the novel and the descript didnt start until mid page of page 2. OH well i asked for honesty and behold he was honest, stung alot but i can recover.

[meg_evonne]

These two different beginnings are quite different.  Personally there were parts of the first posting that I liked a lot, this second version just isn't grabbing me. 

I think you need to seriously look at how close your world is to Jim's.  By getting deep into your premise and into your outline, you'll be able to pinpoint places where you can make absolutely sure that it is your world from top to bottom. 

My personal preference is to be brought in to crit a story after several edits, because so many of those first decisions define who you are as a writer.  Your voice has to be unique to you and that will entail several key choices that you will decide for your own reasons.  If you are still searching for your voice in a story, we will just complicate your decisions-possibly to the detriment of your story.  You are the one who knows your voice best. You are the one who knows the story that you want to tell.

[Flashand]

thats the  thing there isnt any worlds left to exploit, however i did not want to throw a place like the NN, into what i have. an alternate earth type thing.

Jims actually is from what i can grasp based loosly on the shadowrun series.

I was going to go with the first and then implement the secound in a dream sequence it seems a little more posh that way.

[belial.1980]

thats the  thing there isnt any worlds left to exploit

Well, I'll agree there's nothing new under the sun. Everything comes from an earlier source. If you ever get the chance (and haven't yet already) read Joseph Campbell's The Hero with a Thousand Faces

I think Meg's trying to say that, at first glance, the piece feels a wee bit like something from the Dresdenverse. I can see where she's coming from but then again it's only a page or so worth of material that's been presented. So who knows where it goes from there? Authors always emulate their inspiration.

There're countless worlds and ideas out there to draw inspiration from. I think a better goal than exploiting a preexisting world is to create your own. Seriously, what could be better than being able to say, "I'm boss here. This is how things work. This is what people look like, how they act and feel. Why? For no other reason than because I say so..."

[Flashand]

I have been goofing around and not being seriose but here is another snippit, Bear in mind i have only re read the first few paragraphs and am usually found at the bottom writting more, so alas there are many things wring it is in concept faze atm

[Flashand]

Even as I thought that the damn thing fell off me into pieces. As I stood up I noticed the other charms that I had, had all crumbled to dust as well.  I was mad as hell now, it had taken most of my adult life to come up with those things, not to mention the cost for the items and the time to gather the regents to create them.

Whoever sent that damned creature at us was either really powerful or really damn dumb, probably both that would be my luck. All the karma I had built up in my life had just bent spent in one hell of a shoot out. I looked around the area again and really noticed that there was only one spot that didn’t resemble the remains of a forest fire, and that was where I had lain. I dusted the rest of my clothes off me and started walking naked back towards where I had left my car.

It took me half an hour to hobble back to the old beater, an emerald green 73 Plymouth Satellite with a hopped up Hemi 360 stuffed under the hood. I smiled as none of the cars had been touched, I looted the miscellaneous items from each that seemed of any value. Cash was plentiful, as mages couldn’t use credit machines because of the energies involved, and no one wants to lose their wallet where a cop could track you from a location you didn’t want to be connected to. I made off with around nine grand in cash, and a diamond ring some one was going to surprise another with. Didn’t matter who now as both parties were probably ashes.

I smiled evilly and pulled my keys out from under the seat, then I went to the back of the car and like any good boy scout I was prepared. There sat an old duster and a change of clothes. I had imbued the duster years ago when I started magic, it held many of the same enchantments that the Rhino hide had, but these were done by a novice. I shook my head, the time to stitch the hide and imbue is enormous.  I sat down into the Plymouth and fired it up, the static radio belted out a verse of  “You cant keep a good man down” from Alabama.  I laughed hard at that and the radio died, it shouldn’t have worked to begin with it never did before.

I backed out and headed towards town, stopping abruptly and letting the engine purr. Whoever it was would most likely have the road watched, I would have. They wouldn’t know how bad it was up here until no one came back, and they came up to look. There was two ways out of this national forest preserve. Most only knew about the first one, simply because if you don’t have a four by you didn’t go up the other, but I might be able to go down.

Making sure not to make any extremely loud noise, Hemi’s have a tendency to do just that, I pulled the car around and headed towards the other end of the road. I turned left onto the service road I found there and continued on until it said that it was a dead end. I smiled evilly again and continued on for another third of a mile.

To most what they saw was a dead end. The side of a hill that had so many rocks and trees going down its side that you would have to be insane to attempt to go down it, or have a horse. “To bad its not a GTO, that would be a good joke.” I said to myself.

I twisted my head around looking for the rock that marked the head of the trail that leads down out of this hell hole. After finding it I crept up and made sure to stay out of the ruts heading down the hill. It was a slow drive but I did make it, there was only one rock that I had some trouble with, but with a little ingenuity and a whole bunch of muscle I was able to make a small ramp to over come the rock. I made the half hour drive in just over an hour. I wasn’t in a hurry to find out who summoned the creature, I was frustrated and irritated but had calmed down enough to start thinking rational.

First off the bad guys had known about our secret meeting, either the rat was dead or one or all of our houses were tapped. Secondly they had called in outside mage work, that kind of money being thrown around by any one always tips off the Feds. I mean I don’t work cheep, and no one likes to ante up the “five mill if I die insurance policy,” that almost all mages wanted, but they do. Banks always report that amount of money being