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Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine.
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Now then. Time for the Page Critique. First I’ll present the page without comment, then I’ll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer your own thoughts, please be polite. We aim to be positive and helpful.
Random numbers were generated, and thanks to amsadeghi, whose page is below.
Title: The Antarian
Genre: Science FictionSaros’ sun burned sky. Light seared edges of buildings, and winked off air vehicles rising and lowering like mouth flies. Mearrin adjusted eyeshields against the glare and peered up into the thick sky, ignoring the press of bodies waiting in a long line.
There was a sound a deep space freighter made when it entered atmosphere that was like no other. A long hiss split the upper atmosphere followed by a deep drone that climbed three octaves and then lowered into a resonant hum. That sound was the closest thing to the Ever After, and Mearrin would give anything to die out there between stars, instead of here.
“Batch ya!” A brutal shove from behind, pushed her into a huge being. Mearrin whirled, the Nephta in her hands.
The shove came from a thick, hairy being with large double eyes, and a snubbed snout that dribbled snot aggravated by dust and heat. It stank of garbage. Normally, Madj were nonaggressive, but they’d been waiting in this work line for half adaynight.
The line brought color and movement to a long yard surrounded by low, battered warehouses. The front of the line began inside a large docking platform for local system transport, and the back ended beyond the open gates into the street. It was hot and dust was high due to air and off ground transports which lifted and settled nonstop in Saros’ spaceport district. Every being in this line was desperate for employment, including her.
There’s a lot that amsadeghi does well in this first page. It’s an immersive setting, there’s quite a lot of good (if occasionally imprecise) description, and we have a sense of what the protagonist is after given she’s in a line to seek employment. Nice work!
If I had to nitpick, the first sentence (“Saros’ sun burned sky. “) threw me off immediately as it feels more like a fragment than quite achieving a certain evocative quality. I got my bearings as the page went on, but it’s symptomatic of something I see quite often: people overthinking their first lines.
You don’t have to have the world’s most memorable first sentence. If it comes naturally, great. But it’s better to risk underdoing your first line than it is overdoing it.
Apart from that, particularly with a first page you want to make sure to take every opportunity to invite the reader into the story and fill in key details.
Here’s my redline:
Title: The Antarian
Genre: Science FictionSaros’ sun burned the sky. Light seared edges of buildings
,and winked off air vehicles rising and lowering like mouth flies. Mearrin adjusted eyeshields against the glare and peered up into the thick sky, ignoring the press of bodies waiting inathe long line.There was a sound a deep space freighter made when it entered atmosphere that was like no other. A long hiss split the upper atmosphere followed by a deep drone that climbed three octaves and then lowered into a resonant hum. That sound was the closest thing to the Ever After, and Mearrin would have given anything to die out there between stars, instead of here. [Keep the tense consistent. Also, be more specific. Where is “here?” Missed opportunity to let the reader into the story]
“Batch ya!” A brutal shove from behind
,pushed her into a huge being [Be more specific than “huge being”]. Mearrin whirled, the Nephta in her hands. [What’s a Nephta? I think it’s okay to leave some of the details in the opening mysterious, but this seems more important]The shove came from a thick, hairy being with large double eyes
,and a snubbed snout that dribbled snot aggravated by dust and heat. It stank of garbage. Normally, Madj were nonaggressive, but they’d been waiting in this work line for half adaynight. [I’m confused, what does Mearrin do about being shoved? She lets it go?]The line brought color and movement to a long yard surrounded by low, battered warehouses. The front of the line began inside a large docking platform for local system transport, and the back ended beyond the open gates into the street. It was hot and dust was high due to air and off ground transports
whichthat lifted and settled nonstop in Saros’ spaceport district. Every being in this line was desperate for employment, including her.
Thanks again to amsadeghi!
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Art: Mars Lander by Brian McMullin
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I agree with your comment, Nathan, that the opening sentence fragment was off-putting. I think the opening needs to contain something more inviting, something that gently invites the reader to enter the flow of the story. With the abrupt ending of the first sentence–which seemed forced and not well-thought out, it was like the door into the story slamming in my face. I reluctantly tried to read on, but I thought the style of writing kind of lacked warmth and/or charm. To continue the analogy, it was like being met at the door by a robotic personage with dead eyes who barks, ‘Are you coming in or not?
To trust the door-keeper, or the narrator of the story, enough to enter the story world I need to feel a warmth or a pleasing personality combined with specific detail enabling me to see where I’m going and which entices me inside the story world.
Now, this isn’t to say you don’t have proficient writing skills. The skills are there. But I wonder if you could have a look over the first page of stories you’ve enjoyed and see what they have that gives you confidence to enter and read on.
I agree, “burned sky” is overly poetic.
Grammar says that the sun over Saros would be “Saros’s sun.” (Only plurals get just an apostrophe, eg “the many rockets’ course”.) If the s-apostrophe-s looks too awkward for a first line, it could be “The Saros sun” or “The sun of Saros” or “The sun burned the Saros sky.”
Another point in the third sentence: it would be more natural as “adjusted HER eyeshields” — and that would get Maerrin’s gender in our minds early, not down in the third paragraph. (It’s a fairly feminine name, but SF can always complicate that.)
But no question: this is vivid worldbuilding combined with an immediate sense of a strong story need. It deserves getting every nitpick just right to do it justice.