Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Teaser Tuesday

I see that all my peeps on AbsoluteWrite on putting up teasers so I thought I would give in. This is an excerpt from my newest novel that I am working on. Leave comments if you like.

Kenji looked around at the mess in front of him. Bodies of the people he loved littered the road. He tried in vain to make sense of what had just happened. Princess Kressara had been kidnapped, and the adults were either dead or kidnapped. He looked at himself and saw all the blood. At some point during the battle, blood had splashed him in the face. The stench of it burned his nose. He walked around in circles as tears streamed down his face. How had this happened? Kenji stopped just as quickly as he started and looked around one more time. A rumble formed in his chest and could be heard rising in this throat.

“Why!?” He screamed. He screamed again. The sound of his voice bounced off the rocks and throughout the empty city.


6 comments:

Sarah said...

Wow, that 100 words packs a punch! Well done! If I were to suggest anything it would be a bit more variety to the sentence structure - try reading it out loud and seeing how it flows. It looks like you have a remarkable story here! xx

inkwench said...

Agree with Sarah on the sentence structure, but you've got a lot of powerful stuff happening. I'm intrigued. Nice job!

Unknown said...

Woah, that's an intense scene. When it comes time for revision, definitely give some attention to flow, repeated words, etc.

Also search for descriptive words that are as powerful as your scene. For example, in the first line, is "mess" really the best word for what Kenji's seeing? Maybe "carnage" or something even stronger?

Again, this is what revision is for, and you'll have a great scene to work with here. Good job!

sue laybourn said...

What the others said.
It's a huge scene and it certainly catches the attention. And, as Carmen said, some more words that convey the horror of what the boy is seeing.

ChristaCarol Jones said...

This is a powerful scene, and agree with the others as well. It can be more powerful by cutting some extra words and using powerful descriptive words like Carmen suggested. I'm curious to know what has happened. Good job!

Gretchen said...

Hit this scene with a highlighter, marking up all the repeated words. Right off the bat "blood" and "kidnapped" hit me in multiples. Streamline the repetition - perhaps by combining some of these ideas together - and it'll be even more powerful than it already is!