Death is ignoble. Poets may claim otherwise, but there is nothing heroic about its finality. Ed zippered the body bag over the now perpetually young soldier; that once virile face would haunt him for years. ………..would like feedback on this opening sentence
KaznatsLogliner
Death is ignoble. Poets may claim otherwise, but there is nothing heroic about its finality. Ed zippered the body bag over the now perpetually young soldier; that once virile face would haunt him for years. ………..would like feedback on this opening sentence
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Show don’t tell. That advice is more important in film and television because a script should only describe things that are seen on screen or heard. Unless the first part is narration, how does that translate to a visual cue for a director to film? “Perpetually young”. Dead is a simpler way to say that. Otherwise it could cause confusion on whether it means eternal youth, as in living but never aging. The last part is once again telling and not showing. As a first line it doesn’t exactly make me interested.
The image of someone zipping up the body of a young soldier could create powerful and visually interesting imagery, but the description does too little in conveying that. Does the soldier have a specific look on his face in death? Is it fear, peace? Is his body mangled or is it still intact, fully displaying his youth? What about Ed? There’s no physical description of him at all. Is he kneeling on the ground in the middle of what was a a war zone? Is he hunched over a medical examination table? Does he look angry, sad? This line does the bare minimum in creating a visual image by only describing an action. No setting, no context to the scene.
Not only that, but it doesn’t seem like the line is in present tense. Sense I am assuming this is a screenplay and not prose, it should be “zips”, not “zippered”. “Will” not would.
it is the opening line of a prologue for a novel. I wanted to see if it adds more emotion. Here is the first graph:
Death is ignoble. Poets may claim otherwise, but there is nothing heroic about its finality. Ed groped in the cold to zip the body bag over the now perpetually young soldier; that once virile face will haunt him for years.
The thick rubber gloves of Ed?s biosuit snapped rigid in the bitter cold of the February dawn. The gentle hiss of air through his respirator drowned out most of the distant cadence of trainees chanting as they marched down icy roads: ?A yellow bird, with a yellow bill, flew upon, my window sill??
Okay. For a novel it’s pretty good. The use of descriptive language paints an interesting picture. It doesn’t really evoke any type of emotion. In fact Ed seems to be fairly emotionless, even in this version “that once virile face will haunt him for years.” is told but it doesn’t show. To me, if that line were removed, Ed would seem indifferent. Just doing his job, jaded from experience.
BINGO! thanks a lot, This episode is pivotal years later. Ed suffers from PTSD doing this stuff for decades. He partitions it away in his mind but eventually something triggers him to snap. Ed becomes a sociopath with PTSD and still works for covert groups, He trusts no one because his own agency is no better than their ‘enemies’. ed is one messed up dude, but one still with a shred empathy that appears at the most unlikely time. That helped a lot anf i may keep this line solely in the hopes an agent will read it and decide to read more