R. R. Hunter
Troubadour
I've recently acquired the assistance of a mentor/professor to help with my writing. He has made the suggestion to change my Chapter 1, or rather, push it back to a later chapter. It's doable, but the intention of my first chapter was for shock-value, to hopefully grab the reader's attention with action (violence) sprinkled with mystery. I posted a rough (coarse sandpaper rough) version of Ch 1 in the critiques and it is much different now. I'd like to sum them up and see which one sounds like a better first chapter.
Option A)
A homeless man with a kind, helpful heart is attacked in his sleep, has his eye plucked out and replaced with a magical stone that allows his attacker to control his body. He is trapped in his mind and starts to lose it.
Option B)
A down-on-his-luck archeologist gives some background on the wild, un-civilized, territories where he is searching ancient ruins for a rare, magical resource. (a light to moderate amount of info-dumping and some reflections on his deceased parents). He finds something unique buried in the ruins but has negative connotations linked to it.
The chapters combined are just under 6K words. I'll be more than happy to post them in critiques. Option A starts with the homeless man treating an eye infection (pretty gross). Option B starts with 5 paragraphs and 300 words of expositional world-building.
Option A)
A homeless man with a kind, helpful heart is attacked in his sleep, has his eye plucked out and replaced with a magical stone that allows his attacker to control his body. He is trapped in his mind and starts to lose it.
Option B)
A down-on-his-luck archeologist gives some background on the wild, un-civilized, territories where he is searching ancient ruins for a rare, magical resource. (a light to moderate amount of info-dumping and some reflections on his deceased parents). He finds something unique buried in the ruins but has negative connotations linked to it.
The chapters combined are just under 6K words. I'll be more than happy to post them in critiques. Option A starts with the homeless man treating an eye infection (pretty gross). Option B starts with 5 paragraphs and 300 words of expositional world-building.