It's true that writers give other writers different sorts of advice, but I'm going to need a reader to gauge my suspense, tell me if I give the ending away too fast...junk like that. But that might be a year from now.

I'm crafting as fast as I can, as it happens.

Right here for anything needed, bebe.

erika, I would be more than happy to provide feedback on any original fiction you care to write.

Deb, insent with comments.

Cool! Thanks. I've just not been ready to show it around yet...putting in crazy, redball-like amounts of time however.(Although not, of course, around the clock.) Meanwhile trying to convince myself it's not a Big Deal, because my big deals? End badly. Not quite "Congratulations on your nuptials, Detective Munch." badly, but...

Heh.

Anne, received, and backflung.

The thing is, I want the intro to feel a bit distant. It's the only time in the whole story I'm not in the hero or heroine's head, and I feel like I can only get by with it if it's short and different in tone and style from the way I write non-omniscient. If this were a movie, this whole scene would play out while the credits were still rolling (or whatever the credit-like stuff at the front is called), shot from long to middle distance, with no dialogue whatsoever. I don't want to stretch it out because it's only there for two reasons: to kill off the heroine's husband as quickly as possible so readers/editors won't be turned off by having her be married, and to set it up so the reader knows he's dead before Anna does. Since she spends a good deal of the first scene reflecting on her unhappy marriage and how she's dreading seeing Sebastian again because he's going to be angry about X and disappointed about Y, I like having that there.

Anyway. Obviously this isn't quite where it needs to be, because the majority of people aren't reacting to it the way I intend. But to me the brevity and distance of it is kinda the point, so I'm not sure how to fix it.

Oh, I'm fine with the brevity and the distance as concepts; I'm in agreement about it.

It's the how that's in question. Also, I'd like to know what immediately follows it, how that reads.

Susan, could you, just for the space of this intro, get into the head of a regular soldier and tell it from his point of view? Either a hard-bitten vulgar old veteran with no love for officers, or a young recruit, a replacement only just attached to this unit and trying to stay alive long enough to learn. You can drop his POV as soon as the intro is over, and never use it again. Although it would be nice if sometime later in the book you have a callback--one of your main characters could meet him out of uniform on a street and nod absently, or something. They wouldn't know who he was but your reader would, if you describe him well enough.

I understand that you want to make clear that the captain isn't a hero, or even a sympathetic character. But if you don't want to put any emotion at all into the scene, maybe you could have--I don't know, a priest? Or a minister or someone read a newspaper account of the ambush. That would provide a lot of distance and not alienate your reader.

Because, to be completely honest, if the first thing I read on opening a book was that introduction? I'd put it down and have not the least inclination to read further. I'm not your target audience, but that's my reaction.

Hmmmm. The problem with that, Bev, is that if she writes that properly, the audience will want more of him. And I'm not a believer in crafting throwaway characters; I think they're unfair to the reader.

True. I'ma just back out of this one. I think the account needs to grab the reader's attention, but I'm stuck as to how to do that and maintain the distance she wants.

But Susan, I'll be more than happy to line-edit for you any day. This is why I don't crit content.