Again, great dialogue, like it was above with Jack and Eldon. But this part tripped me up a bit. She’s calling after her, right? I don’t know if the ’tryina’ save a chicken’s life’ is needed here. It kind of lets the air back in to what would otherwise be a real suffocating threat... Maybe it’s her character... I dunno. But still. If this is the start of a grave situation, like Minn told us, it seems to end on a note of... lightheartedness (?), which I didn’t expect.
EDIT - just wanted to say, I’m going to stop reading here. The quality of the writing here has already sold me on this story. Pre-ordering NOW!
“Oh darlin’ you can’t but wrinkle my tail feathers with a look like that,” she said as I shouldered past. “I’m just tryina’ save a chicken’s life!”
Incredibly tight paragraph. Whatever you write about Minn from here on out, this beautiful little cornerstone sitting at the crossroads within your first chapter... It’s perfect - lets readers know clearly what we’re getting ourselves into with her character. Not only how her story will be defined by her relationship with this ’demon’, but also (perhaps more importantly) how it’s shaped her VOICE. Brilliant stuff. Really enjoying this!
Well let me tell you something: that is nothing but a skein of lies designed to bamboozle folks into forgetting there’s a demon inside Bert Sinchilla
G-R-E-A-T Dialogue!!!!!!!
Jack peered down from his mount, eyes as pitiless as the winter wind. “You’re not bringing whatever shit you’re in to my house.”“You already brought it, little brother. Now get up on this mount and point the way to your diggings."I felt ten years old again. Like I wanted to punch him.
Got a bit of a challenge here for those unsavvy about nature, like me. What’s a ’tree well’? I can kind of figure from the context that it must be like a hollowed tree, but has the whole trunk fallen over to expose this opening wide enough for a man to fall in? I’m having trouble picturing it. ...Kind of took me out for a bit. BUT, taking a step back, I appreciate how you’re putting your hero in this vulnerable situation - I LOVE stuff like that. Ground him in gritty humanity early on. The dude stumbled into some amateur-hour stuff, I get that. I think it adds a lot to the story.
I fell head first into a damned tree well. Sucked right down into it. I remembered what my father’d taught me. Put your hands out in front so you can dig an air pocket and not suffocate. I felt the anger bubbling up. All that running and shooting and this is how I meet my demise? Swallowed up whole and suffocated in a godforsaken tree well?
Ohhhh, good simile! You’ve already shown plenty of examples of good writing in your first couple hundred words, but this is my favorite so far. No doubt there’ll be more. Excellent!
Wind whipped up shoulder-high drifts, scraping snow off the lake ice, her blue surface showed like bone through a wound