A very spooky Monday to you (although perhaps this isn’t the year where I should be tempting fate with anything…)!
Last week’s writing exercise was to craft the opening line of a book with the following cover:
As you’ll recall (and as is probably abundantly clear with a single glance at that image), the theme was Horror! Sadly, I received no submissions from readers this time… which is a bit of a shame, because I thought it was a pretty compelling image. Oh well… I’ll take a crack at it today, but if you think of something please feel free to leave your submission in the comments! I’m always happy to hear from you. Here we go:
“The night’s stillness was pierced by the rhythmic sound of a shovel scraping the dirt behind the old barn.”
I kinda like that. It’s got a good amount of alliteration to it, it flows nicely, and it offers enough of a hook to keep you reading. Why is someone digging behind a barn in the middle of the night? They killed someone didn’t they? ARE THEY BURYING A BODY?! (Note: Reader emphasis intentionally exaggerated). Let me know how you’d improve it, or… if you’re game… how would you follow it up?
This week’s theme: Sci-Fi. We’ll maintain the same format for the exercise, so think of an opening line to a novel which features the following cover:
I hope you like this one! I encourage you all to leave a comment with your submission, and I’ll go over them all next week.
Have a great evening!
The Cyberbard 