Share your first three sentences

[Banespawn]

Project the first (fantasy novel, this begins a sort of two-page prologue):

She dribbled boundless over the lip of her shell and dropped, oil-like, to the cool basalt below.
The moment she hit the stone she curled into a tight ball, cringing in the sunlight. For months it had baked the walls of her birth-shell but now it touched her back directly, searing her moist grey flesh and prickling the red-tipped bumps along her spine.


Project two (another fantasy novel, of course - chapter one):

Beads of firelight slid along the blade as she turned it in her hands. The heavy wood axe's handle was carved from a single block of alder, smoothed into the shape of a human femur; the bonfire crackled as Adrathina ran her thumb across the runes impressed upon the grip, as though examining the four glyphs for the thousandth time would help her to discern their meaning. A mess of brown hair swung into her eyes as she raised her head, breathing in the smoke of the campfire.

I don't get enough story from either to suggest that one might be a better option to pursue than the other. The first is clearly a non-human, so there's some intrigue there, though the opening line is a little odd because of it.

For some reason I haven't been able to fathom in all the years I've been writing, many writers seem to have an aversion to naming characters when they are first introduced. I think doing so might help with both examples. In the first, using "she" immediately has me thinking this a human, but everything that follows does not. If you instead refer to her by name, and that name is something that would be very strange for a human, I think it will work better.

In the second example, it again refers to "she" at the start. We get her name in the next sentence, but if you think it about it, it's entirely possible that these are two different people. Pronouns rely on first establishing who they refer to. Unless there's a reason the character's name isn't known, just give it to us from the beginning.

Overall, I'd say the first is better than the second. I'd cut the word "boundless" in the first. I think it's muddling the description. In the second one, I don't think of fire in terms of beads. Blade makes me think of a sword or knife, not an axe.

 

[Homer Potvin]

I'd take the purple down by a factor of three for both. It's like you're forcing words and images together to affect certain images, but all I see are words and phrases that don't belong together.

 

[Username: required]

From the "Black Edicts":
"I am alone in this world. If there are Gods, they are all gone. If there are survivors, I have met none, and I'm afraid I never will."