If you want the truth, I started planning my wedding at my best friend's funeral.
But now I can hear Nic screaming, "Nobody wants the truth! It’s boring and takes too long. People have no attention span! More words and depth than a New Yorker cartoon equal zero readers. Kindle this, lady."
She’d probably be right. My love for the printed word is quaint at best; my attention to detail tedious. But I’m a proofreader. And Nicole, the hypocrite, was a copy editor. Plus, the funeral in question was hers, so maybe she would keep reading just out of personal interest. Just to find out what happened when Alec and I finally met.
.................
I was 27 when Nic died. I had to fly from New York to California for the funeral. Nic’s parents, the Hansens, were nice enough to let me stay with them. The service was very dark, literally and figuratively. It was held at the Alumni House at the University of Southern California, this place full of deep brown mahogany moldings and recessed lighting. From the outside it looked like the walls of the bottom floor were all French doors, but when you got inside, they had put these heavy velvet curtains along all four walls so the room was cave-like, closed in. It seemed like the entire first floor was a giant room swathed in red velvet, full of folding chairs and reeking of flowers.
****
With Suzie's Critique
If you want the truth, I started planning my wedding at my best friend's funeral.
I like this first line. There's voice here and it's intriguing. Not something I would expect.
But now I can hear Nic screaming, "Nobody wants the truth! It’s boring and takes too long. People have no attention span! More words and depth than a New Yorker cartoon equal zero readers. Kindle this, lady."
But whatever interest I had based on that first line has now already waned. Who's Nic, why is he/she screaming? And this dialogue block is much too long for someone we don't know or care anything about. Especially if this dialogue isn't happening in real time. If this is something the protagonist also thinks, I'd rather hear it in her voice.
She’d probably be right. My love for the printed word is quaint at best; my attention to detail tedious. But I’m a proofreader. And Nicole, the hypocrite, was a copy editor. Plus, the funeral in question was hers, so maybe she would keep reading just out of personal interest. Just to find out what happened when Alec and I finally met.
Here we get some more details. I'm interest that the funeral in question is Nic's--maybe knowing that before would help. But even with this paragraph I think the set up here is too long. It's telling, and what we really want after that first line is to see what exactly will get the protagonist to start planning a wedding during her best friend's funeral.
Also, and this might be me, but a huge pet peeve of mine is when the protagonist steps out of the narrative and tells us that we're reading. There are exceptions to everything and I've certainly read some great books that break down that fourth wall. Most of the time it just really pulls me out of the narrative--which is the opposite of what you want.
What if the first few lines read:
If you want the truth, I started planning my wedding at my best friend's funeral.
My best friend Nic--the one whose funeral it was--might say No one wants to hear the truth, but I'm a proofreader and my attention to detail is tedious.
So the truth it is.
.................
I was 27 when Nic died. I had to fly from New York to California for the funeral. Nic’s parents
While I find some of these details interesting, there's too much telling here. The first four sentences are short and structured similarly and just dispensing information. I do like the images of the last several lines in the paragraph, particularly the reeking flowers, but it's still telling description.
The voice in the earlier lines seems different now or even gone. I want to get the protagonists thoughts and feelings interspersed with the description--her best friend just died, where's the emotion?
I think I would read the next paragraph or two to see where this was going--I really did love that first line--but if the protagonist continued to lack emotion I'd stop.