Tuesday 9 December 2008

Two Sentence Tuesday: 9 December 2008

Women of Mystery invited my participation in their Two for Tuesday where you provide two sentences read and written.

Here are two sentences from "Conquistador" by S.M. Stirling, an alternate history, and a book I enjoy rereading for the descriptive narrative:

"She looked around; Kolomusnim had finished off his opponent, then leaped to the back of one of the horses he'd been holding for Simmons; the other was down. He pulled its head around and raced for the open mouth of the pocket of dry land; arrows went after him, and bullets--she thought something struck him, but he might have been hugging the horse's neck to present a smaller target."

My two sentences are from a draft manuscript:

"David Lawrence happened to be walking down his quiet residential street when he heard a woman screaming. Turning in the direction of the commotion, he almost missed glimpsing the furtive motion: a hundred yards up the side street, a woman being dragged behind a privet hedge by a man the size and build of a pro wrestler."

5 comments:

Shelley Munro said...

Both are intriguing and make me want to know what happens next.

Clare2e said...

Thanks for your nymph and elf boosting. It might just be me, but just the phrase privet hedge overwhelms me with cozy rightness, quite at odds with brawny abductors!

Tess Kincaid said...

Yikes. No, don't tell me...

Barbara Martin said...

Shelley, then I'm on the right track.

Clare2e, what better way to say that safe neighbourhoods can be inflitrated. Besides, I needed something to conceal the antagonist with.

Willow, it's not as bad as you think.

Sepiru Chris said...

I also like the juxtaposition of the neat, fastidious, orderliness and ordinariness connotated by the privet hedge with the burly, illict, illegal, dangerous connotations that arise through the combination of the dragged woman and a man the size and build of a pro wrestler.

Ahh, profiling in action.