First Line Frenzy™ No.546
Adult general/commercial + time-travel romance
She's always been pale, but now her fingers are almost translucent, dangling from beneath the blanket thrown on her.
I have…concerns.
Our unnamed "she" is in big trubs if her skin is moving from pale to translucent. The position of her fingers — "dangling" — makes me think she might be prone, on some kind of stretcher or bed. A blanket "thrown" rather than draped or tucked around suggests the person under the blanket might not be…ummm…alive enough to care?
Like I said: concerns.
Noah Ballard is a literary agent at Verve. Back when my annual writers' conference, The Work, was still happening*, Noah gained something of a reputation for advising authors not to start their books with a dead body, since we can't care about someone if they're dead before we know them. This always seemed like sound wisdom to me.
Because Line 546 is written in third person present tense, there's a chance our main character isn't the one under the sheet, but someone nearby, observing those eerily see-through fingers. If that's the case (and I kind of hope it is), we can reframe the sentence to gaze at "she" while maintaining focus on…not "she".
EDIT: I tried not to stare at Margaret's nearly translucent fingers, dangling lifelessly beneath the blanket thrown over her body, as the coroner and his assistant proceeded past my hiding spot.
Aha! Now we have someone to focus on who isn't maybe-probably unalived already. This is helpful from a narrative perspective, because dead men tell no tales (source: pirates). In all seriousness, we want to offer our readers someone to form an emotional connect with, and that connection typically requires both parties to have a pulse. Also, my edit offers a bit of intrigue: Why is the narrator hiding? Why is she trying not to stare at those ghostly digits? What did Marge die from? All good questions.