: Re: Critique: Intro/Prologue to my Novel-in-Progress all. Please forgive me, for I'm afraid I'm a novice when it comes to writing fiction. I wanted to get the community's thoughts and recommendations

@Kevin153

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I like the flow just the way it is. I don't see any inconsistencies in these few paragraphs. And I think there is plenty here to intrigue readers.

Several stylistic choices tripped me up as I read. My first stumble was over modifiers. Consider replacing "swiftly walked" with a stronger verb. "Tragically" is unnecessary. We know that a daughter's disappearance is tragic. I'm not sure about "empty silence." Seems redundant, but I like the rhythm of it.

Some non-simultaneous stuff is expressed as simultaneous. The man asks "as" he turns and exits. Are those really simultaneous?

Jansen walked out, locking the door. I'm especially picky about "-ing" verbs. I run those through two tests:

If I inserted "while," would it make sense? Jansen walked out while locking the door. Doesn't make sense.
If I reversed the order of the clauses, would it make sense? Jansen locked the door behind him, while walking swiftly out of his study. Doesn't make sense.

The phrasing fails both tests, so the actions are not simultaneous, and "-ing" isn't the right form.

Beyond the simultaneity trouble, there is an overabundance "this while/as that" in these two paragraphs. One in each of the first three sentences, and two in the fourth. Then two more in the second paragraph. The prevalence of that construction distracted me.

I found the narrative distance shifting in and out. In the first paragraph, "an empty silence hung in the air" puts us moderately intimately into Jansen's head. But "only one thing was on his mind" feels distant. That phrase not something he's thinking, but a comment on what he's thinking. Whose comment is it? Not Jansen's.

More troublesome is the sentence that begins, "The Jansens hadn't been the same since..." Whose thought is that? Surely Vanessa wouldn't refer to herself and her husband as "the Jansens." And the whole sentence is narrative summary. There's nothing evil about narrative summary per se, but given that the first two sentences place us so intimately in her head, the sudden shift in narrative distance is jarring.

Sometimes we're fairly intimate in the Jansen's heads, but they're referred to as "Mr. Jansen" and "Mrs. Jansen," which suggests distance. From these two paragraphs alone, I can't tell whether there's a reason for that. But wasn't sure how close to feel to these two characters.

Some people will advise against the POV switch from one paragraph to the next, and characterize all such POV shifts as evil headhopping. I'm okay with POV shifts as long as they're done well and with a purpose. "Across the street" marks the POV shift nicely.

It isn't clear what POV we're in at the start of the first paragraph. The man's? If preceding paragraphs put us in Mr. Jansen's POV, that's fine. If this is the first paragraph of the novel, it works less well. And given that we shift POVs from one paragraph to the next, it wouldn't likely work as the first paragraph of a scene or chapter.

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