A useful nugget:
Describe the book you've written as though you're telling a friend about a great book they'll want to read right now.
Mutterings and Musings on Writing and Publishing
Describe the book you've written as though you're telling a friend about a great book they'll want to read right now.
6. Use commas to separate two or more coordinate adjectives that describe the same noun. Be sure never to add an extra comma between the final adjective and the noun itself or to use commas with non-coordinate adjectives.
5: Pairs of adjectives are exponentially worse than single adjectives. The ‘big, old’ man walked slowly towards the ‘tall, beautiful’ girl. When I read a sentence like that, I’m hoping he dies before he arrives at his destination. Mind you, that’s probably a cue for a ‘noisy, white’ ambulance to arrive. Wailingly, perhaps!
First contact was not supposed to be like this. The first intelligent species to encounter Mankind attacked without warning and swarmed locust-like through the solar system. Merciless. Relentless. Unstoppable. With little hope of halting the savage invasion, Earth's last, desperate roll of the dice was to send out three colony ships, seeds of Earth, to different parts of the galaxy. Earth may perish but the human race would live on ...somewhere. 150 years later, the human colony on the planet Darien has established a new world for Humanity and forged a peaceful relationship with the planet's indigenous race, the scholarly, enigmatic Uvovo. But there are secrets buried beneath the surface of Darien's forest moon. Secrets that go back to an apocalyptic battle fought between ancient forerunner races at the dawn of galactic civilisation...
Try as I might, I can't imagine you letting loose with this in response to the question, "So what are you writing?" Why not start with something more conversational like, "I'm writing a sci-fi about an amnesiac who is being hunted across the galaxy by a powerful religious cult, because he..." Make this into a verbal pitch, a dialogue. First, put it in context by saying what it is. (A sci-fi or whatever.) Then fill it in with some of the story. Why do we care about this amnesiac? What will he do with the weapon? And why does the cult want him? Then put a finish on it. You could have a concluding statement like, "The novel is finished and I have sample chapters available" or you could ask a question such as, "Are you interested in sci-fi?"
Minor niggle: I think the first comma is superfluous.Yes. It reads so much better without it.
Tries to remember knowledge... sounds klunky, at least to me. Can you even remember knowledge? And since he is trying to remember it, he already has knowledge of it, doesn't he?Yes, the protagonist has some knowledge in that he knows something about it, but he doesn't have any useful knowledge other than this prototype exists, but remember knowledge sounds very clunky.
Hunted across the galaxy by a powerful religious cult, an amnesiac searches for clues to his past and tries to remember how to build a prototype weapon that has the power to enslave billions.This excellent, but (ah there's always a but) the protagonist is not going to build this weapon he must destroy it. So why isn't that in there?
Although... will he enslave billions with it to save himself from the cult? If not, how will it help him then?Always leave 'em wanted more - part IV coming soon.