Edit: turgid beginning to promising narrative--maybe

J said it was okay to post this edit of a sample he sent. Very interesting work, although I think there are things holding it back from its potential. You may see here an illustration of the subjectivity of editing -- the part that doesn't work for me may be jam for your toast.  It has mostly to do with the second opening paragraph.

Please keep in mind that all any editor can offer is opinion that is necessarily subjective -- my cuts, additions, and comments are suggestions, not facts, to be used or discarded by the writer. Things I added are in red and comments are green.

There is beauty in everything. (Big. Makes me wonder.)

Vinatoru Kocescu, with ebon eyes hooded by the sludge of hair across his brow and rimmed by abnormally puffy grayish skin, scanned the street. Gray ferroconcrete buildings with shattered windows abutted gutters overflowing in used condoms and cigarette butts. I-beams long oranged by the rust of local government corruption lay orphaned in the cratered lot across the street. What did they call these places in America? The ghetto?

(For me, this paragraph was like encountering a hurdle before I'd left the starting blocks. I believe a reader should be able to glide effortlessly through a narrative, and my mind bounced off the density of language here, created by word choice and uncommon usage. Clearly you labored to achieve this imagery -- but it was over the top for me. This is not true of later narrative.

My troubles began with the "sludge" of hair; no picture comes to mind; what is a sludge of hair? Sludge is a mushy, muddy mass. Why "ebon" eyes instead of black or dark? This sentence is also unnecessarily complicated, I feel. How about: Vinatoru Kocescu scanned the street, dark eyes hooded by hair falling across his brow, the flesh around them puffy and gray. BTW, I ditched "abnormally" because we can't know what that means -- abnormal in respect to what? His normal puffiness? What's that? The adverb doesn't create a picture or add meaning here. Also, breaking this up into discrete clauses helps the meaning go down more easily.

In the next sentence, "ferroconcrete" is a fancy word that means reinforced concrete, with steel imbedded inside that may not be visible. If you can't see the reinforcement, why use it instead of "concrete?" Why the large word instead of the usual? My advice: use simple words unless they just won't do.

But wait, there's more: the "I-beams" sentence doesn't work well for me either. You're reaching further than I want to go with "oranged" as a verb meaning rusted. Don't get me wrong here -- I'm okay with using words as verbs even though they technically aren't when it fits, and do so myself. But here the reader has to slow down to translate. And what does the "rust of local government corruption" have to do with the I-beams? The biggest problem with that sentence is that, for me, it fails to conjure a picture of the lot. I'm so busy deciphering it that a visual never comes to mind, except for a hazy image of I-beams and dirt.

You are doing the right thing in attempting to set the scene through the lens of your character -- that's great -- but the language obfuscates the meaning.

As I said, we're into really subjective territory, and I plead with those who disagree with the above to send their comments. Please. Now to continue…)

Kocescu called it paradise - his paradise.

Just after eleven o'clock this morning, drizzle dribbled like God had a prostate problem. (nice)   Kocescu's best whores formed a ragged garland across the pockmarked apartment entrances (pockmarked? by what? bullet holes? tell/show us), awaiting the lunchtime crowd of bureaucrats, office workers, and construction jJoes to blow their pitiful paychecks on fifteen minutes of sticky friction. (nice)

God bless them all, thought Kocescu.  Them and their money.

Another spit of rain dotted his face, rivulets stumbling through the deep ravine of scar tissue (I think "ravine" says all you need to of "deep" and is more effective unmodified) that spanned Kocescu's right jaw from his ear lobe to his chin.  The souvenir came from a knife fight he'd had (redundant: of course he had the fight, otherwise he wouldn't have been cut) in Bucharest years back.  His opponent had slashed and cut deep(don't need this, it's obvious from "ravine"). A millimeter lower and it would have been Kocescu's blood that sprayed the dank alley. (if he was cut that deeply, his blood would have been in the alley, wouldn't it? This implies that it wasn't.) Enraged - giddy, almost - from the cut, Kocescu had dipped his shoulder and pumped his own blade up and under the punk's sternum, shredding the pulmonary artery. (shredding the pulmonary artery would not, as implied earlier, "spray" the alley with blood -- it's inside the chest, right? Suggest you visualize this scene thoroughly and conform the dramatic staging details to what could really happen.)

Kocescu took a deep breath, passing the air up his nostrils and then opening his mouth to let it escape again. He repeated the cycle once more. Despite the yoke of carbon monoxide from too many cars, he smelled something. (if it were me, I'd consider opening with this paragraph and continue until noted below -- this is far more intriguing, and raises good story questions.)

Now he used his tongue to taste the air, flicking and waggling, allowing the entire range of his olfactory system to break the air molecules apart, catalog them, and confirm or refute the presence of prey. (exotic, but darned interesting, and denotes an unusual character).

Kocescu could smell a woman before he even saw her. He'd acquired the skill establishing himself as the kingpin of lust and depravity in Moldova. Dealing with the thousands of women he'd pimped, beaten, or sold into slavery, he got to know all the weird and wonderful scents that leaked from their pores and dripped from their dark places. (I'd look at starting the story here and working in the locale and character description along the way. This smacks of "story" more to me than the preceding stuff. You could follow this paragraph with the two above, then go to the one that follows. Just a thought.)

His nostrils flared again.  He knew the perfume.  And he knew the scent that lay beneath the manufactured smell.

Old woman. (With his senses, he should also be able to smell the girl who is with here. I suggest you add his sensing of the girl here and a hint of what that means. What I'm looking for is the insertion of tension/conflict as early as possible, and character/locale descriptions don't do that for me. For example, if he senses the young woman, he might… Kocescu glances at an aging blue van parked down the street. Here came an opportunity, and his men had better be ready. Note: not that this is right; I think it could/should be more fraught.)

(here's where I would move the opening paragraphs to in order to set the scene, then insert a transition in the following paragraph to remind the reader, something such as: The scent of old woman grew stronger. Kocescu turned his…etc.)

Kocescu turned his head, knowing she'd be coming around the corner. An old woman didn't interest him. Most of Kocescu's clients preferred much younger delicaciesy. But for those who did enjoy (suggest "enjoyed" instead) a more mature interaction, he had two lively grandmothers on speed dial.  Just in case.

There.

She ambled around the corner with a slight limp, leaning forward just a bit. Kocescu figured both arthritis and an injury were to blame. But he stopped caring about the old woman when he saw she wasn't alone. ("caring about" doesn't seem appropriate to this character -- he wouldn't care about much of anything. Could it be something like: But he lost interest in the old woman when…etc.?)

Kocescu eased back into the recessed doorway of the building behind him. What, he wondered, would make an old woman come out on a day like this and walk through a dangerous section of town renowned for its whores? (no fair. the previous paragraph told us that he wasn't alone, and I think you're obligated to follow up on that, at least a little. Just move the that includes the girl up ahead of this one.)

Arrogance. He could see it in the way she moved.  Even with her various afflictions, he could sense anger and determination in the old gal. The way her jaw was set firm. The way she struggled to keep her chin up. The way she eyed the scene before her with a mixture of contempt and pity.

In the material that follows, J really gets his story moving, and I suspect the best opening is waiting to be unearthed from there. For what it's worth.

Thanks, J, for sharing your work.

RR

Free edit: 1,000 words of your novel's opening in exchange for permission to post it. I won't post it without your okay.