From: mdhangton@gmail.com   
      
   I think about it that way to an extent.   
   Below is an opening.  I try to begin in a conflict.  Bring reader into setting   
   and world fast. Show the POV character's station in the world, age, gender   
   directly; make it in no way a struggle to figure out.   
   You can see immediately reasons why it will never be published...there are a   
   lot of exotic character relationships, but the SF elements are subdued.  But   
   this is the best I can do to make the opening strong in this story.  I see   
   pulling the reader in as    
   an aspect of art and skill.  About editors, it has more to do with being a   
   prostitute.      
      
         "Jin Yu, where is your slave tag?"   
         "I don't know."  I threw it in the woods.   
         Wai Jan bent over to poke into the space under the    
   oven with a burning stick, then shoved it further into the    
   fire.  She made a big deal out of her stupid oven, said its    
   bricks were dug out of the ruins of Denver and some other    
   town, that nobody had made any good oven bricks for two    
   thousand years.  "Lauren will be upset if she sees you    
   without your tag."   
         Her voice made my head hurt.  "If Lauren owns me, then    
   how come the tag has a mark on it that Indians put on their    
   cows?"  I saw the brand last fall when they brought in a    
   steer's hindquarters for Wai Jan to braise.   
         Wai Jan straightened.  When she frowned, her rounded    
   nose crinkled and you could see into the nostrils.  She had    
   big boobs like the White Women, but she was shorter.     
   "We've explained this to you before.  You're a very    
   beautiful child.  You're old enough for someone to take you,    
   a strange Navajo or Apache.  Nobody would steal from Chief    
   Brightknife."   
         Then nobody would make me work in a fake restaurant.  I    
   mean, what was it?  Just a hogan with a sign over the door    
   that had Chinese letters burned onto it with a hot coal.   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)