Scratch

stevetheipad wrote:

Try starting without an introduction, it'll force people to pay attention and learn things about the setting based on little hints you give them.

I'd find it a bit confusing if I didn't have a clue who any of the characters are. An introduction is like the most important part in my opinion.

My father's family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.

That, in my opinion, is not in the slightest bit compelling. It's from Dickens' Great Expectations.

Jack Holloway found himself squinting, the orange sun full in his eyes. He raised a hand to push his hat forward, then lowered it to the controls to alter the pulse rate of the contragravity-field generators and lift the manipulator another hundred feet. For a moment he sat, puffing on the short pipe that had yellowed the corners of his white mustache, and looked down at the red rag tied to a bush against the rock face of the gorge five hundred yards away. He was smiling in anticipation.

That isn't action-y, but it's interesting and mysterious. 'What's he doing?' 'Who is he?' It's H. Beam Piper's Little Fuzzy. The mysterious opening line is probably the most widely used.

Buck did not read the newspapers, or he would have known that trouble was brewing, not alone for himself, but for every tidewater dog, strong of muscle and with warm, long hair, from Puget Sound to San Diego. Because men, groping in the Arctic darkness, had found a yellow metal, and because steamship and transportation companies were booming the find, thousands of men were rushing into the Northland. These men wanted dogs, and the dogs they wanted were heavy dogs, with strong muscles by which to toil, and furry coats to protect them from the frost.

That's the type that almost leaps into the action, but is more mysterious. It's Jack London's Call of the Wild. I can't find one that leaps right in, but I found an informal one.

YOU don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but
mainly he told the truth. That is nothing. I never seen anybody but lied one time or another, without it was Aunt Polly, or the widow, or maybe Mary. Aunt
Polly -- Tom's Aunt Polly, she is -- and Mary, and the Widow Douglas is all told about in that book, which is mostly a true book, with some stretchers, as I said before.

So, that's about all of them. Public domain books don't tend to have leapy openings so that's all I could find.

soupoftomato wrote:

LS97 wrote:

Andres-Vander wrote:

What's the difference? How's one better than the other?

Actually, both are fine. Both are also grammatically correct.
However, the former is describing a finite moment, whereas the second is a lot more description-like!

Actually, neither are more descriptive.
It uses different versions of the exact same words.
Actually, I would say since they have such close meaning you could use the one labeled "Wrong" to remove wordiness.

Well, actually, grammatically the "wrong" one is using simple past, whereas the "right" one is using past continuous. It is a fact that simple past is used for actions whereas past continuous is used for descriptions and (obviously) continuous actions.

Ergo, it is more description-like and more continuous 

Andres-Vander wrote:

LS97 wrote:

soupoftomato wrote:

Actually, neither are more descriptive.
It uses different versions of the exact same words.
Actually, I would say since they have such close meaning you could use the one labeled "Wrong" to remove wordiness.

Well, actually, grammatically the "wrong" one is using simple past, whereas the "right" one is using past continuous. It is a fact that simple past is used for actions whereas past continuous is used for descriptions and (obviously) continuous actions.

Ergo, it is more description-like and more continuous 

"Continuous actions"?

Actions that are prolonged in time while other finite ones happen.
For example,
"while I was making tea for my family, the doctor knocked at the door"

making tea: continuous
knocked: simple past (finite action)