First contribution from me, so please be gentle!

I have only read the opening, not the complete story, so I am drectly addresssing the original question of whether those opening sentences "snag" or engage the reader.

I did not find myself snagged by "converted". For me, the more evocative word in that sentence was "mudflat" so my mind rather slid over the adjective to get there. That being the case, however, I found that the picture in my mind was of a typical empty mudflat, not a developed harbour at all. I assume that the fact that it is a harbour will be relevant to the story, so I found that opening sentence misdirecting me a little. I would have been better guided into the setting of the story by a more basic opening sentence, setting the scene a little more plainly before moving on to establishing the writer's feelings about it, or even the detail of the setting.

Tightly-elbowed - I found this a little jarring, simply because I don't know what it means. I don't know whether it is a technical or factual description, or whether it is a metaphor that misses its mark.

I had never been there when the tide was high - again, my mind tends to skim over this as irrelevant. In the first sentence, the author has begun the business of describing the scene - that is where my mind is. His/her experience is a distraction for me at that particular point in the opening - I want to know more about the setting.

Unlovely - I like it.

The shags/fish - I take two meanings from this and without reading on, I don't know whether the author intends me to take both meanings, or whether there was a clear intent for one meaning only to come through. One possible meaning is that the author has never been there because the birds and fish are of no interest - is he a fisherman? A birdwatcher? the other meaning is purely a descriptive one. A shag, for me, is a mean, slightly bleak bird, perhaps the kind of bird that would hang around hopefully in a place where the scrawny fish made for lean pickings.

So to conclude, I would probably read on. I would, however, probably be faintly irritated when I had to mentally refer back to the opening to revise the picture in my mind to "harbour", rather than "mudflat". I don't mind making that kind of mental re-visiting for the purpose of noting which of two meaning is the right one, as in the case of the shag/birds part of the opening, but I find it jarring to have to redraw my mental image based on an error. So for me, the opening is engaging, but with a couple of snags.

Maybe this thread should have been titled 'Snags, mostly'.

Jan

I read this whole thread because it purported to be about shagging. Can I have my money back?

Well, it's interesting to see that the shags are still bringing in the punters!

Anne, that's a very well-balanced and thoughtful response. If nothing else, it's been interesting to see such a wide range of responses to such a short piece. It shows, I guess, that while authors probably like to believe they're being specific, either with details or tone, in fact whatever they say is going to be interpreted differently.

Having said that, I still hold by my view that there are snags here. 'Tightly-elbowed' is a good example. Like you, I don't know what it means. And I would have thought that anyone who thinks they do would at least have to pause to decide if that's the case, which I'd say is still a snag. On the other hand, one thing that's come out of this thread is that some readers like the snags; like to think about the prose itself, even if it clunks against the story-flow.

Possibly, also, there will always be more ambiguity with writers who are interested in the prose itself, and imagery and mood. I'm having to read a bunch of thriller novels at the moment, and there is very little ambiguity there. They're telling a story in which the plot is king; therefore momentum is everything, so the last thing you want is snags to get in the way. Having said that, there still are snags but of a different kind, usually details that turn out to be superfluous to the plot, i.e. perhaps the opposite of 'artistic' writing.

Terry

Hi Terry, I loved 'tightly elbowed', could picture it immediately. It stood out for me, so you could perhaps call it a 'snag', but it was a very positive 'snag'!

Jan

This is interesting, in that it perhaps raises the question of how different people visualise the same verbal description. The reason I have trouble with this is I keep picturing an elbow and have trouble super-imposing it on a harbour, plus I don't really know what a 'tight' elbow looks like, just assume she means the lower arm is close to the upper arm rather than more open. Which tells me that I'm probably quite literal with mental imagery. Certainly, one of the things that used to irritate me about Harry Potter was JKR's loose or confusing imagery. For example, at one point she describes this stockade, mentioning that the walls are 30 feet high. Then she has Harry and a mate walking around it (i.e at ground level) when they see these two beasts in the middle of the stockade. Which I found mentally confusing since she hadn't mentioned any gates that were open - in fact, had given the impression the place was sealed - so how the feck could they see anything inside? More to the point, how am I, her diligent reader, supposed to picture it?

Terry

Obviously, Harry and his mate are giraffes.

I think of a stockade as being made up of poles driven into the ground with gaps between them so one can see into the compound.

However, if JKR described the stockade as having 'walls' (which sounds so solid), and without mentioning a gateway or other means of seeing inside, I can quite see how you might become confused.

Jan

<Added>

No, I have adjusted my mental image, the poles are close together in a stockade. Dunno, perhaps Alex was right.