I’m rewriting a story that I started, but never finished, in high school, some ten or so years ago. The pacing of the story was off though the matter of the story was engrossing enough for one of my teachers to take the time and miss his lunch break reading it, even though it was only ten or so pages at that point in time. I want to use the synopsis of the story and expand it to novel length, which I know will be quite a bit of work, but it’s something that I believe in and I think that should be done, for myself if nobody else.
This is the first few paragraphs of what I have re-written:
The sound of a crack of a whip and a shrill feminine scream echoes throughout the halls of the lower section of the confinement building. The lowest floor of the basement was, of course, an imprisonment area that was dimly lit with dirt floors thinly veiled in straw. Along both sides of a corridor are several open air cells with bars of cold iron, only a couple of which were occupied, though I could not see by whom. At one end of the corridor was a wooden door with a grate about head level; this grate was open to allow sound and air to pass through, maybe a bit of light when chance happens to allow this.
At some point my eyes had adjusted to the darkness though I can not say how long I had been here.
My eyes open halfway as I feel my body being lifted up by my arms and the sting of some metal manacles biting into my wrists. I don't really know where I am at the moment as the last thing that really comes to mind is sitting in a dark cell with straw on the dirt floor. The smell of which told me that I was not the only person to have been in that cell in the past few days, though there was nobody else there at the time. The reason I had gotten into that cell in the first place had been simple enough; I had been caught stealing from a bread merchant at a marketplace in Maltoria. Nonetheless I was here now.
Soon, my eyes raised up a bit to the person that was somewhat carrying me around and it was a largely-muscled and bald dark-skinned man wearing what seemed to be the remains of a canvas sleeveless shirt, the chains attached to the manacles slung over his left shoulder. I was not being dragged about long before the man stopped and turned, grabbing me around the throat with one massive hand and pressing me back against a wooden pole that was at least the size of my waist. His other hand lifted the chains attached to the manacles up to a hook that was a good three feet above my fingertips and attached them to a clasp there, it wasn't until then that I discovered where I was.
A slave market, I had been delivered into slavery by the law enforcement patrols...
I would appreciate some critique, the good, the bad and the ugly. I know my writing isn’t perfect but I’d like to know what other writers see that I don’t. New eyes and such.