Beginning Lines to THE VASE

I begin THE VASE by setting the tone for the weather. I pictured in my mind’s eye a blistering sun in a bare sky. If it was a movie, the first thing the audience would see is a blazing sun with those white lines emanating all around it. Then a bird’s eye view of Nazareth and the Galilee regions baking in the heat.

So what words conjure an image of a blazing sun? A merciless sun? A hot sun? A sun that takes no prisoners? Take into account there is a potter who works outside with no roof over his head. I thought that, to him, it would be a spiteful sun. Yeah, that’s it, a spiteful sun. So bingo, I nailed it. My first three words are: A spiteful sun. But again, I want my readers to picture those white lines that shine from a spiteful sun. What words would conjure those white rays you see when you squint your eyes at the sun?
White-hot tendrils. That’s what they are.

Now that I’ve established a reference as to what kind of day it is, I wanted to establish a point of reference as to where these white-hot tendrils are taking the reader. And what do these white-hot tendrils do when they get there? They shimmy, I believe, and the rolling hills of Galilee is where this story begins. So my first sentence reads like this:

A spiteful sun sliced the cloudless sky in white-hot tendrils that shimmied over the rolling hills of Galilee.

So from my first sentence, the reader already knows it’s day time, it’s a sunny and hot day, and it’s somewhere in the Galilee region of Israel.

Next, I want to give a more specific reference to what the place looks like, and what’s happening there. Well, most of the downtown buildings in Nazareth are roofed in red tile, and the streets are paved in black basalt. And at this point, the main idea I want to convey is the horrible heat baking the place. So my second sentence reads like this:

Red-tiled roofs and black streets of basalt scorched in dismay to the stellar onslaught.

By my third sentence, I want to introduce the main character, and his thoughts of the unusual conditions. So I went with this:

Throughout the region temperatures soared, and Muhsin Muhabi knew well it wasn’t normal for this time of year.

So let's put them together. Here we go:

A spiteful sun sliced the cloudless sky in white-hot tendrils that shimmied over the rolling hills of Galilee. Red-tiled roofs and black streets of basalt scorched in dismay to the stellar onslaught. Throughout the region temperatures soared, and Muhsin Muhabi knew well it wasn’t normal for this time of year.

Now as the editing process continues, some of that or maybe all of it may change. Hey, it's what revisions are all about, right? Let's see if they stick.