the reader's point of view

The girl's screams echoed off the cavernous wall. The villain let out a cackle so chilling the dead should have woken.
       "Any last words?" the villain asked, an evil grin splashed across his face.
       "Help!"
       "A bit cliché, hmm?"
       The dagger moved ever closer, glinting in the pale light of the rising sun.
       A slight thud sounded on the wall. The villain forgot the girl in that moment. Suspiciously, he looked around. No one there, not at the window...
       The window glass gave out and shards went flying. The hero stood on the ground, a warrior's pose completed with a raised sword.
       "You nefarious, scheming villain!" the hero cried out. "You shall never succeed! Hand over the girl."

----

Did those beginning sentences grab your interest? I was trying for that. ;)

I like the uplifting moments. In the paragraph above, everything seems at its final moments for the girl. Then suddenly, the hero bursts in, guns blazing (or swords, in this case.).
      There's a book series you should seriously check out --Tales of Goldstone Wood by Anne Elisabeth Stengl-- that has epic moments like these. Just as everything seems lost, there's this prince who comes and offers you a hand.
       In a TV series --Merlin-- our main character is practically on his death bed, surrounded by these huge killer scorpion, and in comes a dragon who heals Merlin with magic and chases away the beasts.
       In the Hunger Games --oh wait, nothing uplifting happens there.

People like uplifting moments.

The reason I'm telling you this is, I'm giving you tips from a reader's point of view. I realized how helpful a reader's point of view is when my sister and I were editing, and I suddenly said, "No. Don't do that. I'm not going to read that. People just don't like that."
      She looked at me and was astonished. "They don't?"
      "No. They'll do it if you make that part shorter, put it here, do this..."
      It was something my friend and I had discussed, whether we'd read this particular scene or if we wouldn't. We didn't.
     My sister then began to ask me more questions. "Would you read this if I wrote it? What about this?"
     She didn't know. She had like the idea, but she didn't know that other people would skip this sort of thing. This is the importance of having someone else read your story because you're going to think, oh lovely, I like this so I'm going to put it in. This is because you're thinking from a writer's point of view.
      Not that that's a bad thing, just have a couple readers by your side.

--

The scene I wrote wasn't from any story, by the way, in case you wondered whether I would really write something that corny. But answer me these, please?

Did those first lines grab your interest?

Did you want to see what happened next?

I would like to use some answers in my next post.
What are your thoughts?

-The Writer