The Last First Page Friday

It is with some sadness that I announce today is the last First Page Friday.  We have been down in submissions for a while and we didn't have any others for the month.  After consulting with our amazing editors, we came to the conclusion that this feature has run its course.  (We've been doing it for over two years now.) I have learned so much and have been so grateful to the authors who have submitted their work and to Ms. Shreditor, Angela Eschler, and Heidi Brockback.  I really am indebted to these women for donating their expertise to help aspiring authors. I will miss working with them.  

I'm not sure what will replace First Page Friday yet, so if you have any ideas, let me know.  Thank you for being such great bloggy friends.  

See you next week!

The Entry

Untitled

by Kasey Tross

Kate opened her closet door and pulled out the garment bag. She laid it on the big canopy bed and unzipped the front to check its contents, trying to ignore the muffled undertones of the intense conversation going on in her parents' bedroom next door. Half the time she preferred it when they just yelled so she could at least hear which issue they were arguing about.

She pulled out the bib number from her last horse show and tossed it onto her desk, then fished around in the bottom of the bag for the rest of her show clothes. She found them crumpled up with her boot socks inside her black velvet helmet. Catching a whiff of their aroma, she wrinkled her nose, and tossed the bundle into her dry cleaning basket to be sent out the next day. As she zipped up the now empty garment bag she heard a door slam, followed by quick footsteps across the hallway's hardwood floor. Her door flew open and her mother stormed in.

Kate glanced up in surprise as her mother walked right past her into her closet. Kate's leather luggage set began hurtling out of the doorway, and she had to jump out of the way to keep from getting bowled over by the bulky suitcases coming at her.

"Mom, what are you doing?" she asked in alarm.

Her mother marched out of the closet and began picking up the suitcases from the floor and heaving them onto the bed. "Pack," she said. "You need to pack. We're leaving."

"What are you talking about?" Kate asked. "What do you mean we're leaving?"

"We're leaving," her mother repeated. "We're moving out."

Heidi Brockbank from Eschler Editing Comments

First Impressions: 

You’ve got some great elements that have potential for a strong start. The primary one is the fighting parents. That creates instant tension. Young readers will be able to empathize with Kate’s situation, and feel concerned at the situation of a possible divorce or separation. That could definitely get their attention. Kate is also a character with some intriguing personality traits, but with a little creative rearranging, you’ll be able to add more pizzazz to the start of your story. Let’s take a look at some possibilities.

Clear up the confusion:

When someone pulls out a garment bag or suitcase, the first thought is that they are packing. So I had to go back over this a few times to get that Kate is actually unpacking. Which was confusing when I thought she was already packing, and then her mother tells her to pack. If Kate is just getting back from a trip, why put the bag away before she unpacks? Or has it been awhile since the last trip and she is just now getting around to unpacking? But that doesn’t track if she needed her horse-riding gear for lessons or practice. So you’ve got some logistical issues to rethink and clarify.

Getting Hooked:

Nothing terribly wrong with your start, but it doesn’t dazzle yet. We’ve got a teenage girl (I’m assuming, but you don’t give much indication, so reader is left to guess) whose antagonist parents apparently are splitting up. That’s inferred. If that’s wrong, you’ve got to clarify things for the reader. We have no idea how old Kate is. Her mom comes in and starts packing for her, which would seem to indicate she is too young to do it for herself, but the tone suggests teenager. There is a sense of too much telling. Kate does this. She does that. The mom storms in. It comes across as rather matter of fact. What you need is something to make us care more about the character and what is happening. In order to make that happen, we need more context, and it would be helpful to get Kate’s thoughts. (The only place we get them right now is in the first paragraph when we get her reaction to her parents’ fighting.)

Capitalize on Your Strengths: 

The first sentence lacks intensity. A better place to start may be with the parent’s arguing. What are they arguing about anyway? You’ve given a hint of Kate’s response—the parents obviously fight a lot, to the point where Kate has gotten a little blasé about the whole business. A fight is a natural curiosity point. Who hasn’t eavesdropped on an argument? If someone in my family is having a fight, everyone else always has ears to doors, trying to figure out what’s up. Why isn’t Kate doing that? If this is a more intense argument than usual, Kate would notice it.

What’s different about this fight that suddenly the parents are quits? Something must be different, because even spouses that are hostile and used to fighting won’t get out of their comfort zone unless there has been some escalation in their hostilities. So you could use that to crank the tension and conflict.

Show and Tell: 

Perhaps you could show more about Kate. Did she win the horse show? Why do her parents fight? Does she think it is about her (whether that’s true or not)? Is it about money? What if they are fighting over her and her horse shows? She is careless with her horse stuff which makes me think that she doesn't really care about it, but that it is more of a burden to her. She tosses her bib on the desk, her clothes are crumpled and dirty for who knows how long. There is also a lot of activity that is unnecessary, when we would rather have Kate’s thoughts: She opened the closet and pulled out the bag, she laid it on the bed, she zipped it back up, etc.

What we do know about her: Kate is a bit sloppy. She left her dirty clothes in a bag in her closet for who knows how long? And yet she has a dry cleaning basket in her room? That is an interesting contradiction. While you don’t want to slow the impact of your opening with too many extraneous details, any information that gives insight into the character or the situation is always helpful at the start. And conveying this information by helping the reader see it through the main character’s eyes is even better.


Next Steps: 

Inject some tension, conflict, and curiosity into the opening, especially the first sentence.

Show more—the parents’ fight would be a good place to start. And give more conflict.

Give us more of Kate’s thoughts and reactions. Give us a better picture of what is happening and why. Have the parents fought her whole life, or is this a more recent development?

Give us more info about Kate. Is she an only child? Does she have siblings? Is she rich? Is money tight, and stuff like the riding lessons has only put a strain on the budget? Besides a bored resignation to her parents’ fights, what else does she feel? Even if your parents have a pretty stable, happy relationship, I’d guess most kids absolutely feel sick when their parents fight. This is a subject I think everyone can identify with Kate with on some level, so use that to your advantage by getting the reader inside Kate’s head and heart and letting them experience her thoughts and feelings.

How else could you start the story? Kate coming in from a riding competition ready to share her victory, only to find her mom has already packed the bags? Kate’s mom picking her up from the airport with her packed bags already in the car? Kate coming home to walk right in on the argument? And maybe pausing in the entry way and hearing some of the confrontation?

Give us more info, period. Unless we know more about Kate, her parents, their conflict, and what spurs the mom to decide to leave, it’s hard to care deeply about the story.

I can see lots of exciting places you could take this opening. Put some of these suggestions in place, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised at how much stronger you can make an already promising start. Good luck and happy writing!

First Page Friday

Well, my friends, it is Friday and time for First Page Friday!  This author was critiqued by Heidi from Eschler Editing last month and made the suggested corrections before submitting to Ms. Shreditor for her take. Ms. Shreditor put in her longest critique today and I, for one, am applauding her for all she does in her attention to detail and in helping writers.  Thank you!

See you all next week.

The Entry
Entangled
by Ellen Bahnsen

Jillian McConaghy and her supervisor, Raina Goldstein, walked toward the elevators the Friday evening before Raina’s long awaited, one-month vacation.

When they reached the elevator bank, Raina pushed the call button for down. She looked straight into Jillian’s eyes and asked, “Are you ready to take on Graham Parker by yourself Monday morning?”

Jillian hesitated, turned, and looked at the floor. “Yes, I am.”

Raina looked over her shoulder to assure no one else was around. “Remember what we discussed yesterday. Watch your back with Neal Bosch. Even though he is Graham’s brother – actually, half-brother – he is sneaky and a slacker. Graham doesn’t want him in his office. I really think Neal wants to get rid of Graham and take his CEO job. Do you understand the challenge of working with them every day?”

“I get it, Raina.” The elevator door pinged open. Jillian followed Raina onto the elevator.

A deep voice yelled in the distance, “Hold the elevator, Raina.” Jillian’s heart thumped in her chest. She knew that sexy voice belonged to the man she secretly loved.

Raina put her hand out to stop the elevator doors from closing as their boss jumped in. “Thanks, Raina.”

Graham put his arm around his lead secretary’s shoulder and presented his most adoring smile. “You know I’m going to miss you. Is it too late to change your mind?”

Graham feared working alone with Jillian for the next month. He needed Raina’s mothering demeanor to guard Jillian and to restrain him from his secret passion for Jillian. She was unlike any woman he ever met with her youthful beauty and innocence.

“Not this time, Graham. My vacation is long overdue.”

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

This week’s first page is a resubmit from last month. Heidi wrote a comprehensive critique that addressed key problems and provided some great solutions. What we see this week are the fruits of that amazing feedback.

The first thing I noticed: this week’s sample was a more appropriate length given Julie’s submission guidelines. Last week’s first page weighed in at 389 words and ran nearly two double-spaced pages. This week’s sample is much more in keeping with the First Page Friday guidelines, and I cannot stress enough how important those guidelines are to follow in the publishing world.

Another key change: The author has followed Heidi’s advice and dialed down the information dumping on this page. No longer are there endless names and complex relationships flying at the reader in rapid succession. Instead, the author introduces us to just a few characters at a time, making the information much more manageable for the reader.

In this week’s version, I think that the first sentence needs to do more. It sets the scene and introduces Jillian and Raina, but there’s no dramatic impact here to hook the reader. I actually liked that last week’s version opened with a meaty piece of dialogue that established immediate conflict. This first sentence doesn’t tell us much about the story about to unfold beyond a passing mention of Raina’s upcoming vacation.

Point of View

My problem with the first few paragraphs is that it’s unclear whose story/point of view this is. We don’t really get inside anyone’s head until Jillian’s heart thumps and she reveals that she’s secretly in love with Graham. That’s more than halfway down the page, so the reader spends the first few paragraphs trying to figure out whose story this is. Just when we’ve figured it out, the story head-hops to Graham without a change of chapter or scene. It is so important to keep perspective consistent within a scene or chapter; the reader must be clear at all times who is narrating.

Dialogue

You also want to make sure that your dialogue flows naturally. Read it out loud to yourself and ask yourself if this is how you and your friends would talk. When Raina discusses Neal with Jillian, it feels more like an information dump disguised as dialogue. Unless Jillian is a brand-new employee, which she certainly wasn’t in the original first page, she would already know a lot of the basic information Jillian shares—e.g., Neal’s last name, that he and Graham are half brothers, that he is a sneaky slacker, etc. You might try recasting like this: “Remember, watch your back with Neal. I really think he wants Graham’s CEO job. Can you handle being in the middle?” Of course, a writer strikes a fine balance between dumping too much information or providing not enough. What I’ve tried to do with my edit is make the dialogue sound like something someone would actually say out loud in conversation.

Characterization

I think that this first page is on the right track. It has zeroed in on a smaller set of characters, but we still need to understand these people better. Jillian meekly stares at the floor and listens to Raina as she speaks. She’s a very passive participant in her own scene, and just when we get a pulse (literally), the perspective shifts abruptly to Graham.

We do get inside Graham’s head a little, but we need more. The story tells us that he is in love with Jillian and offers up the perfunctory explanation that she’s innocent and beautiful, but there has to be a deeper connection here to hook the discerning romance reader—a friendship, private jokes, shared pain or workplace stress. He has to love more about her than just her appearance. Moreover, we get some
troubling cues from the text about him that I suspect were inadvertent. He slings his arm casually around Raina in the elevator, behavior that violates employee conduct rules in most workplaces, particularly given that he’s Rain’s supervisor and in a position of power. What’s more, he implies that if it weren’t for Raina, he’d have trouble controlling himself around Jillian. I think you want to be careful not to let Graham’s workplace interactions cross the line into inappropriateness.

Overall Impression

The author has put in a lot of hard work to create a first page that only resembles the original in the barest of ways. We’re getting to know key characters a little better, and we’re getting to the meat of the story—the blossoming romance between Graham and Jillian—right off the bat. You just want to make sure to hook the reader from the beginning with an attention-demanding opening sentence and present your characters in the third dimension from the outset. Keep up the good work, because you’re definitely on the right track.

First Page Friday

So glad it's Friday and we get another installment of First Page Friday!  Today we are talking a bit about hooks and backstory, something we can all work on I think. 

As always, thank you to our editors and authors who go to so much time and effort so we can all learn the craft of writing.

If you would like your first page critiqued by our amazing editors, submit your double-spaced, 12 pt font, first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com.  We have two openings left in September, so hurry and submit! Critiques are scheduled in the order in which they are received.

See you next week!

The Entry
The Night is Gone
by A.R. Talley

Tristan didn’t remember his driveway being quite so long. The last time he had seen it, the trees lining the pavement were gray and bare. Now the oaks were in full bloom and alive with the green of a warm, wet summer. Tristan wondered what the other kids at the Midpoint Center for Drug and Alcohol Addiction would think of his home and his life here. Most shared a life similar to his—wealthy, respected in the community—the illusion of perfect families.

Even considering their shared backgrounds and addictions, Tristan had been different from the rest. Most of the kids were bored—turned to substance abuse for entertainment or rebellion. Most of them had come from broken homes where parents tried to make amends with money and leniency. Tristan’s home wasn’t broken—at least not in that sense. He had been raised in an atmosphere of family devotion and religious straightjackets. But, perhaps straightjacket was too harsh a word.

As all 7000 square feet of the brick colonial that he called home came into sight, Tristan knew on some level he had taken his privileged life for granted. His family was better than what most of those kids had. And he had almost squandered it for a momentary escape from standards he thought impossible to keep. No. He knew they were impossible to keep. But in retrospect, he wished he could. He really did want his life to be different now.

“We made some changes to your bedroom,” his mother said somewhat apologetically. Tristan had watched her closely in the mostly silent drive from the airport. Allison McKinney was petite, with a flair of auburn hair that she always wore up in some kind of hair clip. The only time Tristan could remember seeing his mother with her hair down was when he was little, when he and his twin sister, Tessa, would climb into her bed early in the morning for a cuddle. As a little boy, he remembered feeling proud—he had the prettiest mother of any of his friends.

“What kind of changes,” he asked.

“It may appear a bit Spartan to you,” his father answered.


Comments by Heidi From Eschler Editing

What works:

The writing is solid, grammatically clean, with no major mistakes. It is a promising enough start, with perhaps the exception of too much backstory, which is easily resolved by starting at a different point in time. You’ve got great potential here for a human drama full of pain, struggle, and conflict. The nature of the struggle has got lots of room for your character to grow over the course of the story. So let’s look at a few things that could get in the way of a great story.

What needs re-thinking:

• At this point, we don’t have any solid reason to become emotionally invested in the main character, and you need that emotional connection to go from good to great. What reason do we really have to care for this character? The initial perception is that Tristan is whiny and perhaps a bit spoiled. 

His “excuse” for his actions is that he couldn’t keep “impossible standards.” That may come across the reader like he was too weak to keep them. What standards are being referred to here? Staying out of drugs or alcohol? Know lots of people who kept that one. No sleeping around? Know a lot that kept that also. Keep up good grades? While working to help the family? And being honest and kind? Ditto. My guess is that most of your audience will have kept some standard or another, and to them, this will immediately sound like the cop-out that it is (he wasn’t bored into drugs—no, it was his religious family that made him do it). Even if there was a real extenuating circumstance, we don’t know that yet, so this is what people will be likely to think. No standards are impossible to keep. History is full of examples who held themselves to values (also plenty of examples of people who didn’t with sad results). So basically, he’s not strong enough to keep a rule?

• Tristan wondered what the other kids at the Midpoint Center for Drug and Alcohol Addiction would think of his home and his life here. Most shared a life similar to his—wealthy, respected in the community—the illusion of perfect families. But his life isn’t similar to the other kids. For one, his family doesn’t appear to be broken in the traditional sense. And it’s stated that he isn’t bored. The only similarity seems to be the wealth. Also, if the kids come from broken families, how are those families maintaining the illusion of perfection? Mixed signals here.

Another vague message: He had been raised in an atmosphere of family devotion and religious straightjackets. Talk about opposite ends of the spectrum: family devotion co-existing with fanaticism?

But, perhaps straightjacket was too harsh a word. So is he backpedaling? Should we assume that this is just his opinion—and one that may be distorted at that? The line about religious strait-jackets is good because it catches our attention and pushes buttons but we have no evidence that his family is fanatic other than his opinion. The idea could be really intriguing if you expanded more on defining the strait-jacket rather than leaving it to the reader—in this isolated case—because our assumptions don't bond us. But it has potential.

• Speaking of family, it is odd that we have three whole paragraphs where we don’t even know his parents are there. Then we get a bit of a tangent about his mother’s hair and appearance, but it doesn’t seem to have much relevance to the story. Perhaps it does, but this may not be the best place to explore that. 

• No driving force. What is the real problem of the story going to be? The conflict is poorly defined—we have a hint of past conflict (he’s coming home from rehab) and we can guess about future potential conflict, but it’s unspoken, vague. In non-fiction, you have a thesis statement. Usually within the first paragraph or page, you tell your audience what your essay/article is about. Fiction actually works better when you borrow that rule—let your audience know quickly what the conflict/problem is going to be. In this case, is it that Tristan is weak enough that he is going to risk falling back? Did he fall in with a bad crowd and they are going to try and drag him down again?

Or will it be conflict with his family? His mother? His father? A younger sibling that is going down the wrong path? A dysfunctional family? In that case, what is the underlying problem in the family, beyond pat answers like “religious strait-jackets”?

• How long was he in rehab? Why the Spartan room? The reason for that escapes me. Is he likely to be suicidal? Is this punishment from his family? Seems very strange without explanation. 

• We are in Tristan’s head a lot (that can be good) but opening with more action would create more intensity. He’s driving (or being driven) and thinking and looking at how the scenery has changed, and unless he’s got amazing, compelling thoughts, it’s kind of slight. Action is better, or at least more dialogue. Show more, tell less. Instead of so much explaining and labeling Tristan’s emotions, try instead to demonstrate them with his action, body language, and dialogue.

Next Steps: 

• Consider starting the story someplace where you get more action, more bang for your buck. For instance, Tristan walking back into class? The whispers and stares from the other kids in the hallway. Having one of his old friends try to talk him back into his addiction? Have his dealer confront him in the parking lot at high school?

• Let the reader know upfront what the main conflict will be, or at least hint at it. 

• Look for places to show instead of tell. Telling plays an important role in most stories, so you don’t need to avoid it completely. Just be sure that you keep it balanced with plenty of action and dialogue. 

Everyone loves a story where the protagonist overcomes their weaknesses and redeems themselves. If that’s where your story is heading, that could be a great read. Even if you take off on another angle, it seems like you’ve got lots of room for creating a story packed with emotion and drama.

Happy writing and best of luck.

First Page Friday

I love it when we have critiques like this.  Makes for a great beginning to the weekend.  I hope you enjoy it, too.

If you would like to have your first page critiqued, please submit your DOUBLE-SPACED, 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com  September is quickly filling up, but there are still spots left.

As always, thank you to Ms. Shreditor and our author for their hard work.

See you next week!


The Entry
HARM
by Kathy Kale

The upper floor office suite in the upscale Prosperity Capital Group Building said it all: Art Farber was finally on top. With the fall of his major competitor, Art’s company was set to become the number one manufacturer of chemotherapy drugs in the country. He had to expand, go big, and this was just the beginning.

Missy, the realtor, towering beside him, reeled off the selling features. Twelve foot high ceilings, rare black marble floors, teak trim imported from India. At twenty-nine, she was ambitious, both a digger and a climber, a reminder of four ex-wives. Missy wanted the commission, but flaunted the low interest rate. If Art assumed the terms of the current mortgage, he could lock in an excellent price.

He strode to the north window and stared at a wall of skyscrapers off Broadway. He had to ramp up production and needed more space. Drug manufacturing could stay in the New Jersey warehouse, but top management would move. Production was set to double. Art made a four-drug cocktail that was used to combat leukemia, breast, pancreatic, liver, skin, kidney, stomach, and colon cancer. Everything under the sun except brain cancer, thanks to the blood-brain barrier. The complete treatment of thirty-two injections over an eight-week period cost forty thousand dollars, retail. With one out of four people coming down with cancer every year, and no end to the war in sight, he had a guaranteed market.

Missy stood at the doorway. “It won’t last long,” she said. “Not at this price. Not in this location.”

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

I absolutely love the first sentence of this story, particularly the bit at the end: “Art Farber was finally on top.” That’s a loaded sentence right there. If Art Farber is on top in the first sentence of the story, there’s really only one direction for him to go from here. (Hint: It’s not up.) To paraphrase the last sentence of the first paragraph, this is just the beginning indeed.

This first page sets up a lot of stakes right off the bat: Art has established himself as a leader in the cancer drug field, and his business is booming so fast that he can hardly keep up with the demand. We also get enough description of Missy, his realtor, to suggest that she may be a major character in the story. (However, the description of her as the prototypical ambitious career woman is a bit reductive, but I imagine we’ll learn more about her later.) If I’m right that Missy is to be a major character, it sounds like the kind of high-powered couple that can go one of two ways: 1) They conquer the world together, or 2) They fall from the top together. It would be interesting to find out if I was right about any of these first-page impressions.

Missy does serve a larger narrative purpose than merely selling Art his office space. As Art describes her, he lets it slip that she reminds him of his four ex-wives. That’s a pretty hefty rap sheet. Readers can start to make some assumptions about Art now that they know this tidbit. In all likelihood, he is married to his job and doesn’t have much time to build real relationships with other people. We’re left wondering what else he has done to make four separate marriages fail. (Perhaps it’s unfair of me to assume that the divorces were his fault, but he is the common denominator here.)

One thing I like in particular about this first page is that it takes place in New York, but it’s not a touristy depiction of the city. It feels organic and not like a vision of the city culled from Google and travel guides. (I’ve read some published books set in New York and was convinced the authors had never experienced the city beyond Google.) I think what this first page gets right is that the description of the city doesn’t linger too long on tired NYC clichés—e.g., “towering skyscrapers,” “the bustle of the city streets,” etc.

A minor fact-checking detail: I was floored by the “one out of every four people coming down with cancer every year” statistic, so I did a bit of research. From what I can surmise, it’s not that one out of every four people gets cancer every year; instead, one out of every four deaths is from cancer. I’d recommend revising the sentence to reflect this distinction. It’s still a pretty sobering statistic.

Overall, there’s not much I would change here beyond some minor punctuation-level tweaks. This first page seems submission-ready.

First Page Friday

I'm excited for today's First Page Friday because we're talking about introducing characters.

As always, thank you to our author and editor for all their time and effort.  If you would like your first page critiqued by a national editor please submit your double-spaced 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com

See you next week!

The Entry
Entangled
by Ellen Bahnsen

“Are you ready to take on Graham by yourself,” Bruce asked.

“Yes, I am,” Jillian lied. Jillian McConaghy sat with her supervisor Raina Goldstein and her husband Bruce for dinner at Budekan restaurant in downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Raina and Bruce were leaving Monday morning for a long-deserved, one-month cruise along the Mediterranean. She wondered if Raina knew how she felt about their boss. Jillian feared to be alone with Graham. Never, ever would she tell to anyone, but she had a huge crush – more than a crush – on their boss, the young and attractive Graham Parker. She was in love with the out-of-wedlock son of Arthur Bosch, owner, CEO, and President of Bosch Consolidated.

Raina had told Jillian in her initial interview that she worked at Bosch Consolidated for over twenty-five years and worked for Graham Parker the young Chief Operating Officer for the last two. Jillian worked as Raina’s assistant the summer before her senior year at college and since she graduated five months ago. Jillian held a degree in public relations from Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey; however, the recession only afforded her the opportunity to work as a secretary for a holding company in Center City Philadelphia. Bosch Consolidated, outside of its main shipping business, owned several companies, including a real estate agency and a small public relations firm in which she hoped to transfer eventually. She needed to prove herself first with Raina and then with Graham.

After Bruce paid the check, he escorted the ladies from the table. Jillian spied Neal Bosch, the young Chief Financial Officer at Bosch Consolidated and Graham’s half-brother. He sat at the bar watching her. A tall, statuesque brunette-haired woman sat next to him observing the door with impatience. Jillian thought Neal approachable and very attractive. He gave her a charming smile so she smiled back. She heard the office gossip about Graham and Neal. They were born six months apart with Neal as the oldest. Arthur Bosch had an affair with Graham’s mother while married to Neal’s mother. She also knew Mr. Bosch had two older daughters from his first marriage, a younger son, Bryce, who also worked at Bosch Consolidated, from his third marriage, and now there were twin, six-year old girls from Mr. Bosch’s fourth marriage. Graham was one of seven children – all half siblings.

Heidi Brockbank from Eschler Editing Comments

What Works

The Bosch family’s rather unconventional genesis could be very interesting. There’s definitely material here for satire, social commentary, or dark humor. You’ve also put a lot of thought into adding details to help establish the setting and bring the reader up to speed with what I assume is going to be a central issue to the story, given the amount of focus on Graham and his unusual family dynamics. However, you want to be careful not to go the other direction and overwhelm your audience with so much information all at once.

Things to Consider 

There is a multitude of people/relationships the reader has to track. Imagine being set down in the middle of a party with people you’ve never met, and having all these introductions and backgrounds and relationships given to you in two minutes, and then you spend the rest of the party totally befuddled about who’s who and what’s what. That’s what too much info can do to the best of readers. In this beginning, we are introduced to seventeen characters, either by name or implication: Jillian, her supervisor Raina, Raina’s husband Bruce, Jillian’s boss Graham, his father Arthur Bosch and his half-brothers Neal and Bryce, a nameless brunette who appears to be with Neal, Arthur’s two daughters from another marriage, Graham’s mother that Arthur had an affair with, twin daughters from yet another marriage, not to mention his four marriages. Assuming all (or most) of these people know each other to some degree, that’s 136 different relationships created by that group. And they are all complete strangers to the reader. You see the problem.

Another problem I see right at the start—it’s unclear that Bruce is Raina’s husband. I had to read the paragraph twice before I realized that Jillian wasn’t calmly sending her husband off on vacation with another woman. I’d look for ways to avoid bringing an unnecessary character at this point—so give Bruce the ax, at least for the time being. He’s part and parcel of the plethora of people we don't know anything about so we can't instantly make the right connections.

Aside from characters, the reader also has to try and keep straight their titles, the corporate structure of Bosch Consolidated, Jillian’s resume and work history, and the Goldstein’s travel plans. While it’s true that you want to give enough information in the first pages of a story so that your audience can get their bearings and have an idea of what is going on, information on this magnitude can drown the reader and wash them out to sea before they even get to the good part of the story. More importantly, too much information too soon leaves no room for more essential information: thoughts, feelings, emotions, and motivations.

The main thing is that you want to give good information to the reader. Too little information can be just as deadly to your story as too much. But the information has to be timely and relevant and must aid in setting up the story-worthy problem and engaging our curiosity right from the start. A lot of the information in this opening could wait for a few more pages, or even a few more chapters.

Where’s the Problem?

In addition, I can’t find the real hook in any of this. It may be there, hidden from view, or the excess info may simply be acting like a magician’s sleight of hand to hide the fact that there really isn’t a substantial hook. Where is the problem for the main character? What is the event that is changing his/her world?

There’s the out-of-wedlock son. This would be a grave problem in a regency romance. An illegitimate child could not inherit the lands or the title. Graham would not be able to play a major role at his father’s company or even possibly be allowed to mingle in polite society. Nowadays, this doesn’t hold the same onus. Even if your personal ethics or creed has reservations against having children outside of marriage, and even though children born outside of marriage have definite financial, educational, and social disadvantages, society has shifted completely in how they are received in general, so I don’t see that being a big stumbling block in Jillian’s relationship with Graham.

Jillian has a crush on the boss—pretty typical if your boss is handsome and you are young and naïve. But I’m not sure that’s gripping enough to be the story-worthy problem. She’s scared of him, but I’d guess shy is a more accurate description. Unless you want to imply that she’s attracted to him, but he has a dark side that she’s seen hints of in the past. That could get our attention.

Showing versus Telling:

You want to swap out some of the telling for showing. Give us a more interactive scene with Jillian as the central player. What if this story started with women at the office cooler dishing over their hot boss? Jillian could be part of the conversation, but at the same time, you could show her internal thoughts as counterpoint to the outward conversation. The reader could compare/contrast the women’s attitudes to Graham next to Jillian’s, who could be cool, nonchalant, or flippant on the outside, but inside, she could be in the throes of a massive, unrequited crush. You could even have Graham walk by and interact with the women. Would he be charming and flirt with them? Would he be all work and no play, and growl at them to get back to work? You’ve got a lot of ways to introduce us to the hero and heroine.

Every story needs a story-worthy problem. For romance, a good working model is to have a short-term problem and a long-term problem. These could be thought of as a surface or external problem which brings the couple together and a deeper, often internal problem, such as a character flaw or painful experience in their past that creates conflict and presents a barrier that makes it difficult for the couple to be together. Graham’s family history has potential for lots of emotional pain. He may be distrustful of relationships in general, due to his father’s poor example of marital fidelity. Jillian should have her own internal problems. Without these deeper problems adding conflict and tension to the story, you end up with weak tea.

Your Next Steps

Consider limiting the number of characters to three or less in the opening page. You’ve got an entire book to introduce the rest of the gang, giving the reader a chance to get to know them one by one.

Show more, tell less. Use action and dialogue to create a scene that lets the reader experience the unfolding events without relying too much on narrative summary. Instead of telling the readers about Graham’s unusual family, let them experience it through the characters’ interactions with each other. There is room for telling, but keep the balance tilted to more showing and you’ll end up with a more engaging story.

Check out Leigh Michael’s On Writing Romance. It has lots of great examples on how to work short and long-term problems into your plot.

I’m interested to see where you go with this story. A well-written romance is fun and entertaining. It’s always satisfying to see two people overcome the obstacles that keep them apart and find true happiness. Best of luck and happy writing!

First Page Friday

I am excited it's Friday because I have some great plans for the weekend AND because we get another First Page Friday!  Today Ms. Shreditor talks about scene flow and tension, something I can always work on.

As always, thank you to the author and our editor for their efforts.  If you would like your first page critiqued, send your double-spaced 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com We still have one opening for August.

See you next week!

The Entry
The Cove
by Julie Spencer

“Why did you do that?” she demanded, standing in his lit doorway, dripping wet in her custom-made designer swimsuit. He stood with the screen door still closed between them, a look of confusion and anger across his face. Gail pushed the door opened and stomped into his house, not really caring that she was leaving water all across his linoleum floor. He silently grabbed the kitchen towel from the handle on the stove and stooped down to wipe up the mess. Out of spite, she grabbed her long hair in her hands and wrung the water from it so that it left an even bigger pool of water beside her. He just took a deep breath, as if to calm himself into not getting angry, and wiped up that mess as well. When he stood up, he tossed the towel at her chest.

“Dry yourself off,” Todd snapped at her. “You’re making a mess in my kitchen.” He walked back over to the counter where he had been making himself a sandwich. The thought occurred to her that she didn’t know how he could possibly be hungry after the huge buffet he’d had access to for the last few hours. It passed quickly when she reminded herself how angry she was with him.

“Why did you have to show up there anyway?” she asked, a little less fiercely but still with intended bitterness.

“I was invited!” He turned back to her with fierceness in his eyes. “By your fiancé!” He spat the words at her and she flinched back from his accusing eyes. He stepped away from the counter and crossed the room to her. She was kind of glad that he had put down the knife he had been using to cut the salami for his sandwich. Not that she thought he would ever really get that mad that he might hurt her, it just would have felt a little more threatening. “Do you have any idea how much Patrick loves you? How much it’s going to hurt him when he finds out that you’re engaged to someone else?”

Ms. Shreditor Comments

This story certainly cranks up the drama. There’s a strong undercurrent of anger and resentment between Gail and Todd as she drips water on his floor and he slices his sandwich meat. I’m a bit confused about the sequence of events here, though. If I’ve read correctly, Gail has been swimming while Todd was at some sort of event with Gail’s fiancé, Patrick. Gail comes charging in, asking why he’s done something, but it’s unclear how we’ve gotten to this point, with the two of them facing off at his door. Did she hear Todd’s car drive up while she was swimming and approach the house? If Todd is her man on the side, why is she at his house swimming while he’s not home? Or is Patrick the man on the side?

This first page leaves me with a lot of unanswered questions. How did Gail end up engaged to two men at once? There are plenty of stories involving characters who are involved with two people at once, but having this character be engaged to both of them ups the ante quite a bit. How do Todd and Patrick know one another? Which one did Gail get engaged to first? (If she accepted Patrick’s proposal after she got engaged to Todd, it seems odd that Todd would have stayed with her. If she got engaged to Patrick first, why would Todd have gone so far as to propose to her when she was already engaged? That’s a huge leap.)

There are a lot of effective devices at work in this scene—the way the dripping water heightens the tension, Todd’s very palpable anger, and the love triangle already in motion. I’ve mentioned in past columns that the first page should leave the reader with questions that propel them to the next page, and the next. However, I feel like we’ve stumbled into the middle of a story without enough context to make sense of what’s happening.

So what’s the solution? It’s a tough call. I like so much about how this scene flows, so I wouldn’t want to reinvent the wheel if I were editing this. I would, however, want to drop a few more details to ground the reader and provide some much-needed context. In reading this story, we’re signing on for what promises to be a juicy love triangle (a plot that will sell books until the end of time), but if we’re going to stick with it, we need to understand a few key details about the two relationships in question.

First Page Friday

This was a fun First Page Friday because I really wanted to read more of this story!  Ms. Shreditor has some great points, and I'm wondering now what the answers are to her questions.  These are the kind of First Page Fridays that I really learn from.

As always, thank you to our author and editor for their effort.  You are so appreciated!

If you would like to have your first page critiqued by a national editor, submit your double-spaced 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com with First Page Friday in the subject line.  We have one opening left in August.

See you next week!


The Entry
Better Than Fiction
by Emily Clawson

Isabella raised a hand to her forehead and sighed. How could he say such things to her? Wasn't it enough that her uncle was forcing her into this marriage against her will? Against her heart. She had suffered enough. Frederick's words only confused her more.

        "Say you will be mine. My dear Isabella, I can't live without you." He held his hands out in a silent plea. Isabella could only stare at him - so strong, so handsome in his black, silk tails and creamy satin cravat. For just a moment she wanted to reach for his hands, to let him take her away from her Uncle's cruel control. But she was too afraid he would hurt her.

        "I can't Frederick. I must be true to my heart." She blinked, a single tear falling from her lavender eyes. 

        "So must I”, he replied, pulling her roughly into his arms. "And you, my darling, are my heart. You are my soul and my very reason for living." 

        Isabella sighed again, this time in defeat. How could she resist any longer? With a groan of delight, Frederick bent his head to steal a kiss.

My iPod reached the end of the playlist and the music disappeared, pulling me away from the words on the computer screen. Wasn't that playlist three hours long? A quick glance at the clock sent me scurrying to get dressed for work.

Whisker Face brushed against my leg, nearly tripping me as I tried to pull off my pajamas.

"Not now, sweetie. I spent too much time writing and I'm late." He slunk away to curl up on my chair, enjoying the warmth I'd left behind. 

How I envied him. Staying home and spending my day with Isabella and Frederick was much more inviting than the Java Stop. Eight hours of dispensing and mixing lattes for the same crowd, always rushing in and rushing out. I was pretty sure I was the only Mormon girl who constantly smelled like coffee.

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

I’m sensing a trend! The structure of this sample reminds me very much of the one I critiqued a few weeks ago. It starts with a passage from the protagonist’s work in progress and then flips to the protagonist’s perspective. I do tend to enjoy this tactic because, really, who doesn’t like a good literary fakeout? I particularly liked that the author italicized the font in the excerpt from narrator’s manuscript. The slight variation in typography makes it clear that the opening paragraphs are an entity separate from the regular roman text that follows.

I want to be sensitive as I critique the excerpt from the heroine’s novel in progress, because I’m not entirely certain my reaction was the intended one. The thing is, it amused me. It’s a hotbed of romance clichés, from the hand to the forehead to the theatrical sighing, from the emotionally overwrought dialogue to the forced marriage setup, from Frederick’s rough handling of Isabella to his groan of delight, from Isabelle’s lavender eyes to Frederick’s stolen kiss. It was good, campy fun, and if it was written to be just that, the author of this week’s first page fired on all cylinders. Working that many romance writing tics into half a page indicates a really sophisticated understanding of what does and doesn’t work in a story.

After I read the protagonist’s narrative in the second half, I went back and re-read the Isabella/Frederick scene through new goggles. It reads a lot like wish fulfillment fiction (i.e., the author writes herself, thinly disguised as the heroine, into a fantasy scenario to live out her unfulfilled desires). Is this the case here? If so, the work in progress acts as an unconventional vehicle for characterization. We learn more about the narrator through that scrap of writing than we might from a few lines of straight biography. Perhaps our narrator is feeling unfulfilled in her love life. Perhaps she has been treated cruelly by someone in her past, much like Isabella has been mistreated by her uncle. Perhaps her own life is so unexciting that she escapes to fictional realms to spice things up.

Ultimately, I choose to believe that the author wrote Isabella’s part of the story with the intention to violate as many tenets of good romance writing as possible, that this story reflects a certain romantic immaturity on the protagonist’s part that will develop as the story progresses. If I’m right, I think we have a pretty good first page here!

First Page Friday

Can you believe it's Friday already? This week has flown by.  I'm so excited about today's First Page Friday critique because it's on memoir.  Someday I'll write my own memoirs and hopefully have this post bookmarked!

If you would like your first page critiqued by a national editor, submit your double-spaced 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com with First Page Friday in the subject line.  We still have two openings in August.

As always, thank you to our editor and author for their time and effort.

See you next week!

The Entry
Dreamed I Could Fly
by Lee Hinkle

In college, I was a cheap date. If a guy asked me what I’d like to do, I’d often suggest a drive out to the end of Imperial Boulevard1, which runs parallel to the south side of Los Angeles International Airport to watch airplanes take off and land. If he didn’t know me very well, the guy inevitably interpreted my response as a come-on and would happily, eagerly agree to the excursion. However, by the third date, he would likely sigh and say something like “Not again.” If our relationship made it as far as a fourth date he knew better than to ask.

Why do I feel this weird cosmic link to airplanes? I wish I knew. It has been there inside me for as long as I can remember. I’m just fascinated by those sleek, metal birds that soar high above all that is mundane and earthbound. Oddly enough, my fascination and passion for them have never translated to wanting to actually pilot one. Mostly, I just want to look at them, experience their kingly presence, delight in their amazing ability to whisk me away to anywhere else, watch and listen to their splendid roar as they climb into the sky, and breathe in the heavenly scent of jet fuel left trailing in their wake.

My love for airplanes is best illustrated by my choice of apartments when I went to work for Continental Airlines at in Los Angeles back in 1977. I rented an efficiency apartment at the end of Imperial Avenue in El Segundo, CA, which was located directly across the street from one of the runways at LAX. My new address blessed me daily with the opportunity to hear the roar of jets taking-off and landing practically in my own front yard. It was music to my ears, though visitors to my apartment often were jarred by what they described as noise.

1 Imperial Boulevard parallels the south side of Los Angeles International Airport (LAX). It ends at Pershing Drive, which runs parallel to the Pacific Ocean.

Heidi From Eschler Editing Comments

Every life is a story, and every person’s story is worth telling. The trick is in telling it properly, so that it has maximum impact.

There are as many reasons for writing a memoir as there are people. Memoirs can be fancy or fussy, complex or simple, full of whimsy or gravitas. They can be broad and expansive, covering a long life, or short and focused. They can explore one season in your life, one experience, one angle, or they may try to tie up the myriad of experiences that define you as a person into an overarching whole. A memoir is an invitation to the world to share in your life’s journey, whether it’s for the space of a year in Provence, the span of a wild childhood, the length of a war, or the sum of an entire life with the marrow fully extracted.

You can write at the start of your journey, the middle, or the end, from the perspective of childhood or the wisdom of age. Still, so much choice can leave you feeling indecisive and unsure of where to start.

What I like:

The narrative is a little quirky and off-kilter. I’m left with the impression that the person I’m accompanying on this journey has a sense of humor – always a positive thing in a traveling companion.

The first line really is great, setting up a fun and interesting premise. It would be a good hook if you are sure that’s what your story is about. Although it has potential, you want to be sure it is the right one for the story you want to tell. Below are some thoughts on creating a strong opening for your story.

Are you starting in the right place? 

Every beginning of a story has an inherent promise in it. The words, the events, you choose to talk about in the opening paragraph and first few pages are an indication to the reader that those are important and hold weight. Therefore, if you start your story with a puzzle, an enigma (why this “weird cosmic link” to planes?) you must be prepared to follow through and explain it over the course of the story, or at least by the resolution. Right off, as a reader I’m already a little doubtful that I will be satisfied, since I’ve already been informed that the storyteller doesn’t know why she feels such a magnetic pull to these magnificent carriages of the sky. That’s not necessarily the strongest starting position.

How you position the events, what weight you give them, what interpretation, what order you relate them in, will all impact the effectiveness of your tale.

Although a memoir is non-fiction, it can benefit from many of the same guidelines that inform fiction writing. So your opening, your hook, your first five pages, all these are prime real estate. Every word counts, and you want to maximize their impact. Just as you want to start with a story-worthy problem in fiction, in a memoir, a great place to start is a life-changing event.

What is your inciting incident?

The inciting incident in fiction is the event that brings the main character to a realization of the main problem that is going to propel the plot forward. In a memoir, a life-changing event can fill this role.

Take, for example, the first three paragraphs of The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. The author relates how she is in a cab on the way to a party, and looking out the window, she spots her homeless mother going through the dumpster, and the author is panicked at the thought of her mother recognizing her and greeting her, and of other people seeing them together. This would be gripping if it were fiction. Knowing that it’s real makes it even more intense.

What is your beginning doing to pull people into the story? 

People that love planes may be intrigued (or they may be confused as to why someone that is so fascinated with planes has no desire to fly one). People whose interests lie elsewhere may not be as hooked. And what is the problem or life-changing event? Of course, there’s always the possibility that your story is not really about how your fascination for planes has shaped and molded your life. But in that case, a different opening anecdote may be a stronger pick.

The other possibility is that this is an examination of your relationship experiences. That’s what your first sentence and paragraph focus on: your dating patterns and attitudes. But that theory runs into a conflict when the love of planes is brought on stage. The reader may wonder: is your love of planes interfering with your love life? If that’s your intended message, all’s well. If not, you may want to re-imagine your beginning.

What belongs on the first page?

I mentioned earlier that your first page is prime real-estate. You don’t want to waste a millimeter of space. But your first three paragraphs mention Imperial Boulevard and its location three times with slight variations. Unless this location is where a life shattering event is going to occur, once is enough (and even in that case, once is enough). There is also no need to put that information into a footnote, especially since it’s been adequately explained within the body of the text. Be sure that you don’t get side-tracked by tangents in this vital opening section.

Taking a page from someone else’s story

The Glass Castle traces Jeannette’s journey through childhood with parents that are little better than children themselves. In the face of her father’s gambling and alcoholism, and her mother’s erratic behavior, Jeannette and her siblings face poverty, danger, and instability, moving precipitously from one town to another. Eventually, the Walls children must forge their own lives. Jeannette writes honestly but without self-pity or a feeling of victimization. Surprisingly, there is love and affection and charming memories mixed into the harsh realities of her life, such as the night her father takes the children outside one at a time and lets them pick out a star for their Christmas gift. The structure that Jeannette uses for her story starts with a moment of painful clarity and then loops the readers back to the beginning of her childhood, so that they can experience it chronologically along with the author. The resolution comes as she reminisces about her life after her father’s death.

Like a snowflake, no two life experiences are the same (not even within the same family). But that doesn’t mean you can’t borrow structure from other memoirs to enhance your own story, just as multiple poets can use the same structure (say a sonnet) to achieve vastly different results.

Your to-do list:

Be sure you can answer the following questions: What message do you want to convey to your audience? What life-changing event best propels your story forward? At what point does your journey reach a resolution? (This will be the logical end point of your story.) This will not only help launch your story, it will keep your narrative focused and bring it to a satisfactory conclusion. It takes courage and passion and integrity to bare your soul and reveal a part of your innermost self to the world, but it can be a deeply rewarding and uplifting experience. Best of luck on your journey.

First Page Friday

Today's First Page Friday sample was so interesting to me and Ms. Shreditor's remarks made it doubly so. I can't wait to hear what you think of it.

If you would like your first page critiqued by a national editor, please submit your double-spaced 12 pt. font first page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com with First Page Friday in the subject line.  There are two openings for August.

As always, thank you to Ms. Shreditor and to our authors for their time and effort.  See you next week!


The Entry
An Uncommon Blue
by Ryan Hancock

There are three unspoken rules in high school rugby.

1. Your team members are family.

2. You support your family.

3. This support must be shown periodically with an affectionate slap on the backside.

After four years as the starting right winger, I had almost gotten used to this.

Almost. At least I no longer felt the urge to bloody my teammates' noses when they tried it. But in the middle of the hall? No way. During school hours my glutes were off limits.

I whirled around to explain this to whichever of my idiotic team members was behind me.

Instead, I found myself face to face with an attractive redhead.

“Hey, Bruno,” Drea said with a smirk. “Ready for the test?”

I opened my mouth but no sound came out.

Even with her super-short hair, Drea was stunning. Before last summer she’d often been mistaken for a boy. But that all ended when puberty hit. With both fists.

I recovered from my embarrassment enough to nod.

She leaned against the lockers. Her face reflected the light from her blue palm as she twisted an earring. “History should be a breeze compared to pre-calc. I wanted to stab myself in the eye when I got to that section on antiderivatives.”

I grunted and fumbled with my combination.

Without warning she came up close and spoke in a half-whisper. Her hair smelled like coconut. “I know someone that likes you. If you hurry up with that lock, we might have time to talk before the final.”

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

I’ve read this first page several times to collect my thoughts. At first glance, it looks great because it’s clean as a whistle. I might tweak the punctuation here and there, but there aren’t any egregious proofreading errors. The author clearly took the time to proofread this before submitting, a vital step in the submission process.

When I read through the second time, my inner developmental editor awoke and started evaluating the structure of the sample. Before long, I was mentally rearranging various components of the story to create a stronger opening. The issue here is that the first page throws two hefty plot points at us without lingering on either one for long: rugby and Drea.

Starting the story with the three rules of high school rugby suggests to the reader that this is the master plot in this book. Is this correct? If not, if Bruno’s relationship with Drea (and the unnamed girl who has a crush on him) is actually the main event, then you might consider opening with that and weaving in the rugby later. As is, we get only the briefest of primers on the narrator’s status as a rugby player before the story rapidly diverts into Drea’s orbit. This makes the rules of rugby at the beginning feel a bit gratuitous—more like an attempt to engage the reader with a Fight Club–esque breakdown of rules than an actual gateway into the story.

I tend to be a character-driven reader, and I don’t feel like I really connected with Bruno. If we clear away the rugby and his crush on Drea, what do we know about him? This is actually a good gauge for all writers of fiction. If you strip the story of its external plot points, what is left of your protagonist? Is there some meaty internal conflict? Where does this person’s humanity lie? His weaknesses? These are seeds you want to plant from the very beginning to give the reader an immediate understanding of the person driving this narrative bus. Right now, Bruno is somewhat of a blank slate.

At the line editing level: Be careful not to develop what I call the “one-liner” tic. I counted ten one-sentence paragraphs on this page. This can be a hard habit to break. You’re trying to build up the level of suspense, and paragraph breaks can certainly punctuate the story at key moments. But you should rely on this tactic sparingly. The mounting suspense has to come from more than just strategically placed paragraph breaks.

I’d recommend revisiting this first page and thinking about the most important things your reader needs to know from the outset. I’ve been tough on this week’s sample because I want to coax it out of its YA romance boilerplate and into something that will stand out on a shelf. This author writes well, so it’s a matter of turning this into a rich, fully realized first-person story. 

First Page Friday & More Reviews!

Today I have a guest post over at Spellbindings, where I talk about how I can realistically write about snipers and law enforcement.  You can read it here

I also received two new reviews.  The first one from Why Not? Because I Said So, said the reviewer actually took her iPad to the theater so she could read a bit more of my book before the lights went out.  I loved that!  You can read what she thought of Ashes Ashes here

And this was my favorite line from the second review I got today at Sarah Aisling's blog:  "Bellon’s writing is intriguing and descriptive, and she keeps the plot moving at a rapid-fire pace with no wasted words or unnecessary scenes to bog down the story."  I definitely want to put that one in my keeper file.  You can see the whole review here.

I am really loving this blog tour.  And if you didn't know, you can enter to win a $25 Amazon gift card at any of the blog stops.  Yay!

All right, on to First Page Friday.  This one was fun because of what Ms. Shreditor thought of it.  As always, thank you to both our author and our editor for all their hard work.

See you next week!

The Entry
Relative Evil
by Jaycie Allen

It stood motionless, less than ten feet away from Ryan. The sallow, blotchy skin barely hung on its bones. The not-quite-human’s lips were gone, eaten away by the fleas that had given it the virus. Now, only broken teeth, dripping with blood, glistened in the hot sunlight, and forced an aberrant smile onto its face, like a gruesome Halloween Jack-o-lantern. The tiny bugs still feasted on what was left of its healthy membrane.


It stared at him through clouded blue eyes; the whites tainted jaundice yellow with disease. Ryan wanted to run away from it. He knew he had time, but watching it kept him riveted to where he thought was his hiding place behind a forgotten industrial garbage bin. He shivered as gooseflesh coursed over his sweaty skin. This one appeared cognitive, unlike some of the other altered creatures. When it lifted its boney left hand, something caught the sun, refracting the light into minuscule rainbows onto the broken window by its fetid arm. A diamond. Her wedding ring—their wedding ring.  

“Oh! Yuck! No, no, no! This is so stupid,” I said out loud, and I began tapping the delete key with more force than necessary to get rid of the last two disgusting paragraphs I’d just written. I glanced at Paddles, my fifteen-year-old polydactyl cat, who trilled at the noise my excessive pounding produced. “Why can’t I just be happy writing romance?” I asked him. He didn’t answer me in words, of course. But I interpreted his ears rotating backwards and half-closed his eyes as his way of saying, “You should be happy, Claire.”

Switching hands, I continued hitting the delete button, maybe not with as much enthusiasm. “At least I’ve published two in that genre. My editor probably won’t take a second look at this drivel.” I looked back at Paddles. “Would she?” I sighed. “What was I thinking? Moonwriting Publishing doesn’t even accept science fiction.”

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

Okay, I fell for it. Before I started reading, I took a cursory glance at this first page and noticed that the first half was italicized. I flexed my fingers, ready to take the text to task for mashing up a prologue and the actual beginning of the story—and a multitude of other sins, which we’ll get to in a minute. And then the italics stopped, and the evil genius of the first two paragraphs began to sink in. It was supposed to be over the top. Some of the errors in execution that activated my editorial radar might have been deliberate.

I’m going to break this week’s critique up into two sections: Ryan and Claire. Think of them as Goofus and Gallant, if you will. (If you aren’t familiar with these crazy fictional kids, you can find tons of their old comic strips from Highlights magazine on Google Images. To boil it down: Goofus bad, Gallant good.)

Ryan

In all honesty, I wasn’t really going to eviscerate Ryan’s story. It’s flawed enough to give Claire agita, but I’ve read far, far worse. So what exactly does the first part of the sample get wrong? For starters, there’s some serious excess here. We have broken teeth dripping with blood, bugs feasting on membranes, and jaundiced eyeballs. It’s funny that Claire later classifies her piece as science fiction, because it reads more like campy horror to me. There are a lot of horror clichés herein. (However, bonus points to the author for spelling “minuscule” correctly. If I had a dollar for every time I had to fix the spelling of that word, I could afford a wheel of cheddar cheese that’s been aged more than six months.)

A few technical hiccups stood out to me in Ryan’s story that I suspect weren't intentional. For instance, we have “the whites tainted jaundice yellow with disease.” The syntax is a bit murky here. “Claire” could simplify this by saying “the whites jaundiced with disease.” You’ll also want to ditch the preceding semicolon and replace it with a comma. (Semicolons separate two independent clauses; we have an independent and dependent clause here.)

Claire

So what does Claire’s section of the sample get right? For starters, it’s funny. Claire has a distinctive voice. She’s self-deprecating and aware of her own flaws. Her feline sidekick, Paddles, provides comic relief in an already funny scene. There’s also something very “meta” about her commentary on book publishing. It speaks to the difficulty of the writing and submission process.

The First Page about First Page Friday

I have a feeling that the structure of this first page will garner mixed reviews. Ryan’s story sets up a pretty good fake-out. Someone reading this blind (as I did) wouldn’t know right off the bat that his story is somewhat of a farce and might deem it a cheap trick. I personally like it because of its aforementioned “meta” nature. This entire first page is like a satirical salute to the literary angst that powers First Page Friday every week—from the challenges of the writing process to the self-doubt to the agony over submission guidelines. These things are very real, and the author illustrates them in creative fashion here. Well done.

First Page Friday

Whew, it's Friday!  I hope you all had a wonderful Independence Day celebration yesterday. I know I did!

I wanted to let you know we have one July opening for First Page Friday so if you would like the first page of your manuscript critiqued by a national editor, please submit your double-spaced 12 pt. font manuscript page to juliecoulterbellon@gmail.com

As always, thank you to our author LAA and to Ms. Shreditor for their time and effort.  See you next week!

The Entry
Sigma
middle grade science fiction
by LAA

Here’s the thing about super heroes: you can’t count on them. How many infant aliens manage to find their way to earth? How many lab accidents are there? The answer: not a lot. And then you run into the problem of, hey, they have a life. They’re not reliable to be there whenever you want them to be. They’re human (well, most of the time) and flawed.

That’s where I come in. My name is David and I’m four years-old. I don’t look it though. Physically speaking, I look about thirteen. I was born four years ago. Well, woke up. I wasn’t born like normal people.

The scientists at Epsilon Labs made me, the Lambda Project, code named ‘Sigma’. Their slogan is even ‘Heroes Aren’t Born. They’re Made.’ They collected the best genes they could find, from the fastest, strongest, and smartest people from all over the world. Then they mixed it all together and added in a bunch of other stuff, and voilà, me.

~~~

This is the game everyone talks about: Auto Jack 7, at least according to Anthony. I’d been begging the Docs to rent me a copy for weeks now and now I finally get to play. My leg jiggles with excitement as the game starts up. I can do this. I know I can.

The game starts and I move my character, going through the tutorial on stealing cars. The pressure in my chest grows, and my hands lock up on the controller. Not even a few minutes into the game and I'm already trapped. This is ridiculous, it's not even me that's really jacking a car, and none of this is real. Tons of other kids can do this, and if they can so can I. The Docs’ programing does not rule my life.

Ms. Shreditor's Comments

          This piece has a lot of potential. The narrator, David, has a distinctive voice (and also the distinctive problem of being a four-year-old trapped in a thirteen-year-old’s body. He tells us in the first section that he was engineered by scientists, and then the narrative cuts to him playing Auto Jack 7, which sounds similar to Grand Theft Auto.

The section break that splits this first page into two parts is what concerns me. We get a very cursory introduction to David that reveals a few basic biographical details, and then we’re transported to a new scene in which he’s playing Auto Jack 7. It’s a bit too abrupt; there’s not a smooth enough segue between the two scenes. We’ve just found out a pretty juicy detail about David—that he essentially sprang from a petri dish of desirable genes—and then the curtain falls. When it rises again, David is playing the video game.

I’ve read some authors, particular postmodern ones, who can get away with frequent cutaways, but it takes some finesse to pull off this technique. You’re trying to leave the reader with impressionistic shreds of narrative while simultaneously developing characters and—one of the most important components of sci-fi/fantasy—world building. In this case, the sudden shift to the video game makes the entire introduction feel perfunctory, as if it’s there only to dispense a few key details before the story gets under way. It almost reads like a bare-bones prologue.

The thing is, we have two compelling tidbits of story here that are dueling in a very small space. We have our introduction to David’s character versus David embarking on what I assume to be a training exercise. These are both key elements of the story. Perhaps it would work better to open with David playing the video game and work in the biographical details as the story progresses. This would eliminate the troublesome section break halfway down the first page, and it would allow the author to develop David within the story (as opposed to outside it, in a cordoned-off introduction).

Overall, the story touches upon some classic sci-fi tropes, so I would only caution the author to avoid clichés. There have been plenty of stories about biologically engineered children, so make sure that yours stands out on the shelf. As a reader, I can often forgive a story that doesn’t break much new ground if the writing is strong and the characters are well developed.

The writing here is quite good. It could benefit from some copyediting to resolve various syntax and punctuation issues, but the author has a good sense of rhythm and transition (with the exception of the aforementioned section break issue). My best advice would be to revisit the structure of this first page. If this is a work in progress or a finished manuscript, examine any other section breaks closely to ensure that they interrupt the narrative in logical places and don’t compromise the integrity of the scenes on either side of the break. The result will be a fun sci-fi story that flows well and keeps readers turning the pages.

First Page Friday & An Announcement

Today we have an announcement from Eschler Editing to kick off our First Page Friday.

Greetings, Writerly Friends!

We’re thrilled to announce the launch of the new and improved Eschler Editing! We’ve added some exciting features to our website and made good on our plans for bringing you fantastic content when it comes to everything writing, editing, and publishing related.
Every week we’ll be bringing you a brand-spanking-new blog post on critical topics to get you ready for publishing. Here’s a sneak peak at upcoming content:

·         Writing Craft help for fiction and nonfiction

·         Industry Insights to help you successfully navigate through the confusing and often frustrating world of publishing

·         Thursday Therapy posts to keep you inspired, motivated, and de-stressed when it comes to your writing goals

·         Editor’s Nightstand posts to share what our team recommends in terms of resources, breakthrough reads, and insightful publications

·         Effective + Efficient marketing tips, because we know that while promoting will demand some of your attention, it’s not why you write


Craving insight on something specific? We’d love to hear from you! Drop us a line here with your requests and recommendations.

Loving our style and have something to contribute? Even better! We’re always on the hunt for guest bloggers on anything and everything writing related. Send us a message here with your post pitch and background info.

And last but not least: We’re kicking off an exciting raffle, just for you. When you join our mailing list, you’ll automatically be entered to win a free hour of editorial help from our team of experts--be it brainstorming feedback, help with your hook or query, or just some free editing!

So be sure to head on over to the new site and sign up for our weekly newsletter (eschlerediting.com)  to get stellar tips and a chance to win!

Hoping to hear from you soon,

Angela and the Team

That sounds so great, doesn't it? I love Eschler Editing and I'm so grateful for the help they give our authors every First Page Friday. Today we have a wonderful entry and I learned a lot about tweaking just a little to really bring a first page up to potential. As always, thank you to our author, JT Spell and to Eschler Editing for all their hard work. See you next week!

The Entry

Silver Mine

by JT Spell

Silver reached for the blaring klaxon of her cell phone going off at 11:30 p.m. These calls are never good. She took a deep breath then answered it.

“Silver here.” She tried to make it sound like she hadn’t just been asleep.

“Good. We have a driver on his way to pick you up from your house. He will probably arrive at oh-one-hundred hours.”

The Chief omitting his opening banter meant a tense situation.

“I guess that means I don’t get a choice on this one? What should I pack, Chief?” She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and rolled gracefully out of bed, an art she had plenty of practice with. She turned on the light and went to the closet. She pulled out her carry-on pack and opened it up on the rumpled bed.

“You know I can’t give you the details over the phone, but I’d suggest picking out some cool weather gear. Also, your passport.”

Passport? I hardly ever travel internationally. What’s going on?

“Chief, I’m putting you on speaker so I can prep while we talk. There’s no one else here.”

She looked over at her golden lab, rolling over and opening one sleepy eye at her.

“Except JJ,” she added. The mature dog whined and complained in a long monologue before standing on the covers, turning around and around and settling back in.

Comments from Eschler Editing

What’s working:

• You’ve got a cool name for your character. It’s definitely unique. It catches your attention, makes you wonder if it’s a given, nick, or surname. Silver conjures images of metal, knives, quicksilver. This character could be law enforcement, military, or even a supernatural crime-fighter (think silver bullet). At this point, I don’t know anything about what genre I’m in, but your choice of name has me thinking. That’s what you want.
• I also like your choice of syntax. You’ve got a nice mix of attention getting words (klaxon), words that convey texture and energy (banter, prep), and words used in an unexpected fashion (the dog’s monologue).
• Finally, you’ve given some interesting hints and clues about the setting and character. We’re guessing at this point, but it seems possible that she’s an officer or agent of some kind, although we don’t know for sure. That’s part of the fun of a story – using little details and clues to build up a theory of what is happening, who the character is, what the problem is going to be. A good writer can give enough clues that the reader can accurately predict some events, and at the same time, keep enough mystery that there’s room for surprise.

Things that need tweaking:

• The Chief omitting his opening banter meant a tense situation. The first assumption is that this is a direct thought because it is in italics. However, this does not sound like Silver’s thought. First off, the wording is in the wrong tense. Even in a past tense narrative, italicized thought is generally in present tense: The Chief omitting his opening banter means a tense situation.
  
  If you don’t italicize, this would work fine because readers will recognize that it’s what she’s thinking. But by putting it into italics, there’s an unspoken assumption that we are getting her thoughts in real time, and that is best done in present tense. Secondly, she wouldn’t think like that. It’s too formal. It’s more likely she would think something like: Something’s wrong. The chief never starts a conversation without joking. Or Crap, the Chief sounds tense.

• Passport? I hardly ever travel internationally. What’s going on? Again, this is not what a person would think. We wouldn’t need to remind ourselves that we never travel internationally, as we would know that. Passport? What’s going on? is enough to give us a sense that she usually doesn’t need it. The whole I hardly ever travel internationally sounds like you are feeding us information (which you are) because we won’t get it if you don’t, but we do. Give your reader the benefit of the doubt wherever you can. It cuts down wordy explanation, and makes the reader think. At the same time, it keeps the opening moving along briskly. Don’t put in any unnecessary verbiage that will bog the reader down.

• Chief, I’m putting you on speaker so I can prep while we talk. There’s no one else here. This sounds like she is saying it is okay for him to give her information, but he just said it wasn’t. At this point I am thinking she is a spy of some type and I wouldn’t be worried about someone in the room hearing them talk, but actually that the phone was tapped. If she’s a professional, she should be thinking along these lines, and wouldn’t make an amateur move like that. The point of this dialogue is a little lost on me—how does it contribute to plot or character development?

• She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and rolled gracefully out of bed, an art she had plenty of practice with. She turned on the light and went to the closet. She pulled out her carry-on pack and opened it up on the rumpled bed. She rubbed, she turned, she pulled. This is a trap every writer falls into occasionally. I call it a laundry list—just a list of activities or events, recounted without sentence variation. The good news is that this is an easy writing problem to solve. Just be sure to vary your sentences as you write—using different beginnings, lengths, and structure. Intersperse short, snappy sentences with longer compound sentences. Keep on the active side of the fence, but throw in an occasional passive phrase to keep things interesting. Mix dialogue with action, internal monologue with narrative exposition. Make one sentence lean and mean and fill the next with piquant details. There is a cadence and rhythm to writing, and you’ll add your own style and flair, but once you master this skill, you’ll be able to do it almost subconsciously. And even if you have to think about it from time to time, it will still result in a more interesting, dynamic telling of your story.

• The mature dog whined and complained in a long monologue before standing on the covers, turning around and around and settling back in.A car is on its way to get Silver and she needs to pack fast. This line made me think that she is watching the dog do all this, but she doesn’t have time. I like the detail in this line, but it contradicts the feeling you’re trying to impress on the reader—that something dicey is about to go down, that time is of the essence, that intrigue is lurking around the corner. This line will be great—after you’ve got the reader under your spell. First you need to focus on increasing the tension, the sense of danger, of something wrong in the universe that must be set right.

• There is some tension and conflict in this first scene, but it seems more told than shown. Silver doesn’t seem too concerned about this assignment. Even though her first thought is that it’s a tense situation, nothing that follows is tense. It’s great that you are trying to create a sense that something is wrong. Go ahead and crank that up. Be more direct. Give us more usable information. Is she already on a case? If so, maybe she has an inkling of what the chief is going to say. That could be shown in her thoughts.

Another option would be to start with the crime scenario. This story feels like it’s going to be a murder mystery, a thriller, or a spy novel. Start with the crime, the terrorist act, the body, the victim’s last minutes. They all move your story from zero to sixty in three seconds. If you start here with Silver, tell less and show more. Find something besides direct thought to reveal her. How does her body react, or not react in expected ways (involuntary physiology), what are her expectations, can the dialogue reveal more hints at what’s going on without spelling it out?

Your next steps:

You’ve got the potential for an interesting beginning. Little changes can make a big difference at the start of any story. Consider ways to wrap internal thought into the narrative. The best way to do this is simply as past tense statements of fact. When done correctly, this comes across smoothly as internal dialogue without the necessity of using italics every time you want to show what the character thinks or feels about something. For example: “The Chief never started a conversation without at least five minutes of banter—something was definitely wrong.” Statements like this imply what the character is thinking or feeling, without interrupting the flow of the story. Use direct italicized thoughts more to show personality rather than just convey information: use them to show that a character is witty, sardonic, arrogant, funny, or has very unique insights on life. You can slip information in there, but if you aren’t disguising it with more interesting character development and prose, it tends to put up a flag to the reader that you’re using it to sneak info it. Which has the opposite effect of being sneaky.

Next, be sure you are starting the story at the right place. When in doubt, start with murder and mayhem (then the next scene/chapter can be where the protagonist gets his/her mission to save the world—or at least catch the killer); or start with very interesting character development while conveying what’s at stake with saving the world. Your character currently has the potential to be interesting, but her thoughts/actions aren’t yet super unique and intriguing, so this scene isn’t pulling me out of my chair just yet. (If she were to pull a swimsuit from her closet, put on a wig and put in false teeth, and was thinking about whether she could handle plane food so soon after ingesting poison, this character-focused scene would be a great place to start.)

Make sure your characters act logically within the context of the story. (For instance, if they are spies, they need to follow protocol. Silver’s actions demonstrate her awareness of possible surveillance and why important info can’t be shared over the phone.) Be sure not to give unnecessary information that the readers can deduce on their own (such as letting the passport speak for itself), and at the same time, give enough that the story heats up fast (like what profession Silver is in and what the story-worthy problem is going to be).

Finally, become aware of your sentence structure and aim for lots of variety to avoid repetition and keeping things interesting. These steps will help you create an intriguing beginning and keep your readers hooked from start to finish. Best of luck and happy writing!


*Julie's note:  For some reason I was having formatting issues today and I couldn't fix it.  Please don't let that take away from Eschler Editing's great critique.  Hopefully I'll have this figured out . . . soon.  Thank you for your patience.