Flogometer for Carol-Anne—will you turn the page?

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FtQ is on the road The workshop in Mendocino went swimmingly—the group (23 writers) and I critiqued the opening pages of 11 novels, and the writers seemed quite pleased with what they learned whether we turned the page or not. The writing was quite good, overall, yet I turned the page on only 2. The group was more generous than I, but the writers gained insights nonetheless.

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Carole-Anne’s first 16 lines:

The first time I saw him, I was five years old. A proverbial kid in a candy store, only… I wasn’t proverbial and it wasn’t exactly a candy store.

Back then, my mother and I filled in the long hours until my father came home as best we could. Like toys discarded in the playroom, we only truly came to life when he walked through the door at the end of the day. Busying ourselves with household tasks, we allowed the minutiae of ordinary life to distract us for as long as possible, until – the banking done and the dry cleaning dropped off – we would wander over to the park to wait. And watch.

It was from my mother that I learned to read people like books, inferring emotion from a glance, a shift of the shoulder, a twist of the mouth. My mother was an expert at taking the measure of a person, at finding the cracks in the foundation of a life. Maybe that was what made her a good nurse. Or maybe it was the way she held herself apart from others, occupied, but unaffected. She hadn’t returned to the hospital right away like everyone had expected her to. I didn’t understand why until much later. And when I did, too much had happened, too much had passed between us to return to the place where understanding might have helped.

That day – the first time – the weather had been murky and cold, the late November wind ripping the few remaining leaves from the trees to mingle with the garbage that coasted along the (snip)

Good writing, but no page turn for this reader
The editor side of me likes receiving submissions so cleanly written. That, and a clear, good voice, are likable qualities of this opening. On the other hand, tension is missing. Nor, for me, does it raise a single story question. The one possible question, who is “him,” didn’t arise in me because the reference to “him” doesn’t contain any hints as to why it might be special. And then the narrative lapses into exposition to ground us in the character and his/her mother (the pages sent contain no name for the character, nor a hint of gender).

Since there’s not much to nit-pick here, I looked for what I thought could be a stronger opening. Here, constructed from material from the remaining pages, is a different set of 16 lines.

My mother had grudgingly begun her overseas Christmas shopping, hoping to package up and ship off the gifts for her Scottish in-laws ahead of the holiday rush. Thoroughly uninterested in helping her pick out pyjamas for my cousin Shirley, I pretended I was blind, my eyes squeezed tightly shut and one hand stretched out in front of me. I used the belt of my mother’s winter coat like a lifeline.

Growing tired of my game, I let my eyes slide open and saw a Christmas village built completely out of gingerbread. Almost as tall as I was, the walls were stacked upon cotton candy snowdrifts – the crystallized sugar a fair mimic of ice warmed by the sun. The warm smell of cinnamon wafted under my nose as I gazed in wonder at chocolate wafer streets that had been patterned like cobblestones and lined with candystick light posts. At the end of the street, a licorice car was stopped at a cherry-red lollipop.

Mesmerized, I drifted towards the village, staring at the snow-capped peaks on the roof. Tentatively, I reached out with one finger to touch the outer edge of the sugary wall and stopped, suddenly aware of the slack in my other hand. Looking back, I stared uncomprehending at the tan belt that lay on the floor like a sick snake, no longer attached to my mother’s coat. No longer attached to my mother. She was gone.

If you think of this as the opening, the description almost lulls you into a sense of a safe child’s world, and then the last two sentences are like a whip-crack of tension and a huge story question.

Just a thought. Very nice writing here, as I said, but I urge you to get to the story sooner. And let us know whether this is a girl or boy, plus an idea of the age.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

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Public floggings available. If I can post it here,

1. Email: email 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter as an attachment (cutting and pasting and reformatting from an email is a time-consuming pain) and I'll critique the first couple of pages.
2. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font, 1-inch margins.
3. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
4. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
5. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
6. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

ARCHIVES

© 2009 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[kathy]

Although I like the writing I passed. I wondered if the POV was from an adult or a child.

Ray's selection was a page turner for me. The description of the village was delightful. And there was no doubt the character is a child.

[Darcy]

I loved the writing, but in the first selection there wasn't enough to compel me to turn. I would rather have gotten to meeting 'him' and why it was pivotal first and learned about the character's relationship to his/her mother later.

Also, the line: "She hadn’t returned to the hospital right away like everyone had expected her to" raised a completely different question ('returned from what?'), that thoroughly distracted me from the original hook question ('why was meeting him so important?'). Either aspect of the story, combined with the lovely writing, would have gotten me to turn, but both are so low-key as far as tension that on a first page I need to focus on one.

Would have turned the second selection without a doubt. :)

[Kami]

The first opening I had a lot of trouble because it seemed to keep switching story threads. I wanted to head right into a story, and instead I received a mood piece that meandered around the setting.

The second grabbed me. Excellent.

[Darla]

I was interested by the first paragraph of the first entry, but then we wandered off to various topics.

I got lost on the line about mom not returning from the hospital right away. I stopped and read it all through again, intent on finding something I missed, but there wasn't any explaination.

Ray's opening was a definite page turner.

[Liz P]

The first opening turned me off right away. You started interesting--in that I was wondering who "he" was, but as soon as you said one thing, and then contradicted itself in the very next part of the sentence, I felt like the writer was trying to trick me or confuse me. Probably not the intent, but that's the first impression I had.

I think the writing itself is good, but something that is straight-forward and gives me a character to care about/relate to in some way would be helpful.

[hope101 (Jan)]

LOL, I'm going to be a complete contrarian today. (Maybe that's a sign I need a holiday.)

I actually hugely preferred the first snippet. Yes, it had problems in that we got pulled away from the initial story question, and there was a lot of telling rather than showing. But I actually saw a lot of microtension in it.

I know there's someone important arriving, but I don't know whether he'll be a positive force or a negative, friend to this young girl or lover for the mother. I know her mother has been through something traumatic and has a co-dependent relationship with her husband, and this child is going to have to pay a price for that in some way; and I know that this narrator is still estranged from her parent all these years later.

This reads to me like women's fiction or lit fic. If I'm right, I'd suggest you begin just with showing how self-absorbed and lost her mother is, and how this young child copes. Then take us to the park and meet whoever.

The second passage, for me, had no question or tension whatsoever until the child was lost. I would need some foreshadowing of her peril to make this passage work.

Anyway, another perspective. ;)

[Carol-Anne Hendry]

Many thanks for the comments above. All are much appreciated and have given me some wonderful ideas for reworking the first chapter.