And here we go again. Admittedly, this plea for concrit is a touch more important than the previous one. The prologue is meant to reel the reader in, give them just enough background to make them interested but not enough that you give away the entire story. Below, however, is the first page or so (Works page ... I have no idea how many book pages it is) of my first chapter. And this is where I'm having the most trouble.
As I've mentioned before, I'm having issues getting the tone right. The characters here are eleven, and my normal style is more along the lines of what you saw in the prologue. However, the proper, reserved tone that works well for adults in 1877 does not work as well for children in the present day. So I'm trying to adapt a little, make the tone a little more conversational and a little less proper.
What I've come up with so far is below the jump. Please, please give me concrit. I don't have much to offer in the way of rewards, but the offer of virtual cookies and my undying gratitude still stands. (Also, I realize that Charlie comes across as really annoying here ... he doesn't stay that way. But we're in Allie's head and she's annoyed with him, so ... yeah).
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Allie Sullivan shielded her eyes from the mid-June sunshine and watched the Frisbee slice through the humid sea air like a hot knife through butter. When the plastic disc sailed right over the wrought iron fence surrounding the property next door, Allie muttered a word that, if her mother ever heard it, would get her grounded for three days. Then she whirled on her heels and fixed an exasperated glare on Charlie Davis.
“Oops?” offered Charlie through a wince. The mischief sparkling in his bright blue eyes completely obliterated the innocence of his tone.
Rolling her eyes, Allie crossed her arms over her chest. “I am so not getting that.”
“You are such a baby,” he snickered before brushing past her and heading for the fence.
With an indignant sniff, Allie pulled her cell phone from her pocket to check the time. Twenty minutes together, and she was already fighting the urge to throttle him. She realized with mild amusement that Charlie had broken his own obnoxiousness record; it normally took him at least half an hour to do something that irritated the crap out of her. And besides, the simple fact that she didn’t share his--in her opinion, mildly unhealthy--fascination with the abandoned house on the other side of that fence hardly made her a baby.
Not that the house didn’t give her the creeps. The rundown three-story Victorian was a blemish on the otherwise gorgeous Lancaster Road. What was left of the paint that had in years past been a soft and pretty robin’s egg blue had dulled and dirtied to a deep thunderstorm gray. Dark green splotches of mold or mildew covered the weathered clapboard in the areas where the paint had flaked off entirely. Every single window in the structure was broken, evidence of the decades of homeruns and wild pitches from the vacant lot next door.
The end result was a building that looked like every single haunted house in every single haunted house movie that Charlie had ever forced Allie to watch. So, yeah, it made her shudder. Who could blame her?
She took a moment to summon what little courage she had before stepping up to the fence and wrapping each of her hands around a black iron bar. Averting her gaze from the house, she scanned the yard for the Frisbee. A brand-new Frisbee the exact color of a highlighter should have been easy to spot among the twisted tendrils of long-dead shrubbery and tufts of brown grass, but Allie saw no sign of it.
Fan-freaking-tastic. That meant one of them--meaning Charlie, because she absolutely refused--would have to slip through the fence and go on a search and rescue mission. Allie lifted her gaze to the sky, trying to recall exactly how much allowance money she had left. At this point, wouldn’t it just be easier to scrounge up the three or four bucks to get a new Frisbee at the 7-Eleven?
“The Black Widow’s going to get you.”
Allie shrieked and spun around in the direction of the hissed voice. She found herself face to face with a grinning Charlie Davis. “You’re not funny.” She gave his shoulder as hard a shove as she could muster, which had the decidedly undesired effect of making him laugh out loud.
“Aw, c’mon, Al.” Suppressing a chuckle, Charlie raised his hands in mock surrender. “It’s just an old house.”
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I liked what I read so far. My only concern is that until Allie started thinking about her allowance I thought her and Charlie were closer to 14 or 15 years old instead of the 11 you have them listed at on the plot page. If this was in print I'd buy it in an instant.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all... please remove this from your first paragraph "like a hot knife through butter".
ReplyDeleteYou paint a good picture here and everything is very clear. I think there's a little too much writing - by that, I mean too many adjectives where just being a bit less descriptive would work a lot better. I have this problem too and I know it's reeeeally hard to get rid of, but I'd say that is the thing that struck me the most while reading this.
I haven't read the other bit you've posted but your tone here seems okay... though just be careful that (assuming it's a children's book, or YA etc) you don't sound like an adult talking to a young person. The trick to this type of thing is to sound like you're one of them. I'm not really sure I can go further into it than that but I hope you know what I mean. You've done well to an extent but there was something that niggled me. It could've just been the overwriting thing, though.
The characters seem okay too, though yes Charlie was definitely annoying :P I'll take your word for it that he stops being that soon ;)
I hope this doesn't seem harsh, I am pretty blunt when it comes to this sort of stuff... and the more time I spend being 'an editor' for my job the easier I'm like "arghh" when I see stuff. I guess that could be useful to you, though :)
Ah - reading Anthony's comment - he's made a good point. They seem older than 11!
ReplyDeleteI agree with Anthony -- these kids do sound a little older than 11. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing, as a realistic 11 year old would probably drive your readers up the wall. Charlie's closer than Allie, but the narrative voice makes Allie come off as older.
ReplyDeleteTo be honest, this isn't really grabbing me and I'm not sure why. Like thezombiekit, I feel maybe it's a little overwritten and it's lacking a certain punch. Your structure is good, but I think it may be getting in the way of your characters. In particular, Allie seems a little remote. Charlie is fairly well fleshed out, for the length of this, but all we get from Allie is that she thinks Charlie is annoying and she doesn't like this house. Basically, I think there's too much narrator and not enough Allie. Nothing really happens and we don't really meet the characters, and I'm just not sold. Also I didn't use the word really enough so have a few more: really really really really.
As far as suggestions: Try simplifying your sentence structure (my grammar checker suggests you're writing at an 8th grade level with an average of 15 words per sentence; it also thinks you're wordy. See what happens, you give machines some basic linquistic analysis skills and they get uppity). See if you can punch up some of your word choices. Maybe give us some kind of woo-woo or hook so we know why we're watching these kids play Frisbee and why it's important to the later plot.
@Anthony Adams
ReplyDeleteThank you! I had a funny feeling they were coming off as older than I meant them to; I just needed an outside opinion to tell me so, hee.
@thezombiekit
ReplyDeleteThanks! I have issues with being verbose; always have. Part of the problem now is this is not fanfic. This is an imaginary place that people who are not me don't know. So I'm trying to describe it enough so people can see it but not enough to bore them, ha.
It is (or will be) YA, so yes. I'm having issues adapting my normal style to YA (mostly because I can't imagine a lot of adults would buy a book where we follow two 11-year-olds on their summer adventures).
It wasn't harsh at all! I needed it, believe me. Thanks so much. *offers virtual chocolate chip cookies*
@the 216
ReplyDeleteAt least now I have proof that I am verbose. ;) Thank you. Knowing that other people are having the same issues with it that I am helps a lot. *offers virtual sugar cookies*
@Danielle
ReplyDeleteWould it work to bump the kids' ages up a few years, to thirteen or fourteen? Then it's less critical to nail a childlike voice, as long as it's passably young. And you can probably go back to your journals or your teenage fanfic to help with the voice. (Providing you still have teenage fanfic or wrote it in the first place . . . not that I would know anything about that *cough*)
You might even be able to structure the prologue as a flashback, which might help with generating a hook (ie, here is some woo-woo shit that happened two years ago, smash cut to present day.)
@the 216
ReplyDeleteSee, I'd thought of making them older, but my sticking point is Allie. The reason she doesn't like the house is she 100% believes all the town stories of it being haunted. Charlie doesn't, and is trying, in his own heavy-handed way, to show her that it's not haunted. He threw the Frisbee into the yard on purpose and is going to make her go get it. He figures when she goes and nothing happens, his point will be proven. Of course, the house IS haunted, but that's kind of beside the point.
I'm just afraid that if I make them much older than 11 or 12, Allie's fervent belief in the town legends, that long after everyone else has stopped believing in them, will just make her come across as more babyish than I really want. Plus, Charlie's methods won't be as age-appropriate anymore.
@Danielle
ReplyDeleteMaybe you could bump them up and then add a bit about how Allie saw a ghost when she was younger and that's why she's convinced there's still ghosts, even though she's older?
Maybe just something like Allie sighed. Charlie tried this same trick every year. When would he realize it was never going to work? To him, the house was just a fascinating, mouldering old dump, someplace to explore for a cheap thrill. She, on the other hand, knew better. Nobody believed her, but Allie knew what she'd seen. She could still remember the way the pale hand had pulled aside the tattered curtains in the third-floor window of the house, the scowling face that had appeared, and the menacing way the ghost had pointed at her -- and the frightening whisper in her ear:
"One day you'll join me."
It had been real. As real as Charlie and the Frisbee. So if Charlie thought she was setting one foot on that property, he was deluding himself.
Okay, that's rough, but you see what I'm getting at? I think she can still believe if you give her a reason to believe.
Don't get down on yourself, you're just having a hard time right now. If it makes you feel better, I'll post some bits of my Crappy Fantasy Novel and you can laugh at them. ;-)