Volunteers to read it [complete at 1400 words---quite short indeed] are more than welcome!
Portabello Road:
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Walking the cold, cobblestone streets of London, with her numb feet, she turned the corner. The bitter wind sliced through her thin, tattered frock, chilling her to her weary bones. Long had she been lost, wandering among the many maze-like streets of London. She looked up, pulling her twig-thin arms tighter around herself, trying to fight the abrasive winter air. The sign on the street corner read: “Portabello Road.”
“Portabello Road” she whispered, staring at the chipped street sign. She followed the twisting alley that opened before her, filled with shops, merchants, and food carts. Books stood dusty in their shelves, sulking as they were passed up for the jewelry shop next door.
Comments and advice welcome!
"with her numb feet" struck me as odd - would she be walking with anything else? If you mean her feet are bare and cold, I think you might be better off starting with that - Her bare, numbed feet pressed on over the sharp cobbles of the streets of London...something like that.
Twig-thin arms seems almost cliche now I think and having "Portabello Road" twice running in the text is a bit jarring, does the girl really need to read it aloud to herself?
The "sulking" books didn't really work for me either, perhaps the mention of the dust already shows they're being passed up for grander things.
The hook for me here is the lonely girl wondering the streets of London, I think you missed a chance after "Long had she been lost..." I wanted to know more about that, the street sign seemed to interrupt the momentum you were gaining.
However, I see your concern about what you see as the 'hook' of being lost in the streets of London.
I am fine with that for now, because I address that issue about half-way through the piece [why she is lost and lonely on the streets].
I will email the piece to you in an attachment. The title will be in the subject line.
quote:
Walking the cold, cobblestone streets of London, with her numb feet, she turned the corner.
With her numb feet, is just with her feet if we remove the "numb" part. I think it's apparent to the reader that she's walking with her feet. You'd only need to tell us if she were walking with her hands.
In this case, I think simplicity would be best: tell me her feet are numb. Even better, considering telling me why they're numb so I can learn something about her.
quote:
The bitter wind sliced through her thin, tattered frock, chilling her to her weary bones.
Again, I think simplicity would help. Bitter, sliced, thin, tattered, chilling, weary all serve to make me feel a little weary. They tend to make the sentence slog along. I know her feet are numb. Now, I know the wind is "bitter", she's wearing a frock that is both thin and tattered, and she is both cold and tired.
I think I could assume the frock is thin, if I'm told it's tattered.
Bitter is a taste. Using a poetic description among so many other descriptions makes it heavy.
Sliced is violent--and poetic in this case. The same rule as above applies here.
quote:
Long had she been lost, wandering among the many maze-like streets of London.
At this point, I'm wondering why she has been lost and wandering. I don't feel any better for knowing she's been wandering without some clue about why.
quote:
She looked up, pulling her twig-thin arms tighter around herself, trying to fight the abrasive winter air.
Again, so many extra words: now the air is both bitter and abrasive. Nothing wrong with hyperbole, but it just blends into the background here, drowned among so many other modifiers.
quote:
The sign on the street corner read: “Portabello Road.”“Portabello Road” she whispered, staring at the chipped street sign.
Portabello Road is repeated here, and I don't feel I've gained anything from it. I'd recommend having her look at the sign, then whisper what she reads.
quote:
She followed the twisting alley that opened before her, filled with shops, merchants, and food carts. Books stood dusty in their shelves, sulking as they were passed up for the jewelry shop next door.
I can't really imagine books sulking. You've shown us they're unused with the dust.
It's quite an opening. I like the detail, but I think it would work better if you were meticulous about which ones to include. With so many details, they just kind of blend in. My advice is to think about what elements are most important to show and find creative and fresh ways to show them, once.
At this point, I'm not hooked. I don't know anything about the character or her Point of View. I don't even know if she is the Point of View character. Unfortunately, the writing doesn't hook me, and I don't feel any sense of conflict or peril. Thus, I have to say I probably wouldn't turn the page to learn any more.
However, I think it could be polished up so that I would want to turn the page. It's a good start.
Would be interested in reading whole thing if you want to e-mail it to me,
Grant
Walking the cold, cobblestone streets of London with numb feet, she turned the corner. The bitter wind sliced harder through her tattered frock. Pulling her twig-thin arms tighter around herself, she looked up. The sign on the street corner read: “Portabello Road.”
A little better. To me, it needed the wind to slice harder here. Something. It’s still not flowing well. It does now have an action-reaction going on. Wind blows harder, she pulls her arms tighter and looks up. Something...a held breath for a reader, something is about to change.
Hmm...this is one of those openings with a static situation that then changes. She’s been wandering half the night and then, this wind blows harder, she tightens her arms and looks up – Portabello Road.
If nothing does change, right now, I’d be disappointed and never read past the next few lines.
If anyone is still interested, please email me. I would really appreciate it.
LOTS of adjectives. This bothered me.
The line "The sign on the street corner read: “Portabello Road.”" implies that she has read the sign (because of the POV of the main character). Her whisper is redundant for me.
What is special about this girl? Is she more than just some every day, London street urchin?
Luck with this.
Otherwise, decent setting and description.
A list of cliches:
numb feet
bitter wind
wind that slices
chilling to the bones
weary bones (notice how you've merged to cliches into ubber-clicheness)
quote:I like the inversion.
Long had she been lost