A) There is no hook here. There isn't a whole lot of anything here. A girl wakes up having just flown in from somewhere and is being woken up. A hook is defined as something that makes me interested in what will come next, in either a larger sense (keep me reading to further and further chapters) or a smaller sense (make me want to turn the page). This has neither, because I have no idea if she is arriving somewhere new or returning home from a distant locale. Regardless of that issue, we have no idea why it is important she just arrived in this location. I also do not care if Aunt Esther makes pancakes or bacon & eggs for breakfast. I want to read a STORY.

B) I'm usually good for a page or two if I can't see any glaring issues with the first 13. The only real issue I can see is a misspelling of tardiness. It's up to you to grab me and make me want to read more.

C) I do not like or dislike the POV you've chosen. It seems interesting enough and well done technically, you're getting us into her, using our senses to immerse us in the POV. But without anything actually happening, it's tough to say whether the POV is good or not.

Now, a few pointers from me, not on this piece, but overall.

1 - Spend some time reading and critiquing other people's stuff. You're technically competent, that's obvious. By reading our pieces and the critiques offered (and offering a few of your own) you'll start to get the hang of how we deal with the first 13 around here. It's kind of like riding a two person bike. It feels like sort of like you would expect, but there is a lot more precision required to do it well.

2 - Finish a piece before you start to obsess about the first 13. Having the greatest opening in the world is teriffic, but if the story doesn't have an ending, you've got nothing to show for all the hard work of writing an awesome opening 13. If you're worried about the peice as a whole, try posting a summary to get feedback on the whole arc of the work.

By the way, welcome to Hatrack. Apparently I wasn't that quick.

Jayson Merryfield

Hint to get your novel going. Suppose you have one minute to tell someone the plot of your novel. What do you say?

It's about a Prince of Denmark who thinks his father has been murdered, but can't decide what to do about it.

It's about a warrior, who sulks in his tent because he has been slighted by his Chieften. Then, his best friend gets killed.

It's about a girl who falls for a very rich man who all of her friends think is stuck up.

Get the idea?

Rick

My take:

quote:

---

[The alarm went off at eight fifteen. Rolling over, Jazlyn groped for the button and shut off the insistent noise. With a sigh, she leaned back against her pillow and pulled the comforter up to her chin. It’s too early, she thought as her eyes involuntarily closed.<--Cliche.] Her plane had arrived late the previous night and her body was still adjusting to the time change. Sleep had almost [claimed<--or reclaimed] her when there was a light knock on her door.
“[Jazlyn,<--Cool Name.] honey, are you awake?”
She groaned. “Yes, Aunt Esther.” Her voice was sleepy. She listened for a moment to her aunt’s retreating footsteps. I better get up, she thought pushing back the covers and swinging her legs off the bed. Aunt Esther hates tartiness to breakfast.

---

This is technically accomplished, but there doesn't seem to be a hook. While its well written enough that I'd give it a little longer to hook me, I want to be snared soon or I'm going to lose interest. As its a novel, I think the hook is a wee bit less important than for a short story, but I want to be confident that there IS going to be a story happening.

One other typo/error, I think:

I better get up, she thought pushing back .. should this be I'd better get up?

a) No hook.

b) Sorry, but probably not.

c) I don't like or dislike her. There's not enought to go on. She's just a typical teenager stereotype at this point.

There doesn't seem to be any reason to start with her waking up and almost falling back to sleep again. If there isn't/ DON"T start there.

You can start with your last few lines.

Ex:

There was a light knock on Jazlyn (last name)'s bedroom door.
"Honey, are you awake." Her Aunt Esther's voice carried through the wood.
She groaned. Aunt Esther hated tardiness at breakfast. "Yes," she said as she conjured a clean set of clothes.

NOW, hopefully, we are set up for the action. The writing is good but give me a reason to care.

Other than the header, there is no indication that this is fanasty. Some of those elements should sneak into the scene/text PDQ.

The thing I love about this article of his is that it shows the journey he took as a writer to get to the right place w/his opening of the Ender's Shadow story. You can almost feel him zoom in as you go from draft to draft. Each draft is, like yours, technically competent, but you can feel the distance (it helps tremendously if you've read this story of his, but even if you haven't I think he includes enough fragments that you get the idea.) By the end, though, you can see that he has settled into a framing of the story, a POV (he switches from one to another in the first chapter, an interesting decision) and who knows what other good stuff. It's an interesting read, I pick up something new each time I read it (or is it that I'm a different writer each time I read it? Hmm...)

At any rate, my point in posting this is - unless you've deliberately chosen to start with a very normal everyday scene, I would ask you to think about where your story really STARTS. Does the MC open the door of her bedroom and walk into Xanadu? Get attacked by Evil Robot Monkeys? (good catch, kings_falcon - I knew IB had forgotten something! LOL) Or does nothing happen until she tells Auntie at breakfast about some weird thing that happened on the plane the night before? (in which case, didn't the story start THEN?) What are the big events that drive the story? Do we need to be in the middle of one of them to get the story going? I am mostly working in short fiction right now, so I definitely am biased toward starting the story with the conflict, but it's something worth considering. Right now, I don't know what the stakes are, why I should worry about this MC, what perils she's going to face. I want to have her dangling on a cliff, or in battle with the Evil Robot Monkeys (hey - does anyone have a link to the ERM blog? That is hilarious and worth a good half hour of laughter.

Or, have her angry at someone (auntie? have her throw lightning bolts at the door to keep auntie from coming in?) or have her goal in jeopardy - even if her goal is only to get more sleep...have that goal be more in jeaopardy from the start. Know what I mean?

To look at your lines in particular - I suggest removing some of the refernences to the tiredness and noise of the alarm. We all have experience with both - we get it after only one mention. We don't need to see that the noise was incessant - alarms have a habit of ringing until someone turns them off. We know she's sleepy, of course her voice is sleepy. And why would aunt esther ask if she's awake, then walk away? My mom at least, when she does this when we're sleeping at her house, will stay there and wait for a reply (darn her!) because typically, when asking that question - it's not rhetorical, it's a passive aggressive attempt to tell the person to get their tush out of bed.

Otherwise, you might consider rewording some ing words - she thought, as she pushed back the covers and swung her legs off the bed. Little stronger that way.