posted
Horror/Dark Fantasy, 7000 words, looking for readers of the whole thing.
Steven McFarland walked into his living room and saw the boy opening the lock of a small, wooden box. The boy lifted the lid, but Steven slammed it shut. “It's time for you to leave,” he said. The kid stood up.
“You're a jerk.”
“Go home kid.”
“I can't. I gotta be at school soon.”
“Better get there then.”
“I can't walk all that way and still be on time.”
“Then start running.”
“It's not too hard for you to drive me, Steven.”
“I'm not your damn chauffeur!” Steven said. The boy jumped back; Steven had never shouted at him before. “If you wanted a
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited October 18, 2005).]
posted
I'm not very much hooked. First, for reasons of readability, you should tag your dialogue. Readers don't see repetitions of "said" as actually repetitive, but they are very useful to know who is speaking. Right now I have to do a mental count of lines from the beginning to know who the speaker is. Second, I don't really get any emotions here. Whose POV is this in and how does he feel about the situation. For that matter, where is the situation? What is the boy doing in Steve's living room? What is their relationship, if any? The dialogue does not make sense because there is no context to it. And, additionally, Steven seems to know the boy ("Steven had never shouted at him before"). Why does he not know his name?
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posted
The dialogue is fine, I think. But he's right, it's not much of a hook the way it is. Maybe, and this is just an idea, the way to draw the reader in could be done with body language between the characters as they speak. Maybe the kid's scared for some reason. Maybe Steven is unreasonably agitated (there's some hint of that already in the dialogue). Plus, it'd be easier to tell who's talking.
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I would like to know whose POV I'm in. The boy's name, too.
The relationship could be interesting if I understood it. But so far, I don't know what's in the box, why Steven cares, why the boy cares, whether I should care, how they are related (or are they?), why the boy calls Steven by his first name, or how they feel about each other generally. It's conflict, but since I don't know what they conflict's about, I can't feel it as though I were there. So I'd say: tell us up front, and it'll help me be hooked.
posted
I get very quickly bored with passing back and forth dialogue like this. It would kill me if it were in the first lines. I always get lost and end up having to take careful note of who is saying what.
I agree with there needing to be actions. Show what's going on more. Make us care about what's being said.
posted
I'll agree that just a little bit of tagging will do the trick. Really only the first line of dialogue after the first large(-ish) paragraph. AFter that the things they say to each other do an adequate job of helping keep straight who is speaking.
The thing that bothers me is that I have no idea of the relationship between these two. Why is the boy in Steven's house--or why is Steven in the boy's house? What is he (whichever one) doing there? That last line 'Steven had never shouted at him before,' makes me think that Steven is an integral part of the household here, but there are other things that make me think he's not.
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