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When the cart of breadloafs hit her, Honeysuckle didn’t see it, and she was of a mind that, less Parrow willed it, she would never see anything ever again. But, she’d spent enough of her childhood exploring every corner of Feedertown that thisday, even without her sight, she could get about fairly easily. Often, she’d miss a wandering dummalo or watercart by less than a onefoot, much to her mere’s dismay. She was sure Feederfolk marveled at her ability, but mostly she didn’t care to impress them so much as she cared to avoid them. With no clearcut future in town any longer, Honeysuckle wished she could go off on an adventure, never to return. But, she was just a blind jenny, too young and helpless to make it anywhere but about town. She didn’t even go to Faraway Castle anymore to help with

* edited to fix a typo i hadn't noticed before

This of course is just my opinion.

1. The first sentence says she didn't see something ("the cart of breadloafs"), then -- if I'm not mistaken -- tells me that that's because she's blind? And that only Parrow (deity or master?) can make her see again? So right off the bat, I'm a little wary of what you're trying to say.

2. It seems that getting hit with a cart of loaves of bread would be important enough to discuss, but you don't talk about it at all. Does that mean that the cart with the loaves of bread was what caused her to go blind? (If so, then you're literally opening with a flashback, and then moving to real time, which is confusing because people expect "The cart ran into Honeysuckle" to be in the story's "real time" -- "The cart had run into Honeysuckle" would be in the story's past.) Or are you going to eventually get back to discussing what happened thisday? (If so, then the discussion about Honeysuckle's blindness is a digression from the accident.)

3. "She'd miss a wandering dummalo or watercart by less than a onefoot" doesn't tell me what she's doing -- riding a bike? running? walking? delivering the mail? -- but apparently what she's doing is important, because you tell me a few moments later that there's "no clearcut future in it any longer" (without identifying what "it" is).

4. What's a "mere"? Normally I'd interpret this to mean a body of water, as in Beowulf or modern French; but maybe you mean "mare"? Or something else?

I got the sense of the fragment going too fast, too -- but not that _Honeysuckle_ was experiencing something happening rapidly; rather, I got a blur of images coming at me, without a clear thread.

I suggest that you take Honeysuckle and think of the two or three things you most want your reader to know about her (perhaps "she's blind, she's anxious to get out of this little town, but she fears leaving the security of the town"); then take the situation that makes your story important, whatever conflict there is or whatever issue she has, and decide how you want the reader to see that; and then focus on making the reader clearly understand exactly what situation Honeysuckle is in, and on making the reader know those key things about Honeysuckle that you had decided on.

I'm unpublished, so you don't have to take my word for it, but that's what it looks like to me.

1. the cart hitting her (in the past) made her blind. parrow is effectively a deity.

2. the accident itself DOES come up again, in much detail at the end of the story

3. she's walking about town and never bumping into anything. this is clearer later, but could be reworded here. and, as for the "clearcut future in it" that is actually a typo i didn't notice. i think i changed the end of the sentence and neglected to change the pronoun. "it" refers to the town. (and i just fixed that typo so it doesn't come up again)

4. mere is mother

the opener is quick: honeysuckle is blind but gets around well enough, but still wants to get out of feedertown to have an adventure. in the rest of the story, she gets a more local adventure, involving a talking mountain cat, an eye transplant (of sorts) and time travel (again, of sorts). the latter is why the accident doesn't really get much detail until later

Well said! Now make your introduction that clear.

> a few quick answers:

Okay, but since your reader won't have you at the other end of a network connection to explain it now (if you want my advice) you should make the necessary bits of this clearer in the text.

> 1. the cart hitting her (in the past) made her blind.

This can be a momentary flashback, since it's in the past. "She avoided a blurgle by a mere onefoot. Since she was four and became blind when a bread cart slammed into her, she had memorized every inch of the town...."

> parrow is effectively a deity.

Your original phrasing made that a plausible guess, but Parrow might not matter enough to mention on your first page.

> 2. the accident itself DOES come up again, in much
> detail at the end of the story

Okay, but since it's in the story past, I'd leave the details until later and still have as little as possible about it now. The important thing is that it made her blind; but what kind of trouble is she into _right now_ that would make me want to read the story?

> 3. she's walking about town and never bumping into
> anything.

So it's a general thing, not a part of her job or anything. You might consider showing this in a very specific way -- an accident narrowly avoided, in which she hears a townsman gasping, maybe.

> 4. mere is mother

You have enough slightly-off-but-understandable sets of words in here that you might consider leaving "mother" as "mother", or a closer derivative.

> honeysuckle...wants to get out of feedertown to
> have an adventure.

My only concern about this is that it seems too generic. What is it that's specific to _her_ and her situation that makes me want to read on?

In the Hobbit, it was the fact that Bilbo _didn't_ want an adventure, but Gandalf demanded it of him. In other stories, people are driven out of town by family, priests, warriors, whatever. Just pure wanderlust? Unless the character has something unique about her, I'm not likely to care all that much. Wanderlust in an effort to show the world that she can get by while blind? Okay... Wanderlust because she's sick of knowing every last step of the town too well, looking for a piece of turf that's unmemorized? Maybe, if there's something there. But I'm guessing, based on the clues you've given, that there's more, or at least much more that you could think up that would make me say, "Yeah, that's interesting..."

An immediate and believable hook would be that the town is afraid of her and that she has to leave to save her life. I mean a blind girl who can "see" would cause the superstitious louts to hate and fear her maybe even as a witch. But she really can't see, she's a genius who memorized the entire town and now must survive in an alien and strange world. The breadcart was a murder attempt and the trigger for her to flee. Or something like that.

Anyway it's just a thought. Disregard it if you think I am being too forward.

JB Skaggs

Honeysuckle had been blind ever since the cart of breadloafs hit her.

I think you have the right idea about telling us her situation up front, but the way you said it, I didn't understand. To be "of a mind" means "decide" in my vocabulary, so I thought she thinking, I don't ever want to stop being blind (!).

I understood that Mere was mother. I believe it is French or something close. think maybe a rearrangement of events is mostly what you need for clarity. If the sentences are rearranged, it makes it clearer that Parrow is some sort of deity or at the very least an overlord. I don't know any other way to get my point across than to take your words and arrange them in another order.

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It could be just me but the horsey set might trip over that word especially where Honeysuckle sounds like a name a kid would give to a horse and "mere" isn't too far off from "mare."

Anyway, other than a word issue, which most likely is just me, I like it.

for the record here:

jenny=girl
mere=mother
parrow=jesus christ (sorta)
dummalo=cow (though physically a cross between a buffalo and a camel)

and there are a lot of compound words we wouldn't use but which are easily understood, like breadloaf or onefoot