posted
Danielle Darcey put her hand on the cool airplane window as she looked down at the huge city sprawling below her. To her it looked like a frightening gray maze peeking up through interspersed cumulus clouds. An enormous maze, she thought. I hate mazes. “Is this your first time to London?” a British woman seated next to her asked. Danielle pulled her attention from the window. “No, my father is from here. I came with him once when I was little, about six, I think.” “So, you probably don’t remember much.” “I remember my uncle’s place in Chertsey, an Edwardian style home.”
I hope I did the 13 lines correctly. I was a bit confused about that, however, it fit in the little box, so hopefully I’m not too far off.
Anyway, Fateful is finished at 115,000 words. It’s a modern-day, romantic fairytale with a vampire twist.
Note: Her thoughts are italicized. (“An enormous maze” and “I hate mazes.”) I just couldn’t figure out how to do that in here.
Would you want to read more? Thanks so much, Cheri
posted
I identify with the heroine (I've flown enough times) but nothing happens in these first 13 lines to make me want to keep reading. I would have liked to see something unusual, odd, exciting.
Would your average teen (presumably she's a teen, if this is YA) say "an Edwardian style home"? That reads like info-dump poorly disguised as dialogue.
posted
Your average YA probably wouldn't recognise 'Edwardian', so why not 'Victorian'? There's little or no difference as far as architecture goes. Maybe a bit of description is needed to supplement this.
[This message has been edited by RobertB (edited May 20, 2008).]
posted
Thanks for your opinion. And just to clarify, she is an older teen, so yes, the character would say that. (My 17 year old would, and my character is a bit older.) Words like that would fit within Danielle's personality. But you'd only know that if you read more, which you can't do here.
I could try Victorian too, or just take it out. That little bit wasn't that important to me. I'm more interested in knowing what you think of the reast of it, and it seems we're getting hung up on one word.
posted
You did the 13 lines correctly, sweetcheri.
And you do italics by putting the letter i inside square brackets [] at the beginning of what you want italicized and a slash with the letter i, as in /i inside the square brackets at the end of what you want italicized.
If you click on the pencil and paper icon at the top of this post, you will see what I've said in a box like the reply boxes, and you will also see how I did it with italics in this sentence.
quote:such as set apart something you want to quote
and you can find a list of how to do them by looking to the left of the reply box for the underlined words *UBB Code in ON and clicking on that. It will take you to a page that shows all that kind of stuff.
posted
The name Darcey is awfully close to Darcy in my mind. That and the mention of the Edwardian house make me think you are aiming for the Austen market.
Other than that, I think you've framed a nice beginning, we have setting, and a character the reader can identify with.
posted
Very good all around... I don't have a whole lot to comment on.
quote:Danielle Darcey put her hand on the cool airplane window as she looked down at the huge city sprawling (1) below her. To her it looked like a frightening gray maze peeking up through interspersed cumulus clouds (2). An enormous maze, she thought. I hate mazes. “Is this your first time to London?” a British woman seated next to her asked. Danielle pulled her attention from the window. “No, my father is from here. I came with him once when I was little, about six, I think.(3)” “So, you probably don’t remember much.” “I remember my uncle’s place in Chertsey, an Edwardian style home (4).”
1. You're duplicating yourself here. A sprawling city is a huge city, and a huge city is sprawling. The same thing happens below with the word maze. You use it three times in three sentences, when the second line merely repeats the first. Economy and focus are the calling-cards of strong writing, in my books anyways. That said, I'm a terrible word-waster myself.
2. I don't think interspersed is the word you're looking for here - it means scattered among something, not spread out and distant from one another. Clouds could be intersperced through the sky, but are not interspersed themselves. Regardless, I don't know that you need it here. I may be wrong, but are cumulus clouds naturally spread apart? Doesn't the defined name of the cloud formation change when cululus clouds transfer into something all-encompassing and opaque? In my opinion, merely saying cumulus clouds, coupled with the fact that we know Danielle can see the ground, is enough to infer that the clouds are spread out.
3. Something about this dialogue doesn't sound quite right to me... something about the rhythm of it, the way I sound it out based on the indicated punctuation, sounds wrong. It might just be me, but I'd try and find a way to reword it.
4. This is horribly awkward. The only people who speak like this are historians and architects, and only to one another. If you want to describe the house as Edwardian, do it when we actually get to see the house for the first time, and only in narration. If people were actually discussing it, they would refer to it as old, rustic, well-preserved, striking, impressive, any number of adjectives that aren't arcitecturally-derived.
This started off with a lot of promise and I really liked it from the outset, but the dialogue issues near the end make me pause. I'd probably read on since there isn't anything terribly difficult about this piece, but I'd hope the dialogue would become more realistic within the next page or two. You've got a knack for setting and description, and that will carry me a fair ways. Work on the dialogue and it'll carry me a good deal further - right to the end, sometimes.
Good work.
Jayson Merryfield
[This message has been edited by Wolfe_boy (edited May 20, 2008).]
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