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Hi Friends. Here is the reworked first 13 of Finish Line. It will be an 85,000 word count novel of literary fiction with a Young Adult feel. I welcome your critiques and am happy to reciprocate. Here goes:
Ketchikan was the last stop on the bridge to nowhere, but it was Cree’s somewhere. Nestled among the roller coaster hills of Revillagigedo Island along Southeastern Alaska’s Inside Passage, life was idyllic here, most of the time. Like tonight under the Quonset-style dome of the Cochrane gym where Cree felt safe from the sleet sizzling under a hide-and-seek moon. Craving high school basketball, this was his tune-up for the track-and-field season with its promise of brighter yellow-jonquil days ahead. Too bad the tough love of the finish line didn’t translate to basketball’s hardwood. His freakish speed in the 100-meter dash was one thing. Ball handling was something else.
This finish line was a hard seat at the end of a short bench.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited April 01, 2010).]
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Oh my gosh. There are a LOT of names here. I count eight names (though I did not count repeats, so the real count is actually higher), none of which help me very much as a reader. I've never been to these places, havn't seen this tournament, don't care about the style of the gym. I don't mean that negatively, by the way, I just mean you havn't given me much incentive to care. I feel like I'm reading a list. Of course this is your book, so I don't know for sure, but I think this information could be added in slowly and naturally later on. If they are needed at all.
What I like about this is the way the voice of the character comes through in third person (when you're not naming things.) Your opening line is fantastic. I like the idea of "the middle of no where" being someone's "somewhere". I wasn't turned off by the "sleet sizzling" (I actually sort of liked it).
Good luck with this! It's hard to tell how a book will turn out in terms of plot from only 13 lines, but I think you are on track for a good start.
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I don't read literary fiction, so I am a little hesitant to comment, but I liked the other opening better (the finish line one). Posts: 1102 | Registered: May 2009
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sjsampson, while that is considered a valid piece of feedback (as in Kate Wilhelm's red mark in the margin of a manuscript to indicate where she would stop reading if she were an editor who had picked the manuscript up from the slushpile), it would be more helpful to explain why "sleet sizzling" caused you to stop reading.
I'm guessing it might be because of the contradictory (if not oxymoronic) image of sizzle as something related to heat and sleet as something cold. I have to say, however, that I think I know what Wum intended, because I've heard snow "hiss" when it was falling, and the sound could have been called a "sizzle" except for the oxymoronic effect.
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I actually meant to come back to this and then forgot. I spent too much time thinking "sleet doesn't sizzle" before I understood that Wum meant the sound.
And then I spent even more time wondering if I'm oversensitive to lines like that because of my meteorological background.
I did finish the sentence, but after that I spent some time wondering how Cree could see the hide-and-seek moon if he was under a dome in a gym. By that point, I was out of the story.
I decided this particular literary descriptive style probably wasn't for me and aborted reading.
I expected to see more comments like TrishaH24's stating that the sizzling sleet didn't bother them.
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Ketchikan was the last stop on the bridge to nowhere, but it was Cree’s somewhere (its a heavy phrase to mentally digest, maybe "but, Cree loved it."). Nestled among the roller coaster hills of Revillagigedo Island along Southeastern Alaska’s Inside Passage (to many words to describe this place), life was idyllic here (just cut here), most of the time. Like (cut like) tonight under the Quonset-style dome of the Cochrane gym where Cree felt safe from the sleet sizzling (sleet can sizzle? makes me think of heat) under a hide-and-seek moon (hide and seek is an awesome image for the moon!). Craving high school basketball, this was his tune-up (maybe just, High School basketball was his tune up...) for the track-and-field season with its promise of brighter yellow-jonquil days ahead. Too bad the tough love of the finish line didn’t translate to basketball’s hardwood. (I like the contrast between track and field and basketball) His freakish speed in the 100-meter dash was one thing. Ball handling was something else.
This finish line was a hard seat at the end of a short bench.
I like that you have a fantasyish feel for an Alaskan location. But (as with my story) there's too many words to digest before we can get to the great stuff about finish lines and basketball, and how Cree feels about them. I wouldn't mind just diving right in to Cree's mind, maybe go first person. It would settle better to see how HE feels about his suroundings as the unfold around him. Let the Alaskan landscape tell its setting through Cree's eyes.
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These names are very long, and it's hard to follow, for me at least. Honestly, I wouldn't read on because there are for one too many names and long words that are hardly understandable, and for two I don't really read literary fiction.
I was also lost on the first sentence. It made no sense to me. Firstly, I can't pronounce the first word "Ketchikan"; secondly, I do not understand "but it was Cree's somewhere"? What do you mean by that?
I also don't know what you meant when you said: "Too bad the tough love of the finish line didn’t translate to basketball’s hardwood" More specifically, what do you mean by "trasnlate to basketball's hardwood?"
I think this opening should be a little easier to read, an opening that someone doesn't have to stop and think: what does this mean?
Lastly, I don't get the last line: "This finish line was a hard seat at the end of a short bench."
Anyway, Good luck with this. I'm sure you'll get it right. It's taking me forever to get the opening to my epic novel "Eye of a Shadow" just right, too.
But I can say this, though: congradulations with getting it at 85,000 words! I wish I'd known more about writing last year and about publishing and what agents and editors look for, when I was actually writing Eye of a Shadow...Then I would have known that my book is waaaaaaaaay too long to be looked at from any agent, publisher, editor, etc...and that is why I've decided to start smaller, while I'm still trying to finish "Eye of a Shadow" and then I'll work my way up from there.
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