TITLE: DIVINE LOVE
GENRE: Regency-set Historical
Veni tapped her slippered foot and checked her pin watch… again! If her mother said marriage one more time she was going to scream!
“I do not know what is to become of you, Venitia,” Lady Belmaren disparaged.
Veni stood like a penitent before the duchess. It took but a moment after hearing the duke’s carriage depart for her to be summoned to the Egyptian-style sitting room her mother claimed for her own.
“I am quite disappointed you chose to not be at home when the duke called,” the duchess bemoaned. “Whitecliffe is a fine figure of a man, and is quite interested in getting to know you better.”
“Mother, I am not interested in getting to know Whitecliffe any better. He is arrogant and distant and has the coldest eyes I have ever seen. I do not find him attractive in the least.”
“That is neither here nor there, Venitia. He is interested in you and that is what is important. After all,” the duchess huffed, “you are hardly in the first blush of youth, and even when you were, no one would ever confuse you with a diamond of the first water. Now Artemis, she is a different story. Your sister takes after my side of the family.”
Veni stared at the woman who had given her life, sitting like a queen on the green and gilt settee shaped for all the world like Cleopatra’s barge. It had always amazed her that she was this woman’s child.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Too much dialogue, not enough meat. The obvious non-use of contractions makes it awkward to read, as does the misuse of words like "disparaged," "bemoaned," and "like a penitent."
ReplyDeleteThere's no visuals here, it reads like a bad fanfiction.
I liked the characters, but I found it hard to believe that a child would be named Artemis in Regency times (maybe that's just my ignorance). I also found it hard to conceive of such an eccentric Egyptian living room during Regency times, although I did like the visual.
ReplyDelete(I wrote this comment before reading any of the others.)
ReplyDelete46 - I don't read Regencies anymore but this seems as though it might be a fairly standard opening. The sequence in the third paragraph is really jarring and I assume the duchess is connected to the duke, rather than to Lady B. 'Disparaged' isn't used correctly. I'd read on to see if Veni has anything more going for her than a dislike of the duke, but I'm only barely hooked.
I want to like this and I think it's close, but there are some really clunky infodump lines in here. Another thing is the names threw me off a little because of the genre...
ReplyDeleteThe first thing I noticed was the exclamation points in the first two lines. I also thought the dialouge was heavy and sometimes awkward. There isn't much going on here except she doesn't want to be involved with this guy. I would need more than that to keep reading. I really liked the line "in teh first blush of youth."
ReplyDeleteI'm not much of a romance reader, and I'll be honest, this doesn't pull me in. I couldn't tell you at this point if it's just a genre issue for me or if it's more than that, but I'd put it down.
ReplyDeleteI actually like dialogue heavy openings, but the dialogue here was really awkward. As example:
ReplyDelete“I am quite disappointed you chose to not be at home when the duke called,” the duchess bemoaned. “Whitecliffe is a fine figure of a man, and is quite interested in getting to know you better.”Quite is repeated. Bemoaned is misused... etc.
I'm not the ideal reader for your genre, but this seems cliche to me... the mother trying to set her less beautiful daughter up with a rich lord. I could be wrong, but that seems to have been done to death.
I like the back and forth between mother and child and it made me curious about Veni. But it feels like you are starting in the middle of a scene instead of the beginning.
ReplyDeleteSorry, not hooked.
Since a reluctant debutant not wanting to marry the man selected by a snobby mother is a really common plot line, maybe you don't want to start here. You need something that makes your novel stand out...something unique. Otherwise I think and agent would pass on this just because there isn't anything remarkable about this intro. Take a good look at your ms...what is there about your story that is different? Find a way to work that into your intro.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
I write Regency-set historicals too, so the non-use of contractions, as well as the Egyptian furnishings, are completely appropriate here.
ReplyDeleteI agree that perhaps the story isn't starting in the correct spot -- it's always hard to determine that! What does Veni want to accomplish? What obstacle has just gotten in the way of that desire? That may help decide where the scene should start.
Good luck. There are never enough Regency-set historicals!
This doesn't quite hook me. As others have said, the idea of "daughter resisting her mother's attempts to marry her off to a rich man" has been done over and over again. That means that it's an idea that works, of course, but it also means you need to make yours unique somehow. Right now it seems too typical.
ReplyDeleteI also recommend avoiding too many variants on "said" - disparaged, bemoaned, huffed. They distract from the actual dialogue, and they're not necessary if you've written the dialogue well enough. The majority of the time, a simple "said" is the best choice.
I liked the characters. Good feel for the setting/period. Very well done. It hooked gently, I could become more enthralled as it goes -I would read on to find out.
ReplyDeleteNot hooked. I agree with many of the others that the opening is cliche. I've just recently read one that is almost exactly the same, except the names are different and it's set in a futuristic world.
ReplyDeleteTake DeeSoul's advice. Figure out what your MC wants, and what stands in her way of getting that. That's what we need to know in your opening. It's not enough to know she doesn't want to marry this guy, we need to what she does want to do. (Marry someone else? Run off and join the army? Be a world-famous badmitton player?)
And use 'he said' and 'she said' as opposed to 'he disparaged or bemoaned' Using those kinds of tags tells editors and agents you're a beginner. There's potential here, I think. It just needs more work.
I do not read Regencies. However, this wouldn't hook me if it were a fantasy, either. I disliked the use of mixed metaphors in the same sentence (blush of youth/diamond of the first water). You've got several words that make no sense in the context and I'm not at all sure about the Egyptian fetish in the Regency period, although I could be wrong. I will say I liked your last sentence, and with a little work, your last paragraph. Best of luck, but you'll want to keep working.
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid I'm not hooked. I liked the last paragraph quite a lot. The rest seems to lack spark or something to differentiate it from other "marry off the less than beautiful" daughter stories. If you've got a twist, I think you need to get to it more quickly.
ReplyDeleteI'm not hooked. I agree with the others that this has potential, but needs some work. I think everyone else has already given some pointers: the dialogue tags and a more distinctive starting place would really improve this.
ReplyDeleteStrange use of words like 'disparaged' and 'bemoaned' - didn't really work. No one came alive for me. A bit of a cliche.
ReplyDeleteI'm not hooked by this, to my dismay. I like Regencies, but you lost me at the overuse of exclamation points in the first paragraph. Everything after that was pretty much fluff, and it needs much more substance to it to work as the opening to a novel.
ReplyDelete