TITLE: Always Kiss Me Goodnight
GENRE:Romance
Her heart raced, the normal rhythm now erratic, pounded in fierce uneven beats. She sucked for air, and tried to get a breath. Beads of hot, sticky perspiration drenched her clothes. Clenched fists turned her knuckles white, she grasped her trembling knees, and tears streamed down her cheeks.
The intercom speaker crackled and vibrated, a voice told her to brace. Morgan Reynolds squeezed her eyelids tight, afraid to look. Her body throbbed and pulsated with fear. She tucked her head low on her lap.
The silver jumbo jet engines were silent. The wide wings baffled by turbulence, fought to find balance. The plane buffered from side to side, then descended; slow at first, then more rapidly. Morgan glanced out the window, and dropped her face low. Treetops snapped, swiftly extinguishing the emerald green forest below them.
Wind gushed, the sound deafening, her ears rang with the shrill whistling reverberation. Morgan braced and rocked in her seat. Her arms quivered trying to hold her legs tight. She anticipated the final collision. They were about to crash. Fear gripped her; beads of sweat covered her forehead. She froze in the moment. Seized by terror and fright she waited for impact.
The metal shrieked. The fuselage scraped and tore as they bounced up, then down. The plane swayed and pitched as it scuffled with the ground. The motion stopped. Lights went off. The plane was dark – swallowed in blackness.
*
Morgan stirred and reached for Ben. Her hand shook on his chest. She waited, trying to feel movement. Please breathe!
Miss Snark's First Victim
Ahhh, I think you mean "buffeted", not "buffered"?
ReplyDeleteI like the idea behind the opening, but I'm not quite hooked. I feel it could be tightened and tweaked a bit.
I think I would read on to see how she survived the plane crash, or if that was a premonition, but this could be tightened and tweaked. There might have been too many details in the plane crash part... and yet no mention of other people.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments, especially Catherine's about no other people. But I would ask to read more.
ReplyDeleteNot hooked. You seemed to be focused on making this an exciting crash, and it is, but you've completely missed the human element.
ReplyDeleteA woman is in a plane about to crash and she doesn't have a single thought. She doesn't think about her kids, her husband/boyfriend, her parents, or Ben, who she seems to care about once the plane comes to a halt. She doesn't even think, OMG! I'm gonna die.
Perhaps delete some of the heart thumping and beaded sweat, and replace it with some human emotion, that way we fell what your MC feels. Give us something that makes us connect with her.
(From the writer) Catherine was right this was a premonition actually a dream that's why she's appears alone on the plane. The story unfolds and connects to her life crashing and her helpless to stop it.
ReplyDeleteI was a little shocked at the third paragraph to see that she was in a plane. I think that should jump out right away--maybe make the first sentence of that paragraph to the very beginning.
ReplyDeleteThe writing was good and tense for me until the fourth paragraph, when I think you could do some cutting.
Also, even if it's a dream, the panic you have here indicates that she can feel a bit more. Which means that she would move with the impact and the sway and pitch of the plane. Her body's gonna be jerking around like a doll. Play that up. Make us feel it.
So overall, not hooked, but I think if you play with the writing some more, I'd be there pretty quickly.
Barbara stated it perfectly--this lacks the human element.
ReplyDeleteThe things is--you haven't made me care for these people yet. And since I don't care for them yet, the emotional impact of the crash is lost on me.
Having trouble going from someone's panic attack (?) to an intercom, and no identity to this reaction machine until the second paragraph -- and I'm only half certain Morgan is the one with the racing heart.
ReplyDeleteI think this needs to start with a concrete statement. The plane is going down. *Then* show Morgan's reactions. Without a reason for her panicking, it loses all its strength.
I spent most of it wondering what was happening, therefore the dramatic descriptoin was a bit lost. Let me know what's going on then I can pay more attention to how she feels about it and what she is experiencing. Also I think it wasn't neccesary tell us her "heart raced" and describe what that is. I think you could make it more dramatic by eliminating some of the descriptives.
ReplyDeleteI think you have a nice writing style and I would read more to find out if Ben survived.
(From the author) Morgan is having a dream. Actually this is a real dream and the way it happened. Dreams are not always realistic, but they can have hidden messages or premonitions of things to come. Such is the case here. The dream gets bizzaire as it goes on, but as changes take place in Morgan life pieces of this dream fall into place. I actually had this very dream several times myself and it made sense after the unexpected death of my husband five years ago. Strangely it all made sense after his death and I never had the dream again. It inspired me to write this book. Althought it's a fictional book the dream was a real happening. I tried to capture the dream as it really happened.
ReplyDeleteIt's an exciting beginning, but I think the writing needs to be tightened. I found the first sentence very jarring. Going from "the normal rhythm now erratic" to "pounded in fierce uneven beats" put me off. I'd either cut the second or third part of that sentence.
ReplyDelete"Baffled" should be "buffeted" also, except you won't want to use "buffeted" twice in the one sentence.
I didn't care for all the description in the opening sentance, seems over written.
ReplyDeleteWe have some very purple repetitive language here, and I wanted to stop after the first paragraph. "Sucked for air" and "tried to get a breath" mean the exact same thing. In the last paragraph, all those colorful verbs (shrieked, scraped, tore, bounced) actually distract from the story. This is an example of a writer getting caught up in the language and forgetting the story, so I feel like it's not ready for submission.
ReplyDelete