TITLE: The Emerald Girl
GENRE: Thriller
The knock at the door is so hard the glass rattles. We have few visitors, leaving one possibility: the steer are out. I can see my animals running down the side of the road, thousand pound bovines built of solid muscle, giving my insurance carrier indigestion.
I throw my book to the living room table without bothering to place a marker, wondering which neighbor I pissed off now and tripping over the up-step between kitchen and hallway leading to the door.
Ann is pulling laundry out of the wash machine as I pass the utility room. Mason, our one year old son, is crawling underfoot, preventing me from getting to the door.
The urgency of the knock is muted when I see the woman standing on the other side of the door. Her short black hair is messed from the wind and her slacks show a nice contour of a**; something I appreciate. I open the door praying she doesn’t hand me a pamphlet telling me ‘Jesus Loves You’.
I step back as I open the door, startled. Two men in dark blue suits stand to the side and behind the woman.
“Mr. Melvin Humphrey?” Her voice is firm, yet polite; all business. She extends her hand. I take it, feeling like a sheep ready to be sheared.
“What can I do for you?” The words catch in my throat with a click.
“I’m Agent Alice Hanson with the FBI,” she introduces herself, showing me her badge.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Not quite hooked. I might ask for a few more pages if I were an agent to see how the story progressed, but the present tense narration pulled me out of the story quite a bit.
ReplyDeleteNot hooked. I agree with the above poster that the present tense pulled me out of the story. I also feel like you could tighten things up a bit. There were some areas where you were telling rather than showing (i.e.: "I step back as I open the door, startled." -- did he jump? Puke? Grip the door with a sweating palm? Break out in show tunes?). I'm interested to see why the FBI is at his door, but wouldn't read on because of the tense you used.
ReplyDeleteConsidering the title, I assumed the MC was a woman until the line about Ann and "our son." That threw me a little. I didn't think it was likely the mc would think of his insurance carrier when his cows--sounds like his livelihood--were escaping. Other than that, I would keep reading. Good luck.
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if I would read on. The present tense didn't bother me and I thought the introduction set the scene nicely.
ReplyDeleteI just don't like the MC. Not because he pisses off his neighbors, but because he was sitting on his butt reading a book, while his wife did the laundry with a little one underfoot. Then he compounded it by sexualizing a stranger on his doorstep.
He rubs me the wrong way already. But, then again, I'm probably not your intended audience.
And, depending on how good the plot is, I can and do overlook a lot of chauvinistic behavior on the part of a male MC.
Didn't quite work for me. When "I can see my animals running down the side of the road" is in the second sentence, it's hard to know whether see means see, or see means imagine.
ReplyDeletePutting the book down without bothering to place a marker felt like an extraneous detail.
Walking by the wife doing laundry to notice another woman's ass doesn't endear me to him much, either.
It took me a few reads to figure out that the steer (s)--should be plural--weren't knocking on the door.
ReplyDeleteUntil the third paragraph I thought the MC was a woman--not sure why.
How does seeing the woman knocking mute the urgency? Then I ask myself, why is he reading and the wife doing the laundry. :-)
Doesn't have the thriller feel to it, which I'm sure comes with word 251.
I like the indigestion line, but for one pet peeve: You're not going to give the insurance carrier idigestion. The carrier is not a person, it's the company as a whole, comprised of underwriters, sales & marketing, call centers, policy service reps, actuaries, claims adjusters, management, HR, etc...
ReplyDeleteBut you could give a person in one of the departments indigestion, such as the underwriter or a claims adjuster.
rom my experience I disagree with Coffee, Please in the fact that most farmers are rather aloof about their getting hit by Joe Schmoe's Hummer or grazing away at Old McDonald Neighbor Farm's corn. At least they seem that way when I call them on their claims.
Sorry, Super Insurance Nerd is bursting out!
Also, I thought the MC was a woman for some reason, until the 'son' line.
Not hooked. Not to piggyback on the other commenters, but I also thought the MC was a woman.
ReplyDeleteHis attitude doesn't bother me if that's the picture you were trying to paint. If not, I would change it.
I may slim over the next few pages to see what Agent Henson wants.
At this point, nothing I've read seems to justify the present tense. Unless a story is so compelling I feel I'm experiencing it in real-time, present tense tends to distance me from it. Sorry. I just wasn't engaged. Sorry.
ReplyDeleteI didn't mind the narrator's attitude towards the women in the scene, as I assumed it was intentional. I'm with everyone else; I thought the narrator was female up until the line about Ann.
ReplyDeleteWas thrown off by the second paragraph. I suggest maybe shortening the sentence or simplifying it?
I might read on a little, as you end the page with a curious hook (the FBI are on his doorstep), but I'm not very invested in the character so far. Sorry!
If the Mc can see the steers (the plural for steer is steers) are out why is she/he contemplating possibilities?
ReplyDelete"I can see..." This sentence is grammatically incorrect. It should read.I can see my animals, each weighing a thousand pounds, running down the side of the road. Escaped cattle don't give insurance carrier's indigestion unless they know they the cattle escaped. The time frame doesn't allow for this, thus it's not funny.
We don't need to know the character didn't mark the book.
I don't follow the escaped cattle to the FBI. Aliens have arrived. If he/she can see the cattle running down the road, then the MC can see the FBI pull up the drive and why aren't the stopped by the cattle?
Start here, then come back. There's a lot more.
Could be hooked. I thought this flowed pretty well, and the title combined with the FBI agents on the doorstep have definitely piqued my curiosity. I also liked the insurance carrier reference (although I agree with Angie about the carrier being more than one person; the quick fix is just to change "carrier" to "agent").
ReplyDeleteThings I didn't like:
1) A married man with a one-year-old admiring another woman's behind
2) The present tense: It could work, I suppose, but I agree with the commenters who have said that it doesn't seem necessary. Present tense almost always feels like a gimmick to me; unless you have a specific reason to use it, you might consider revising (although that's going to be a lot of revising, I know).
I'm going to have to piggyback here on other posters: I find present tense jarring and I also thought the MC was a woman at first.
ReplyDeleteWell, I didn't have a problem with present tense, or with him admiring another woman's ass. I'm betting most men, married or not, notice other women.
ReplyDeleteI did, however, think he was a woman until he mentioned Ann, and I wasn't sure if he actually saw his cattle running loose or imagined the situation. I settled on him imagining it after reading further.
And I'm hooked enough to read more. In 250 words, I've met him, his wife and child. I know what he does for a living. I know he likes to read and doesn't want to be bothered by Jehovah's Witnesses. He lives a pretty ordinary life until this moment.
You started the story at the moment his life changes and the writing was clean and readable.
The only down side is it's not a real compelling opening, but I'd certainly stick around to see what the FBI had to say, and see if it livened things up.
A few things about this bothered me but I'd read on because I want to find out why the FBI are at his door.
ReplyDeleteI'm not a fan of the present tense, but this is a personal thing.
I was confused with the line about seeing the cattle. I assumed this meant the MC could literally see the cattle out the window, but then when the urgency of the knock was muted, I realised 'see' must have meant in his mind. Perhaps you could clarify this a little.
I think the part about not bothering to put a marker in the book is redundant, because when you throw a book onto a table you usually don't put a marker in it. This isn't really a big deal but at the start of the story when every word counts and when I was eager to see what the knock was about, it interrupted the flow a bit.
I had no problem with the MC sitting on his butt while his wife did laundry, and I'm a woman. Sometimes I'll be sitting on my butt while my husband does chores and vice versa. But I also think this, along with him wondering which of his neighbours he'd pissed off now, builds up a good picture of him in a very short space of time. And that's what I liked about this. Within 250 words, we know he runs cattle, he has a wife and a one-year-old, he pisses off the neighbours with seeming regularity and the FBI are after him. It's a lot to convey in a short space and I think you've done it really well.
I found quite a bit of awkwardness in the writing here. It started in the first sentence. “So hard the glass rattles” feels strange; why not simplify to “The knock at the door rattles the glass.” The second sentence stretches logic; “few visitors” leaves only “one possibility”? Third sentence: Are the steer really out and does he see them right this minute, or is he saying he can imagine the steer being out? The insurance carrier is a total step outside the story.
ReplyDeleteSo many places to get tripped up in the very first paragraph make it difficult for me to want to keep reading. Notwithstanding that the guy seems like a real jerk for ogling a woman’s ass while his wife is doing laundry, I have a more pressing question: Assuming she is facing the door, how can he even see her ass? Also, isn’t there a door between him and her? Is the door only partly glass? If so, then I envision the wooden part of the door being between him and the woman, so again, how could he see her ass? And if the door is 100% glass so that he could see her ass, then he would have also seen the two guys flanking her, right?
It’s really important to write in proper blocking for your characters and allow your reader to really visualize. When the actions don’t make sense, it throws the reader out of the story.
By the time I find out it’s the FBI, I already don’t like this guy and I’m annoyed so I hope they just haul him off and the story ends. Or something. Sorry!