TITLE: THE STARS FELL SIDEWAYS
GENRE: YA
Where did the casting director find this guy? Villians-R-Us?
I grunted as I hung from the technicolor cliff, my fingers barely holding on to the plastic edges fifteen feet above the soundstage.
“See what happens when you mess with me?” Captain Aragno said in a bad imitation of Jack Black. He pointed down at me, his head back in laughter. “Let’s see how you get out of this. Your precious Mikaehl can’t save you now! So long, Princessa!”
Aragno laughed again and stomped away. I watched his saggy belly sway above the ridiculous codpiece as he strutted down the back ramp and over to the nearby table. He took a quiet drink from a large Nalgene bottle and winked at me.
Ew. He really was awful. And his real name was Eugene, to boot. But enough of him. I had a job to do.
Refocusing on the ledge, I started swinging my legs up, trying to get a foothold. The sharp plastic edges dug into my fingers, but I pushed down the pain.
At a training day about a year ago, my father took me to the Navy Seals training grounds in North Carolina and we worked on dangling techniques.
“Keep your arms slightly bent,” he had said. “Try to pump if you can, keep that blood flowing.”
I worked on it tirelessly for weeks after that. I had bigger guns than Madonna. It was awesome.
Miss Snark's First Victim
Great first line, wouldn't use the flashback or Madonna reference. Other than that the voice is powerful.
ReplyDeleteI love this. You've established a great voice already in these 250 words, and I would definitely read on.
ReplyDeleteOne thing, I think it's Navy SEAL instead of Seal (and I might be wrong, but worth checking). Also, while I appreciate the Madonna comment, I agree with the previous poster, if this is YA, I'm not sure they would get it :)
Good luck!
I love the title. :)
ReplyDeleteAnd I think even teens know who Madonna is.
I don't get a good sense of where this is going, but I did get a great sense of voice from this excerpt, and I agree with the others that Madonna is not as relevant a comparison as Jack Black.
ReplyDeleteBest of luck!
I like the voice and the setup - I'd love to read a novel about a teenage stuntwoman! I think it needs a little tightening, but I'd read on.
ReplyDeleteI like this a lot. It's fresh and it sounds like the MC has at least one very cool hobby. I'd want to see a partial.
ReplyDelete(It is Navy SEAL, btw; SEAL is an acronym and should have all capitalized letters.)
I like the voice and the set up.
ReplyDeleteI feel sort of stupid for being the only person who got the Madonna reference but not the Jack Black one...
I thought the flashback was a little abrupt without much of a transition (she's pushing down the pain in one sentence and in the next, she's at SEAL training) and went on a little long if all it's there for is to explain that she's well muscled.
I'd read more.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone!
ReplyDeleteJust to clear something up, that SEAL training isn't a flashback, that's all there is to it. The next sentence has her hanging from the cliff again in the commercial shoot. She's using that memory to explain the actions that come after this excerpt.
It's funny that most of you didn't get the Madonna part and that you did get the Jack Black part. I would have thought Jack Black wasn't as popular as he used to be, and with Madonna doing the Superbowl and having a new album out she'd be more 'now'
I've seen this in a lot of places for crit, and it doesn't feel like it's changed much? I still really love the idea of a teenage girl who's a stuntdouble. I still love the voice.
ReplyDeleteBut for some reason, in this read through, I feel like time pauses in various places: she grunts while dangling on the cliff *pause* we cut to Aragno and him walking off scene *unpause* then dangling again *pause* Navy SEAL training *unpause*... If she's waiting for a cue, then that's one thing, but I felt there was a sort of stilted, lack of flow here. Maybe this is just me? But I still would want to read more to see where it was going.
You also may want to cut out the second "plastic edges" since I hadn't forgotten they were plastic from the second paragraph.
I've also seen this around the blogging world; I like the concept. I wonder if it would work - just throwing this out there - to include a little bit of the movie drama in a screenplay format. The character is introduced, and then it zooms into the format what the character overhears, then we experience her reaction to it. With this premise it seems like you have room for creativity in how the story is presented.
ReplyDeleteThis is what I meant by my comment above:
ReplyDeleteI grunted as I hung from the technicolor cliff, my fingers barely holding on to the plastic edges fifteen feet above the soundstage.
(formatted like a screenplay):
Captain Aragno: See what happens when you mess with me?
[maniacal laughter]
Let’s see how you get out of this. Your precious Mikaehl can’t save you now! So long, Princessa!
I watched his saggy belly sway above the ridiculous codpiece as he strutted down the back ramp and over to the nearby table. He took a quiet drink from a large Nalgene bottle and winked at me