TITLE: Cadence
GENRE: YA Spy
I’m at dinner when they come for me. My heartbeat is in my ears, and the adrenaline rushes in my feet, my hands. I’m sitting at a table by the windows in the Cartwright Institute for Young Women dining hall, eating bad dorm food while my friends discuss the chemistry test we took today. Mira swears she failed the test even though I stayed up half the night helping her prepare for it. And I know they’ve come for me.
There’s an uncomfortable squirming in my gut that has nothing to do with Cartwright’s signature meatloaf mush and its proximity to my mouth. There’s a whispering in my ears, memories of voices and people I have tried desperately to forget.
Mira taps me on the shoulder and I jump, sending my knees into the bottom of the long, rectangular table. Chocolate milk splashes out of my glass and splatters all across my blouse, leaving the pristine white cotton pocked with brown freckles. The other girls around us laugh. Mira offers me a napkin. “Sorry,” she says. I take it with burning cheeks.
“No worries.” I dab at the stains and try to swallow down the rising panic in my throat, making me want to cry or scream or choke. “What is it, Mira?”
“I was wondering what you got for the first question,” she says. Her thin, dark eyebrows scrunch low over her eyes in concern.
Miss Snark's First Victim
I like this, but I think a little rearrangement in the first paragraph would strengthen it. Maybe something like this:
ReplyDeleteI sit at a table by the windows in the Cartwright Institute for Young Women dining hall, eating bad dorm food while my friends discuss the chemistry test we took today. Mira swears she failed even though I stayed up half the night helping her prepare for it. And I know they’ve come for me.
My heartbeat is in my ears, the adrenaline rushes in my feet, my hands, and the uncomfortable squirming in my gut has nothing to do with Cartwright’s signature meatloaf mush and its proximity to my mouth. There’s a whispering in my ears, memories of voices and people I have tried desperately to forget.
Etc.
This solves my only real problem with the excerpt, which was that when you start with something dramatic like "they come for me" and then switch to talking about the mundane dinner table conversation, the urgency drains away. So if you put those few lines of set up first, tension builds more steadily.
But overall, this seems interesting, and I would keep reading.
I think you have too much telling instead of showing. The whole first paragraph is telling. Instead, show her at the table with her friends, and show us what she sees that makes her think someone is coming for her.
ReplyDeleteInstead of "I’m sitting at a table by the windows in the Cartwright Institute for Young Women dining hall, eating bad dorm food while my friends discuss the chemistry test we took today. Mira swears she failed the test even though I stayed up half the night helping her prepare for it. And I know they’ve come for me."
Try something like:
"Oh, my God, I totally failed the math class today," Mira says.
I laugh, but then I see the figure across the room. He's dressed all in black, and he's staring right at me. And then I know. They've come for me.
That's lame, but you get the idea. Good luck! :)
I'm not too worried about the "telling" aspect of this because it is in present tense and very stream of consciousness.
ReplyDeleteMy only worry is that you are not clear who "they" are and I don't have enough sympathy for your MC yet to care whether people are after her or not.
However, I still really like this and would read on because it seems as though this could be an excellent page-turner (the kind that keeps me up until I have to finish it!! Go you!).
Good job and much luck!
This opening doesn't work for me because "they" are never identified. "I am at dinner when they come for me" is a promising opening line, but then there is nothing to provoke the adrenaline rush in the following sentence. What scares the MC?
ReplyDeleteThis might work better if you cut everything except the 1st and 3rd sentences from the first paragraph (so it would read, "I'm at dinner... I'm sitting at a table by the windows... while my friends discuss the chemistry test we took today.") and then show us what the main character sees. Then her fear and jumpiness might be better justified.
I like the tension in this opening, and I like opening with the claim "They came for me at dinner." It immediately puts a pall over the mundane descriptions, and I like that juxtaposition.
ReplyDeleteI do think you could use some rearranging -- maybe stick with the mundane a little longer before going back to who is coming for her, or alternately introduce the first sight of those coming for her, and that she knows they're coming for her, before we see her nervousness and reaction against the mundane things happening around her. In particular, the last sentence of the first paragraph feels out of place and jerked me out of the scene.
I'd keep reading a few pages to see where this was going.
I think the opening sentence is great but the rest of the paragraph falls flat for me. Because we don't know who they are, I'm not sure why she is so scared. Also, how does she know they've come for her? There is so much description of the mundane but no indication of what makes her think they are there.
ReplyDeleteIt could just be me, but I'm a little stuck on the descriptions here:
ReplyDeleteMy heartbeat is in my ears, and the adrenaline rushes in my feet, my hands.
It seems like some words are missing; the heartbeat WHAT in my ears, and does adrenaline rush IN the feet or TO the feet? I definitely get the sentiment here, but I think if you push a little further then you can come up with some great descriptions that really pop.