TITLE: LIES WITCH BIND
GENRE: Paranormal Romance
Janelle vowed she would make the girls pay for this. Nothing short of indentured servitude would suffice. Scanning the lobby of the movie theater, which resembled a screaming fan-girl convention, she searched for any sign of them. Revenge tactics barraged her mind with each jabbing elbow and purse smacked into her abdomen.
LIES WITCH BIND, your typical book turned big-screen movie, blew up out of nowhere. Janelle suffered blissful unawareness until the promos for the movie came out. Not much of an avid reader like her friends Dara and Cecily, her free time consisted mainly of science journals and dolphins.
Merging in with the rest of the hormone-surged women, chatter about the book and movie clogged the air. Grateful that at least one of them had towering Amazonian height, she caught sight of Cecily; whom she affectionately referred to as Go-Go Gadget Legs. Compared to her, Janelle and Dara were like hobbits.
Once Janelle had a visual on the girls, she all but army-crawled to where they were in line.
“Oh good, you made it!” Dara cried out.
“Only by tapping into my zombie-apocalypse survival skills. If I even looked at the movie poster the wrong way they'd suck my will to live. These women could probably hold an entire seminar on plot theories and character analysis. If they put as much thought and effort into chemistry or biology, maybe we'd finally find the cure for cancer,” Janelle huffed.
“They're just passionate,” Dara chided.
“They're delusional lemmings,” Janelle smirked.
I loved this - just loved it. I get an immediate uh-oh feeling when the mbook-turned-movie/title of the story are the same. More! More!
ReplyDeleteI liked it! Like the sarcastic attitude, the abrasive humour. Wild definitely read further!
ReplyDeleteI think there is a good sense of character here. Although there is quite a bit of telling instead of showing. The sarcasm is good at times.
ReplyDeleteI'm a little confused about what's going on though. I see that the title of the movie is the title of the book so there must be something there but in the first 250 words you've given me a LOT of information (setting, conflict, friends, description of friends, etc) and little explanation. I wonder if you can slow it down a bit, tease it out...give me a little more of a clue as to why your mc is upset with her friends.
I think there's great potential there and, to be fair, this is a small excerpt...for all I know you've filled in the blanks immediately following.
Strong voice for the MC with an interesting edge to her. Dialog was immediately engaging.
ReplyDeleteThere was a lot of telling leading up to the dialog though. Interspersing some of the lead-in information with the dialog could draw a reader along a bit more.
This wasn't particularly a hook for me.
I really enjoyed the voice of the MC. Sarcasm is one of my favorite pastimes and I like to read it in MCs as well. The set up is good but a little clunky, I did catch up by the end of the 250 words though.
ReplyDeleteThe title of the book actually IN the book threw me for a few paragraphs, then I realized she was unwillingly going to a movie with friends. Before that I couldn't figure out her association with the title, and therefore, the theater (since it is the name of the book and she will obviously be associated in some way at some point).
Just by the humor, I'd certainly read on!
I love the opening two sentences. I find it a bit strange to reference a movie based off a book, named the book you're writing. It just gets into weird meta territory that unless you're writing something like Detention, might need to be avoided.
ReplyDeleteNot really grafting on to any of the characters, but I'd read more just based off the personality shown so far.
I'm definitely intrigued, and I love the title, it's clever. I also like that this starts with a group of women as friends, which I personally root for in books (yay!)
ReplyDeleteAdmittedly though, questions arose. With the mention of girls at the start, I was thinking younger girls, but I think the girls are meant as her adult friends, correct? The last sentence of the first paragraph reads a bit clunky, and I don't think it's needed. I also got tripped up o her free time consisting of science journals and dolphins--reading about dolphins or... what with dolphins? It feels like it is missing a word, more so because of how the sentence is constructed.
The line Merging... also feels unneeded. I would skip to finding the friend, and again clarify, these women are her age, she isn't babysitting girls, right? I mean, I refer to my over-30 friends as girls sometimes, but the way it's written here is a little confusing; saying "her friends" might clear this up easily.
I didn't quite connected with Janelle's statement; it's got all these great things I should love (zobmies, plot theories, curing cancer) but I think a shorter more concise response would be favorable here to intro the character. OR break up that dialogue with a physical reaction beat, show us Janelle while she's talking or something. Something about it now doesn't flow well enough.
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ReplyDeleteTHis didn't do anything for me. A woman goes to a movie she doesn't want to see and makes fun of the people who do want to see it. She blames being there on her friends, but since she arrived alone, she obviously went there of her own free will. She could have stayed home. SHe could have said she didn't want to go. For me, the MC just isn't appealing, and you didn't add any problem that might have hooked me.
ReplyDeleteI feel I know more about Janelle’s friends and the movie she doesn’t want to see than about Janelle – the feelings the reader is told about are more superficial feelings of annoyance, and we aren’t shown what brought her to this movie theater in the first place if she hates this phenomenon so much.
ReplyDelete