TITLE: The Portal
GENRE: Young Adult Fantasy
Once again, Quinn woke in the middle of the night and fought the urge to scream. She was hopelessly entangled in her bed sheets, drenched in sweat. She ripped from the confines of the linens and lunged to the window at the end of her bed. She was just in time to empty the contents of her stomach on the ground outside.
Even after all her time at the Facility, her life didn’t feel real. Her nightmares felt real but not the emptiness inside of her.
Quinn wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glanced over her shoulder at the other girls tucked safely in their beds. Thankfully, they were still asleep.
We’re nothing, she thought sullenly, hanging her head.
Leaning against the window sill, Quinn let memories of her mother washed over her.
“Now Q,” her mother used to say. “It doesn’t matter where in this world you go. I’ll always be there for you. Just look at the moon and know I’m out there somewhere looking at the same one, thinking of you.”
Her fingers glided upwards to the worn crescent moon necklace hanging from her neck. The crystals of the moon’s surface had been polished to their fullest shine from her thumb travelling across them daily. The necklace had been a gift from her mother on her sixteenth birthday. It was the only thing she had left.
Her mother would never gaze at the moon anymore to think of her. No one would.
Miss Snark's First Victim
This is kind of like another entry I read, the writing is good, but I think your story is starting in the wrong place. Most agents will say, "NEVER START WITH WAKING UP." Thousands of writers do it so you don't want to. You want your story to be unique.
ReplyDeleteI also think this scene is NOT your inciting incident. It is set-up to tell us your character is trapped in a Facility and her mother is dead. When does everything change for Quinn? Is it when she arrives? The day she decides to leave? Does a new girl show up? Whatever it is, move that up front and put the rest in later.
And this just might be me, but I think you can punch up the writing by giving it some more personality. "She was just in time to empty the contents of her stomach on the ground outside." Does anyone ever really say that apart from YA novels? How about, "She got to the window just in time to keep from puking her guts out on the dorm room floor."
Thirdly, "Leaning against the window sill, Quinn let memories of her mother washed over her." It should be, "wash." I'm sorry to be so nitpicky, but these are things an agent will pick out right away, and no one wants your hard work to get rejected.
Best of luck!
Here are a few thoughts! Hopefully they're helpful.
ReplyDeleteThe first paragraph felt disorienting to me. Someone waking with an "urge to scream" doesn't *absolutely* establish that Quinn had a nightmare or that she was afraid. (Hey, as far as I know, this is some OCD compulsion, or a reaction to some really bad sleep issues... and she regularly wakes up raging and screaming. I don't know!) If she's really afraid, I think you need to ham that up a bit. She keeps waking up wanting to scream because she's *terrified*. Imply at least a little--tease!--about what it is that is scaring her. The fact that she is so upset she has to throw up will have more impact when her emotional state is clearer.
But here's my big suggestion: After that, we need to follow her emotions. How does she feel when she wakes up? What does she do about it? How does she feel after?
Right now, she's distressed enough to throw up. But immediately afterwards, she's thinking about how "her life didn't feel real," which doesn't sound particularly upset at all to me. It sounds kind of detached. And from there on out, she's sad--she laments her and the other girls' lives, she misses her mother, she's lonely.
So I would do some restructuring here. If she is going to wake up in terror, then that emotion should carry through. She wakes up scared. She needs to calm herself. There needs to be some reference to what made her wake up so violently, even if it's waved aside by you saying she doesn't want to think about the specifics. She has to work through that violent awakening before she can, AFTER she's calmed down, think about the girls or her mother or anything else.
Or, alternately, don't have her snap awake at all.
Also, keep an eye out. There's this:
She ripped from the confines of the linens and lunged to the window at the end of her bed.
"Ripped" isn't the right word here. (You have to rip something in particular.)
And:
Leaning against the window sill, Quinn let memories of her mother washed over her.
"...let memories of her mother WASH over her."
Your writing is solid (fix a couple tense issues). However, a lot of your opening imagery are things we have seen before, i.e. waking from a dream, staring at the moon, the shared necklace. Try to find a way to make these things unique and fresh to your story. Good luck!
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ReplyDeleteOverall, you have an interesting premise and some nice initial conflict, however there are a few things you could modify to really make it pop. To start, the use of "Once again" at the beginning of your first paragraph threw me off. We're just entering this world, and while I know you mean to imply that this isn't the first time MC has woke up from a bad dream, I think it cuts the tension. The rest of the excerpt implies that this is commonplace, and in general it seems to me like a detail that could serve better purpose somewhere deeper in the work.
DeleteI thought the MC thinking of her mom was abrupt. She goes from looking at the other girls in the Facility to thinking about her, but is that what triggers the memories? What causes her to suddenly think of her mom? As she was throwing up out the window, did she see the moon and was reminded of that conversation? Right now it comes out of nowhere, and I think if you smooth it out, you'll have a powerful scene.
An agent once told me to never start a book with bodily fluids (ie. throwing up). She said most agents will reject an entry based on that. She didn't explain why, she just said, don't do it. So, I'm passing this on to you.
ReplyDeleteQuinn woke in the middle of the night and fought the urge to scream. She was hopelessly entangled in her sheets and drenched in sweat. She ripped off the bed to the window at the end of her bed just in time puke on the ground outside.
ReplyDeleteEven after all her time at the Facility, her life didn’t feel real. The nightmares felt real, not the emptiness inside of her.
Quinn wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and glanced over her shoulder at the other girls tucked safely in their beds. Thankfully, they slept.
We’re nothing, she thought sullenly, hanging her head.
Leaning against the window sill, memories of her mother washed over her.
“Now Q,” her mother used to say. “It doesn’t matter where in this world you go. I’ll always be there for you. Just look at the moon and know I’m out there somewhere looking at the same one, thinking of you.”
Her fingers glided upwards to the worn crescent moon necklace, her sixteenth birthday gift from her mom. The crystals on the moon’s surface had been polished from her thumb traveling across them daily. It was the only thing she had left.
Never again would her mother gaze at the moon and think of her. No one would.
I like what you have going here, but I think it is a little too wordy. I wanted the pacing amped up a bit. You have built in the story question that makes me wonder if her nightmares aren't real, since this is fantasy - my favorite. I do wonder if you should start with more of a problem for your protagonist with her in action. Waking from a dream or dreaming is frowned upon.
Life in the Facility doesn't seem real to Quinn, but her nightmares do.This hooked me-I want know why. This would be a good place to start, but drop the comparison to "the emptiness inside her." You may want to ground us through Quinn's experience in the Facility before the nightmare. What if one of the girls witness her thrashing about and puking? This could introduce an interesting conflict with many possibilities. I love the mother's quote about the moon, and Q having a moon necklace from her mom, but it's out of place here. I would weave in mom's back story later, unless you can connect it to the nightmare.
ReplyDeleteAll the Best!
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ReplyDeleteI also think you're starting in the wrong spot - waking up and vomiting don't really encourage me to read on. You're also trying to cram too much backstory on this page.
ReplyDeleteI'd rather you didn't tell me she doesn't feel real - or that she's empty - or that they're nothing - or that her nightmares feel real. Make me interested in Quinn and then show me these things.
You also don't need to tell me her mother is dead - the paragraph with her fingering the necklace show this, although I don't think the first page is the right place for it.
Waking up is an overdone start to a story, and not as gripping as this could be. It also feels a bit overdone for the idea of a parent to be talking about the moon/stars and that by looking at them, they’ll be thinking of her when she too looks at the moon. Also, rather than telling us Quinn feels empty inside, showing us how she feels empty as this chapter progresses will make us more sympathetic to her as a character. Some of the language in this feels a bit stiff, like “confines of the linens.” I can tell that there is something mysterious, possibly dangerous, going on here, especially wondering about the other girls who surround her sleeping, setting up Quinn for an exciting journey.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of a "Facility" where Quinn was living (or being kept?) along with other girls was very intriguing. I got the feeling that she was sent there for protection, perhaps by her mother? But it turns out to have been a big mistake. I'm just guessing. But I am intrigued. However, some of the language feels a little stilted for a 16 year old. I would also like to know a little more about the Facility and less about the mother at this stage. I think it would have greater impact if the memory was hinted at. It would also be nice to know a little more about what Quinn is afraid of at this point. I don't have a problem with starting a story with someone waking up. There are only so many hours in a day. However, I think the point people were making here is that when Quinn wakes up, nothing happens (other than she pukes) and then she thinks. Thinking is not active. (Unless she was thinking of an escape plan perhaps.) But I like the idea here.
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