TITLE: The Third Gift
GENRE: MG - Fantasy
Eleven-year-old Marisi gets more than she bargains for when she wishes for adventure instead of babysitting duties: her parents disappear in a storm and a witch takes over her home. To save herself, her home and her parents she has to solve three riddles before sunrise – all while taking care of her baby sister.
Marisi was raised on stories that didn't have happy endings. It's what happened when you grew up on an island. Ships sank. Priceless cargo was lost. Sailors never came home. It was said the tears of grieving mothers and lost children filled the oceans. Sad laments echoed through rafters and rattled down hallways in every manor house, on every island in the world. They were cautionary tales with lessons tucked in along the way. Everyone cried when they heard them. Which only made the water rise higher. There was something almost poetic about it.
But Marisi had learned that being the star of your own sad story wasn't so great. Certainly nothing poetic. As far as Marisi could tell there wasn't even a lesson to be learned. Unless it was to never have a baby sister.
She sat on the sill of her bedroom window, folding a sheet of paper in half. Then she folded it again until it had a pointy snout, slender body and broad wings. Her mother called it a ‘featherless bird’ or ‘sail without a ship.’ Marisi wrote ADVENTURE across its wings in bold block letters.
Perched on top of a cliff, her house was a perfect launch site. Leaning out her bedroom window she set ADVENTURE free. “‘May you find a current to your liking. Sail high! Sail long! Sail true!’” The blessing for ships leaving safe harbors, or in this case, Marisi’s hand, sent ADVENTURE skimming the sky.
Miss Snark's First Victim
The logline pulled me into this story, and then your beautiful first paragraph hooked me. I LOVE that first paragraph! You set a tone of poetic mystery. I don't think an 11-year-old would necessarily speak this way, but I think it works because you've got a third person narrator.
ReplyDeleteThanks Cathleen! I've struggled with the opening to this story. It's been rewritten from several different angles. When this came to me it like BOOM - I thought it was right.
DeleteI adore the labyrinth-esque premise.
ReplyDeleteMy notes small notes would be for the line "...in every manor house, on every..." I'm not sure if the comma is necessary.
For the end of the second paragraph and the opening of the third paragraph, "... baby sister. // She sat..." the "she" could be read to refer to baby sister instead of Marisi. It might be worth using Marisi here instead of a pronoun.
I would definitely read on if I saw this on the shelves. Best of luck.
Thanks for well made point about pronouns. I've found out how tricky it can be when the two main characters are the same gender. I don't want to repeat names all the time but at the same time the reference to be clear. I'll take a close look at the ms.
DeleteBeautifully written. Naturally, a good editor would take care of those minor details already pointed out, but it has a lyrical rhythm to it that I really like. And it leaves the reader with an expectation that something magical is waiting in the following pages. Nicely done. I agree that the voice sounds a bit more adult, but I don't see that as a distraction.
ReplyDeleteI liked your hook, but I wonder if it would be stronger if we had a sense of who the antagonist is and why this is going to happen. I wonder if your opening pages would more strongly set the scene if you showed her babysitting and hating it, instead of telling us about the lesson learned and babysitting. Those two notions aren't entirely linked. Overall, I enjoyed the passage. I like the image of her sitting on the windowsill and folding paper. The excerpt was lovely.
ReplyDeleteHi Karen - It feels like I've rewritten the opening to this story a bazillion times. I should have kept count.
DeleteI love the saying that the opening of your story is the promise you make the reader. At Marisi's core she wants adventure. In the next couple of paragraphs the reader finds out why she's angry about being stuck baby sitting: she's missing the trading voyage she's dreamt of because she's stuck at home with her baby sister.
The problem with an action scene without context is that the reader doesn't know who the character is - if they should care what happens to the person or not. I was concerned that if all the reader got in the first few paragraphs with a ticked-off kid she wouldn't be very likable. Anger isn't at her core, it's temporary, the desire for adventure tells you much more about Marisi. And I hope the logline helps with that.
The story is a fantasy. I also wanted to give the reader a sense of Marisi's world. Flying a paper airplane (without using those words because her world is not ours) was a vehicle to tell you something about Marisi as well as the world she lives in.
So that's how the first 250 words came about. Whew.
I liked your hook, but I wonder if it would be stronger if we had a sense of who the antagonist is and why this is going to happen. I wonder if your opening pages would more strongly set the scene if you showed her babysitting and hating it, instead of telling us about the lesson learned and babysitting. Those two notions aren't entirely linked. Overall, I enjoyed the passage. I like the image of her sitting on the windowsill and folding paper. The excerpt was lovely.
ReplyDelete