I want to thank Sprouts Magazine executive editor, Anita Nolan, for taking her valuable time to critique four of the writing prompts sent in. I think everyone can gain a lot of knowledge by reading the critiques presented and I hope more of you will give it a try.
Anita will be doing critiques at our 2012 Conference being held in June.
Here is the first one submitted:
I never thought about Maya, my shy best friend, who wouldn’t even kill a fruit fly, hurting anyone. I especially didn’t think she would ever hurt me. At just 5 feet, 2 inches and 113 pounds, Maya was smaller in height, weight and attitude. At any other time and in any other place I might not have been afraid, but fighting on a beach when the forecast calls for storms can psych out even the most fearless person.
“Please don’t make me hurt you Em,” she pleaded.
Her bony fingers tightened around a fistful of my hair. I fought to free myself. The winds, echoing my feelings, howled as if in pain. Wet sand pelted my face. My eyes stung from a mixture of the salty sea water and a steady flow of tears. I looked around for a seashell or branch. Not that I knew what I would do if I found either one. This had to be a bad dream. In a few minutes I’d wake up in bed. The scary image of my angry best friend and an even angrier ocean, a foggy memory.
A large wave knocked us both to the ground. I made it back to my feet and took off toward the boardwalk. Maya was right on my tail. I pumped my legs willing them to go faster, my bare feet sinking deep into the sand. At some point I had lost both of my shoes. I made the mistake of looking back and screamed as she sacked me from behind.
“Give me the Terces stone now!” she yelled.
The ocean seemed to roar in response behind her. I rolled over and clawed at Maya’s face. My nails sank into her eyes. I stood up and turned to run but froze when I noticed a monster wave heading right for us.
“Maya, get up, we have to go now!”
I tried to help her up from the sand.
“Don’t you understand Em? I need that stone or I’m as good as dead. I’m too deep into this thing to get out.”
Here is Anita:
Let me say, first, that this didn’t come through with proper formatting to me, so I’m not quite sure how the paragraphs were broken out.
Putting that aside, were you involved in the story by the end of the first page? I was. The action draws the reader in. However, the first paragraph, describing the friend, slows down the story. The description of Maya being smaller could easily have been dribbled in throughout the first page so we could get straight to the action.
I did think the first sentence was somewhat awkwardly worded, as I did with some of the others, which is a function of having to use the prompt.
I get the feeling that this story is of the type that starts with an exciting moment and then goes back in time. With the technique the story starts at a high point to draw the reader in and then goes back and gives us the information that gives the story meaning.
Another book that uses this technique is A Northern Light by Jennifer Donnelly, if you’d like to see how it can be used effectively.
The down side with starting a story this way is that we don’t know the characters or feel anything for them before we are tossed into the action. I understand this is in response to a prompt, and the author may never t
As usual, these critiques are SO informative, educational and enjoyable! First, thank you, Anita, for taking the time to do this for us
And, of course, there’s always thanks to Kathy for initiating all this!
Anita, I agreed with all your comments, for sure. The one thing I never saw as an issue, though, was “was.” I’ve always considered that a basic word like “said” or “is,” etc. I’ll certainly be more conscious of it now!
You’re very right about certain things being a factor in the 23-line limitation of a first page. It’s very frustrating when just one letter, if on the wrong line, can push you onto page 2! It tends to make it more difficult to include dialogue, depending on how it’s done, and paragraphing takes up more lines, too
Guaranteed these are big factors. Also, I don’t know about anyone else, but I didn’t decide to write mine ‘til the day it was due when Kathy put up a reminder, and also posted the next prompt lol
On the “put” sentence, I originally had “slipped” on his sweatshirt, but it sounded more like a banana peel incident lol It was nearing the midnight deadline, so “put” was the first thing that came to mind. I personally like “pull” better, as you suggested. I also prefer your rearrangement of the phrases in that sentence. When I was analyzing it, I was more in the mindset of trying to pull the reader to “look” toward the branches at the end of the sentence for the thought to flow into the treetops with the sun barely showing through. For sure, the way you phrased it is better, though, as a sentence
I also never knew that “when” is a good indicator of an incorrect order of the sentence! Great tip! There were LOTS of great tips in all the critiques! Thank you so much
Donna
Thanks, Donna. One thing I learned from entering a lot of writing contests back in the day was that you can almost always get to a good page break, whether the limit is one page or five or ten. Having the page limit forces you to write leaner, and it’s a good exercise.
I used to think that I’d change my story just for the contest, and go back to my original version. But I realized after a while that I didn’t need the extra words most of the time.