Innocence Lost

by Michelle Gagnon

Today we’ll be tackling another first page critique. This one is entitled, INNOCENCE LOST:

The elevator doors opened facing the sign for Children’s Psychiatry. Seth Bellingham froze. Places like this never changed. Dreary, gray waiting areas were filled with old, broken toys and troubled people. He was fifteen again, and angry with his mother for forcing him to come. Talking to someone wouldn’t help. No one understood how he felt and no one ever would. They kept asking him, how it made him feel. Why? They didn’t care.

The tap on his arm brought Bellingham back to the present. He saw his new partner, Jake O’Brien, eyeing him with caution before he asked, “Are you okay? Did they get the results back on your father’s tests, yet?”

Bellingham shoved the elevator door that bumped him for the second time, and stepped out. “I don’t know what the results are. The old man threw me out after I dropped my mother off.”

He changed the subject of his father with years of practice and asked, “What do we have?”

Jake pulled his small notebook out of his shirt pocket and flipped to the right page. “The hospital security was here first, followed by a couple of uniforms. They secured the scene and waited for us. I got here a few minutes ago.”

Bellingham followed Jake down the hall, past all the doors that normally would’ve been closed, hiding the private sessions of pain and trauma. Today the doors were open, filled with faces of doctors and patients curious about someone else’s misery. The last time he’d seen a place like this, he was a scared fifteen year old, with a gut full of pain and guilt. His years in the military and on the police force rid him of the fear, but the pain and guilt still lingered and grew stronger the longer he was forced to stay in Maine.

My notes:

I think there’s potentially a great premise here, but it’s buried under some fairly awkward sentences and way too much exposition. I understand that the author wants to give us a sense that Seth has past experience with Children’s Psych wards, and that will play into the story. But as of yet, I’m not invested enough in this character to really care. And not only am I being asked to care about him, but also about his father, an apparently negligent dad currently waiting for test results. That’s a lot of information presented at the get go, about people I don’t really know anything about yet. Better to hint at that dark past with a single sentence, farther along in the story.

I would open with the reason that Seth is there. If the cops are about to interview a kid, I want to see that right away. Consider starting with a line of dialogue, then show Seth’s discomfort throughout, but subtly. Get to the meat of the matter much more quickly. If I know why the cops are there, and how it feeds back into Seth’s past, then I’m engaged. I have no idea what the situation is, but take this as an example:

“So why’d you kill her?”

The kid shrugged, eyes fixed on the floor. He was fifteen, scared, with a gut full of pain and guilt. Watching him, Seth reminded himself that he was a cop here to do a job. Still, all of this was striking uncomfortably close to home…

That’s a little rough, but something along those lines would draw a reader into the storyline more than following two guys out of an elevator and down a hallway. The point at which you choose to open a story is critical. You’ve got one shot at grabbing a reader’s attention, and turning that browser into a buyer. Make sure you don’t squander it.


7 thoughts on “Innocence Lost

  1. I agree with your critique, Michelle. This gets bogged down with way too much backstory. Cut to the chase and fill in the history later. One of the most common problems new writers have is either starting in the wrong place or loading up the front end with exposition. Your rewrite grabbed me right away.

    Here’s a tip: once you’ve got a number of chapters or the whole manuscript drafted, consider starting the story with chapter 2.

  2. Like Joe, I also advocate the “Chapter 2 Switcheroo” and have seen it work wonders, time after time.

    And I like starting with dialogue. It forces you to get into the scene. Michelle’s suggestion is right on, because it’s adversarial dialogue.

  3. I like it, but small things kept breaking my focus. Since Michelle gave some big picture suggestions here are some specifics to help clean up some of those awkward sentences:

    I didn’t realize Jake, the partner, wasn’t in the elevator with Bellingham until he read his notes (Buddy partners are always together). So how about changing it to read, “He saw his new partner through the open doors, Jake O’Brien, eyeing him with caution before he asked, ‘Are you okay? Did they get the results back on your father’s tests, yet?'” This will clarify the location of the partner.

    The mother was dropped off. I found myself not understanding that phrase. Can the author clarify this or use different words?

    Clear up the grammatical ambiguity. Use “With years of practice he changed the subject of his father and asked, ‘What do we have?'” instead of the other way where *the father* has the years of practice…

  4. So two of you suggest starting with dialogue. I’ve done it before and seen it done, but many, many times I’ve seen “experts” claim it’s something to never do.

    Obviously this is a rule that’s breakable, no?

    And it’s great to see another front page critique. I love these posts.

  5. I’m with Jim- but then, I’m biased since my debut kicked off with a line of dialogue. I think that as long as you’re not dropping the reader into a full-fledged conversation, it can sometimes be very effective.
    Good analysis, Daniel. I thought the same thing.

  6. Thank you for the compliment, Michelle. Like Jarrett I love these posts too. For me, it’s an opportunity to put into practice what I’ve learned about the craft of writing. Now if it were only that easy to critique my own words… 😉

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