Monthly Archives: May 2012
First Page Critique: Beware the Wolf
By Jordan Dane
Please enjoy Beware the Wolf, an anonymous submission for critiquing, My thoughts are on the flip side.
***
Hoards of onlookers pushed and shoved to the front as they congregated behind the yellow tape, all hoped to see the mutilated body. Police huddled, compared clues, and discussed the who, the how, and the why of the crime. They may work and eventually answer who and how, but the why will always be a mystery.
Derek Mitchell reached for the tape, ducked below it and entered the crime scene. He waved a moth from his face as he stepped around the temporary lights.
“Hey.” A scowling officer pointed at him.
He held up his ID. “I have authorization to be here,” he said in a low voice. The man retreated.
He turned his head, and studied every detail of the park. Hours before the killing, children played on the slides and swing sets feet from where the body now lay. Oak trees and crepe myrtles surrounded the area, which provided ample cover for the attacker to wait for a victim. The location would indicate a random murder. Only, he knew this victim wasn’t random. The why is what he needed to understand in order to stop future killings.
Uniformed officers searched the flora with flashlights looking for clues, bagging every gum wrapper and lollipop stick, while two detectives stepped back from the corpse and waved the medical examiner forward.
He arrived too late. He needed to examine the body and area before the authorities arrival to detect fragile clues. He approached the examiner. “I need a few minutes to examine the evidence.”
The man nodded and walked back to his van.
He took a deep breath and raised the crimson stained sheet. It appeared to be a wild animal attack. The skull peeked through deep gouges of skin and muscle. The throat open, exposed the larynx, which was the source of blood that now seeped into the ground. Eyes, wide, stared into nothingness.
A shiver ran down his spine. To the human eye, a dog or wild animal killed her. Only he knew the truth. One of his people killed her.
***
Critique
The author sets a dark tone from the start – a crime scene with a dead body—but the punch of the last couple of paragraphs might work better if their essence were moved to the front of this scene to put the reader right into the action as seen through the eyes of a different kind of detective. Derek could be looking right down at the body and gathering “clues” in his own way.
With Derek walking up to the crime scene—and with the scene description so generic without details—these parts could always be described later during the course of the next narratives, if they are still important to the scene. Readers of crime fiction are familiar with aspects of a crime scene. To write it so generally is almost like waving a red flag that the author is glossing over details they may not be as familiar with. This sentence is a good example of too generic with POV problems: Police huddled, compared clues, and discussed the who, the how, and the why of the crime. Derek would not know what’s in the heads of the police or what they’d been discussing, so this reads like a bit of author intrusion.
If the author clues the reader in from the beginning that Derek isn’t quite human, he/she can build in his “abilities” to read a crime scene like a wolf. Derek could sense the fear from the crowd as he searches the bystanders. (Killer sometimes watch the cops work at scenes where they killed.) He could search the faces through the eyes of a predator at night, for example.
Sniffing the air, he could be drawn to the smell of blood and the splatter before he even sees the body. He might overhear snippets of distant conversations between the human detectives mixed with chatter from the crowd, since he has wolf instincts. Don’t go too crazy with this. That could slow the pace. Tease the reader with the set up, but leave more for later. For now, the author should “think” and “react” like a feral wolf. Since dogs/wolves can recognize scents off specific animals, does he have the same ability? Does he “mark his territory”? (Just kidding, but you get the idea.) Use your imagination on what his instincts are and why he’s a cop working “special cases.”
Another point – the author describes the park, right down to the oak trees and crepe myrtles as making “good cover.” Trees and shrubs could be cover, but why mention the variety? This reads like the author is using Derek’s POV to set the scene in a manner that would not be natural for a cop. It’s forced.
I’m also not sure how Derek would know from the start that the victim wasn’t a random kill. He’d have to establish a relationship between the vic and the killer, which is typical cop procedure that is backtracked after more is known about the victim’s life and a timeline of her activities that led up to the killing. But the first step in any investigation is to ID the victim, which isn’t mentioned here either.
If the attacker hid behind cover and waited for any victim to show up, that’s random, yet Derek seems to have an unexplained reason for knowing this wasn’t a random act of violence. Rather than spell all this out in the first 350 words, the author might focus on Derek’s instincts and his ability to read a crime scene in his feral way and leave the details/clues of the case to be discovered later. The intriguing part would be Derek, his instincts and abilities, and the conflict he faces being an outsider to both worlds—as a cop who isn’t human.
The author mentions that Derek “arrived too late,” but I would venture an opinion that he could detect far more than the average human who needs specific evidence to build a case. He wouldn’t need a human ME’s opinion of what happened and fragile clues would be his specialty. Is Derek trying to stay ahead of the cops to wield his kind’s brand of justice? Does he keep secrets to that end? Or does he work with human cops to keep the peace? Derek is the ultimate “lone wolf” cop.
There is definitely enough here to make me turn the pages. There are inherent conflicts in this scenario of an outsider cop working his own cases, sometimes at odds with humans and perceived as betraying his own kind. Plus he’d be tracking a killer with greater abilities to evade pursuit—a classic outsider theme that could be fascinating to explore. Good job of conceiving this plot, character, and conflict!
Kunoichi: Critique
Chapter 1
“Dismantle the bridge after crossing it”
Wednesday, August 26
S.S. Palma Soriano, 120 miles off the coast of Sevastopol, Ukraine
They executed the entire row. Two dozen men on their knees. Hands tied behind their backs. Looking over the side of the freighter at a reflection of the quarter moon on the calm waters of the Black Sea. Just a few seconds of racket. Then the bodies fell forward. Bled out. The men in black military fatigues relaxed. Let the muzzles of their suppressed MP5 submachine guns face the deck. A stocky, Nordic-looking redhead standing at one end of the firing squad whistled. Pointed at them.
“Reload!”
They changed their clips.
The second half of the crew was brought out. Knelt next to the bodies of the first group, in deep, warm puddles of maroon.
“Fire!”
Racket. Fall. Bleeding.
The wheel lock for the bulkhead hatch spun around and the door opened. An Asian woman in her late thirties walked out onto the deck, a twenty-four inch sword strapped to her back, a ninja-to. Two men in Russian military officer uniforms, a general and a colonel, followed her. Behind them, two more men in black fatigues escorted out the white-haired captain of the ship handcuffed. The general said something in Russian to the Asian woman. She turned to the colonel. In heavily accented English, he said, “General Kornilov wants to know if your men have checked the entire ship yet. He also thanks you again for agreeing to meet him here for the exchange, Ms. Mochizuki.”
With an American accent, she said, “Please, Colonel Grieg, call me Chiyome.” The colonel put his hand to his chest, genuflected slightly. Chiyome motioned towards the row of dead men. “We checked every inch, could only find forty-eight. But I’m sure your smuggler friend has a few secret compartments you’re unaware of.”
Grieg translated for Kornilov, briefly discussed something with the general. Then he sauntered over to the ship’s captain, said something in Russian. The white-haired man answered, shook his head at Grieg. Emphatic. The colonel got in the old man’s face. Yelled.
Pointed at the crew’s bodies.
The captain shook his head again, repeated his previous answer.
Grieg stepped away, turned to Chiyome. “That is everyone.”
“Good.” She moved in front of the captain. Smiled. Brushed his shoulders off. Then unsheathed her ninja-to and decapitated him in a single fluid motion.
Kornilov and Grieg froze. Watched the head roll across the deck. Over the side.
“Well,” said Chiyome, taking a breath, “now that that’s out of the way….” The redhead came over to them with a laptop under his arm, opened it so that Kornilov could see the screen. Chiyome flung the captain’s blood off of her sword. “Fifty million American, as promised. All you have to do is press enter.”
Grieg translated.
Snickering, Kornilov moved to press the key.
Chiyome put the tip of her blade against his chest. “Wait.” She pushed her sword into him, forced him to move back. “Colonel Grieg, would you be so kind as to ask General Kornilov if he’s spoken to anyone else about our transaction?”
The colonel did as instructed. Got a response. “He says no, not to anyone.”
“Is that so?”
“He swears it.”
She stared into the general’s eyes. “How honest.”
The two men who’d been holding the white-haired captain drew their pistols on Kornilov and Grieg. Forced them onto their knees.
Kornilov shouted. Grieg translated. “What’s going on? I thought we had a deal.”
Chiyome sheathed her ninja-to. Took the computer from the redhead. Pressed several keys. Held it so that Grieg and Kornilov could see a video feed of the general talking and having coffee with a man in a suit in an office. The symbol of the Russian Federal Security Service, the FSB, was visible on the suited man’s cup. The video cut out. Came back on a close-up of the suited man’s dead body on the floor of the office, Chiyome standing over him. Static. Chiyome closed the laptop, squatted in front of the general. “You could’ve at least switched cars before driving to Lubyanka.”
Kornilov spat in her face.
She wiped it off. Nodded to the man behind him.
Racket. Fall. Bleeding.
Chiyome came over to Grieg.
“No, no,” he said. “Please…I—I don’t even know what this is about. I am just a translator.”
“Unfortunate.”
She nodded again.
Racket. Fall. Bleeding.
My Critique
This action-packed opening grabbed my attention right away. It’s a great opening hook. I could easily envision the scene. And the terse, rapid-fire style lends itself to the thriller genre.
That said, some of the longer paragraphs could be more divided. For example, the one beginning “They executed….” I’d like to see a new paragraph start with, “The men in black military fatigues…” We are switching attention from the executed to the executioners, and this would be a good place for a paragraph break.
I wasn’t sure who was meant by “Pointed at them.” Who? Maybe change to “Pointed at his comrades.”
I started to get confused by the paragraph beginning with, “The wheel lock opened…” Three people are mentioned here and I wasn’t sure who was the translator at first. I think this could be made clearer. I’d start a new paragraph beginning with “The general…” And I might name the characters more quickly. Here’s my rewrite:
General Kornilov spoke in Russian to the translator, Colonel Grieg. The colonel turned to the Asian woman and said in heavily accented English, “General Kornilov wants to know if your men have checked the entire ship yet. He also thanks you again for agreeing to meet him here for the exchange, Ms. Mochizuki.”
You mention that the Asian woman speaks with an American accent. Is this necessary? Is she American? Yet she’s Asian. And the other guys are speaking Russian and accented English. It gets confusing.
Also, the second time you mention “the redhead”, I’d rather you say “the redheaded man or soldier.” I tend to think of redheads as being female.
By the third “Racket. Fall. Bleeding,” I am getting tired of this phrase and I’m ready for the language to have a more natural flow.
More importantly, whose viewpoint are we in? An omniscient presence hovering over this scene? While the action holds my interest and I get the gist of what’s going on, I’m yearning to be in someone’s head and to experience this emotionally from a viewpoint character. In other words, emotional impact is missing.
In the best thrillers where the story starts with a prologue and someone dies, the writer immediately puts you into a character’s viewpoint so that you feel their horror as they face the last minutes of their life. Thus you care as a reader about what happens to them. Action without reaction is merely plot.
What if you have the trio on deck during the initial executions? What if we’re in the general’s head? We’d experience his cold sweat, his twisted gut, his fear of discovery. With this emotional investment, we’d be eager to see who would bring down this Asian woman after she kills him.
It’s a great beginning, but it could be even better if the reader identifies with one of the victims. Or you could even make the viewpoint character one of the soldiers who is sickened by what he has to do and what he sees.
This sounds like an exciting story, and after this engaging opening, I’d certainly be curious to read more.
WHAT’S THIS STORY ABOUT?
I dunno. I got dis feelin’, ya see? Like, sometimes I start a story. Ya know? An’ da autha thinks it’s so important for ya ta listen–and dat you understand. Ya know? Yeah. So, he, well, he tells ya stuff that doesn’t really go no where because he’s workin’ up a head o steam to get to da point. Ya know what I’ mean? But you keep listenin’ cuz da way dis guy is tawkin’ you know there’s sometin’ interestin’ coming. I’m just sayin’.
You’ll have to excuse my fooling around with dialect, but, that was my immediate reaction to this first page I’m critiquing today.
Now, please understand that this first page has actually intrigued me with the narrator’s voice. I know this character dislikes public speaking even though he’s in front of a huge audience, and he is reunited with a mountain of a man from whom he wished he had the chance to run. Even the few misspellings and wrong word choices were surmountable. My biggest concern is that from this first page, I have no idea what is going on.
No Who? (Well, two guys with gangster-sounding names.) What? Nope. Where? (A stage somewhere.) Why? Nope. When? Nope.
Again, it all can’t be delivered on the first page, but I’m lost. I want to know much more. I feel like I was asked on a blind date and all I have to go on is a fascinating voice over the phone. Otherwise, I’m in the dark.
That said, I’d take a chance on that date—cuz’, ya know? Sometin’ tells me I’d find a diamond in da rough here. Ya know what I’m sayin’?
So, hook me, baby. Don’t need much. Perhaps spend less time telling me about the voice Nicky hears in the crowd. Maybe, let him hear it, then spend a few sentences telling me why Nicky wants to run. That way, when they embrace in that bear hug, I can be screaming, Run Nicky! Run!
Kudos to the author for the courage to share. I would read more. Tell me what you think.
Catalina Eddie
THE CROWD ERUPTED. Dominic Bellagio grasped a microphone and waived his appreciation to his audience. Hating public speaking, Dominic’s subsequent expression of appreciation was perfunctory and terse. Once completed, he offered a final waive. Just as he was about to leap from the stage, he picked out a familiar sound coming from the audience. A sound he hadn’t heard in years. Right away, he couldn’t believe it. Didn’t want to believe it. But there it was just the same. There was no mistaking Eduardo Catalanos’s big hoarsey laugh. Too late to make a run for it. Catalanos had plowed through the crowd, shoving people aside, as if they were little children. Now he stood at the edge of the stage grinning up at Dominic.
“Hey, Nicky! NICKY!” The big man shouted, arms opened wide. “How’ya doin’, bro?”
“Hey . . . uhhh, Cat. Wow! CAT!” said Dominic. “It’s . . . it’s been a while . . . buddy.”
Dominic jumped from the stage and the two men wrapped each other in a bear hug. His friends called him Cat; anyone else knew him as Catalina Eddie. An imposing sight—six-six and two-eighty-five—two coal-black eyes gleamed from a smiling face. To his credit, he looked a cheerful person. In truth, he was far from it. Favoring black, he was dressed in a simple black tee shirt and matching karate pants. His body was solid and tight.
“So, Cat . . . whaddaya been up to the past three years? Least it seems like three years since . . . since what was it now? Cartagena, I think it was. Huh?”
“Yeah, Nicky. That’s about right, bro.”
Grounding the Reader – First Page Critique
My comments:
I liked the visceral sense of foreboding that this first page evoked, and the author has created a situation that is both compelling and scary. I must confess, however, to finding myself a little ‘ungrounded’ at times in the scene.
First off, I found the phrase that her eyes “were open, nothing covered her face, but something sticky was all over it”, awkward. I started thinking about how her eyelashes could flutter if they were sticky which made me question whether her eyes had sticky stuff over them or not (which is making the reader work too hard!). Then, having discovered this stuff all over her face, why didn’t she try and work out what it was? (I was imaging all sorts of horrible stuff…) But instead she immediately starts thinking back to what had happened at the art studio. As a reader, I confess I wanted to get a stronger sense of the horror and panic she must be feeling.
Two paragraphs later, when the horrible stench ‘stung her nose and throat’, I wondered how she hadn’t noticed this immediately (had there not been a stench before then?) When the cold and wet seeped between her toes, I realized I had no idea whether she was clothed or not and, given I assumed she was clothed when she was attacked, wondered how she could notice the softness of the sheet around her but not the state of her undress (or at least the fact that she didn’t have any shoes and socks on)? This is when I think the author needed to think through the sensory experiences depicted and make sure they were consistent and well-grounded so that, even though the reader is as unsure as the protagonist about what has happened, we feel like we have enough information to keep reading without getting confused.
I would also have expected her to scream or yell rather than whisper ‘hello’ (I certainly would panic in this situation!) but I was willing to go along with this reaction until I learned more about her as a character. On a more pedantic note, the sentence at the end of the first paragraph: “She’d heard someone in the outer room and when she walked out caught a movement out of the corner of her eye, someone grabbed her and then…. Nothing.” is awkwardly phrased (and grammatically incorrect – is something missing perhaps?). I think the author needed to proof read this page a little more closely. (For another example, the word ‘stung’ is used twice which is repetitive for one page).
Otherwise, I was intrigued. I would probably keep reading but I would want to be a little more firmly grounded, in terms of her sensory experiences and location, to feel fully engaged in the story.
What do you think?
The Case of the Thin Man and the Soft Opening
First Page Critique: ROAD TO ARRAY
I’m sorry to say that this piece really didn’t resonate with me. It read as research-by-television series, and it just didn’t work. Not knowing what lies ahead in the story, I will venture a guess that this part of the story might be better told from Rick’s point of view. Assuming that he’s having a bad day on the other side of Daniel’s suspicions, I propose that Rick’s world view might be more interesting.
Setting the Stage: A Writing Exercise
For a change of pace today, I thought we could tackle a writing exercise. One of the things that’s struck me during our critiques lately is that I’m not alone in sometimes neglecting to include enough descriptive prose to set the stage for my stories. In fact it’s such a weakness of mine, I rarely add much detail in first drafts. I get the plot and dialogue in place, then go back during the editing process to flesh everything out. In all honesty, scenery description is my least favorite part of the craft of writing.
For one, remembering to include all five senses is always a struggle; I have a terrible sense of smell, and have to remind myself that my characters might not. Also, describing anything from a basic room to a crowd scene is rife with pitfalls; there isn’t a writer alive who hasn’t caught themselves typing out a trite cliche about the shape of the moon, or something similar.
So when my book is set somewhere specific, I rely heavily on photographs. The corkboard behind my desk is always layered with photos representing nearly every scene in the manuscript. I find that looking at them triggers sense memories, especially if I’m writing about somewhere I’ve been. I remember how streets in Paris are always wet in the morning, having been freshly washed by maintenance crews just before dawn. Or how the light in Central Park shifts dramatically season by season, or how the air in South America just tastes different (maybe my sense of taste is stronger, to compensate for that lack of smell).
Below I’ve pasted three photos. Pick any one and describe it in a paragraph, or use it as the jumping off point for a scene. Take care to avoid overused metaphors: “The sea was dark as slate,” for example, or, “The sky was as blue as a robin’s egg.”
Bonne chance!
Balancing Multiple Projects
Things used to be simple when I wrote for Kensington. I had to turn in one book a year. Easy, right? I wrote my Bad Hair Day mysteries and nothing else. It wasn’t until the publisher turned down my option book that I started writing in other genres to see what would sell.
Now it’s years later, and I’m still seeking a home for my two new mystery series. Meanwhile, Wild Rose Press picked up my romances, and I am preparing to launch a new paranormal series. Then Five Star published my tenth Marla Shore mystery. So years after I thought this series was dead, I’m writing it again. Before starting the eleventh book, I completed the first three books in my romance series. So those are all done, except for the edits, page proofs, and promotion.
And herein comes the juggling act. I am attempting to move forward with Bad Hair Day mystery #11, but I keep having to halt work on this project to do page proofs and revisions for the Drift Lords series, not to mention planning the promotional campaign for the series launch and taking time off to go to the Malice conference.
Meanwhile, those two completed mysteries linger in the back of my mind. Should I continue submitting them to small press or self-publish? If the latter, should I publish them as stand-alones or as the first books in new series?
Before deciding on these titles—and we’re still waiting for responses—I would like to self-publish my deceased father’s book. He hitchhiked across the U.S. in 1929 and his story includes some fascinating adventures. So my projects include:
1. The Drift Lords series from The Wild Rose Press
2. A new Bad Hair Day mystery
3. The possibility of self-publishing three titles
4. The possibility of one of my other mysteries selling in the interim
Never before have we had so many options. It’s an exciting time but it’s also all consuming. Who has free time when we can publish our entire body of works, and then when we have to spend hours on the social networks promoting them?
Do you find that your writing production has increased with the advent of new technologies? How are you balancing your writing projects, promotional efforts, and private life?
Bringing them in the door
In the second-to-last paragraph, your narrator’s reaction between “Thanks” and “Say, how did you know…” is a bit distracting, and doesn’t add anything new to Tamara’s description. Right now your character is thinking about the fact that he’s been ID’d, not whether Tamara is hot or not. As a general rule, try to keep every paragraph tightly focused on a single action or reaction.