Yay, it's here! The first contest I've entered in 2012! For anyone who didn't know the contest was going on, you can check out the fun here. Feel free to join in!
Here is my entry:
Title: The Gone Missing Girl
Genre: YA Contemporary
Word Count: 101,000
Pitch: Nineteen year old albino Ansel isn’t one to go looking for excitement, until the day he saves a runaway heiress and gets tangled up in a real life fairy tale that’ll change his world forever.
I didn’t mean to find her. All I planned to do was retrieve a crappy book from the storage shed so I could cannibalize some of its pages for another book I was restoring. Instead, I found myself facing off with a deranged waif.
The busted hinge on the door should have clued me in, but that’s an oblivious bookworm for you. I was already plotting how I intended to rebind the book back in my apartment, not wondering why the door of the shed was broken.
Shoving my way inside, I cut to the right, heading straight for the box labeled ‘GerFairy’ which held double copies of the German fairy tale books in the bookstore. Even with the Coleman lantern, I didn’t notice her standing amidst the stacks of books at the center of the shed. Not until I happened to trip over a box and turned left to step around it.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
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Ouh, an albino - quite original, brava! Here's my crit about your scene: I want to read it as your MC lives it, but right now, it feels like he's telling me a little foreshadowing. Why not start with your incident, the moment it starts to go wrong? I want trouble, I want to plunge right into the world you've created when things are getting messy.
ReplyDeleteThe pitch is pretty solid.
ReplyDeleteThe second paragraph of your excerpt trips me up. It's full of voice. But it saps the story's vitality and tension. i would eliminate paragraph two and perhaps try to work some of it in later.
GL to you.
I love the idea for this! I agree with Anne, though--we realize that action is about to happen, but I'd rather it happen right as the book opens, rather than hearing something about it and getting info about other things afterwards.
ReplyDeleteGreat job and good luck!
Love the idea. It's something different. The pitch is good and I enjoy the voice.
ReplyDeleteGood luck!
Great pitch, great excerpt! The pitch gets to the point and the excerpt leaves me wanting more. I really want to know what happens when he finds the heiress.
ReplyDeleteAll right, so you pitch isn't awful. But there's a few things here that can be left out. Having an albino protag is interesting, it's probably not vital to the pitch. That's query material. Synopsis even. The age isn't even important unless it has everything to do with the plot. Again, query and synopsis. You have the story down in that last sentence and it's great. Work on removing those few things and strengthening what this relationship between Ansel and the heiress will mean.
ReplyDeleteAlso, if you're looking for another blogfest, stop by my blog on February 13th. I'd love to have you.
Best,
Justin
In My Write Mind
The only thing that threw me off was the last sentence of your 150. How can he trip over a box and turn left to step around it? The sentence makes it seem like it happens all in the same action, as opposed to two separate actions, which muddles what really occurs.
ReplyDeleteOtherwise, interesting pitch and a really good start to the book.
I love bookworm MCs :)
I liked the pitch a lot! The only thing I would suggest, is that I do agree with a few of the others here, that you should start with some action in the first couple of sentences, though.
ReplyDeleteI love the voice!
Good job!!
Hey Artemis--Great pitch!
ReplyDeleteI disagree with some of the comments above--I liked the second paragraph--I like to be anchored in who's head I'm walking around in before the action starts, and it's a quick paragraph and interesting voice!
I too stopped to consider your last line. It drew me out of your writing, when I considered what that would look like, to trip over something, and then to veer around it.
But overall, I think it's awesome!!
I do however, take an issue with Justin's tone above. It doesn't seem all that supportive. Maybe you guys are close, and he's joking. I hope.
Great pitch, Artemis. :)
That last sentence also kind of caught me the wrong way, but I liked the rest of it a lot--and I loved your pitch!
ReplyDelete