If you’d like to nominate your own page or query for a public critique, kindly post them here in our discussion forums:
Also, if you’d like to test your editing chops, keep your eye on this area or this area! I’ll post the pages and queries a few days before a critique so you can see how your redline compares to mine.
And, of course, if you need help more urgently or privately, I’m available for edits and consultations!
Now then. Time for the Page Critique. First I’ll present the page without comment, then I’ll offer my thoughts and a redline. If you choose to offer your own thoughts, please be polite. We aim to be positive and helpful.
Random numbers were generated, and thanks to Catherine Shields, whose page is below.
Title: A MILLION WAYS TO MEASURE NORMAL
by Catherine Shields
Genre: Memoir“Your daughter, Jessica, is profoundly retarded.”
Some words you never expect to hear spoken aloud. Whispered words, accompanied by lowered eyes, and the nod of a head became nothing more than the practice of empathy projected, but not understood. Retarded. A doctor spoke those words. The year; 1988.
For twenty-four years, I struggled to navigate an often-unknown land, and solve the mystery of what awaited at the end of my passage.
*
Yesterday the defining moment of my journey manifested itself when I stood in Jessica’s empty bedroom. Everything appeared the same as the day before. The same but different. An assortment of posters hung on the wall above her bed, most of the images, teenage boy bands. In one photo, the boys, arms linked, leaned forward and smiled. For a moment, I imagined they wanted to hear my thoughts. I whispered the words like a quiet secret. “We moved Jessica to a group home today.”
Through the bedroom window, the sway of the palm trees captivated my attention.
Crack. The snap of a frond roused me from my reverie, and I returned to the posters, the ones she asked me to bring. My fingers trembled as I grabbed the edges. I wondered if my heart would crack into a million little pieces like the broken keepsakes she refused to throw away.
I dreaded this for so long.
Our twenty-eight-year-old daughter often followed me around the house and begged the same question.
There’s a lot in this page that feels weighty. A terrible visit to the doctor, the aftermath of a wrenching decision to move an adult child into a group home. There’s some good attention to detail here, the prose shows promise, and in particular I like the moment where the narrator whispers to the boy band.
The challenge with writing weighty topics, particularly ones that are true and are bound up with intense emotions, is that it’s extremely difficult to disentangle your own memories of moments, your analysis of what those moments mean, and storytelling necessities.
Above all, especially with memoirs, it’s difficult to remember that at the end of the day, you’re telling a story.
If you cornered someone at a party and one of the first things you say is, “Whispered words, accompanied by lowered eyes, and the nod of a head became nothing more than the practice of empathy projected, but not understood…” they’re going to have a bit of a hard time grasping what you’re talking about, even if they can sense from your intensity that what you’re saying is important to you.
Rather than trying to impress upon someone how important something is by hammering it in an abstract fashion, allow the reader into the scene. Give them the physical surroundings. Let them connect with the narrator’s vantage point. Invite them into the protagonist’s mind and give them the context to understand what they’re seeing. Then hit “play” and let them experience the moment for themselves.
In the case of this page, it feels like a rush of thoughts and feelings and analysis, but I’m struggling to orient myself within these two scenes. The first one feels like a rushed snippet with too much zooming out to analyze, the second bounces around in time in a way that made it a bit hard for me to get my bearings.
Set the physical scene, give the reader context to understand what’s at stake, and trust them to draw their own conclusion without imposing the author’s analysis of what things mean. It will make the journey much more palpable.
Here’s my redline.
Title: A MILLION WAYS TO MEASURE NORMAL
by Catherine Shields
Genre: Memoir“Your daughter, Jessica, is profoundly retarded.”
[Set the physical scene. Where are we? What are we doing here? Who’s present? What’s the broader context?]
Some words you never expect to hear spoken aloud.
Whispered words, accompanied by lowered eyes, and the nod of a head became nothing more than the practice of empathy projected, but not understood.[I’m not really grasping what the second half of this sentence means] Retarded. A doctor spoke those words. The year;in 1988.For twenty-four years, I struggled to navigate an often-unknown land, and solve the mystery of what awaited at the end of my passage. [This feels vague and universal, let us into the specifics of the story a bit more?]
*
Yesterday the defining moment of my journey manifested itself whenI stood in Jessica’s empty bedroom. Everything appeared the same as the day before. The samebut different.An assortment ofPosters hung on the wall above her bed, most of themimages,teenage boy bands. In one photo, the boys, arms linked, leaned forward and smiled. For a moment, I imagined they wanted to hear my thoughts. I whispered the words like a quiet secret. “We moved Jessica to a group home today.”
Through the bedroom window,The sway of the palm treescaptivatedoutside caught my attention.Crack. The snap of a frond roused me from my reverie
,.andI returned to the posters, the onesshe asked me to bring to her in [where]. My fingers trembled as I grabbed the edges. I wondered if my heart would crack into a million little pieces like the broken keepsakes she refused to throw away.I dreaded this for so long. [Dreaded what? Be as precise as possible to let us into the story. Help us understand what’s at stake.]
Our twenty-eight-year-old daughter often followed me around the house and begged the same question. [What question?]
Thanks again to Catherine Shields!
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Art: Tropical Landscape by Frederic Edwin Church
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Info-dump first pages are an evil so few new writers know about. I have had to do a virtual Nerf noodle attack on the heads of many of my writing students because of this. New writers believe that the reader needs everything at once. No, they don’t. Part of the fun of reading is picking up the small clues to help figure out what is going on. It’s part of the interlocking questions that draws a reader through the story.
I’d just toss this whole section because it’s static with a passive viewpoint character, then I’d figure out the turning point moment that shows the book’s goal, hopefully with more than the protag in the scene, put my character in that moment in viewpoint, and go for it.
This book has a real Jodi Picoult novel vibe to it. She’s a master craftsman at this so I suggest you read and study how she does this so well.