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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 KJJackson, whose page is below.
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny The YoungerTitle: You Belong To Me
Genre: Suspense/ThrillerSlumbrous eyes fluttered under closed lids as the familiar yet unidentifiable scent of a stranger invaded her subconscious. Plastic snapped somewhere between sleep and reality, and Delia stared through bleary lenses. A tingle filled her chest. Is someone in here? Ears pricked, her heart thumped as she scanned the room. In the semi-darkness, her eyes darted across the vacant bed to the nightstand with the gun inside. Her belly clenched, her fingers touched her bare ring finger and rubbed. The cotton blanket bounced with each breath. A soft glow from the nightlights dispelled the darkness. The feeling of being watched eased from her chest, and she took a shuddering breath.
Metal clinked from the vicinity of the den. What is that? Delia bolted from bed; bare feet slapped in quick succession on the Brazillian hardwood past her daughters’ closed door, relieved the room was empty. Hefting a hand-carved wooden statue overhead, she eased around a corner. A shadow moved like a movie reel between the incandescent swatches of moonlight through the vertical blinds. Eyes wide, her pulse jumped. A frog croaked. What the heck! Her foot lost purchase, and Delia landed hard on her right hip. Ow! The statue thudded, beside her head. Pinpricks of light danced above. She clamored to her feet, the gown whispered against her ankles, and her heart skipped. She released a shaky breath. Crap, I left my phone. Each footfall tightened the knot in her belly, making her ribs ache. Snatching the phone from the nightstand, she made her way back to the living room and peeked out. Her labored breath fogged a circle on the glass as she scanned the semi-dark world outside.
The best writing sharpens our mental image. It helps us picture our physical surroundings and makes us look at the world and ideas in new ways.
I read so many pages like this that feel like they’re written by someone trying extremely hard to be stylistically evocative and unique. I often end up wishing they would just try to be clear.
Let’s take the first sentence: “Slumbrous eyes fluttered under closed lids as the familiar yet unidentifiable scent of a stranger invaded her subconscious.”
What does sentence this actually tell us? Strip away the overwrought prose and here’s what we learn: a sleeping woman smells a stranger.
Does it help us picture the smell? Are we picturing the stranger? Are we picturing the woman? Where are we? It ends up being much less than the sum of its parts.
Throughout this page, the writing has a tendency to be vague first and later clarified. The woman is first unnamed, then she becomes Delia. The setting is just “the room” until we learn from context that it’s a bedroom.
This will quickly result in an exhausted reader because we constantly have to go back and revise our understanding of the physical setting when it could have just been clear from the start so we can focus on what’s actually happening.
I’m all for prose that shades purple, but only when that prose is trying be overly articulate, not when it’s obscuring. You don’t have to be wholly straightforward in your approach, but always always strive for precision.
Lastly, be careful with repetitive gestures (which I sometimes call “gesture explosions”). Usually one or two representative and specific gestures suffice. I worry this page overdoes it with generic gestures that quickly become repetitive: looking into the semi-darkness, chests tingling and pulses jumping, bellies knotting, hearts thumping and skipping, breaths shuddering and bouncing blankets and shaking, etc.
Try to be much more specific and individualized with your gestures, and trust the reader to get the gist from fewer.
Here’s my redline:
An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit.
Pliny The YoungerTitle: You Belong To Me
Genre: Suspense/ThrillerDelia’s slumbrous eyes fluttered
under closed lidsas she smelled the familiar yet unidentifiable [Familiar yet unidentifiable is an oxymoron? Is this intentional?] scent of a strangerinvaded her subconscious.Plastic snapped somewhere between sleep and reality[I don’t understand what this means, is plastic referring to the glasses?],and Delia stared[at what? Don’t we cover this with more specificity in the subsequent sentence?]through bleary lenses. A tingle filled her chest. Is someone in here?Ears pricked,Her heart thumped [pick one] as she scanned the room. Iin the semi-darkness,. Her eyes darted across the vacant bed to the nightstand with the gun inside.Her belly clenched, her fingersShetouchedrubbed her bare ring fingerand rubbed.The Her cotton blanket bounced with each breath.[Deleted to eliminate repetition of “breath” at the end of this paragraph]A soft glow from the nightlights dispelled the darkness[We already know it’s semi-darkness, do we also need nightlights “dispelling” the darkness?]. The feeling of being watched easedfrom her chest, and she took a shuddering breath.Metal clinked from the vicinity of the den. What is that?
¶Delia bolted from her bed
;. Her bare feet slapped in quick succession on the Brazillian hardwood past her daughters’ closed door. She was relieved the room was empty. [Which room?]HeftingShe hefted a hand-carved wooden statueoverhead, sheand eased around a corner.¶A shadow moved
like a movie reelbetween the incandescent swatches of moonlight through the vertical blinds [I’m having trouble visualizing this, how is something moving behind vertical blinds “like a movie reel?”].Eyes wide, hHer pulse jumped [pick one]. A frog croaked. What the heck!Her foot lost purchase, andDelia slipped on X and landed hard on her right hip. Ow!The statue thudded
,beside her head. Pinpricks of light dancedabove. She clamored to her feet,theher gown whispered against [“whispered against?” I’m not sure what that means?] her ankles,and her heart skipped. She released a shaky breath.[Empty gestures. She already took a “shuddering breath,” do we need to see her release a “shaky breath?”] Crap, I left my phone.Each footfall tightened the knot in her belly, making her ribs ache.She snatchedSnatchingtheher phone from the nightstand,shemade her way back to the living room and peeked out. Herlaboredbreath fogged a circle on the glass as she scanned the semi-dark world outside. [It feels repetitive for her to peer into more vague semi-darkness, can you be more precise about what she’s seeing to help fill in the setting for the reader?]
Thanks again to KJJackson!
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Art: John Anster Fitzgerald – The Stuff that Dreams are made of
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This reads like a first draft where I throw everything at the page in order to keep the flow going as ideas and words fly in all directions. On re-write I do as you did and pick and choose what to keep and what to eliminate. My second draft is usually longer, though as new ideas continue to flow, so I then have to go to a third draft which is getting closer to something I would show someone
If she has a gun in the nightstand, why does she take a statue as a weapon? I was overwhelmed by all the shifting detail. The situation intrigued me, but the lack of focus left me unable to follow the action.
I do word flurry as well, then trim, then more flurry. This I believe is a weakness for it can take as many as 20 edits on a single paragraph to bring this reflooding under control. But controlled it must be. (The more I write, the more I eliminate this waste in future works. I have some clean little short stories that only required 3-4 edits. Might it be that I learned – finally – to recognize what sounds best?)
When it comes to thrillers, less is more. Thriller readers want to move quickly, so loading a scene, especially an opening one, with so much unnecessary detail is, like you said, exhausting, but also feels like trying to run through quicksand instead of around it. And the genre isn’t really one that allows for a lot of description, especially when it comes to setting the scene. The thriller reader wants just enough to be able to picture it themselves and giving them too much not only slows the action down, something you don’t want in a fast-paced thriller, especially when trying to hook the reader on the first page, it also doesn’t allow the reader to fill in blanks and create the scene and characters as they want.
As is often the case with these first pages, I liked it as a reader, though it’s very different from my style as a writer.
Thank you KJJackson for sharing your story opening. I know it’s hard to put a story up for critique let alone so openly. These critiques are hugely helpful.
Your story has a lot of potential. However, I would have liked to have seen a little more of the character’s personality. Did she think her mind was playing tricks on her and she was just checking things out for peace of mind or does she really think someone’s in the house? If she thinks someone’s in the house, does she think is its a stranger, someone she knows, burglar, rapist, killer? Also, as someone else pointed out, why didn’t she grab the gun? What does she plan to do if she sees someone? What’s her mindset? Her actions would be very different depending what’s going through her head. If she thinks she heard something, but not sure what it was… if there have been breakins in the neighborhood… if she has an abusive ex… I know you don’t want to put in a lot of details, but sprinkling in a little of her mindset would help hook us and draw us in more.
Good luck with your story!