If Feyi is an African name, I’m assuming she’s black. Which actually was what I thought from the first few lines. It was just something about the rhythm of the voice, which fit the character. You might want to play up the Caribbean location a bit more (does actual English ivy grow in the Caribbean? It doesn’t do well where I live, and I’m on the Gulf coast…) because I didn’t catch that on first read.

I liked this, liked the voice and saw potential in the story, but the long sentences were hard to wade through (and I like to write long sentences myself, and then have to go back and break them up). The wine-a-thon confused me. Do you mean Feyi goes on a wine-a-thon? Or somebody else does? I got confused a lot reading this, and while I admit that I confuse easily, there were a lot of potentially confusing things here. The 2nd to 3rd Person thing being one of them. I was just getting used to the 2nd when you switched it and lost me again.

There are really only two rules of writing fiction that can never be broken, and everybody’s touched on both of them. #1 is DO NOT BORE THE READER and #2 is DO NOT CONFUSE THE READER. If you’re not boring them, you can get away with confusing them a little bit, but you’d certainly better not do both at the same time, and never, ever bore them. Ever. Never.

What you’ve got going for you here is the voice, and Feyi’s attitude, holding back the Boredom. That’s what is keeping the reader interested. So, even though this is a short excerpt, you might want to tighten it up some and thin out some of the cool description language (I know, I know, more darlings going under the knife–but you have to be ruthless. Get out that samurai sword…) and speed things up to reach that dialogue just a smidgen quicker. Good luck!

I don’t have much for you on the critique front, but a great place (and I am not trying to toot my own horn) is through a class. I teach through UCLA Extension, Romance 1 and 2 (more creative titles than that, but I can’t quite remember how they are worded) online. Another writer teaches romance there as well–so I would assume that you could find a class that would allow you to run through a manuscript or partial in order to get teacher and fellow student feedback. Just a thought.

Good luck.

J

Re my darlings: To get through with that, I will have to murder them dry-eyed and save the uncontrollable weeping for after the fact. But it must be done, yes.

Kill your darlings. Kill your darlings. Kill your darlings. Step back. Pretend you haven’t written it. Revise it or cut it altogether. I myself have problems with this but I am getting better. If you’re trying to sell this to publishers then you have to consider the reader first and what you the writer like second. Personally, as a reader, I felt the 2nd person was a whole lot of tellin’ not showin’ and it did not draw me in. Put it in third and let me feel like I’m at the party. Let me see the drunken mom and the slutty sister. I feel like I couldn’t do that as written. You have strong voice.

To whomever is still reading (hello!) does the fact that dialogue is soon to come change your thoughts about ’showing vs telling’ or does the 1st page still need to have a greater balance? My big problem with all the telling is that it doesn’t draw me in. I am not hooked at all by this opening so I wouldn’t keep reading probably to get to the dialogue. There’s your probem to me, if you keep it as is you might lose readers off the bat. I don’t necessarily defer to the back of the book or look at the rest if I can’t even get through the first page.

RE: the swearing. Clarify for yourself why you want it in the book. I have no problem with it myself, but some people do. I recommend taking a look at books from publishers you might try and counting the swear words. After that maybe allow yourslef half that many swear words because you are not established so you won’t get as much leeway as a published author. Really think about where a good f-bomb will pack the most punch for either comedic effect or character illumination. You can use swear words no problem, but they can’t just be thrown around willy nilly in something you want published.

RE: critiques. I would say for a really good shake-down on your first 10 pages and your query (when you write it). Go to Electra’s Crapometer. They are all writers there and they are very good at tearing things apart and then putting them back together in wonderful ways. Same goes for Evil Editor’s blog. He does first 150 words, short synopsis and query letters. VERY useful blog for getting your submission packet in order. Also, I’ve heard good things about the Critique Circle site thought I myself haven’t used it.

Anyway, there’s my two cents. Best of luck!

~Moth

The issue of ’slang’ or cultural tone is something that I have forever been grappling with. My characters are Cbean nationals. They aren’t Americans or English or Australians living abroad. So someone earlier on had said they’d be interested in reading about why Feyi likes the Cbean – but apart from the odd ‘I love NY’ ‘I love small towns’ interjections I see in some novels, it wouldn’t flow well (I think) to discuss her emotions with respect to her location. It just ‘is’.

This is a problem because I do want to get published and the market is American so I can’t write as if my reader is from the Cbean and expect a foreign market to ‘understand’. At the same time, I don’t want to cut away so much of the colloquialisms that it becomes, for all intents and purposes, an ‘American’ book. (The States pretty much being the default location for any setting that is not specifically stated imo.)

So this is also something I have to figure out.

And the additional comments underline the point that I’m not very clear! Worrying but unsurprising given that sometimes when I read it aloud I trip myself up. Yeah, red flag.

With respect to less telling, more showing, right after this excerpt, dialogue begins and I think the novel on a whole is very dialogue intensive. The first chapter (and 1st page) does hold a heavier narrative-dialogue weighting than what follows. To whomever is still reading (hello!) does the fact that dialogue is soon to come change your thoughts about ’showing vs telling’ or does the 1st page still need to have a greater balance?

Crude language: I’ve tried to excise a great deal of the swear words from the narrative and I do fear it would make Feyi appear immature and unintelligent to some. But then, to others it would simply be ‘realistic’. I suppose this is a ‘you can’t please everyone’ situation. Of course if an agent or publisher tells me to wash her mouth with soap, they will immediately become the Everyone and yes, I will ensure that Everyone is pleased.

But what I’m really clocking in again for, is to ask whether anybody reading or who has commented is looking for an online critique partner (or knows someone who is looking)? I have been searching since Christ was a child for someone to be my sounding board and vice versa.

If anyone is interested, e-mail me at heymissybookstore at gmail dot com.

I give good crits, I promise.

I did notice (and this is minor) a lot of dashes and hyphens in the second person part. They grate on the eye, so if you keep that as it is, remove a few.

What is in both the second and third person sections, though, is a great deal of telling. I don’t feel like I am actually in this scene, and I think I deserve to be. It’s wild and there are things going on I’d like to feel a part of (even if I am hiding in the corner). Some dialog, some sensory “feel” here–my god, I’ve never been in such a throng, and I want to at least look, feel, taste, touch, etc.

But a clear strong voice, a great set up, and good flow.

J

IMO, just putting it into present tense will help make it clear that it’s the narrator ruminating

Totally.

And I have no problems at all with the crudeness of her inner voice. I swear like a sailor myself, so I don’t think a tendency toward profanity has much to do with a person’s level of intelligence.

I won’t say I would read this, because contemp is not my thing. But the voice does tug at me. If this was lying around and I was in need of something to occupy me, it could well serve the purpose, regardless of the genre. Which says a lot, since I won’t read something that doesn’t grab me, no matter how little there is to do.

I would hope that at some point soon, this woman will make her feelings known to those around her. I don’t think I could read a whole novel filled with her frustration–it’s one reason I got so infuriated watching “Meet the Parents”. By the time that movie ended, I just wanted to smash something.

Count me in favor of rewriting the POV to avoid the strange shift, and tightening up some of the sentences for clarity, and showing more/telling less. Be sure to let us know how this fares, and good luck!

As Anion said, there will be those who love something and those who don’t. For me, this is a don’t.

I don’t actually use the ‘2nd person’ again in the novel. I started off like this years ago when I first began and have never truly overhauled this opening scene. I may have to I think though I’ve grown attached to it.

But I will definitely mix things up using your comments and see which suits me best. Also, I will attempt to make my language clearer. I have a tendency to have long, run-on sentences so I know I have to tighten that up.

Re the -ass endings: we meet the heroine on a bad day basically and on good days she has a potty mouth. I think I’ll have to tone that down as well for marketability. But the usage of -ass for cuss words is normal in the Caribbean.

The hero: he’s a popular comic strip artist and is the island’s Golden Boy. Feyi (which is an African name, not made up!) is cynical as someone mentioned above and he’s all happiness and light.

Thanks again for all your comments. I’m going to sit down and go through each one so that I can take my writing to the next level – a publication-worthy level!

And I’m saying that because this is a subjective business, so when you start querying for real…don’t be disheartened by rejection. Obviously, for every one like me, there’s at least one who really likes it. :)

The shift between second (or third person limited) and third person jarred me a little. Maybe because I didn’t see it coming. But I agree with those who say that once it hit third person it felt tighter and more engaging. I don’t know if this makes much sense, but perhaps if the second person was italicised, the shift to third person wouldn’t have felt as jarring as it did.

And I’m assuming that the use of “stink-ass” “small-ass” and other “insert adjective-add ass” is a cultural slang. Otherwise I don’t see why it would be needed to such a great degree.

Aside from that, I liked it, and would be interested in reading more.

I found some of the adjective choices to be unusual. “…one hopeful spilled stink-ass beer on your goddamn rug…”–I’m not quite sure why the spilled beer is hopeful. Unless I’m reading this wrong and “hopeful” refers to the guy who wanted to get with the sister. But the construction of this phrase does not make that clear.

Overall, I enjoyed Feyi’s attitude, but there were some really muddled sentences I had to read three or four times before I understood. If I have to reread sentences on the first page, I won’t typically continue on. This sentence in particular really confused me at first: “This – the pretty sky, the teasing breeze – she summed up as the placid, romantic interlude to her horror movie but she’d been primed since earlier that afternoon on the blood and guts effect of a sister gone wild, so it went unappreciated.” I think maybe a semicolon between “movie” and “but” will help. You know, this is an awesome sentence once it gets a little clarity. In fact, I love this sentence! I’m not ashamed to say it!

I love the party scene, especially the mother. I wonder if she continues to make an appearance, because I love an out-of-control mother. (I wonder what that says about my own mother experiences?)

I agree with the poster up above about the hero. He would make a huge difference in my decision to read this book. I know, strong female characters are great, blah, blah, blah; unfortunately, I’m really just here for the men. Hee.