First Page: Dead Grooms Tell No Tales – cozy mysteries
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When Brian stood me up at the altar I swore I would kill him.
Well it was more like I screamed that I would kill him. Then I stormed down the aisle–alone and very much unmarried–and out the church doors to the gravel drive where I commandeered Brian and my wedding limo which I then drove to his home only to discover that someone had killed him for me.
I’d like to send that person a thank you card, except I don’t know who did it. Which is a bit of a problem, because it turns out if you swear to kill someone in front of five-hundred wedding guests and then that person ends up dead–and you happen to be the one to find his body–you become the police’s number one suspect.
My name is May Berry (yes, really) and today is my wedding day.
As far as wedding days go, it’s not a good one. Oh, it started out fine. I woke up around eight in my hotel suite; my five best friends-come-bridesmaids were slowly stirring. The night before, we celebrated my upcoming nuptials by revisiting every club we use to frequent when we were at Penn, from which we graduated last year. It turns out we use to frequent many clubs and we felt the effects this morning, but after a breakfast of fruit, coffee, and bread we were approaching human again.
The ceremony wasn’t until six in the evening, so there was no need for us to rush. We lazed around the suite until checkout time, then drove to my parent’s home in Rivercrest, which is a town in the Main Line. The Main Line is a collection of affluent suburbs northwest of Philadelphia. It’s called the Main Line because the towns were once connected by the main line of the Philadelphia Railroad. Like all the suburbs in the area, Rivercrest is a picturesque town with quaint shops, pretty parks, and massive country estates. Once there, we enjoyed several hours of serious pampering as a team of hairstylists, make-up artists, and manicurists got us ready for my big day.
My wedding day was perfectly lovely right up until Brian Lockwood jilted me. Then, just to make my special day worse, he went and got himself murdered.
So if Brian was dead when I found him, then how do I know for sure that he jilted me? Before getting himself murdered, he had the bad taste to text his best friend to say he wasn’t coming.
Here is how the events occurred:
It was a few minutes before six when the girls and I arrived at the church. The idea was that my father would meet me on the gravel drive, two ushers would open the church’s double doors, and the bridal party would proceed down the aisle. We were meant to be backlit by the setting sun streaming through the open church doors. It was going to be beautiful. Instead, we were met by one usher who said Brian wasn’t there yet, then my bridesmaids and I were taken around to the church’s back entrance and ushered into a little room to wait for my groom’s arrival.
It was almost six-thirty and the girls and I were still in the backroom. My texts and phone calls to Brian were going unanswered and I was agitated, verging on hyperventilating. Brian is one of those annoying people who is never late and I couldn’t believe he was picking today of all days to not be punctual. The preacher had been in more than once and although he smiled and told me not to worry, and said Brian wasn’t the first groom to be late, I could tell he was getting worried.
“He got stuck in traffic,” said Heather, our group’s designated voice of calm and reason.
“He lives right around the corner. He could walk here in ten minutes,” I said.
“Not if he’s wearing new shoes,” said Bree. “If he bought new shoes, he wouldn’t want to get them dirty.”
“That’s true,” said Simone. She nodded matter-of-factly. “A man can’t get married in dirty shoes.”
I wouldn’t read on without some serious editing.
In your second paragraph you say you commandeered Brian and your wedding limo. Isn’t Brian the missing groom?
It’s best friends-cum-bridesmaids, not come and, in the same paragraph, you say ,”It turns out we use to…” It should be used to.
By then, you lost me and I skimmed the rest. You have an interesting premise and easy-to-read style. Pay attention to the details and I think you’d have an enjoyable story.
Hi Author. Thanks for sharing.
I think this premise has potential, but it needs editing and tightening. I had to read the first sentence twice to get the meaning. I actually imagined him physically standing her against the alter, rather than leaving her standing at the alter. Your second paragraph is a hot mess. As pointed out by Francesca, you’re commandeering Brian, who, according to the rest of your page, never showed up. That sentence could be broken into shorter sentences, which might give it more punch. I get your character is in a breathless rush, but I’m not sure this particular sentence, the way it’s written, does that effectively.
You have a habit of giving us a couple paragraphs, and then interrupting the story to tell us something we already know (today is my wedding day), or here’s what happened, and continuing on with the story. It interrupts the flow, stops us dead, and then keeps going.
There’s a great deal of explaining: we had breakfast, which was… We went to Penn, which we graduated from… I got in the limo, which I drove… We lived on Main Line, which is… There’s a better way of working all that into the story in an organic way, rather than giving little mini-info dumps throughout the story.
There is one thing that made me shake my head: if they’re back lit by the sun, that means walking out they’re going to be blinded by it. Some other things don’t track. If the preacher tells her not to worry, how can she tell he is worried? You give no clues to why she’d think that.
I got to the end, and then you lost me with the dialog between the bridesmaids. Part of me wants to like the funny aspect of having a vapid pair of bridesmaids, but another part of me was completely turned off.
I’d like to like this, but I don’t think it’s for me.
Hi Author!
I like your style and your voice, it’s very readable, fun and engaging. However, I think, as it stands, this needs severe trimming.
You start by telling us that your MC has been jilted, then she finds the groom-to-be dead. Then you tell us again, in more detail, and then you start telling us again, in even more detail. I’d start with ‘My name is May Berry’ (cut the yes, really, because I have no idea why May Berry would be an odd name, but then I’m British and we’re tolerant about things like that) and end before ‘here’s how the events occurred’ , where I’d start telling the actual story. So far you’ve got a first page that is all repetition – the reader wants to know what happened, who it happened to…and then they want to start finding out why it happened.
…and I get that you are commandeering the wedding limo as hired by your MC and Brian, but the way it’s written does sound as though she is comandeering Brian as well. You can just say ‘the wedding limo’. We know it’s May’s wedding, we can assume the car is theirs…
I like this:
“That’s true,” said Simone. She nodded matter-of-factly. “A man can’t get married in dirty shoes.”
…precisely because it captures the asinine stuff that people say when there’s a crisis. It’s a great line.
I agree with the other commenters though that the passage could use some tightening – unless there’s something crucial about the clubs they went to the night before, I’d trim a little there, for example. Good start though!
I liked your first sentence, I thought it was a good start. The concept of standing someone up is very familiar to me, I hear “he stood me up” all the time. Could be a location/age thing? I’m in my twenties and from the American Midwest and I’ve also lived in the South.
But then…I really like the premise here but this page is very confusing. You go back and forth a lot, there are some great sentences but they are lost in the confusing timeline. You can add me as another one who was confused by the commandeering Brian sentence.
While I liked the first sentence and the concept, I was definitely skimming within the first few paragraphs and I probably wouldn’t read on. Sorry!
ETA: I understand the concept of leaving someone standing at the alter, or being stood up at the alter. But in the context of this page, it’s an awkwardly constructed sentence that could have more punch if just subtly altered. I think the concept of being stood up is pretty universal. (Original Midwesterner also living in the South, and it’s used in both places.)
I like the storyline premise. However, there are enough grammatical errors in the opening paragraph to make any further reading distracting. I did like your simple writing style; however, the details make the difference between good writing and great writing.
Aside from “commandeering Brian,” your first two para were great. You had me hooked. Then, rather than going forward, you backed up and told us all sorts of boring stuff, like what they did yesterday and what kind of town they lived in. We already know what’s going to happen at the wedding, so reading about the prep is a snooze. I started skimming. If you’d moved forward instead of filling in backstory (wedding prep became backstory the minute the book’s timeline passed the wedding, which you did in line one), this would have been great.
However, our narrator was ready to marry Brian and he’s dead and she appears to be neither shocked, upset, nor grieving, which is not realistic, as well as hard to pull off well, because if she doesn’t love him enough to be upset by his death, why was she marrying him? Making the answer to that question plausible is tough.
The correct term in “used to”
To sum up, you started with a hook, you have some fluff to cut, but you have a serious hurdle in the upcoming pages. I’d read on to find out what’s next, but I would not be surprised if I gave up after a few more pages because the narrator didn’t give a damn about her future husband.
I liked the joke in the first two paragraphs – ‘I swore I would kill him…” only to discover that someone had killed him for me’. I think, tightened up, that’s a great opening.
My big problem with the page, and I understand you’re going for screwball comedy, is that she has found someone she loved (we assume) dead, and she’s just being relentlessly flippant. And maddeningly discursive.
Her fiancé is dead, she is suspected – and I know the police in these books are idiots, but really? – of his murder, and in telling the story she stops to fill us in on why Main Line has that name. And what she had for breakfast. And the conversation her bridesmaids had about his shoes.
I’d overlook her lack of emotion, I’d imagine, if you picked up the pace and drove the story on – Bertie Wooster gets engaged and dumped all the time, and has a pretty casual attitude to it all, and the reader doesn’t think about it because the plot moves apace.
Actually, I liked the conversation about shoes – it grounded the page in some sort of reality. Though – and it’s hard to judge because we’ve only a few lines from Heather, Bree and Simone – for this sort of book, hyperreality might be better. That is, the conversation sounds like the kind people might have, but if the women were either wittier or more clueless than average it might work well in this page.
Short version: it does need to be tightened, but I like the start and end of the page. I thought the middle didn’t work.
Good luck.
My comment has been eaten, but SAO has nailed what my issues with the page are.
Good luck.
@Marianne McA: I fished it out. Thanks for the heads-up, the spam filter seems to be especially active today.
I like your voice. It is an easy read. Yes it could use an edit, but the potential is there.
I also agree with everything SAO said. Ditto.:)
SAO has nailed it for me as well.
I’d read on if your story was edited for a less immature heroine. I’d eventually spit tacks over some 220+ pages due the name “May Berry”. Just don’t be so juvenile. Please.