FIRST PAGE SATURDAY: NA Paranormal
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Welcome to BACK to first page Saturday. This is an opportunity for authors to submit unpublished works for critique. You are welcome to comment anonymously. The first page form is here if you would like to submit your own piece.
It’s so not fair. Kitty, my older sister, is the one that everyone remembers and likes. I mean, who remembers Enyo or Eris? (Except for that one time I started a little war…but it all worked out in the end! Really, if you think about it, the Roman empire would never have existed without me.) Anyway, the answer to that question is exactly no one.
The only other thing people remember about me is running away with Marcus – or Hades, as he was known as at the time – but they don’t even get that right.
Not that mortals ever get much right. We’re nowhere as near incestuous as they think we are – well, somewhat. Anyway. Nor are we as numerous. Where they think there are three or four there’s only one. Although it’s the opposite sometimes. It gets very complicated. I guess I don’t blame them for just making stuff up to suit their own purposes. But still.
Also, that whole other thing about turning people into animals was a complete accident. I swear. Jen, also known as Hecate, had only just started teaching me magic. So. What were you good at when you first started learning?
But, of course, I’m still known as the crazy bitch while Kitty is so sweet and nice and beautiful. It almost gives a girl a complex. I’m not ugly, but tell me, who would feel good when their mother and sister are goddesses of beauty?
At least I’m not married to Henry – Hephaestus – though, admittedly, Kitty seems happy enough.
I would almost say happier than our parents, but really, who knows how they feel? All I know is, I wouldn’t want a marriage like that. Or maybe I would, just to have someone. (Not really.) I certainly wouldn’t want to be married to someone like my father, but – that’s different.
Anyway, I have Marcus. And, once, I had someone else, too.
Best not to dwell on that too much, though.
—
Pip, my best friend and Hermes, as well as the Erotes, and I are lounging on benches in the college courtyard, spying on a lean, almost handsome young man with a beaky nose who keeps shuffling around and around, hands in his pockets, looking bored.
“He doesn’t look like a hero,” I mutter to Pip. Checking off my fingers, I continue, “Too skinny. Kind of geeky. He just…” I wave my hands about, searching for the right words.
“Doesn’t have presence?” Pip suggests, pulling at a loose thread on his trainers and yawning. He doesn’t like to sit still. He twists about his baseball cap.
“Exactly!”
“But he is yummy.” Pip grins.
“If you like that sort of thing.” I grumble.
“Which you do.” He knows me so well. And lust, too. It’s his thing.
I stick out my tongue. Of course Pip is right. He is just my type of boy.
But I’ve sworn off boys. And girls, too. And everyone else. Not everyone fits into the binary, you know. Like Addie. She used to be Orion. She isn’t either a boy or a girl, except when she is. She just doesn’t like to be boxed into either one. Or God.
But I’ve not sworn off sex or relationships forever – that would be way too long. Mei might be happy without sex, but not me.
Besides, I have Marcus.
I jump as, behind me, Harry speaks. “Spying on my brother?”
Harry used to be Cassandra. Or is. If you think the god situation is complicated, you should see the heroes. They’re reincarnated when they die. Sometimes they decide they are the hero, sometimes they like to go by their new name, and have nothing to do with their old mantle, sometimes they do take it on, but keep their new name. Like I said, complicated.
Anyway, Harry isn’t such a big fan of the gods, especially my brother Simon. And me, sometimes, in her angrier moments. But at least now she understands that I didn’t mean to start the war.
“He doesn’t look much like a hero,” I point out to her.
“And you don’t look much like a deity,” she shoots back.
“Although you could be mistress of the dead, with all that black.” Pip chimes in unhelpfully.
I ignore him. “Are you sure? Theseus hasn’t been seen since the Twenties.”
Pip gives me a sidelong look. I ignore that too. He thinks he understands what happened between Theseus and I, but he really, really doesn’t. No one does. No one even understands the real Theseus except me.
Wow, you’ve got a gazillion chars on this page; I think I lost count at 10 and all of them have two names. So, you’ve given us 20 or more names to keep track of and that is way, way, way too much. As a result, I don’t have the foggiest idea of who is who and what’s going on.
I’m not all that keen on your voice, which seems a bit smug and condescending, but I’m not a big fan of first person, either, so this is probably a personal take.
You need to start with conflict/plot. Something happening not exposition followed up by exposition disguised as conversation.
I think this is a case where you need to use the writers golden rule .
Show don’t tell .
Nobody wants to read pages and pages of dialogue , and the only person who can get away with so much exposition is Jim Butcher , and even he can only do so much with it .
I’m confused.
And possibly if I knew more about mythology I wouldn’t be quite so confused, but even then…
As an example: “She used to be Orion. She isn’t either a boy or a girl, except when she is. She just doesn’t like to be boxed into either one. Or God.”
I’m left wondering ‘Or God what?’ The best sense I can make of it is that s/he doesn’t like to be defined as a boy, or a girl, or a (small g) god, and then I start to wonder whether Orion was ever a god, and you’ve lost me.
What I like about the page: ‘the one time I started a little war’. I imagine this refers to an ‘actual’ event, and I’m missing the reference, but it nonetheless worked for me as a running joke/to give me a sense of who the narrator is.
And the sense of – would it be non-determinism? – about the characters lives – that they can break free from their boxes. I liked that.
But for this reader the page needs to be simplified, because I don’t have an existing frame of reference to slot these characters into. And also, while I don’t mind a slow start, something needs to happen. It’s a page where a group of friends are hanging out, and there’s a good-looking bloke in their vicinity. They aren’t witty enough that I’ll stay with them to eavesdrop on their banter, and I am tragically too old to read on just because the good-looking bloke may interact with them soon.
Good luck.
Hi Author, and thanks for sharing. And welcome back, First Page.
I want to like this. But I have to confess I’m lost. I think you’re trying too hard at being clever.
So as a result this is a big page that reads like a Who’s Who of Greek mythology, along with their alter egos. As a result, I’m not really sure who anyone is. There’s so much explanation, by the time you get to the actual story, I’m lost. And if readers don’t have a relatively in-depth knowledge of that mythology, I think much of your story is lost, or will be misunderstood.
The “well, it is, but maybe it’s not” tone of the page gets irritating for me rather quickly. Since I’m not 100% sure who your MC is, I don’t know if this is a facet of their personality, or your writing style. (I believe she’s Persephone, but again, I’m not sure of much after reading this. I’m not one who has a great familiarity with the subject matter.)
The shift to modern times seems jarring and abrupt, although you’ve got enough modern names sprinkled in that I knew it was coming.
So, on the whole, after reading your first page, I don’t think I’d read on. I don’t care about your MC enough to find out who the guy at the college is. Trying to remember which character is which god/goddess, and now adding in heroes, is probably too much of a challenge for me. Maybe I’m just a lazy reader. But I’d have to pass on this one. I’m sure a lover of Greek mythology would find this fascinating.
This is both too much of an info dump and not quite enough information. Most of the characters you’re introducing don’t seem to be there, so you can probably spread that out more. That would allow you more room to tell us something about the ones who are there.
Frankly, I know Jack about most of Greek mythology, so just putting the names out there doesn’t tell me much. I’m also a bit confused, since you went with the Greek names, but your MC references the Roman empire.
Also, you never seem to mention which God/Goddess Kitty is supposed to be. Combining renaming with gender fluidity makes it impossible for me to really guess. (Zeus is my best guess, but I think Saturn ate all his siblings.)
I agree with everything everyone else said above about too much exposition. I would add that I was immediately struck with the realization that the narrator sounded much younger than New Adult. If you take out the crazy bitch/sex reference this could easily be the intro to a YA or MG novel. For instance she’s in college and checking out boys? Kitty sounds very immature.
Remember that with a first page you need to immediately connect the reader to your main character and his or her problem. We have none of that here. I feel distanced from your mc, there are a zillion other character names thrown in clogging up my connection with your mc, and there is no problem here, just a girl chillin’ with her friends -again, are you sure this isn’t YA?:)
Thank you for submitting. Its good to see first page back. Good luck with your revisions!
Hi author! Overall I liked the tone and voice of this. I have some mythology under my belt so I had less of a problem following along with who was who, but I was still a bit stumped by “Enyo” and had to look it up.
Like the other readers, I found the first section to be a bit too much of an infodump. The information we learn there could be woven through the scene we see in the second bit as internal monologue bits, and you may be able to filter that in later in the story. For example: the idea that certain gods don’t fit into the gender binary is great; however, mentioning a specific character by name if they’re not important to that scene is overwhelming for the reader. It will be stronger if you start with the beginning of the second section.
Given that the whole conversation is between Eris and Pip, it will be easier for the reader if Eris is only hanging out with Pip at the beginning. You clearly have a lot of characters to introduce; if you do it one at a time it will be easier for the reader to keep track of.
Harry is a typically male name. I was not sure if this meant that Cassandra was transgender but choosing to use her male name and female pronouns, if Harry was male and Eris was misgendering him, or if Cassandra was female but using a male name. In any of those cases, it’s a lot for the reader to grasp. In the first two cases it needs more expansion to explain what’s going on; in the third, it might be easier on the reader to go with a female or gender-neutral (like Blaire or Dylan) name.
I was curious as to where this was going to go and would have read more.
@Lostshadows: Since Kitty is married to Hephaestus, I assume she’s Aphrodite?
I think you have something here, but it needs some work. I’m not sure this is where your story starts – there’s no goal, no conflict, no hook to keep me reading.
I did like the MCs voice, although I think it needs to be toned down for my taste.
I was guessing Persephone for the MC but I’m not sure about her starting a war. And I was guessing Kitty = Aphrodite. But I don’t know my mythology very well. And it was a lot of characters to keep up with.
I do know a great deal of Greek mythology, and I had no trouble figuring out who was who, so you’d think that this would be my jam.
And I did think it was very clever, and very much liked the fluidity of the gods’ identities — male/female, one/several, asexual/bisexual, etc. — it fits in EXACTLY with the swirling, conflicting, conflated myths.
But.
I really really hated the narrator. I mean, Eris *should* be spiteful, bitchy, whiny, and immature, you’ve got that down pat; but I wouldn’t want to spend one more page in her head.
Give me a reason to LIKE her, or at least sympathize with her. I mean, she’s got a legitimate gripe; it’s genuinely a hard draw to be the patroness of practically everything mean and nasty, when your sister (I assume “Kitty” is Aglaea/Charis) gets to be in charge of beauty and grace.
But right now, I want to read about somebody, ANYbody, else.