Why you don't get published.
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
New Beginning 127
Wendy Keller crawled through rotting jungle vegetation to the edge of the clearing. A horned beetle, at least five inches long, scurried in front of her, and she resisted the urge to flick it away. This close to the clearing her movements had to be slow and steady. She couldn’t afford to draw any attention from the men who were outside the target house.
Billions of mosquitoes strafed her head, completely ignoring the industrial strength bug repellent she had doused herself in but the beetle kept going, a bit of luck for her. No matter how often she’d been in the jungle, she never got used to bugs crawling all over her.
Slowly, rocking herself forward on her toes and elbows, she inched to the edge of the clearing. Someone had cleared a rough circle in the jungle, tree stumps jutting out of the ground, bushes trying to reclaim the empty space.
Suddenly, Wendy's elbow landed on a twig; it cracked like a gunshot. The two men spun around to see her lying at the edge of the clearing, her face scratched and bitten, her clothes torn and dirty.
"Ah. Wendy. I had a feeling you'd turn up sooner or later." Maurice, the taller of the two, smiled in recognition. "It's okay, I found them; they were in my pocket the whole time." He held up his car keys for her to see. "Be a dear and grab that bag, would you? And don't forget to take care of the bell boy."
Wendy pushed herself to her feet. Island resort, she thought. Big fun, Moe. Next year, separate vacations.
Continuation: ril
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13 comments:
The continuation was great but 3 paragraphs of description is not a good place to start. I would suggest making something happen before going into a long description of the scene. I think the description is very good, though. It really puts you in the jungle with the character. It just shouldn't be the first thing you read and in this case, the only thing you read. -JTC
I agree. I thought this was intriguing but would have liked a little more about how she's feeling--is she scared, angry, excited to finally be near her target? Put me right there in her head, not just in the bugs and filth outside her body.
Loved the continuation! :-)
I agree with anonymous 10:47; put the description in a bit later (it sounds good, but I don't think it belongs at the beginning).
Is there some sort of action/tension that can be suggested? For instance, maybe you can hint that people are behind her by having a twig crack (as in the continuation) or something else. When she hears little things like that going on, I'd think she'd get paranoid, look over her shoulder half a dozen times...
I'm hoping that makes sense.
BTW, is there a reason why she's so obsessed with the beetle?
Good luck, author!
~JerseyGirl
I love the continuation.
As for the story, not so much. Kind of dull. And really, BILLIONS of mosquitoes? What is she, Rain Man or something that she can look at a cloud of mosquitoes and count them?
The writing was problematic, not just because of all of the description.
This close to the clearing her movements had to be slow and steady.
Comma after 'clearing'.
She couldn’t afford to draw any attention from the men who were outside the target house.
"Who were" is extraneous.
Billions of mosquitoes strafed her head, completely ignoring the industrial strength bug repellent she had doused herself in but the beetle kept going, a bit of luck for her.
If quantity is necessary, "countless" will do the trick. "Billions" is a metaphorical description at odds with the tension that you're trying to build here.
Industrial strength bug repellent also ruins the tension that you're trying to build. In fact, this whole sentence ruins the tension that you're trying to build.
The sentence is way too long.
The "but" doesn't completely follow. It also would need a comma before it.
"A bit of luck for her?" She's worried about men in the target house, but her "luck" is being ignored by a beetle?
I'll never get it how writers can write a scene in which they're trying to build tension, yet have the MC concerned about trivial things. Last week, I read the start of a sci-fi in which the MC, who was supposedly a member of an elite police force who is trying to be casual and enter a nightclub to catch a criminal, is mentally complaining about her dress, fidgetting uncomfortably, randomly smiling at inopportune times, etc. Um, no.
[quote]Slowly, rocking herself forward on her toes and elbows, she inched to the edge of the clearing.[/quote]
Huh? I'm having trouble picturing that.
[quote]Someone had cleared a rough circle in the jungle, tree stumps jutting out of the ground, bushes trying to reclaim the empty space.[/quote]
Awkward wording. Should probably be several sentences. Better yet, it would be a single, shorter sentence.
Well, all need for editing aside, I loved the beginning and the ending a lot. The ending was brilliant, really.
These beginnings, I'm assuming, are to real novels someone is writing. For that reason, they'd have to be tweaked to fit this exercise because 75 words cannot always come so neatly packaged for what we're doing here.
Them's my thoughts.
I disagree with some of you, in that I think the description is not the problem here. If she's inching her way through a jumgle, we certainly need to see where she is. And we need a little about how the jungle feels and smells and all that good sensual detail, in order to bring the scene to life.
No, the problem is that the emphasis is on the wrong things. Her attention is more focused on the beetle and the mosquitoes than on her reasons for being there and her emotions. I have the feeling this was meant to be a tense opening, but the tension got bled away in a morass of inconsequentials.
So, change the focus to what's actually important, i.e, what's the conflict? What problem is she facing? You don't have to tell all, but you can drop hints. And you can certainly mention in passing interesting details about flora and fauna. Just don't let them take over the scene.
"Ah, Wendy...Be a dear..." LOL! The continuation could only be better if Peter Pan were on the scene.
Author,
You're trying. I'm almost there. But I have no idea what a "target house" is. Or why I care about Wendy Keller.
There's too much jungle. Obviously that is what Wendy feels, but I as a reader do not want to fight through the jungle. (Been there, done that!) I want to feel it, smell it, touch it, but it's either setting or a character--not both. Here you give us so much it's a character, but its role is setting. Need to balance that out.
Billions of--lose this. Its enough to say mosquitoes.
Is the horned beetle important to the story? It competes with the two men in the clearing for the reader's attention. Possibly for Wendy's too. This could be a good idea, but it doesn't come off as written.
Slowly, rocking herself... I think of rocking as a comforting technique, so this confused me.
There might be something here, but right now I'm not feeling the love. So I can't say I'd read on. Sorry.
Good luck.
I disagree with the commenters who say the beginning was mere description. There is inherent tension in the situation when someone is crawling to a target house.
I didn't mind the stuff about the bugs, it made me uncomfortable but drew me in.
Good luck, author.
Hi author,
You might be able to enhance this by being more specific where appropriate. For instance, I jumped at the word "jungle" because I bet she knows where she is - Amazon rainforest, Sumatra, etc. Similarly, I got the impression that she is supposed to know exactly what she's doing. She's crawled through jungles before. Maybe she'd know the name or type of beetle. If she glances at this disgusting thing that would scare me and ignores it because she knows that type of beetle is harmless, then that tells us more about the character.
As people already said, I think you can focus more as well on the main character and her objective. The jungle is interesting for what effect it has on her. We need to see that more clearly.
What bothers me about descriptions like "billions of mosquitoes" or "industrial strength bug repellent" or "at least five inches long," is that they undercut what they're trying to communicate.
I read "billions" and think, well, there must be a lot of mosquitoes, but there really aren't billions, so it's not as bad as if there were that many.
And the bug repellent is strong but it really isn't "industrial strength," so maybe it's not surprising that a few mosquitoes (not billions) got through.
In describing the beetle's length, the narrator evokes options of even bigger beetles. Both a five inch beetle and a ten inch beetle can be described as "at least five inches." After thinking about a ten inch beetle, suddenly a five inch beetle doesn't sound quite so scary after all.
Repetition with "crawled," "slowly", "inched" - we get the picture it's a stealth manouver without being told three times.
And you don't need "she doused herself in" - we assume she put it on herself.
Tighten.
Thank you all so much for the input. It's really appreciated. I write in a very tight 3rd person POV so "Billions of mosquitoes" is the character exagerating her misery, but I see now that it doesn't work. She's using military strenth insect repellent which is so strong it'll eat the markings off the metal casings on watches and compasses, but I see I didnt make that clear.
It's input like that that'll allow me to write the best book I can. Thank you so very much.
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