Name: Nicole Green
Email: niki.g82@gmail.com
Title & Genre: KISS VIRGIN, YA Contemporary/Realistic
Pitch: Chrys Jameson loses her sex virginity, but not her kiss virginity, during a beach week trip gone horribly wrong.
First 250 words:
I had to stop. He was going to catch me staring. Then I’d have to explain myself.
Danny and I sat in my kitchen with our school stuff strewn over the table. Our papers were weighed down by books so the fan wouldn’t blow them away.
Time to go back to pretending to read my AP Government class notes. Hopefully he wasn’t paying attention to the fact that I hadn’t flipped the page in a while.
I needed to stop obsessing over it. If he’d gotten the email, and he was interested, he would’ve said something. Asking about it would make me look extra creepy. And if he hadn’t gotten it, maybe that was for the best. I was starting to regret writing it in the first place.
Giving up, I put my hands over my face and said, “Why can’t I just learn things by osmosis?” The heat—among other things—was making it impossible to concentrate.
I heard the grin in his voice. “It’s not so bad.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re addicted to this stuff.” I pushed my chair away from the table and stood in the path of the fan that circulated in the corner. Unfortunately, turning on the air conditioning in my house was verboten until June. “I need juice. You want anything?”
Danny studied one of the flashcards we’d made. “Nah.” His curly, blond hair hid half his face as usual. I wish his eyes weren’t hidden behind it most of the time.
Everyone is welcome to visit and stay for the fun. Author of PERFECTION, release date July 16, 2013, and FLAWED release date August 12, 2014. Published by Spencer Hill Press.
Hello!
ReplyDeleteThe way the pitch is worded, it sounds comical, but what you're saying is that she was raped, correct? A rape, while very heart-wrenching, isn't a hook. I get no sense of story from the pitch except that the MC gets raped. What happens after? Is the story about the after? Or is it about her trusting a guy who then does this to her, and she has to find a way to trust again?
The opening isn't bad, but it's quite a bit of telling. Instead of: I had to stop...
Why not start with: Danny's curly, blond hair hid half his face as he studied one of the flashcards we'd made. It covered his eyes most of the time, and it was cute in that surfer-boy kind of way. But tonight I wished I could brush it back.
He looked up and I jerked my eyes toward a stack of papers weighed down by my History book. The wind from the fan lifted the corner of the paper. I held it still, pretending to read it.
This would be showing us what he's doing, and that she's staring at him.
Overall, not a bad start. Just needs a little polishing up! Good luck!
I had a very different take on the opening, but I also had a very different interpretation of the 140-character pitch.
ReplyDeleteThe title "Kiss Virgin," which I really liked, indeed seems almost comical to me, and I'm assuming the story isn't about rape. Rather, because of the title, when I hear "horribly wrong," I'm thinking something more awkward than truly horrifying. I hope I'm right!
Enjoyed the voice and read to the end of the opening scene without stopping, which to me is a good sign. I won't comment on showing vs. telling because I still have that problem myself, but I do think the writing could be more polished. For example, the second paragraph seemed clunky to me.
That said, personally, if I was an agent, I'd be intrigued enough to request more pages, and I don't even like contemporary.