Name: London Crockett
Electronic missives: London (at) brokengirl.info
Title & Genrre: THE FORTY-SEVEN WORDS OF THE BROKEN GIRL (YA/Cross-over Fantasy)
PITCH:
The massacre is just the beginning. Can a naïve girl on crutches learn magic and the ways of the word fast enough to save all she loves?
FIRST 250 WORDS:
“Can you help a man, ma’am?” said the broken man sitting on a thick palm root next to Mr. Taálix’s Book Emporium. “You can understand. Is not so easy for us,” he pointed to Jinxx, whose crutches had sunk a bit into the mud near the palm. “Especially when we get on a bit.” His left arm ended with a hand whose fat fingers bent all akimbo and the side of his face drooped, but didn’t move with his words.
Jinxx looked up at her mother, tugging gently on her skirt. Her mother nodded and handed her two copper splits. Jinxx dropped them in the man’s tin cup. “May God bless you, sir.”
“And God bless you both. I can’t say the last time I heard those words.” His smile didn’t involve half of his face, but the other side more than made up for it. “God bless you both.”
Jinxx carefully placed her crutches to avoid the missing cobblestones as she and her mother left the man and went to the entrance of the shop. It was larger than their Prayer House back in Naserys—the village nearest their farm—built out of stone with small round windows at the top of the second story, and crammed so tightly between two date palms that the walls had insets around the trees. Compared to the rest of the buildings they’d passed in the trade faire, it was the most conventional.
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.
I think there is a lot of potential in the pitch, but I think it needs to be polished just a little bit before it really sounds unique. But potential.
ReplyDeleteAs far as the first bit, I got pretty lost in the first paragraph. I wasn't sure what a broken man was, and I felt like even if I did, it seemed like a very blunt tell when it would have been good to show.
But before working on this part, you might want to ask yourself if this is where you want to start, because there is no conflict. You could have written "The End" after this and it would have been passable flash fiction. So look further into your story and find the point where there is some action, a decision to be made, or real, meaningful tension and start there.
I hope this helps you out and good luck with your writing. Keep it up!
Thanks, Mr. Tate. The 140 character pitch looses so much of what the book is about and doesn't do justice to the plot. I don't think I would go that brief for a pitch. But it probably could be refined.
ReplyDeleteI'm not quite sure why you think the first paragraph is a "blunt tell," though. How else to show that he's got a facial deformity and malformed hand than describe it? The broken man exists primarily as a way of gently showing the reader that Jinxx is handicapped and that in her society, people view handicapped people as broken.
I'm not dismissing your comments, which I sincerely appreciate, but trying to understand the thinking behind them.
Thanks
It's true that you do describe him, but you tell us the label of the broken man before you describe him. Perhaps if you switched it around as such.
ReplyDelete“Can you help a man, ma’am?” said the man who's left arm ended with a hand whose fat fingers bent all akimbo and the side of his face drooped, sitting on a thick palm root next to Mr. Taálix’s Book Emporium. He was a broken man. “You can understand. Is not so easy for us,” he pointed to Jinxx, whose crutches had sunk a bit into the mud near the palm. “Especially when we get on a bit.”
Something sorta like that would appease little old me :P Hope that helps.
I agree with M. Tate's suggestion in the third comment. And in your pitch, do you really need crutches? It distracted me from the rest of the pitch. I do like this opening though. Good job!
ReplyDeleteThanks. Interesting comment about the crutches. To me, the fact that my protagonist is on crutches is one of the most distinctive elements in my book. There are a lot of books with girls and magic, but very few books about people who are physically limited. While technically not part of the plot, her crutches are as essential to the story as a ship is in a nautical novel. How did you find the crutches distracting?
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question (because I do agree) it sets up your character at a physical disadvantage that readers have a harder time with. But it all comes down to how you do it. I recently reviewed a manuscript where the little boy had a physical disability where he needed crutches (it was important to the plot) and it just seemed too much. 1. So many other things were going wrong in his life. 2. It made scenes later on hard to believe because he had crutches and had to get out of certain situations. 3. I felt so bad for the kid I really wanted to stop reading.
ReplyDeleteSo if you give them a physical problem, I think they have to be super strong personality to keep us engaged and make them not seem completely pathetic (which is what happened in the story I read, sad as it was).
I know it hasn't been done much, but I think it's really hard in a protagonist because they have so much required of them.
On Glee, they have a kid in a wheelchair and that seems to work well. So as long as you tie it back into the issues at hand - but then again, he's very much a secondary character (as fleshed out as he is). So that's something to think about. As long as you work with those issues and overcome them, it might just work. But I wouldn't put it in your pitch, as it might put some people off it. Let them discover that with the story.
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