Fixing the First Page Feature #27

Photo credit: archer10 (Dennis) OFF on Flickr

Somehow, it's the last week of September, which means the time has arrived to critique another first page here on Writability.

As per usual, I'll start by posting the full first 250 excerpt, after which I'll share my overall thoughts, then my redline critique. I encourage you guys to share your own thoughts and critiques in the comments (because I'm one person with one opinion!), as long as it's polite, thoughtful, and constructive. Any rude or mean comments will be unceremoniously deleted.

Let's go! 

Title: SAVING ERIIA'S WINDSTORM

Genre/Category: YA Fantasy

First 250 words:

"The entire throne room was filled to bursting, elves in every row, some even filling the spaces between seats and walls. The day the king banished his own daughter was not a day to miss. 

But Eriia didn’t see the elves in the seats, high above her and behind. She saw only the two thrones before her, one empty and the other with the tall, imposing figure of her father. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, she really didn’t. She had just wanted to prove to her father that she was good enough, so she wove a spell to light a candle, something Ileon had been doing since he was five. Now he was eleven and could make fire into shapes, dancing dragons and flowers and things Eriia couldn’t even name, and she was nine and set the Hanging Castle on fire, because she had no control. 

'Eriia,' her father’s voice boomed. He wouldn’t even call her a princess anymore. 'You’ve become quite the spectacle to this family.'

'Father, I—' she tried to say, but King Cepheus held up a hand and a frown. 

'You destroyed part of the castle. You’re lucky no one was hurt, but our poor Queen is sick in bed from the smoke. Do you realize what you’ve done?'

'Father, I’m—'

'You’ve always been a menace, causing trouble since you were young.'

Hot tears welled up in Eriia’s eyes. She hadn’t meant to make trouble. Trouble just always found her. 

'Where’s mother?' Eriia looked up at her father, 'Where’s mama? Does she know?'"

Awww. This is sad. :( Okay, interesting opening with nice details but I'm sensing this is a prologue. It's hard to say how necessary a prologue is without looking at the first couple chapters, but given that this is when Eriia is nine and this is a YA, I'm assuming this is just background information on how she got banished. While I understand the urge to start there, as I imagine a princess getting banished from her kingdom is a pretty big deal, I suspect it'd probably still be better to start closer to the actual inciting incident, whatever that is, and fill in this background information either woven into the text, or through a flashback or something, or both.

It's not badly written or anything (far from it!), but in terms of plot and tendencies I've seen with many, many prologues, that'd be my guess.

On a different note, I'd also like to see more description—the throne room is filled to bursting, but what does it look like? She sees the thrones—what do they look like? I was having a bit of trouble picturing the room where the scene takes place.

Now for the in-line notes!

"The entire throne room was filled to bursting, elves in every row, some even filling the spaces between seats and walls. The day the king banished his own daughter was not a day to miss. Nice.

But Eriia didn’t see the elves in the seats, high above her and behind. She saw only the two thrones before her, one empty and the other with the tall, imposing figure of her father. She hadn’t meant to hurt anyone, she really didn’t. She had just wanted to prove to her father that she was good enough, so she wove a spell to light a candle, something Ileon had been doing since he was five. This is a great detail and gives us some nice, subtle world building and tells us she has a brother (or I'm assuming, anyway). Now he was eleven and could make fire into shapes, dancing dragons and flowers and things Eriia couldn’t even name,. 

and sShe was nine and set the Hanging Castle on fire, because she had no control. Moved this down a line to give it more punch. :)

'Eriia,' her father’s voice boomed. He wouldn’t even call her a princess anymore. This is also a great detail to bring attention to. 'You’ve become quite the spectacle to this family.'

'Father, I—' she tried to say, but King Cepheus held up a hand and a frowned. Adjusted both because we don't need the dialogue tag (we know she's speaking because "Father") and also "a frown" sounds like "he held up a frown" which is not what you meant. :)

'You destroyed part of the castle. You’re lucky no one was hurt, but our poor Queen is sick in bed from the smoke. Do you realize what you’ve done?'

I recommend inserting some of Eriia's emotions and thoughts in here. We have her external responses (dialogue) but until two lines from here we don't really get any internal reactions at all, and I think they'd help. This must be a really emotional scene for her, so where are her emotions? 'Father, I’m—'

'You’ve always been a menace, causing trouble since you were young.'

Hot tears welled up in Eriia’s eyes. She hadn’t meant to make trouble. Trouble just always found her. This is a great paragraph and makes me sad, which is good because I'm connecting emotionally with your protagonist.

'Where’s mother?' Eriia looked up at her father, 'Where’s mama? Does she know?'"

Overall, the writing is really well done. There's more I'd like to see, like I mentioned (description, internal emotions and thoughts), but what's there is nicely polished and I only felt like it needed a few tweaks. If I saw this in the slush, I'd keep reading.

So all in all, while I'm not convinced it's starting in the right place and I think it could use more embellishing, this is a really solid start. Nicely done, Magdalyn!

I hope that helps! Thanks for sharing your first 250 with us!

Would you like to be featured in the next Fixing the First Page critique? Keep an eye out for the next giveaway in October!


Twitter-sized bite:

.@Ava_Jae talks prologues, description, internal emotion and more in the 27th Fixing the First Page Feature. (Click to tweet)