Fixing the First Page Feature #40

Photo credit: vpickering on Flickr

November is nearly here! Which means the holiday season is so close you can already hear the music, the cooler weather is on it's way in the northern hemisphere (in theory) and, of course, it's time for the next fixing the first page feature!

As 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 do this.

Title: ONE MORE SAD SONG

Genre/Category: YA Contemporary

First 250: 

"Zeke Williams had had his first wet dream about his best friend when he was thirteen years old. It had been one of his first wet dreams,period, definitely the first one that he remembered, not one where he just woke up sticky and feeling a little bit grossed out, a little bit satisfied, a lot bit totally unaware what had just happened. In this one he’d been with Kevin and they’d been skating, going up and down the cul-de-sac Kevin lived in, doing rudimentary tricks on the makeshift ramps Kevin had managed to cobble together, and then Zeke had taken a pretty bad spill and then while Kevin was patching him up… 

He’d never forgotten about it, and now, four years later when they were going into their junior year of high school, still trying to do stupid tricks off of a cobbled together ramp, as he fucked up his balance and ended up skidding pretty far on the rough asphalt, tearing the hell out of his forearms, he had a brief flashback to the dream. Kevin kicked up his board and came for him. 'I’m good,' he said. He pushed himself up to sit and poked at his arm. Some good-looking roadburn, but nothing broken, and it was just his arm. He didn’t skateboard with his arm. 

'I’ll go get some gauze,' Kevin said. 'Gotta wrap that shit up, son.'"

Hmmm okay. So, I definitely feel like you could show Zeke has a crush on his best friend without immediately diving into, like...wet dreams. Not that there's anything wrong with wet dreams, but it's very personal information for a character we are meeting right this second. It also kind of treads a little into fetishizing territory, which I know was not the intention, but yeah, that's a thing.

I think, instead, it'd be more effective (and less likely to immediately turn readers off) if you showed Zeke's crush through his interactions with Kevin in the moment, through his thoughts and internal reactions. Maybe he briefly considers how embarrassed (or whatever) he is that he's had those kind of dreams about his best friend, which is fine, but I wouldn't recommend starting with that.

So that's what I'm thinking overall right now. Let's dive into the line edits.

"Zeke Williams had had his first wet dream about his best friend when he was thirteen years old. It' had been one of his first wet dreams,[space]period, definitely the first one that he remembered, not one where he just woke up sticky and feeling a little bit grossed out, a little bit satisfied, a lot bit totally unaware what had just happened I find this bit hard to believe. Even at thirteen, he'd know what happened. Even if his school didn't do sex ed, he would've heard from his peers, or the media, etc. In this one he’d been with Kevin and they’d been skating, going up and down the Kevin's cul-de-sac Kevin lived in, doing rudimentary easy tricks on the makeshift ramps Kevin had managed to cobbled together, and then Zeke had taken a pretty bad spill and then while Kevin was patching him up… 

He’d never forgotten about it, and now, four years later when they were going into their junior year of high school, still trying to do stupid tricks off of a cobbled together ramp, as he fucked up his balance and ended up skiddeding pretty far on the rough asphalt, tearing the hell out of his forearms, he had a brief flashback to the dream. 

[new paragraph]Kevin kicked up his board and came for him. 

[new paragraph]'I’m good,.' he said. He pushed himself up to siat up and poked at his arm. Some good-looking road[space]burn, but nothing broken, and it was just his arm. He didn’t skateboard with his arm. 

'I’ll go get some gauze,' Kevin said. 'Gotta wrap that shit up, son.'"

So most of the changes I'm suggesting here are just to condense wordiness, which is a super common critique and something I think we all need to weed out of our work at some point. Overall I think the most important thing is to just reconsider how you open this project. As is, if I saw this in the slush, I would pass.

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

Twitter-sized bite:

.@Ava_Jae talks reworking openings, wordiness and more in the 40th Fixing the First Page Feature. (Click to tweet)