Hello, DMT - THANK YOU WRITE.COM

Thank you for your review request.


Before I start, do not forget,
writing's an art, so do not fret
if you should find that I am blind
to your fine flair, and be aware
this opinion —
it is but one.

When approaching your opening chapter, I'm searching for specific elements that separate the chaff from the wheat, and each will be addressed under a different header.

Hook — does your opening have something that stops this reader putting down your book?


Sorry, I don't like to begin with a negative tone, but your opening paragraphs contain zero hook. A hook is created when either a question is raised that the reader must read on to answer or something really shocking or interesting happens that creates conflict that requires resolving. Your opening is Jake being very happy because all his problems have been solved and he knows he's going to have a great day. That doesn't create an initial hook.

Inside the chapter, you have two good hooks. The first is Mum and Dad's problem that they are hiding from Jake. This is good and creates a solid hook. The second is the 'make up', but it is subtle so readers who don't make the vampire connection will likely miss it. You fail to capitalise on these initial hooks at the end because Jake is apparently off to have a good time, so there's little end hook to this chapter.

Characters — are they well rounded?


Jake and Jason are both sympathetic characters — Jake because he's been bullied in the past and Jason because he helped him during that bad time. However, they don't appear to have a life off the page, ie. they have no obvious interest other than following the plot. They have no musical interests, no hobbies, no sporting interests, nothing. Jake doesn't wake up to a poster of Skrillex glaring down at him from the wall or hide his Big and Bouncy magazine collection under the matress before leaving the room. He doesn't whistle a specific tune, like the latest Katy Perry hit, or do a drum roll on the kitchen table like the riff in Suicide Silence's latest hit. Get the idea? I know it's only your opening chapter, but when the bully empties his bag, he could find an embarrassing set of knitting needles and pattern book… something other than white socks that gives away more about his character. You don't have to make a big song and dance about his hobbies, but simply integrate them into the actions he's already doing in such a way that they become more clear. For example, when planning to go out with Jason, Jake might hope he meets Sarah in town, that girl from his Judo classes who's really hot but never gave him a second glance.

Plot — does your first chapter introduce or hint at the main conflict?


Yeah, but it's very subtle. I think you might like to emphasise it more. To be honest, I don't think the flashback does you any favours. You see, the bullying is no longer a conflict in Jake's live. It's resolved — a done deal, or at least that's how it's presented to the reader. If Jake no longer gets bullied because Jason is helping him, it's not conflict, it's backstory, history, infodump, and not important to the opening chapter. The reader wants to know what's happening now, what the conflict is now, not what it was two years ago when the two friends met. If, however, the bullying is the main conflict, then you don't want it to appear to have already been resolved by the appearance of Jason in chapter one.

Pace — does your story feel like it's going somewhere?


Well, there's no initial hook, and the main action of the first chapter is in a backstory that's apparently resolved, so at the end of the chapter, with no significant hook, I don't personally feel the novel is going anywhere. There isn't sufficient information on the main conflict for me to 'feel' it right now, and the small hook with the parents 'feels' like it's going to be something mundane, like debts, or at the worse, an illness in the family. The parents' secret doesn't feel like it's likely to be life or death. So, at the end of the chapter, I felt like almost everything was hunky dory and we're off for a nice drink, and Jake is happy, the sun is shining, and they're going to have a nice day, which doesn't really encourage me to read on.

Language and voice — does this reader 'feel' the story?


Jake's voice is pretty cool, but it's currently drowned by a lot of niggly narrative issues. I've put a lot of comments under suggestions for improvement. I feel there's a lot of editing to be done here.

Dialogue — are your characters' voices distinct, and do they add to character building?


Well, at least Jason has a Yorkshire accent. That's gotta be a plus for any story. I'm not keen on Jake's use of the word 'boy' to address himself and his peers, but other than that I'm happy with dialogue in general.

Settings — is this reader grounded in 'real' scenes?


The champagne was sort of nice, but first thing in the morning when he's just scrambled out of bed and not even brushed his teeth? It seemed a bit weird, even on his birthday. And, there wasn't anything 'unique' about his room or the house or the setting in general. Unique doesn't have to be weird. I mean, in Twilight the unique was that Dad's kitchen had yellow painted cupboards because Mum painted them yellow shortly before she left Charlie when Bella was a toddler, and he hasn't painted them since, and her bedroom still has all the same decorations from when she was six, except the crib in the corner has been replaced by a desk and a clockwork computer. Twilight isn't a great work of literary genius, but here I'm just using it to show that even a mundane setting can help build characters if it's handled well by a competent author. The yellow cupboards show that Charlie isn't house proud, and Bella cringes at the photos of her from six to sixteen, annual school photos, on the walls that she wants to hide, because they show that Bella and her Mom are the only significant others in Charlie's life, and the yellow cupboards and unchanged Bella's childhood bedroom are symbolic of Charlie's living in the past and wanting to return there. Bella is sad that Charlie has not moved on like her Mom has.

The car, too. It's so brushed over. I mean, he's only eighteen and he's got a car (the narrative implies it's his car) but you say nothing about it. I mean, don't you realise what a huge thing that is for an eighteen year old. There's like a million paragraphs about the old Beetle Bella gets in the opening chapter of Twilight because for a teenager a car is a huge thing, especially in the UK where the insurance for under twenty five year old drivers is so, so, so high that only a tiny minority of kids can afford to get a car. But in your narrative you don't even say what make, kind, color, age anything. in John Green's Paper Towns, there's a huge fuss made over the fact that the protagonist doesn't have his own car and has to borrow Mom's old VW van, which he's embarrassed about, but his best friend has a car that goes on a prayer, and they're always expecting it to break down every second, and nothing works, ie. windows don't wind down, radio, air con etc all out of action. If you want to know how excited teenagers get about their first car, just think about Whitwicky in the first Transformers movie when he goes out to buy his first car with Dad, or the 90s Spiderman movie, where teenage Peter Parker joins a wrestling competition to win the money to buy his first car. The cars have character in books with teenagers.

Think about who Jake is. Think about his interests. Think about his parents' occupations and interests. Make the settings SHOW those elements of their characters, like how in The Hunger Games a photo of Dad on the mantle reminds Katniss how her Dad died in a mine accident in chapter one, and his jacket that she puts on reminds her how he taught her to hunt so she could feed the family. Setting is key to character development in the opening chapter.

This area needs work, I feel.

Themes — is this reader blown away by mind-blowing philosophy or originality?


Again, the only theme in this opening that strikes me as important is bullying, but again it's apparently already resolved. Bullying is a good theme. It's used, for example, to begin Harry Potter, where the abuse he gets from his closest relatives the Dursleys, which generates reader sympathy, and the same again in Jane Eyre, where her cousin hits her in the face with a book, and she gets blamed for it and locked away in a 'haunted' room where her uncle died. Bullying is great (in a story, I mean) if it's not resolved. But, resolved it's a non starter.

Suggestions — a few ideas for possible improvement.


Today is the first day of the rest of your life, Boy. -> I'm not keen on his use of 'boy' either here or later in the story. I have three sons aged 20, 15 and 12, and not one of them would use this word to address themselves or another person. I'm struggling to find an alternative. 'Mate' is a frequent one I hear these days, much more so than it used to be when I were a lad, but American influences may lead toward 'dude' and I even hear some teenages saying 'man' as if it were the 60s again, man. But 'boy' isn't one I hear… unless you're a teacher and your kids use this word to one another, and then I'll have to bow my head and say you know better than I.

I'm really not keen on the cliche sentence, though, first day… i mean, this is your opening paragraph, so you really need to find originality here. If you throw a cliche at the reader in the second or third paragraph, they'll put down the book. Sorry if i sound harsh, but I suspect that's true and I'm trying to help here.

He grinned and began to whistle, -> in your opening paragraph, you have three sentences beginning 'he' and one beginning 'Jake', which doesn't really provide the reader with a variety of sentence structures. Although you may think that it's what you're saying that's important, in Orwellian narrative, the truth is that repetative phrases and sentence structure subconsciously act on the reader in a way that makes them think the narrative is boring. Varying structure, sentence length etc helps keep the reader awake. Here, the word 'began' is a stall word, which you also use later. If you're in the moment, you don't need to 'start' or 'begin' an action, you just do it. Using such stall words makes the narrative drag and also makes the protagonist appear less protag, ie. less proactive.

Your opening paragraph, and the following few, contains no initial hook. The hook doesn't have to be huge, but you need one. Ideally, the protagonist when introduced will have a problem of sorts to solve, and that will make them appear more proactive and also provide a small hook. In the opening chapter, you really need to ask the classic questions:
1) Who is the character?
2) What do they want?
3) Why can't they have it (ie. CONFLICT).

Jake's day begins with zero conflict. In fact, it's the opposite of conflict. All his problems are resolved. Conflict drives a plot, which drives the novel.

His mum smiled and rubbed her hand on her white apron as she walked over.

Jake turned and saw Jason with a coffee cup in his hand. He smiled as he leaned against the yellow painted wall near the door.

Jake turned and saw Jason with a coffee cup in his hand. He smiled as he leaned -> you're really, really keen on the 'as he/she' construction. This isn't the first time you use it, so it's getting a bit much. To be honest, it's not a great construction anyway. Again, think about variety. Also, earlier he grinned, now she smiles, he smiles, Jason smiles — this is a problem I also have with my own writing. My characters smile too much. In the opening, it's enoguh that he's whistling. The reader will get that he's smiling, then here you can have Mum smile but not him, because the reader already knows he's happy. Note that you also have Jake 'grin' twice more before the flashback.

Jake froze. “What are you doing here?” -> with this action, I assumed Jason was an enemy, or at least someone Jake really didn't want to see right now. On first read, it took me a while to realise that Jason really was his friend. Oh, and I should mention that Jake/Jason maybe a bit too close for names of two protagonists. If you think about the classic stories, particularly YA, the names are usually a bit more varied: Bella, Edward, Jacob/Katniss, Gabe, Peta/Harry, Ron, Hermione, Draco/Frodo, Bilbo, Sam, Gandalf/Mat, Perrin, Rand, Egwene/Tris, Four, Caleb, Eric. I'm not saying you never get similar names, but there's a reason the majority of them use different initials.

He towered over Jake and gazed down at him with his soft, blue eyes -> this 'towered' and 'gazed down' reinforced my original idea that he was a threat to Jake on first read.

On the kitchen table four glasses of champagne stood. -> passive -> Four glasses of champagne stood on the kitchen table.

Jake’s dad handed a glass to Jake’s mum -> once Jake's PoV is established, most readers would use a shortcut here and just name them Mum and Dad, ie. Dad handed Mum a glass.

Steady, lad”—he said in an Yorkshire accent -> don't leave it until now to tell the reader he's got a Yorkshire accent. They've already heard him 'say' several things since Jake came downstairs and by now will have got a voice in their head that this statement will shatter, disrupting their suspension of disbelief. If the accent is important, mention it the first time he speaks. If not, drop it.

He got half way across when he heard those dreaded word -> halfway, compound word.

Jake’s whole body began to tremble as he gasped for air. He pulse raced as he tried to control his nerves. He turned and tried to puff himself up - tried is another stall word, like began. Also, watch out again for he, he, he etc. Jakes whole body trembled. Puffing up his chest, he forced himself to meet the bully eye-to-eye, though his heart pounded like a boombox. - shake up the narrative a bit, avoid stall words, and throw in the occasional simile (hopefully better than the one I just used).

Derek, Jake’s high school nemesis smirked. -> in this scene, it's not clear up front that there's more than one bully, and it's never clear how many bullies there are. Consider a small amount of setting here.

He snickered at his own joke and his gang joined in. -> I believe I mentioned in my last review, a comma is required when two independent sentences are joined by a conjunction, unless both clauses are very small.

Jake glanced in the direction of the voice and saw a blond haired, blue-eyed teenage boy in the same school colours as him approach the group… -> watch out for too much filtering. When the PoV is established, you don't need to remind the reader so much that it's Jake who is seeing/hearing/feeling things. It creates a barrier between the reader and the story.

“Nah, Jerry Perkins sister -> Perkins' or Perkin's, depending upon whether his surname is Perkins or Perkin.

Conclusion — a summary of how this reader personally felt about your opening.


I do hope my review hasn't come across as being too negative. You see, I do really want to read your book about vampires, and the prologue kinda hinted at a war between vampire armies which sounds uber cool, but this chapter kinda kills that hope. The problem is that there's nothing in your opening to indicate any issues or conflict really. I'd recommend you get rid of the backstory element and build up the parents' anxiety about something hidden and also the blood on Jason's lips thing. But the biggest thing I'd recommend is that you figure out a small opening and a large ending hook for your opening chapter — something that isn't completely resolved by the end of the chapter.

Thank you for sharing your opening chapter. Good luck with your writing.

Best wishes,

Bob



My review has been submitted for consideration in "Good Deeds Get CASH!" .