9/4/06

Opening Paragraph #1

The phone rang, shattering the silence in my apartment and waking me from a rather nice dream ("rather nice" is too weak). I groaned as I rolled over and squinted at my clock. Eight o’clock in the morning (that is not unusually early. Why is she sleeping in this late? Is there an intriguing reason? Spill it here. If not, we don't care. Yet.) . Only two people ever called me this early and one of those was my mother (but it's not her mother, so this is misleading). Those who knew me knew ("knew me knew"... awkward & repetitive) that this girl was not an early riser. (New paragraph) My hand scrambled around for the cell phone, my sleep-addled brain trying to remember where I had left it the night before. My fingers strayed across the vibrating object (I did a double-take here. If it's ringing-audio-why mention vibrating-tactile? Confusing. Also, "object" is too vague.) (End sentence; delete "so") so I snatched it up to see the ("to see" is passive; "looked at" stronger)caller I.D. Yep, my oldest sister. (This is disruptive to flow; reader is expecting it to be her mother.) It was incredibly (weak description) tempting to end the call, roll over, and go back to sleep, but I forced myself to answer the phone. It had better be a national emergency. (This last sentence is the best of the paragraph.)

Critique: This paragraph needs to be strengthened with words that speak to the senses. You have the beginnings of some humor, but you need more. I need to care about her by the end of this paragraph, and I don't.

Waking up to the phone ringing is not a strong enough beginnning to a novel. It might work in a later chapter, but not here.

Would I ask to see more? No.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I vote for this one.