 This was his secret, not theirs. It was about him. They would make it about them. He went to the woods behind his neighborhood and practiced. On the second day, his parents discovered his secret. He had been arranging little specks of light into the shapes of constellations on his bedroom ceiling. His parents were thrilled. Finally, they had a story of their own to tell. Finally, their son had proven himself useful. On the third day, the son fell. Grandfell found the whole affair rather baffling. Instead of the bewitching orange and pink that typically came the sunset, the sky rained fire at dusk. Meteors, Grandfell, big enough to reach the earth. For a moment, he was frozen, staring out the window of his living room, watching the horrors unfold. His neighbors ran outside, only to watch their homes burn. OK, that's perfect. Thank you. What's going on exactly? What are we learning here? Is it because people didn't hear? Go ahead. It sounds like it's written right in short order after we're hearing about this other amazing personal thing that's happening. And are the events connected? I think that they are, but I'm not quite sure. Again, I feel like I'm being given some sort of history, geography. Like, here is the new shape of the world. Understand all this, and then we're going to start the story. And I think the fact that not that many people answered as to what is going on suggests a little bit. There's a vagary here, and I felt it too. And I also felt that the voice was very rushed, almost like this person was a little bit uncomfortable writing this chapter. But can you read the beginning of chapter one for us and the chapter subtitle? Chapter one is 10 years later. Graham heard his front door squeal open. Graham, it was Martha. It's us, coming, Graham shouted. Graham catted down his narrow hallway to the door. His black hair was a mess, and his glasses were slightly askew. I'm so glad you're here. Graham broke out into a grin. Mara rolled her eyes and tossed her braided brown hair over her shoulder. We hardly ever leave. Charlie walked up to Graham and straightened his glasses. Have you eaten today yet? Graham shrugged and smiled cheekishly. I had toast. Graham, it's two o'clock, Charlie chided. His big brown eyes were filled with worry. Graham had always wondered how a gentle soul like Charlie had become a protector. Graham almost wanted to apologize, but instead he said, I've been busy. Mara folded her arms and frowned at him. You're 23. When are you going to start taking care of yourself? We're your protectors, not your nannies. I'll eat later. This is more important. The other life elementalists are here. Mara said, wait, we're having a meeting today. And what do we think about page one, chapter one? It's like two different people, real people, we're in a chapter one. Totally different voice, totally different pacing. I'll vote on which one, right? Chapter one, I'm there, I'm with you. All of a sudden I'm like, hmm, the elementalists, what are those? And that is a perfect place where you can now back up a little bit and fill us in on these 10 years that you've just rushed through. This voice is so much more confident. This voice believes in its story so much more than the voice telling the prologue, which felt a little bit, she like, on day one, on day two, on day three. And it was like, oh my God, get me to my story. Your reader feels that too. And it was a little bit uncomfortable. Like, I felt your discomfort, whereas here, I feel your confidence and the story is engaging and I wanna know what happens. And I'm so much less confused. I don't need to know that I'm in a post, I'm not even sure that it's quite post-apocalyptic. Maybe it's just sci-fi and this is like a Peter Parker turned spider-man. I'm not sure exactly, but I'm much more willing to go along for the ride on page one, chapter one, and find out, whereas I felt a little bit shut out in the prologue. Again, how can we reshape this if this person is totally committed to having a prologue? What can we do here? Go ahead. The prologue could serve as a short description of maybe when you see the edges of him discovering his power, but not quite giving everything away so that you know something's coming, but what is that something that was going to happen? Exactly, and that is actually exactly what I wrote. I wrote something like, a seemingly normal kid is suddenly struck by lightning, right? We don't know that that being struck by lightning has suddenly transformed him into some supernatural person who can control the light, but we're now gonna find out, or exactly the reference I just made, Peter Parker becoming Spider-man, but not saying, oh my God, I'm Spider-man, I have all these crazy superpowers, check me out. But just in that moment where he's like, what is going, something is weird, as opposed to just telling us right off the bat, I think the line was, there had been rumors about people having the ability to produce and control light. Ground was one of those people. You've just, it's anti-climactic. Not that this was, I realize it's not the climax of your story, but it's kind of the climax of your opening chapter, and you've already handed it to me. As an editor, this may be a question for a writer, I'm not quite sure. But it's okay, there's a room full of it. I know, I'm just maybe familiar with it. But do you notice a trend with the better prologues or maybe written after the work is complete and you've sat and thought about it and written more? It's almost like you're writing an epilogue, but it's the prologue, because you know where it's gone and what's missing. Or because some of them seem like maybe they're starting with their prologue and then they're finding their rhythm. I think that's exactly, I can't say with certainty that that's what's happening, because I'm not part of the writing, I mean with my own clients I am, but my guess is that's probably a lot of what's happening, is that people think they start their stories on page one, they get to the end, awesome, gonna submit, gonna submit. Whereas, and we'll talk about this a bit at the end, which reminds me, Bill, I need a 10 minute heads up when I'm running out of time. Thank you. Is that oftentimes your story changes so much throughout the course that you're beginning, whether it's a prologue or chapter one, no longer fits the rest. So I think that's probably a very good observation that maybe people are writing them too soon or not rethinking them, or just think I need to explain this. But I think the point I'm trying to make is your reader is not stupid and your reader doesn't need an instruction. I mean, we're happy to be kept in suspense, we're happy to have things unfold and unpack them as we move along, just as we do in our normal everyday lives. But probably a lot of it is exactly as you say, that they're being written and just untouched. I don't know, any writers wanna weigh in? I mean. Okay, number three, who has number three? Okay, great. Long, unleavened strides across the rows of strawberries, taking care of them to stick with the tread high above the delicate berries. He was a tall man, white, but tan, and covered in darker skin patches and sunspots from years of farming in the Texas sun. He wore a stained cap with a free fill, no one is for a block of sun's rays. Jimmy refused to wear sunglasses because they were obnoxious. They needed constant cleaning. The dust mixed with the sweat, creating a muddy fill on the lenses. It was like wearing a dirty car windshield on his face. He had also lost or broke every hair he ever owned. Stop, lightly stop. Go ahead. We're moving in one direction. Like, it's with the hair, if there is a going down to the yield, and talking about that, then it kind of attracts back to the sunglasses. It's so progressing forward. Right, we have just spent one, two, three, four lines on the sunglasses before I said stop, but by the way, the sunglasses bit goes on for another three and a half lines. I know more about the sunglasses than I do about the character. And we're also one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 lines in. And what's happened so far? Nothing, right? This is an example of two things. One, focusing on something so in, I think the point about the sunglasses is that this guy is very particular, maybe. I'm not even entirely sure, but it's so distracting from the story itself that I've lost interest. Also, I love sunglasses, so I'm not that into a character that thinks they're obnoxious, because that leads me to believe he thinks anyone who wears them are obnoxious. A second thing that I picked up on here, can you reread the first line? Julie walked in long, uneven strides across the rows of strawberries, taking care to lift his thick portrait high above the delicate berries. Okay, one more line. There was a tall man, white, put tan, covered in darker skin patches and sunspots from the years of farming in the Texas sun. Why am I picking on those two lines? What's going on there? You've got the page in front of you. Can you count the number of adjectives? I was just thinking, it's a little too early. There are one, two, three, four, five, six, seven adjectives describing Jimmy in two lines. And that doesn't include the additional descriptions of the darker skin patches and sunspots from years ago. You're delaying the action with a laundry list of physical character descriptions, but that doesn't actually tell me anything about who your character is, right? Knowing that somebody has red hair doesn't tell me anything about them except that maybe possibly there's some kind of Irish background, but even then, right? All of the focus on physical description can come out throughout the novel. Get me to something that helps me connect. I, long, uneven strides, thick boot tread, tall man, white, it doesn't bring me into this character's frame of mind, into his situation, it doesn't create any action. But, can you read page three? Can you, okay, hold on, I'll set the story. I'll set the scene here for you a minute. It then goes on to describe a hip injury that Jimmy suffered from, and we hear quite a bit about that, and there's a lot of repetition about the awkward stride, so I'm kind of, I get the hint that this is important, but you're a little bit hitting me over the head with it. And then we meet another character, Carmen, who Jimmy approaches, she has a heavy accent I learned, and he tells her she has to go to school to pick up her son, but can you read from the last paragraph, Jimmy knotted? Jimmy knotted, this wasn't the first time Carmen had to leave for one of her kids. He wanted to fire her, but his wife didn't like that. When Mary developed a soft spot for Carmen over the years, an odd friendship existed between the two women that Jimmy never understood, and no white man raised in Texas in the early 1900s could ever understand. That line tells me everything you, I think you have been trying to describe in the opening pages, right? In that one sentence, I understand, okay, he's a white man, I get basically the time frame because I know that he was raised in the early 1900s, and I know that he was in Texas. I don't need to hear about the fielding of the farms and the horses and the sunglasses and all of these things that have delayed the action. The only other question I'm left with because we have spent so much time on Jimmy, and then all of a sudden we're jumped to Carmen's son who has to be picked up from school. I don't remember what he did, but he's been suspended for a week. And then this relationship, I'm not still not quite sure what this story is about. Is it about Jimmy? Is it about the friendship between Mary and Carmen? And if so, then that line really is a fantastic line. Or is it about Carmen's son? And if it's not about Carmen's son, do we need a page and a half about him being suspended and why is this happening? So I encourage this person to focus on your main character, get the story out there, and then bring in these minor elements, especially if this is not a story about the friendship between Mary and Carmen. If that was just a way to further set up Jimmy, it's distracting to me because that's what I'm really interested in right now. I think if there was anything else in there, I think that's it. Questions, comments about this one? I'm trying to give you a little catchphrase. So this one to me was too much character description delaying the action. If you're looking for kind of the catchphrases of what it is that work and don't work, that was that one. Who has number four? Go ahead. Mother's clipped voice fell into its all too familiar tone. How could you even think of that tone? Can everyone hear her? Can you hear me? Yeah, okay. Mother's clipped voice fell into its all too familiar tone. How could you even think of that tone? It's all in your honor, Sterling. You're the guest of honor. All aboard, the shame train is leaving the station. I shifted the phone to my other ear and closed my chemistry book, tossing it toward the inventory of textbooks, papers, flashcards, highlighter pens, and the lights gathered across my bedroom floor. Oh, mother, with that giant portrait you'll put in the foyer, my presence becomes redundant. Besides, my absence will add some intrigue to the night. People will wonder if I'm no longer in remission. The donations will be bigger than ever. Don't be ridiculous. Besides, I already purchased your gown, the most beautiful ice blue to match your eyes, as if I don't have a closet full of blue gowns that match my eyes. And I've made an appointment with Eugene to lighten your hair since you didn't get out in the sun this summer. What with all that mindless and silly studying? My hair's fine. With a weird sigh, I rolled off my bed and stepped to the window where the Houston heat could be felt, even through the thick glass of my high-rise apartment. Down below, the sneak traffic was in full gridlock. I checked the time, four o'clock. If I jogged on the west side of the streets, I could avoid the blazing sun. Balancing the phone between my ear and shoulder, I pulled on my running shorts. Oh, Sterling, darling, you used to take such good care of yourself. Before you started this rebellious obsession, right, only rebels want to go to medical school. I pulled my ponytail forward and studied my hair. I guess it had gotten a little dark over the summer. Maybe I just needed to watch it, but then I'd have to blow-dry it. No time for that. I tossed my hair back. I really don't want to go to the banquet this year. I've got too much to do. If I want to succeed, I can't be wasting entire evenings, shoes, and Houston history, society. It's not optional, Sterling. Your presence is required there. If you want to keep your apartment, your allowance, your car, she hesitated and smiled and felt a bit like a smear spread across my cheeks. My car, I wanted to laugh, but wouldn't dare push my luck. My transition from helpless slave to independent woman wasn't quite complete, but well on its way. Mother's voice changed. How could you abandon your mother, Savannah Sterling Smith? There it comes. I put my phone on speaker and threw my head forward to gather my hair into a ponytail. Oh, mother, come on. How does missing one event equal abandonment? If this is about your father, he promised not to mention your little problem. Little problem. Are y'all now referring to medical school as my little problem? You don't need a job. If you want one, go back to Sterling, engineer, energy. Your father enjoyed your presence there. Although, what you really need is to get married and find your place in society. Thank God Crestwell is still interested in you, even after all your insolence. Don't push, mother. Mom released her own long sigh and topped it off with a sniffle, increasing the stakes. Do you know what it was like for me? Oh, heaven above, not this. My only child dying of cancer. I didn't die, mother, thanks to a moderate miracle called advanced medicine. Do you know how hard that was to think I might never see you again? And here comes the big guns. Do you want me to get back on my medication? Are you trying to bring back my anxiety? She had to do it, didn't she? A blustery breath escaped my defeated mouth. Okay, I'll come, but I'm not going as Crestwell's date. I hung up and tossed the phone on my desk. How that woman could turn a perfectly pleasant afternoon into something so dark and dreary I'd never understand. I love the woman, I do, but I need to live my own life. 22 is old enough to make my own decisions. I wish I weren't so damn dependent on them. I padded to the kitchen with determination, just as I tossed in the first scoop of chocolate chip ice cream into the blender. The apartment door slammed. Maria tossed her shopping bags on the floor and threw her hands on her hips. She held up her phone and pointed at the text I sent her. Tell me you didn't take that job. Sorry babe, we can do our spa treatments on the weekend. I don't care about that, that job is unfitting for you. You're not cut out to be a maid. My God, what would Matilda say if she knew she was coming here? I actually would have gone another sentence or two, but I don't want to take up too much time. But why did I say, I mean, were one, two, three, four, five lines up from the bottom of page three? So I read, you know, that's almost the entire submission. Go ahead. It was fully developed. I mean, she went from beginning to the end, she didn't move around or it just went straight through. It was interesting. Right. I agree, but what made me stop? Because it got all dry. I don't even know what happened with the other person. Right, well, and that's exactly it. When the other person comes in, I start to think, that's all we've had for three pages is dialogue. Right, it's a little too much dialogue. But what I want to point out here is that this is a fantastic example of weaving character description into the plot. And I'm going to pinpoint a couple of examples. The conversation, oh mother with that giant portrait in the foyer, my presence becomes redundant. Besides my absence, we'll add some intrigue to the night. People will wonder if I'm no longer in remission. Right there, I know she's a cancer survivor without you saying, by the way, I'm a cancer survivor. Been in remission for three years, blah, blah, blah. I had this type of cancer and I went through these treatments. Right, all of those details will unfold throughout the course of the story. This was a great way to just give me that little hint without hitting me over the head with it. The dialogue between the mother and daughter, I thought, was sad. I mean, I feel her eye rolls and I'm rolling my eyes right there with her. What I want to point out is a couple of places where there was a little too much exposition. Right, so for example, on page two, we had that line when she stops talking, the conversation dies off for a second and she says, she's worried about them taking her car away from her and she hesitates and smiles and she goes, my car, I wanted to laugh but wouldn't dare push my luck. My transition from helpless slave to independent woman wasn't quite complete but well on its way. To me, that is expository. Show us, don't tell us. The dialogue is showing it beautifully. We get that this is a girl who lives under the thumb of her rich parents who is trying to break free and pave her own way by going to medical school. You don't need to tell us. I feel like you've just given me the one word summary of the entire novel. Lines like that, anti-climate, I mean it kind of takes away from the building tension. Show it, don't tell it. That's the best I could say right there. This also for me is a really good example of why I cautioned you guys to take my rules with only a grain of salt. Any, probably 99% of agents and editors who would sit before you and give you this talk would say, never begin a story with a phone call. It's so cliche and most of the time, it's stale, it's, hi Amariah, it's your mother Mindy calling. I'm calling, remember that time that you had breast cancer, God forbid, but you know, and it's giving us background information in an unnatural way, in a way that two characters would never speak to each other because you think your readers need to know that. This avoids that completely and it's also not the cliched emergency phone call that sets up the big miss, right? No one died. There's no, she doesn't go running from her house to rescue someone. This is fresh, this is different. This is a great example of why sometimes you can do anything or how sometimes you can do anything and make it work as long as it's fresh, different, and well thought out. So, trying to think about anything else to say about this one, I don't think so. I would say again, even the dialogue between the mother and daughter went on a little bit long. I thought there were parts where you could shorten it but you definitely had me going. I wanted to know where this was going. I definitely sympathized with this character and I, you know, I'm fighting for her. I want her to go to medical school and break free and tell her parents they're asshole or at least I think they are. I think that's where it's going. But things like the mother saying, thank God Creswell is still interested in you. We got that from I'm not going for Creswell's date. I think that line makes it very clear that this is the chosen husband for her and she's not going for it. So, cut down on some of that repetition. Great. Who has number five? I crashed on my dining room floor. My back pressed flat against the front wall. My head ducked below the sill of the bay window that looked out over the house's covered porch and the gravel driveway beyond. In my arms, baited over the cat, twisted and yowled. His white and black fur standing on end. Shh, I whispered. The doorbell chimed again. I sensed the germs, hopping off the intruder's finger, slipping through the doorbell button, rushing into the wall, creeping along the ceiling of the porch, the kitchen and the dining room, to hover above me where I hid, waiting to crawl into my ears and infect me with a deadly strain of some kiddie's disease. In my mind, the germs looked like peri-opter pusses with fangs skidding around, looking for their next victim, me. I reminded myself to slowly breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out as Dr. Taylor had instructed me, but the effort did little to calm me. And the August heat made me sweat, creating dark circles on the long sleeve red t-shirt that I wore as a necessary protection against the germs. Bait open screeched and stabbed his claws through one of my sleeves, right into my forearm, creating another pathway for the germs to use to invade my body. I winced, but I didn't let go of the cat. I couldn't. Is anybody home? A voice outside said, read the note I muttered under my breath. My knees were starting to burn with fatigue, hearing no other sounds. I soundly rolled to my knees, chopping the cat between myself and the wall and peeked over the window sill. At first, I could only see the back of someone's head as he stood, reading the note taped to the front door. But then, when he turned slightly, I saw his face and recognized the intruder, Toby Taylor. We'd gone to middle school at the same time. I had even been at Miss Timson's seventh grade English class together. I remember Toby as being a friendly, hardworking guy. His family owned a local grocery store, which would explain him currently doing the delivery. I debated going to the door to greet Toby. I hadn't talked to him in years. In fact, I hardly talked to anyone anymore, especially not in the last nine months, not since mom had died. I'd like to talk to someone though, someone who'd actually answer me, and not just kiss at me, like Beethoven did. But it's Toby worked in a grocery store that was full of people and germs. Actually, not that I thought about it, I realized that Taylor's market may have been where mom contracted her super love. She'd gone there two days before getting sick. So it'd probably be best if I avoided Toby and all the germs he might be carrying. I quickly flipped back to a seated position, ducking my head again below the windowsill, holding a squirming cat in my lap. A moment later, I heard Toby say, oh, footsteps tromp down the porch steps. A van door slid open and clunk shut. Heavy feet shuffled back up the stairs, plastic bags rustled. The lid of the cooler fit as it opened and closed. More footsteps then, finally, an engine caught, read, and died away as tires rolled down the mile-long driveway. I loosened my grip on Beethoven, immediately streaked across the dining room's rag carpet, past the front door, and hid behind one of the claw-footed sofas in the piano parlor. The rumor mom had always held her twice annual recitals. I felt a stab of pain in my chest as I realized that there'd be no piano recitals there this year. Dr. Taylor had told me that my chest pains were just psychological and didn't require additional medical attention, but maybe I should mention them to her at our next session, just to be safe. I wiped the sweat from my forehead with my palms, rolled to my knees, and was about to stand when I heard another car engine approaching. Shit, had Toby forgotten something. I flipped back to a seated position and looked around for any sign of Beethoven. The note on the door said that I'd taken a cat so it wouldn't do to have Toby C. Beethoven prancing around inside the house. My arms stopped. I tugged up my sleeve to survey the damage. Not too bad. Four hairline scratches, each about an inch long and oozing a few drops of blood. They shouldn't interfere with my special performance that evening. Three pages. Why did I not stop? It moved. Yeah. They told us everything we needed to do then. There was to mention that, actually. Exactly. And, again, a great job of showing versus telling. At no point did he sit down and say, I'm a crazy psychopath, who's about to do something ridiculous. I think maybe he killed his mom, but I really hope he did. I don't know. But I want to know, right? I'm right there. I'm on the floor hiding with him. I will admit there was a bit of repetition. I would cut down a couple of the lines about the cat. It kind of went a little too far. But all along, I am so drawn to this quirky character, right? I mean, quirky characters are interesting. And most importantly, I really want to know what's going to happen. Like, what in the world kind of performance is a germaphobe shut in about to perform, right? That's what we're looking for. The questions, right? It doesn't tell me up front. It doesn't hit me over the head with a laundry list of description. It doesn't give me an index to everything I need to understand. I see it in his movements, the nervousness in the germs. And again, I think the germs was a little too much. I would cut down on some of that repetition. But the clinging to the cat, like that fear, instead of saying, I'm terrified, I feel that fear. That was great. Um, so that one I would, if you're looking for the catchphrase, great character reveal, it's a very good balance between exposition and mystery. It leaves me wondering, but it gave me just enough so that I understand exactly where I am. I get who this guy is, but I want to know more. Number six. Chapter one. Baba took me home to Staten Island and 16 years passed before I saw Alex again. I was a junior in high school. Can everyone hear? Cute, a little louder, okay. I was a junior in high school. Yeah, I was a junior in high school. This is the story of that year. Zoom in, and we're looking at the York City, which now has the High Line and the Grand Zero Museum. Take the ferry, or the Arizona Bridge across the Arizona Narrows, which connects up or lower to New York Bay, and you'll arrive on the forgotten boroughs at Staten Island in the neighborhood of Bigwood Beach. For most of my family, I used to live six before World War II. Like most of the boroughs, the houses in the middle of the beach are closed together and in rows. Front yards are most of the show, and we pack our backyards with entertainment, above ground pool, back and the next. Portables screened in with new screensets, sheds. Baba's and my yard is functional. Baba's great. Why'd you stop? We're talking about the yard instead of the yard. Right? Nothing's happening. I'm getting a geography lesson, and let me tell you, I know New York City pretty well. I didn't need, you know, I know there's a ground zero music. I don't see why that very specific, detailed setting matters right in that moment. But read the first line again. Okay. Baba took me home to Staten Island in 16 years past before I saw Alice again. I love that line. It is so simple. I already know we're in Staten Island, so I don't need any of the following geography lesson, but I'm dying to know who Alice is and why you haven't seen her in 16 years and how she reappears and why, you know, why? What's your relationship to Alice? That is a great opening line, but one, two, three, four, we get four more paragraphs of geography, of the neighborhood, the layout of the neighborhood and what the gardens look like. It was gardens and a specific park, a field that the kid used to play in. I'm so far removed from Alice by the time we get back to it. Can you read the third page, the second paragraph? Here, I got it, oh yeah, go ahead. I was in the hallway between classes when I first met Nikki, then a roundabout way would lead me to Alice, though I didn't know that at the time. Right, if you went right from, Baba took me home to Staten Island in 16 years past before I saw Alice again, to I was in the hallway between classes when I first met Nikki, who in a roundabout way would lead me to Alice. I am right there with you and I am so excited to know how Nikki led you to Alice, why Alice met it, right? Those are questions, but you've lost me in one, two and almost a half pages of geography and neighborhood description and playing in the field with your friends and there are so many characters. There's somebody named, I think Dar is the main character and then there's Baba, who I think is maybe the grandfather. But then there's Chris and T and Mrs. M and so many people that I don't know who these people are and why they matter that by the time you come back to Alice, I've almost forgotten about her. Get right into the action. If the neighborhood matters in any way, there will be a natural place to describe the neighborhood later on. I have a feeling a lot of that probably is not even relevant to the story. Again, this is an example, I think of somebody just warming up, right? You need to know all of these things for yourself because you need to understand your character and where this person comes from and where he lives and you have to be able to visualize it. Sometimes your reader never needs to know that stuff. That's just for you so that you get into the mind of the character. Sometimes we need it, but remember that sometimes we don't. Go ahead. I have a question because I live on the West Coast. Yeah. So some of the geography means a lot to me as a reader. So... But the question is, is it relevant to the story? Or could this story be anywhere? Right? If Staten Island is so important to the story that the setting is almost character, then that will come out and you're gonna feel like you know Staten Island as though you live there. But if this story is not, if setting is not necessarily that relevant to this story or at least not yet, you don't, right? Just like because Bill mentioned that I'm from Montreal, doesn't mean here to give you the whole history and geography of Montreal for you to be able to understand me and talk to me. Right? That is kind of a very simplistic breakdown, but that's the basic gist of it is maybe Baba and Alice and Dar could be anywhere or maybe all we need to know is it Staten Island and you know enough about what that means that you don't need to know that the streets run east-west and that the parks have this kind of flower in them or that he really liked this one field that I don't even know what he did there. It doesn't seem that knowing the lay of the land in such minute detail affects the story in any way, but that's a great question because you're right, we all read stories set in places that we have never been to or that we don't know anything about. When those settings matter, it will be revealed but you don't necessarily need to know it immediately and sometimes you don't need to know it at all. Any other questions? Let me see if I had anything else to say about this one. So if we're looking for the catchphrase, it's kind of like the prologue. That was a geographical info dump that didn't move the story forward. All right, number seven. Those buried in the dust. They kept the children underground among the hump of generators beneath the floors and the weak yellow lights that cast shadows into every corner of the room were four small naked human beings. Pale wrinkled skinned hands with pudgy nubby fingers explored the various items. Irregular sized blocks, simple tools, pieces of chalk and charcoal, ripped and stitched plush animals in a long dead potted plant. Tucked away from the rest of the world in the basement of an ancient brick and mortar firehouse, the children were safe from the dust and ash that untuned to the city under dunes as deep as 20 feet. Under the age of five, they were kept indoors to ensure the best chance for survival. They were weak and dependent, but held the potential of youth within them. Messenger was their polar opposite, the oldest person living in the city. For all he knew, he was the oldest person on the frontier as well. He had not met someone his elder since coming to the city. It wasn't entirely irresponsible to consider the idea that he was the oldest person left alive. Gray hair had begun to invade the space around his temples. While he tried to keep his otherwise dark brown hair trimmed with the help of a straight razor, years of exposure had turned it brittle to the touch and impossible to fully tame. His brown eyes rested above heavy black bags where the blood pooled beneath the skin. A habit of insomnia developed in the time before the dust. Stop. I can't hear somebody, but I can't hear you. Where are the children? Where are the children? Exactly. That first line, they kept the children underground is an amazing first line. But where are they? They're still underground, but I don't know why. I don't know what they're doing there. I don't know who's keeping them down there. I don't know what their relationship to Messenger is. And I don't really care that he trims his beard with a straight razor, because what else are you gonna trim your beard? I mean, I get the sense that this is post-apocalyptic, so maybe there's no electricity, there's no electric. But there's so much detail, again, in this character description. And I have no idea why this character even matters or why I should care how he trims his beard. And again, the idea of him being the oldest person, how many, can you re-read that? Messenger was their polar opposite, the oldest person living in the city. For all he knew, he was the oldest person on the frontier as well. He had not met someone his elder since coming to the city. It wasn't entirely irresponsible to consider the idea that he was the oldest person left alive. That's five lines about his age, but I actually have no idea how old he is. Is he 12? Is the oldest person in the city 12? Because that's a really big difference than if he's 84. You're giving me so much, and yet you're not really giving me that much at all. So I'm a little bit lost. It's interesting because a lot of times in post-apocalyptic stories, we get those major info dumps at the beginning that set up the entire world and say what the nuclear holocaust was all about and what the political structure is and what the history is and what it's the year 18 million and six and this is high enough. I don't get any of that, but I'm getting very heavy character description that is equally, that is having the same effect of keeping me from actually getting into the story. I felt like there was something else that I wanna say about this one. So let me just see if I wanted you to read something. Yeah, there are a lot of vague references to before the dust, but I don't know. It's a good clue, but if you say it four or five times, I'm gonna start to wonder, I'm just gonna say, okay, tell me what this friggin' dust is already. What's going on? If you give it to me once and it builds slowly twice, that's great. But by the fifth time, it's like you're teasing me and I'm either gonna get really annoyed or you've gotta give me something that helps me understand what the clue is. You can't drop a clue, you can't bait me that many times and not fill me in. So my advice there would be either cut back on the dust or explain what the dust means, but six times throwing it in my face is getting kinda mean. I really wanna know. I really do. We talked about this already. The description of Messenger is so long, but it doesn't give us a sense of what happened. I think the point that's trying to be made is that the world ended, maybe he's a survivor from the old world because I think there's a line actually. He was not born in this world. But again, if you're gonna keep saying it and keep emphasizing how old he is, you've gotta tell me why. And if you're not gonna do it up front, then you've gotta give me action, but I'm kind of lost in no man's land here of description. Similarly, and we didn't read this part, but just for the person who wrote this, your references to the frontier, what world he was born to, what happened to that world, these are all things I'm gonna wanna know, if not right up front, somewhere along the line, so just keep those in mind. But my biggest point here is that the readers wanna be immediately drawn into the story, and you had us with line one. They kept the children underground, but stay with that. Build your story from there. Maybe the reason the children are kept underground is because of this horrific dust, and if we could understand that, then we could begin to understand where the dust came from and what's happened, and then the story can move forward. You also introduced me to a whole bunch of characters. Harkin, and can you just read page three of the first full paragraph? It was, was that when it was on the store stuff? Yeah. It was on the store stuff that Messenger had found himself 10 years earlier with a young boy of his own. Not my own, he thought, not like the girl in the half-blind mole-rack that clung to her chest. He had picked up Harkin out on the frontier during his last true venture deep into the gray and red wasteland that covered his world. Kendra, the city's voice of reason, had taken one look at the Phil Stain boy and had ordered him into the city. Right, I think I have three characters there, but I might only have two. I'm not sure if the girl in the half-blind mole-rack is Harkin, or if Harkin is a second person, and then Kendra is a third person, but it's a lot of characters for a very small amount of space, especially because you tell me nothing that keeps me connected to them, so I don't really get who they are or how they are going to fit into the story. I think that's, thank you. Okay, number eight. I hunched over the stained yellow toilet and closed my eyes. I expelled the con- Louder. I hunched over the stained yellow toilet and closed my eyes as I expelled the contents of my stomach into the murky water below. I breathed heavily, trying to calm my erratic heartbeat. Once I had spit the last of the bile from my mouth, I rested my head against the cool porcelain of the seat and shut my eyes. I tried to block out the pain I was feeling, curling my fingertips so that my nail was drew blood. I sought solace from the coolness of the toilet bowl. Suppressing a groan, I stuffed my arm to the mouth. I stuffed my arm into my mouth and tried not to make a sound. My entire body tends to dispense the pain. Why did we stop? There's no character yet. It's all about vomit, bile. Right, who is the character? Why am I watching you throw up? I actually, so in the first two times I read this, I stopped somewhere else, but I decided to stop here to make an emphatic point. I have a colleague who would have stopped you after the first sentence. I hunched over the stained yellow toilet, closed my eyes and I expelled the content of my stomach and the murky water below because she would have gone, oh gross, nobody wants to read about somebody vomiting. We were on a, judging a writer's idle panel, which is basically this, but without your participation. And she, any time somebody is vomiting, excreting any sort of bodily function in an opening line, she's done. She says it's disgusting, nobody wants to read it. I disagree, I would have kept going, but I wanna make the point about how subjective this is. A lot of people are just gonna say, gross, I don't wanna read about puke, especially if I don't know who's puke it is. Where I originally would have stopped, can you go on just a little bit more? I'll tell you. You were at the end of paragraph one, puking into the toilet bowl. I still have blood coursing in my veins. It's not as if I had fire thrown throughout my body. I was an agony, a burning sensation under my skin that had my stomach churning and my head splitting. I couldn't take that anymore. Nothing was worth this. I'm often under the cry of pain as I curl myself further. I just wanna relieve. I wanted something that would stop this sensation of squeezing this in my guts. The cool rag on the back of my neck startled me. I weakly thrust out my fist, but the punch was effortlessly blocked. Okay, stop. Two days ago, that's where I stopped. And when I read this one this morning, I stopped in a third different place. But why would I stop there? Cool rag on the back of my neck startled me. I weakly thrust out my punch, but the punch was effortlessly blocked. I don't know. What's the list of? Right, now there's two people I don't know. But also, I feel like we've just jumped genres. All of a sudden I'm in a suspense. Like, I think this guy's getting attacked and there's a crazy emergency coming on. And I've entered a suspense thriller. But then we go back, and you don't need to read more, but we go back to more. This person is still sick. He's embarrassed to be vomiting in front of the other person. Which then makes me think, why would you reach out and punch someone if you know you're not, you know this other person. You're not, maybe you didn't know you were alone, but it sounds like you knew you were in a place with someone else. So I'm starting to just feel very confused about not only character, but genre, and what's going on. And so that makes me a little even less willing to be grossed out by the puke. I wanna point out a couple more things in this one. So this one then begins with dialogue starts and he says, oh, I feel so awful and how long am I gonna be sick? And the other guy who is apparently Damien, even though I still don't know the first character's name, replies, I know, here, and he gives them the wet rag. And he says, the injections just make me, the injections made me sick too. So now I know there are fellow sufferers. And I'm starting to think that they're in a drug rehab program. That's really where my mind was going. But then as the dialogue continues, and I learned the sickness will stop once you get used to the injections, which seems kind of obvious. That's a bit of an example of dialogue that's unnecessary or explaining things that are clear to us. But then I get, he says, well, am I ever gonna start feeling better? And they kind of go back and forth about this. And then Damien, character number two says, it gets better, it's better. He says how much he hates this place, but I don't know, like in my mind, this place is drug rehab, but I don't know for sure. And he says, oh, it's not so bad, the alternative is debt. There's no getting out of this place unless you're dead. And he says, I don't care, I wanna be dead. And then character number two, Damien says, it's better than where you were outside this place. And the first time I read this, that was where I stopped because that to me was like flashing lights, guys, here comes the background story. I'm gonna tell you everything about where I was before I got to this place. And so there were a couple of issues here and yet I'm still intrigued. Like I want to know what is making this person so sick, especially when I get to the last paragraph on page three, right from the moment I was brought into the compound. So obviously we're not in drug rehab, we're home where a little more exciting, essentially sold off by the matrons at the children's home to the leader of this strange place I had wanted to leave. All of a sudden I'm in genre number three. So this is an example of again giving too much of the detail, the color of the vomit, the bile, the right constant vomiting, but not enough of setting and action so that I understand what's going on. And just to be careful about not setting up that kind of Trojan horse that twist where I thought all of a sudden he's getting attacked totally threw me off and then brings me back. So right within your genre, this is not a murder mystery, then that line is really overstated because this person should not be that terrified unless he's just startled because he's not used to being touched but then make that clear because you've got me a little bit all over the place. Questions, comments. Yeah, go ahead. You say you want to be able to identify a genre in the first few pages, like that's something you should know in an agent? Well, I would probably know it because I've read your query beforehand. I don't, that's a tricky question, that's a great question. Some agents will tell you, you have to tell me what your genre is. Right. I don't need to know within the first three pages but I have to have a sense. So for example, if you're writing a romance novel that begins with that, you're in trouble. If you are, unless this is like the crazy, as wackiest romance and it turns out the tap on the shoulder is your future husband but that's cliche, so don't do that. You have to at least give us a sense of where we are. I don't need to be able to read line one and say, oh, this is literary fiction, oh, this is a murder mystery. But when you're going back and forth, it's hard for an agent or an editor to know what to do with this because it seems like you don't quite yet know what story you're trying to tell. So I don't need a big label that says young adult fantasy but if it is young adult fantasy, then there isn't a guy holding you at gunpoint doing whatever. It just has to fit but it doesn't have to be made clear on page one. It's kind of a convoluted answer but it's true because. So yes and no. Yes and no. You don't have to tell me right away but you can't totally break out of the confines of your genre because then I'm just confused and I'm not gonna read long enough to know what genre it is but I need to know pretty early on if this is romantic comedy, up women, up market women's fiction. But the best advice I could say about genre is if you really don't know, don't say. The word, it's very difficult when you get submissions and someone says oh, I've written a literary novel blah blah blah about whatever and that's not the genre at all. They've actually written the murder mystery. And that does happen, it sounds odd and funny but I think sometimes people don't quite know their genre so if you're not sure, don't do it but if you have a good sense that I am writing and I think this one turns out maybe that it's post apocalyptic, I'm not sure if this is post apocalyptic or some kind of fantasy or sci-fi or if it's just a really dark suspense story but there are big differences between those and if you're writing post apocalyptic you should make that pretty clear pretty soon on and if you're writing, if this is not suspense then some of those suspense elements need to be taken out. Do you have any resources you could direct us to? I know there's so many genres and sub-genres with descriptions and kind of, or better yet, book examples of genres that are in the system. Because we can try to categorize some of them. Right, right, the big one, right, exactly. I think it was Writer's Digest that recently had an amazing piece and it was like the 17 category genres. If you Google 17 genres, Writer's Digest, it will come up because I think it was Writer's Digest but even if it wasn't, if you Google 17 genres, you will get it. I don't think I can name all 17. That's how little it matters sometimes. I mean, 17, that sounds pretty cute. Right, but there are resources. Actually, if you wait until after, I think I have the article in my bag but I'll give them to you after, come on. I just had a question with that opening line that to me wasn't important, but I mean, just pretty graphic, but I would have read on. Right. So just with the first line alone and you said some of your colleagues would have just said on their page, what if it was about a soldier coming home? Again, rules are meant to be broken, right? It can always be done and done well. And I'm not saying that this isn't, but I'm saying I need a reason for the vomit. If I'm gonna read that much detail about the vomit. Right, I'm just saying you said that one line someone might have just thrown it in the middle of the bomb. Because what we do is so subjective. She just gets grossed out very easily. She will not read anything where bad things happen to little children. She will not, and it's just personal taste. Yeah, she will not read any graphic, gross, vomiting, puke, blood, just not her thing. But does it then go on to maybe you or someone else? Absolutely it does. Yeah. I just thought that was done boomdread. I thought you kind of thought it out. In the writer's idol competition, that one was done boomdread. But in terms of submitting, there are, you know. Many of you. Many of us will read gross, gory. You know, there are some people who only read gross and gory. There are some people who only read YA fantasy. I personally read a bit of everything. Well, I love it because it's gross and gory. No, not necessarily, but I'm not gonna hate it just because it's gross and gory. If there's something, if it's just gross and gory, I'm probably not the agent for you. But if there's a story there and there was a reason that I'm watching this guy lose his lunch or drugs or whatever he would, then I'm okay with it. Okay. So, okay. Do I have time to do another? How am I doing on time, Bill? It's 317. What time am I good till? Okay. I'm gonna skip ahead. I'm gonna give you. 13 minutes left. Okay. We're gonna do two more. Okay. Who is number 11? Go ahead. Did you mean fingers and toes as well as numbers? But people use counting to make sure everything's there. If you're born, the numbers begin. First thing, to count the fingers and toes. Well, maybe first the doctor looks down and the crucial bits can cause off gender. It's a girl or it's a boy. This part doesn't always work as well as those doctors would like. My own math skills were no match for so many girls. Stop. Why do we stop? And it's not because I failed math. But it might kind of be. So it's no 10 toes, 10 fingers, one way. I'm not sure yet. My big question that you picked up on is what are we talking about? Because I don't really think we're talking about math. I don't really get the connection between math and gender, right? He says, it's a boy or it's a girl. This part doesn't always work so well as the doctors. Like my own math skills were no match for so many variables. Well, there aren't that many variables, although we have an increasing number of variables there today. But I don't really understand what that has to do with math. It's not an equation. And again, I failed math, so if I'm wrong, tell me. But in my mind, this person is trying to create a frame or some sort of parallel that doesn't quite work. And so I'm confused. But can you read the opening to section two? It's a boy brother, Silas. It's fun out to breakfast and a tuna, a sparkle top, and a pair of my ballet slippers from before my ballet teacher claimed that I wasn't suited for that particular art. The shoes look much better on Silas than they ever did on me. So now I really get that this, I think, is a story about gender. I get it so much better if we start there. When my only sibling was born, the doctor said it's a boy and not they named him, because the doctor is he and it's your parents are they. So my parents named him Silas William Ramirez, period. That's a great opening line because then, if you lose, the count wasn't that simple because again, we're not counting anything there. I just don't get the analogy. But if you said instead, when my only sibling was born, the doctor said it's a boy and my parents named him Silas William Ramirez, but it wasn't that simple. I'm there with you, I get it. It makes perfect sense. So my best advice on this one is lose the math, but my broader point is sometimes frames that you try to create or analogies that you use just don't work and so we're getting lost in an insignificant part of the story, well it's actually not part of the story at all, instead of getting into what sounds like a really great story about a nine year old boy who doesn't see himself as a boy, which again, I said that without mentioning two plus two is four or two plus two is five, right? It just throws me off and I think it's not only because I'm bad at math. But I wanna look at a couple of other points in this one. Can you, okay, section three begins, that particular breakfast wasn't that different from the 365 other breakfasts except that someone rang the hotel bell. This is how nitpicky we are sometimes as agents and editors, what's wrong with that sentence? 364. 364, unless you're telling me it's a leap year, right? Pay attention to detail because we are looking for these things. And when we see that, we think sloppy copy editing, not really thinking, you know, I would never ever reject somebody over that. I wouldn't even stop reading, but other people who have, you know, you have to consider how many submissions we have on our plates at a time. Somebody else might or somebody else might just think this person's careless, which I'm not at all suggesting. I'm just alerting you to the fact to pay attention to your own details because we're certainly paying attention to them. A couple of other things. So we're set up with this really great story. My nine year old, it's a boy, brother spins into breakfast in a tutu. I think that's such a vivid scene. I'm really swept up in it. But then, can you read on from if we were far away? So they're sitting at breakfast, but they're not answering the doorbell. Three lines up. Yeah. If we were far away, and our plates of bell and desk might have been more needed at the breakfast room table. And we didn't have many customers who are taking in our pre-continental breakfast. We ate our meals there as our own table tended to be covered with my mom's pottery. I'll get it set set and wait. Relax. No surprise that Salus loved costumes since we lived in a pink castle with a constantly rotating cast. Once upon a time, there was a pink castle on an island, only the castle wasn't real. The residence weren't royalty and the island was a strip of land totally attached to New Jersey. The San Castle Hotel was the only bright beach building on the missing sea island. New Jersey's fabled shoreline. Salus wore the tutu. Okay, he wore it before, but that was the day when Sandra Robberry stopped. Everett was on an edge because our hotel members weren't what they should be. Okay. The first time I read this, that was where I stopped because now I have 16 different things going on and I totally lost the momentum of the little boy in the tutu. Who's Cassandra? Why does it matter that she sees him in the tutu? And then we get even more further removed. This now goes on to a three-quarter page description of a Superstorm, which to ever wrote this. I think you're talking about Superstorm Sandy. If you just throw in the name Sandy, I know exactly what time period you're writing in because at the beginning I kind of thought this might be the 50s or 60s because I was romanticizing a pink castle and I kind of saw like the Art Deco thing. If you just throw in the word Sandy, I know right away, A, where we are, you don't even have to tell me New Jersey or Jersey Short but also I know what decade we're in. I know what millennium we're in. So little hints like that go a long way. There are so many different things going on at this point. I'm still lost in the numbers and I'm gonna be honest and tell you the numbers come back throughout and they still don't make sense to me. So whoever Cassandra is is knocking on the door and they don't answer and then we get this whole subsection about how the super storm destroyed the industry in the area and everyone's suffering. People don't have jobs. The parents renovate the hotel. We get a description of the hotel two or three times so just be careful about repetition. Then he's talking about the narrator talking about the father painting the sand castle at the hotel that they own a cotton candy pink but that would make town officials freak out anywhere but the Jersey Short. But the numbers created some frightening new equations. We're talking about pink colors so I don't know what numbers. Again, you're holding onto this analogy or frame that just is not working. And by the time I get to the end of page three I am not sure if this is a story about your brother in the two two, a story about the hotel that has suffered and maybe is about to rebloss them. I don't know who Cassandra is and why it matters that she saw him in the two two and so now my point to whoever wrote this is if this is a story about the brother get right to the brother, get rid of, it's a great opening, it's a great story. Get rid of everything else. If this is a story about the hotel or what happens when Cassandra comes and I think tries to buy it then that's where you need to start because you've set me down the road onto a different story by focusing on the boy who's not a boy. So it's not really a genre issue but it's a plot line issue here. I'm gonna stop because I know I'm running out of time. I wanna, for those of you that we didn't get to I have them if you wanna come talk to me at some point or shoot me an email. A couple of little things that I also wanna point out and my big takeaway here is that the little things are actually the things that we noticed first. Everything that we've just discussed is assuming that we haven't already passed because of really stupid little things that we are arrogant enough to pass because of and the first one I hate to mention especially to a room full of NFAs but I see so many typos and basic grammatical errors that I have to underline the importance of copy editing your work. We all make typos, I get it, I am not innocent of this but when we see excessive errors of basic copy editing we're gonna start to question the person who submitted this to the writer. Is he lazy? Is he so cocky that he doesn't think he needs to edit his work? And in either case we're kind of left with somebody we probably think we don't wanna work with. So please edit, edit, edit and when you think you're done edit again. Presentation much less of an issue in the digital age because most of you are submitting PDFs in the olden days I'm told or I've read about agents and editors who would get dog-eared pages that were so worn out they could barely read them and they were covered in coffee stains. I know that's not you guys but you would be amazed at how many times I get single-spaced manuscripts which I know sounds so obnoxious for me to complain about. As a grad student I once accidentally handed in a single-space chapter because that's what you do when you submit things at four o'clock in the morning and my professor refused to comment on the chapter. The only thing he said was in academia we double-space and I thought I'm gonna double-space you. All he had to do was tell me to double-space it and resubmit or double-space it himself because we all have word. But as an agent who gets hundreds and hundreds of submissions in a week I kind of get it. I would never reject anybody for not double-spacing but a lot of my colleagues would. So please along similar lines you're not an elementary school so basic formatting rules. Cutesy fonts do not get you anywhere they are an automatic turn-off. You need to be able to express your creativity in your writing and not in your font choice. They're also very hard to read and picky agents and editors will not read them. But really if you're gonna leave here today with absolutely only one takeaway it's exactly what, I'm sorry what's your name? Wendy. It's exactly what Wendy was asking about before about are a lot of the problems because we deal with our beginnings in the beginning and don't go back to them. That is the most important takeaway I can give you is please revisit your beginnings when you come to the end. Sometimes a story has evolved so far beyond where you thought it started that the story, that the beginning is now irrelevant and even though it might be absolutely brilliant it's not gonna get you anywhere if it doesn't match up with the rest of the story and this I think I don't even need to say but if you have an awesome five pages but the rest of your pages are not so great you're still not gonna get you an offer even if it does get you initial interest but in a literary environment where agents and editors are so overwhelmed with the quantity of submissions that they get, your first five pages, a distinctive opening really, really does go a long way. That's what I have to say. What else do we have? Thank you to everyone. Yes, my email is my first name AMA-R-Y-A-H at go-g-o-lit-l-i-t-dot-com and really feel free to be in touch if you have follow up questions about your own submissions or anything. I'm happy to answer questions and thank you all for being guinea pigs and for submitting yourselves to public scrutiny.