chapter 1

My eyes flutter open. As I slowly straighten up, I allow my eyes to sharpen. A few minutes pass before I can see my surroundings. I'm in a small room filled with children's toys and a bed just big enough for a young child. Lying on the bed, fast asleep, is a young girl. I take a few cautious steps toward the girl, careful not to wake her. A sense of familiarity washes over me as I gaze at her honey-brown hair. I reach out and gently brush aside the few strands of hair that have fallen into her face. She has beautiful, long lashes, and the most charming freckles splotched across the bridge of her nose. 

She stirs softly before her eyes blink open. Her emerald-green eyes dart across my face as she calmly takes me in. A smile spreads across her face as her eyes meet mine.

"God answered my prayers." She sits up, "I asked him for a friend and he gave me one."

"I-I don't understand," I mutter. 

"I prayed to God for him to send me a friend to play with, and he must have sent me you!" Her eyes sparkle. "My name is Delilah. What's your name?"

A beat passes before I reply. "I'm Cammie. It's nice to meet you, Delilah."

Delilah's smile widens at the sound of my name, and her enthusiasm is contagious. She hops off the bed, her bare feet landing softly on the plush carpet. 

"Come on, Cammie! There’s so much to show you!" she exclaims, tugging at my hand. I feel a mix of excitement and apprehension, but her joyful energy draws me in.

She leads me to a small play area filled with colorful toys and books. A miniature kitchen set sits in one corner, complete with tiny pots and plastic food. 

“This is my favorite!” she says, picking up a plastic apple and pretending to slice it with a toy knife. 

I chuckle at her antics, the warmth in her laughter easing the confusion still swirling in my mind. 

"What do you like to play?" I ask, hoping to find common ground.

“Oh, everything! But mostly I love pretending to be an adventurer!" she replies, her eyes sparkling with imagination. "Today, we can go on a treasure hunt! What do you think?"

Before I can respond, she pulls me toward a small chest in the corner, filled with colorful stones and shiny trinkets. 

"These are our treasures!" she announces proudly. “We just need to come up with a map. What do you think?”

I nod, allowing myself to be swept up in her excitement. “I love treasure hunts. I could help draw the map!” 

As we settle down on the carpet and I begin to draw, a sense of calm envelops me. The confusion and fear that had lingered moments ago feel distant, replaced by a budding friendship and the promise of adventure. 

Just then, a sudden noise�"a creak from the door�" interrupted our fun. We both turn to see an unfamiliar figure standing in the doorway, their silhouette casting a long shadow across the room. 

Reviews

[JayG]

• My eyes flutter open.

First problem is here, I’m afraid: This isn’t the person waking, it’s the narrator, who is pretending to have once lived the events, talking about it. This matters, because right here is where an agent, or even a reader, frowns.

The thing we all forget is that verbal storytelling is a performance art. How we perform, since it provides the emotional component, matters as much as what’s said. But how much of the performance reaches the reader? None. What they get is your storytellers script. And for that to work the reader would have to perform it exactly as you would. But with no stage direction, they can’t.

So for you, it works because you do perform it as you read, and so, see no problems, which is why it’s the most common cause of rejection. And since the problems are invisible to the author till pointed out, I thought you might want to know.

One of the other problems with that approach is that because you already know the story, you’ll tend to leave out what seems obvious to you, but, which the reader needs for context. For you, each line points to images, background, events, and more, all waiting in your mind to be evoked. But the reader? For them, each line points to images, background, events, and more, all waiting in *YOUR* mind to be evoked. For example:

• just big enough for a young child

I give up. What’s a young child? Three? Six? You know. But for the reader, it’s what THEY believe, based on their life-experience, not your intent.

• A sense of familiarity washes over me as I gaze at her honey-brown hair.

Familiarity with what? What can this mean to a reader? We don’t know where we are in time and space. We don’t know why this person is there, or, what’s going on. and we know not age, not gender, not background, or anything meaningful about the person in that bedroom. And without context it’s just words in a row, meaning uncertain.

• "God answered my prayers."

I've known lots of kids. I have children and grandchildren. But I have never met a child who, on finding a stranger in their room, would say that. At the least, she'd say,, "Are you..."

Remember, we don’t know what we look like, our gender and appearance, our age, or ANYTHING useful in making the character real. The only thing we know about the character is that she has the ability to “sharpen” her eyes...whatever that means.

Here’s the deal, and the thing we all forget when we turn to writing: For centuries, people have been refining the skills of writing fiction. They’ve been finding ways to make the story seem so real that if someone throws a rock at the protagonist the reader ducks. They’ve been finding, cataloging, and avoiding the traps awaiting the hopeful writer. And, we call that body of knowledge: the Commercial Fiction Writing profession.

Learn its skills and you, too, avoid the traps. Fail that and you’ll be caught by them, and never realize that you have.

The problem is that the pros make it seem so easy and natural that, while we know we don’t leave school ready to write a stage or screenplay, or work as a journalist, we never apply that test to fiction. But we must, because while they’re not hard to learn, the skills of fiction are NOT optional.

So...try a few chapters of Debra Dixon’s, GMC: Goal Motivation & Conflict for fit. It’s an excellent first book.

https://dokumen.pub/qdownload/gmc-goal-motivation-and-conflict-9781611943184.html

And for an overview of the various traps, gotchas, and misunderstandings that catch us all, try a few of my articles and YouTube Videos.

So...this was far from what you hoped to see, I know. But as I said, it’s a common problem. And it’s unrelated to talent. So jump in. The learning is interesting and the practice is writing stories you, and the reader will like better.

Jay Greenstein
Articles: https://jaygreenstein.wordpress.com/category/the-craft-of-writing/the-grumpy-old-writing-coach/
Videos: https://www.youtube.com/@jaygreenstein3334

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“Good writing is supposed to evoke sensation in the reader. Not the fact that it’s raining, but the feeling of being rained upon.”
~ E. L. Doctorow

“It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.”
~ Mark Twain

[「 ✦ Kenzie ✦ 」]

Thank you for your feedback. I am a novice writer who is still in middle school, so I know I still have much to learn. I will definitely be reviewing your videos and the book you mentioned. Thank you!!