Title: THE LULLABY
Genre: YA contemporary fantasy
Richard flopped down on a bench as soon as they reached the park.
“You know how many hobos have probably slept on that?” Cassie asked.
He rolled and fell to the grass. She laughed. A distant sound reached her ears. (This is an awkward sentence, imho) She stopped laughing and listened. Richard opened his mouth, but didn’t say anything with he caught her glare. I’m not wild about these sentences, either. I’d actually like just a single sentence here that indicates she hears a sound. Maybe like this: She stopped, cocking her head. A second later she was on her feet, walking fast, She started to walk, growing closer to the noise. She paused and then started to running toward it. “Mitch!”
She burst through some bushes. Mitch looked up, his eyes red and swollen, and hiccupped. He wrapped his arms around her neck when she knelt down.
“What are you doing out here?” She pulled him away from her chest to see his face.
“W-w-w-we,” he tried.
“Take a deep breath,” she said, rubbing his back.
He closed his eyes and inhaled through his nose. “We c-came to f-f-find rocks.”
“You and Tilo, yes,” something was starting to tumble around in her stomach.
“B-b-b-but I-I can’t f-f-find h-h-h-” He stopped and shoved his face into her shirt again.
She jerked him away rougher than she meant to. “Mitch, where is Tilo? You have to tell me where he is.”
“I d-d-don’t know,” the boy cried.
Cassie stood up and pulled Mitch with her. Richard stood on the other side of the bushes, his eyes grave. She pushed past him, dragging Mitch.
“Where are you going?”
“Home. Now.”
The rest reads smooth and I like the dialogue. What do you think?
3 comments:
you can still draw attention to the sound, just clean it up.
other than that, good scene =)
I think the dialogue is good enough that you can trim some of the tags so it tightens up a bit more. For example:
“What are you doing out here?” She pulled him away from her chest to see his face.
“W-w-w-we...”
“Take a deep breath,” she said, rubbing his back.
Because you're really only telling people the same thing twice. You don't need the "he tried" (which isn't a good dialogue tag anyhow) because we already know he didn't say what he wanted to. Because you wrote the dialogue well. :)
I think there's another place you can drop the dialogue tag entirely, but that's your call.
I like the dialogue also and agree with the above crits. I would substitute another word for 'hobo' but that is subjective.
One (just one??!) of my biggest problems is thinking to myself, "I want the reader to know this" then write that into the MS.
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