It's not too late to send in your first page to be entered in the contest. The novel itself does not have to be finished. Send your entry to charity.bradford@gmail.com and include your:
Name, Title, Genre, Word count, and first page.
Entry #3
Genre: NA Fantasy
Word count: WIP, aiming for 80K
First Page:
At this rate, my college fund would be spent in the first month—and not on school fees.
The old guy, with the same mattressman-of-the-month grin that adorned the wall behind the cash register, completed the paperwork before I had a chance at cold feet. Did he have to work every Saturday? If my parents hadn't ingrained in me the need to support small businesses, I'd have been at the mall right now. Even if restock fees were higher in chains, I would have welcomed the randomness of their staff schedules.
My insides twisted tighter than the French braid I wore for graduation. If I couldn't sleep, I wouldn't be getting the grades to keep my scholarship. Then bye bye med school. I couldn't let my parents down this soon.
An hour later, two delivery guys lugged away the soft twenty-four-inch mattress I had bought last week, leaving its firmer brother on my dorm room bed. At least my new deep-pocketed, seagrass green sheets still fit.
The full size bed occupied most of the double room, which was mine alone because Annabelle only needed a place to crash when there were parties on campus. Her twin mattress hid neatly under my bedframe, and the pair of desks that had come with the room bookended the window to complete the décor. Neatening the place on Saturday morning had become as much of a tradition as my trips to the local mattress store. Or Friday nights in the basement’s laundry room.
2 comments:
I like the descriptions. It tells me gender, approximate age, and where the MC is. I would turn the page but after introducing the MC, I want a little more action. Tighten the sentences and lose some verbiage, IMHO.
And structure. I know I’m the Queen of Sentence Structure and rant about it all the time *hereWeGoAgain* but I like a beat. Long sentences. Short. Shorter. Fragments...ain’t nuthin’ wrong with fragments. Think of the beat of a good song and apply it to your writing. Give it a cadence. Also, it creates character traits. Easily.
Summary: Interested and would turn the page.
There are little things in here that I like, but I'm wondering at all these paragraphs about buying a mattress. Even a second mattress doesn't seem that important. However, I learn from this that the MC is willing to do what's needed in order to keep moving toward her goals of med school. She doesn't want to disappoint her parents, and I'm curious about why she keeps a bed for Annabelle in her room.
I'd keep reading to see where this is going, but if the mattress and the store don't play a larger part in the story, you may want to trim some of it's presence in the first page. Save it for later when we aren't trying to learn what the book is about.
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