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This week we have the first page of a cool-looking YA fantasy. My inline comments are to the side, with overall thoughts at the end. As always, this is all just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.
First Page
I’m supposed to have powers, not nightmares.
But every night it’s the same. A young man’s scream. A shattering blow and a white flash. Then the wizard comes to me through the gloom, wearing a sleep tunic and shabby sheepskin slippers. “Just a dream, Lina.” He hugs me, beard prickling my forehead, and I gasp. He’s real, he's Barba Luc, an old man with corkscrew curls and eyes of profound blue. The young man is just a dream. I clutch the rough wool of my blankets as my cheeks begin a slow burn.
I'm not following this yet. |
I’m the tyro, apprenticed to one of the world’s seven wizards. Fifteen summers old and now, as Barba Luc steps beyond my canopy, utterly mortified.
Because I’m supposed to have powers, not nightmares.
Suddenly, she doesn't seem so mortified. |
Or not. A thin face and dark-but-not-quite-black hair. A bruise splotching my forehead and freckles dusting my nose. I blame that bruise for my nightmares and my memory lapses, but the freckles and I don’t get along, either. As for the hair, well, hair’s hair. I drag a comb through it, then push my way through the canopy and out into the cottage.
Seven shuttered windows and an enormous bearskin rug. The hearthboy is chopping goatbites for breakfast, his open-backed tunic showing a shaggy black mane down to his waist. He grunts “morning blessings” without even looking at me. Typical. No respect.
I’m supposed to have powers, not nightmares.
Adam's Thoughts
The writing is good. You've got a great handle on craft, and there's some good voice in here (I particularly like the line: "well, hair's hair.").
I have two concerns here. The first is a first person POV technique so common it has become cliche: describing the narrator in a mirror. Now I, personally, have not seen this trope enough to be bothered by it, but I'm certain other people have (that's how I know this is a cliche).
But also, the reason the mirror trick usually doesn't work is because it's artificial. The narrator has been wearing this same cloak, and seeing this same face, all her life. Why is she thinking about them now?
The second concern is also a common trope: starting with a dream. The reason this usually doesn't work is because the reader isn't grounded yet, and a dream is ridiculously hard to get grounded in because we know it's not real. I don't even know the gender of the narrator (I'm guessing about the "she"), let alone what her conflict is: why is it so terrible that she has nightmares? Why does she gasp when the old man (whom I also don't know) hugs her?
These are things the narrator knows, so the reader should know them too. We don't need to know them right away, necessarily, but the conflict and tension currently in the open are lost on us because we don't know what's going on yet.
(Also, I'm pretty sure the young man is going to turn out to be real, to be someone she meets, and (if I'm right about the "Because, really" line) to be a love interest. That's another problem with the dream trope: if it's prophetic (they often are) then it's also predictable, and you don't want that.)
What do the rest of you guys think? Do these things feel cliche to you?