Search found 6 matches

by Mike Peterson
October 1st, 2010, 1:26 pm
Forum: Nominate Your Query or First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Topic: Page Critique Friday 10/1/10
Replies: 32
Views: 38877

Re: Page Critique Friday 10/1/10

This is quite good. There are phrases I would play with as an editor, but nothing major, and the overall flow is just fine. I like that you are giving the narrator a voice without turning her into an eccentric. She's not bland but it's not like you're trying to hide a slim plot behind a larger-than-...
by Mike Peterson
September 10th, 2010, 3:15 pm
Forum: Nominate Your Query or First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Topic: Page Critique Friday 9/10/10
Replies: 33
Views: 40882

Re: Page Critique Friday 9/10/10

Word-for-word, this is good writing, but it fails to engage me as a whole because it's so very distant. I had the same response, alas, as the reviewer who suggested that the distant POV makes it sound like a set up for a joke -- Three guys walked into a bar. But it does suggest one change, which is ...
by Mike Peterson
September 3rd, 2010, 2:29 pm
Forum: Nominate Your Query or First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Topic: Page Critique Friday 9/3/10
Replies: 21
Views: 30075

Re: Page Critique Friday 9/3/10

I'm no basketball expert nor do I golf, but as an overall sports fan, I'm going to assume here that there is an undisclosed reason that one brother putting another brother into a celebrity golf tourney would raise eyebrows. Unless this tournament is 1,000 miles from where this guy played college bal...
by Mike Peterson
August 27th, 2010, 4:02 pm
Forum: Nominate Your Query or First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Topic: Page Critique Friday 8/27/10
Replies: 27
Views: 30244

Re: Page Critique Friday 8/27/10

Like others, my first response was "wait a minute. This isn't a novel; it's a screenplay." Now, 250 words isn't much, and it may be that, a paragraph from here, you're going to pop into the flashback and tell the story in a more conventional narrative tone until we loop back to this point,...
by Mike Peterson
July 10th, 2010, 8:44 am
Forum: Writing
Topic: The Absentee Parent Conundrum in Children's Lit
Replies: 32
Views: 24245

Re: The Absentee Parent Conundrum in Children's Lit

Agree with Wilderness that the tradition goes back a long way. Tom Brown's father was a mentor, but he was back home and Tom was off, first at Rugby, then at Oxford, well away from any help. Henty also got his "dear lads" away from their parents, though he was more apt to leave them with a...
by Mike Peterson
July 7th, 2010, 8:41 am
Forum: Nominate Your Query or First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Topic: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog
Replies: 720
Views: 451945

Re: Nominate Your First Page for a Critique on the Blog

Title: The Crown and the Colliers Genre: YA action adventure Word Count: 250 "Are you a tall Short, or a short Tall?" the gruff voice boomed. It was not a friendly voice, and Gabriel didn't turn around. The small, bearded man behind the counter looked over nervously as he assembled the bas...