Page critique 12/2/21

Offer up your page (or query) for Nathan's critique on the blog.
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Nathan Bransford
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Page critique 12/2/21

Post by Nathan Bransford » November 29th, 2021, 2:06 pm

Below is the page up for critique on the blog on Thursday. Feel free to chime in with comments, create your own redline (please note the "font colour" button above the posting box, which looks like a drop of ink), and otherwise offer feedback. When offering your feedback, please please remember to be polite and constructive. In order to leave a comment you will need to register an account in the Forums, which should be self-explanatory.

I'll be back later with my own post on the blog and we'll literally be able to compare notes.

If you'd like to enter a page for a future Page Critique, please do so here.

working title: Choice and Consequence
Genre: Suspense, thriller

There may be more difficult places to find a parking spot in the city but Lucas Jackson could not imagine where. Because he woke up late, had a knock-down drag out with the lovely, sarcastic, and quite irrational Betsy on the front porch of his Long Island home, he was now running behind and sitting at a forever red light in downtown Lower Manhattan. Chewing his bottom lip and thumping his right hand on the steering wheel, a couple of airheads were arguing on sports radio of his near new Mercedes SUV while masses of humanity passed in front of him. He honked and waved his arms like all good New Yorker’s do and a couple of Wall Street types slapped their briefcases against his passenger side doors.
“Hey, what the hell,” he said as the men laughed and offered the one finger salute. “Go on,” Lucas added. “Go work in your tiny cubicle with no window. You losers!”
The word ‘losers’ altered his anger to dread, thinking of the secretive payload he was carrying. Now his brain felt like it was on speed, his thumping heart rate shaking his entire body. A glance at his watch stirred a flash of panic and he swerved into a Handicap spot ignoring the bellowing horns as he affixed the counterfeit disability placard to the mirror, climbed out, and flipped his Newport to the curb, before opening the back hatch where two supersize titanium roller suitcases sat. These giant secure bags cost his employer over two grand each and felt like they were filled with lead. He gave them a solid jerk and they dropped to the ground. He grabbed their handles and looked up to admire his destination, the 55th floor of the stunning new Freedom Tower at the exact moment everything in life changed. Again.

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J. T. SHEA
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Re: Page critique 12/2/21

Post by J. T. SHEA » December 2nd, 2021, 12:38 am

Interesting. Just a couple of thoughts occur to me:-

I note this first page is a single long paragraph. But that may be a formatting glitch.

One sentence contains a grammatical error I've noticed several times recently, even in pieces by experienced journalists:-
“Chewing his bottom lip and thumping his right hand on the steering wheel, a couple of airheads were arguing on sports radio of his near new Mercedes SUV while masses of humanity passed in front of him.”
Though I get what this is intended to mean, it literally says that the airheads on the radio are chewing Lucas Jackson's bottom lip and thumping his right hand on the steering wheel.

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