Page critique 7/20/23

[Nathan Bransford]

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.

1. MOON KID
(2018-2021)

-1-
She was not there.
She had gone to sleep singing. She was singing her own songs with words that sometimes went together and sometimes didn’t. Now, when I passed by her bedroom, I heard nothing. I thought I would open the door and see her sleeping in a ray of moonlight.
I opened the bedroom door, turned the lights on and no one was there. I called her. No one answered. The window was open. Her room was on first floor, upstairs.
I looked out the window. I saw only darkness pierced by moonlight. Not even the shadow of a child.
I panicked. I ran downstairs with a torch.
“Jen, Jen!” I said to her nanny, “Where is she? I cannot find her! She’s disappeared! Did you see Mary E?”
“No, Sal, I thought she was sleeping,” said Jen.
“Aye and she was. But not now. Now she’s just gone. You didn’t see her come down?”
“No. My God, what do you think happened?” asked Jen.
“Right now, I’m not thinkin’. I’m lookin’. Come with me. Help me!”
We went out to the front garden, shining the torch on the outside of the house to see if she was trying to come down, if she’d got out the window. We looked in the garden under every bush. We were running up and down Yeoford Drive like madwomen, calling her name. We saw darkness here, moonlight there, heard silence everywhere: but no toddlers.