Page critique 10/5/23

[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.

Title: Solomon Lin and the Sorcerer's Kingdom
Genre: Middle Grade Fantasy

People always asked Solomon how his parents chose his name, but it was Nai Nai who’d decided on the name Solomon.

Mum and Dad thought it was a terrible name, but they’d nodded and smiled at Nai Nai because they’d thought they were going to have a girl, and because Nai Nai was “as stubborn as a mule,” according to Mum. So when a boy came out instead, they hadn’t any choice. Down in the birth registry it went. Solomon Lin.

This saddled Solomon with unwanted expectations. Every year when they drove up hilly, winding roads lined with two-storey houses to visit Nai Nai, Solomon was told the same thing.

“You’ll grow up wise,” Nai Nai would declare, sitting on flat faded cushions in her favourite bamboo armchair and gripping Solomon’s chin between her bony fingers. “You’ll grow up wise and good, just like King Solomon.”

Behind the chair Mum would roll her eyes and mouth the words along with her, and Dad would give Mum a reproving look.

Solomon didn’t feel very wise, though he didn’t say so. But then Solomon never said much of anything. “Very quiet,” was how his teachers described him in end of year reports, along with “mature for his age”, under a low mark for class participation. His art teacher always wrote the same thing, in her forceful capital letters and purple pen:

NEEDS TO EXPRESS HIMSELF MORE. SOMETIMES I FORGET WHAT HIS VOICE SOUNDS LIKE!

The letters got a little larger each year.