Wednesday, December 14, 2011

December Buyer's Remorse #11

TITLE: Utterance
GENRE: Young Adult Fiction

Nat felt the cat's warm face pressed up against her neck, urging her to wake up. Gray eyes and gray fur made Storm appear suspicious even when she was trying to seem playful. Of course, in this case, she wasn't being playful, Nat thought. She was being annoying.

"I'm up, I'm up." Nat mumbled, "Get off of me." She pushed the feline nuisance aside and rolled onto her back. She wasn't thrilled about being woken up, but was grateful to have someone around who replaced the shrieking beep of her alarm clock.

Was it the first day already? The summer had felt so long while it was happening, but now Nat felt the pang that came with the first day of school. Her final year of high school, the last 9 months that she couldn't wait to be done with. Get out of bed, she thought. With each passing second, you're getting later and later. You can't skip a shower. You can't skip doing your hair on the first day. You'll regret looking like a cat lady at 17. You need to feed Storm.

Her obligation to her housemate decided it. She sat up, wishing she could wear her comforter to class. "Come on, Storm. Gotta do that whole 'Breakfast of Champions' thing today, at least."
Storm followed her down the stairs into the bright, sunlit kitchen. Nat set a kettle on the stove, poured food into the cat bowl, and read through the emails on her phone. 

4 comments:

  1. I believe the punctuation is off in the dialogue below.

    "I'm up, I'm up." Nat mumbled, "Get off of me."

    I think there should be a comma before Nat, then a period after mumbled.

    This beginning has promise and has me intrigued as to why she despises school so much. Senior year is supposed to be fun and exciting, so something must have happened to make her so cynical. And although I get what you're doing with giving a play by play of her schedule, I'd hope to get into more action/plot soon.

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  2. This could use some tightening and some formatting. Like so--

    Nat felt the cat's warm face pressed up against her neck, urging her to wake up. Gray eyes and gray fur made Storm appear suspicious, even when she was trying to seem playful. Of course, in this case, she was just being annoying.

    "I'm up, I'm up," Nat mumbled. "Get off of me."

    She pushed the feline nuisance aside and rolled onto her back. She wasn't thrilled about being woken up, but was grateful to have someone around who replaced the shrieking beep of her alarm clock.

    Was it the first day of school already? The summer had felt so long while it was happening, but now Nat felt the pang that came with the beginning of the end; her final year of high school, the last 9 months that she couldn't wait to be done with.

    'Get out of bed,' she thought. 'With each passing second, you're getting later and later. You can't skip a shower. You can't skip doing your hair on the first day. You'll regret looking like a cat lady at 17. You need to feed Storm.'

    She sat up, wishing she could wear her comforter to class.

    "Come on, Storm. Gotta do that whole 'Breakfast of Champions' thing today, at least."

    Storm followed her down the stairs and into the bright, sunlit kitchen. Nat set a kettle on the stove, poured food into the cat bowl, and read through the emails on her phone.

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  3. Even though the fact that the cat wakes her up is a little different, there is still that looming theme of 'waking up' which a ton of agents hate.

    You set up her age and her situation (first day of senior year) very skillfully where it doesn't feel like you just dropped them there to inform the reader on purpose.

    "Come on, Storm. Gotta do that whole 'Breakfast of Champions' thing today, at least." => the 'at least' didn't fit to me because she mentions earlier that she is probably going to take a shower and do her hair.

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  4. I like Kimberly's tightening. Makes it much better. I also like your story question of why Nat dislikes school. The word suspicious hits me as wrong. Maybe stern or grim or severe would be better. This is small, but 'turned on her back' made me think of the cat. Could change it to simply 'turned over.' Over all, very nice job.

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