Monday, December 17, 2012

Hangover Round 1 Entry #15

TITLE: HAVEN
GENRE: YA Sci-Fi

On an alien planet called Haven, human refugees fleeing their dying world have been quarantined by the creepily stoic and strange looking Locals. Seventeen-year-old Hope and her ex-boyfriend are among the specimens undergoing mysterious holographic simulations in the Stacks.
 
The walk down the round white tunnel that led to our Stack for the day felt like a slow march toward doom. I knew the other Specs ahead of me and behind me were all feeling the same thing. What would today bring? Sometimes there were repeats. Another tornado hurtling at us at full speed? Or a herd of large, hairy, hump backed beasts that would charge the ten of us any minute?
 
Maybe it would be something simple. A simple session would be good today. Dress us up in funny costumes and play music. They’d done that once. Just to see what we would do. I think that’s what that was… unless we were supposed to do something and we didn’t. Every time, we tried to maintain a team spirit. That was important above all else. Not only because a lot of the Specs thought what I did, that the sessions were a test of some kind. But also because we had to be a team because if it was a bad day in the Stacks, working together was the only way to survive.
 
Someone nudged me from behind and I turned to see Weeks grinning at me from ear to ear. Weeks got his name from parents who’d given in to the doomsday thinking back on Earth, near the end. Some of the kids had names like his now. Days, Weeks, Hours. They’d named their kid after the amount of time they thought they had left. But instead of turning out gloomy and depressed, Weeks was an incontrovertible optimist.

3 comments:

  1. A logline, from my understanding, is to give an idea of what the overall plot will be about. Currently, it sounds more like a set-up to an excerpt from your book, i.e. "In this scene, my protagonist is about to enter an alien experiment." While I have an idea what the set-up for your book is about (and it definitely sounds interesting), I don't know what the actual plot is.

    Is the story about her fight to escape these alien forces? To lead a revolution? To establish a cooperative peace? To reconnect with her ex-boyfriend in a virtual fantasy world? ;-)

    Some of the lines in the opening felt a bit repetitious or unnecessary, while (what seemed to me to be) necessary info was omitted.

    For example, I think your first paragraph could be trimmed down to: "The walk down the round white tunnel that led to our Stack for the day felt like a slow march toward doom. What would today bring? Another tornado hurtling at us at full speed? [INSERT SECOND SCENARIO DESCRIPTION] Or a herd of large, hairy, hump backed beasts that would charge the ten of us any minute?"

    More than that, though, I felt like I was reading an excerpt from later in your book after the scenario had been firmly established. I'm not saying this couldn't be your opening scene, but that a bit of restructuring or additional information about their situation might be needed to make it "feel" like an opening scene.

    As always, this is all just MHO, so please consider or disregard as you see fit.

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  2. You're missing something in your logline. What are Hope's stakes? What are the consequences if she fails to reach her goal?

    I would get rid of some of the introspection in your opening page and show us the world she's living in, instead of just telling us about it. I loved Weeks - very clever!

    Good luck!

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  3. The last paragraph here is the strongest about Weeks--that's really interesting and clever. I'm a bit confused by the first two paragraphs actually. I agree with comments about the logline. Just unsure what this book is about. I know how hard it is to condense it into one or two sentences but I think you need to keep working on this a bit more. Good luck!

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