First scenes have to do a lot of things: Introduce the protagonist, the mood, the setting, and the most important characters as community; set them in motion, in action; introduce conflict . . . it’s a lot.
I’ve also come to believe that scenes should be shorter than 2000 words. That’s not a writing rule, that’s more to keep me from babbling. Early scenes might hit 2500 words, but that’s a lot. You don’t want people yawning.
But after you’ve rewritten a scene twenty or forty times, it becomes impossible to tell if it’s good or if it’s garbage. Then you want feedback from the kind of people who post in This is a Good Book Thursday weekly. That would be you.
So here’s the first scene of Arresting Anna. What I need to know is:
What’s confusing?
Where does it drag?
What should be cut?
What must be kept?
Feel no need to be tactful. I need all the truth I can get these days.
ANNA
Chapter One
I woke up on Saturday morning because my rescue dog, Johnny, a dachshund-chihuahua mix, was making a commotion because my mother, Lucianna, an Italian-American mix, was standing at the foot of my bed in her pool house where I lived, making kissy noises and saying, “There’s my beautiful baby!”
She was talking to the dog, of course.
I grabbed my catseye glasses—catseyes are my faves, especially if there are rhinestones in the frames—from the counter behind my bed to see Johnny making a happy fuss because, even though my mother had been adamant six months ago about me not getting a rescue dog—“awful, yappy, dirty sonsabitches”—the first time she saw Johnny’s long, pale, tan little body with its random puffs of white fur and his bat-like ears and curly tail, she fell hard, and now she and Johnny were devoted to each other, in no small part because she carried treats for him at all times and told him that he was the best boy who ever lived.
Johnny was easy.
I let my head fall back on my pillow and once again contemplated moving somewhere else, only not really. My mother’s pool house is close to my work, I can live here for free, and there’s a pool outside my front door.
“Get up, Annie,” my mother said as she scratched Johnny behind the ears and made him close his eyes in ecstasy.
“Go away and let me sleep.” I took off my glasses and rolled over onto my side. “I had a bad night last night. I’ll work late tonight to make up for going in late.”
(Yes, I work weekends because that’s when we get most of our foot traffic, scant as it is at the Keppler Museum.)
My mother huffed. “You can’t stay late at work tonight. You have a date.”
“I do not have a date.” I did not tell her that Jason, my significant other, was the reason for my bad evening. He and I had had an argument because I’d been bringing Johnny to work with me for the past six months where he was now practically the museum mascot. People who came to the museum knew him by name. They couldn’t remember my name, but Johnny they knew. And Jason actually wanted me to get rid of this dog permanently. It finally culminated in him saying, “You have to choose, Anna. It’s me or the dog,” and me saying, “It’s the dog.”
“Oliver Olivero,” my mother said. “I talked to your Aunt Paulina, and he’s picking you up at eight.”
“No, he is not,” I said.
“Annie,” my mother began.
“One,” I said, staring at the ceiling, “he’s my cousin and a man who has shown no interest in me.”
“Second cousin,” my mother said.
“Two,” I said, “I’m not sure what the state of my relationship is with Jason.”
“Jason is a putz who will never marry you,” my mother said.
“Three, Oliver tells everyone he meets that he’s so good in bed that every woman he sleeps with shouts out his initials.”
“That’s possible,” my mother said, looking unsure for the first time. “You like him. You should at least give him a chance.”
“Why are you doing this?” I said, since my mother had never favored Oliver above any of my other cousins of various distances.
“You should be married,” my mother said. “You’re thirty-three, it’s time you got serious about life. Have somebody to take care of you. Give me grandkids. I won’t be here forever, you know.”
That made me sit up and Johnny stop yapping. “You’re fifty-two. You’re not going to die any time soon unless there’s something you’re not telling me. Are you sick?”
My mother pulled back. “No. Why? Do I look bad?” She picked up Johnny and went to check out her perfect black updo in the mirror I had on the back wall. “What? What do you see?”
I put my head in my hands. “Let’s take this from the top. I’m thirty-three, I’m healthy, and I’m employed, so I’m not exactly a child who’s dependent on other people. What is this sudden need to marry me off?”
“It’s time,” she said, peering in the mirror to make sure every hair was in place and her make-up was flawless, which of course, it was. Johnny peered with her, probably wondering who that handsome dog looking back at him was. “Oliver is a good boy, steady, good income, nice-looking—”
“I don’t want to get married.” I got out of bed, too awake now to fall back asleep. “Also, Oliver runs a chop shop.”
“He runs a car repair business,” my mother said. “Very profitable.”
I gave up. “I am going to get ready for work now. You could walk Johnny for me while I dress.”
“Of course, anything for my little angel,” my mother said, making more kissy noises at my dog, which was all a sham because the most Johnny was going to get was a swift stroll to the gate and back. My mother does not embrace exercise. She says it makes her sweat. I told her that real women don’t sweat, they glow. She told me to stop reading those commie feminist magazines.
When she had once more listed Oliver’s assets, pointed out again that Jason would never marry me, and waxed rhapsodic about how great grandkids would be (which was a crock, she was not a kid person), she and Johnny left. I brushed my teeth and dealt with the frizz in my hair and ignored make-up because it wasn’t like I was going to be seeing people.
Of course, I was going to be seeing some people, but they were my museum people. I saw them five days a week. They were used to the real me. Also, I was going to be lying low because I definitely did not want to waste time arguing with anybody or make waves of any kind. I had bigger fish to fry.
I needed to save my museum.
Look, it was a nice little museum, it just wasn’t . . . great. It needed work. Vera Keppler, the Keppler Foundation chair, was always on the verge of closing it because Thomas Keppler, her little brother and the Keppler Museum president known to all as TK, had a long history of getting swindled by buying fakes. I’d talked her out of it before when I was an intern there by saying that the museum needed to offer classes to make its focus education, always popular, and that had actually worked and had gotten me a job, but since then TK had gotten so bad with the fakes that Vera refused to let him buy art and threatened to shut us down again (the last time it had been a dozen life size ceramic Chinese soldiers with spears that turned out to be made of very heavy papier mache and not part of the famous Terracotta Army as TK had been told), so I had promised her that I had an idea that would turn everything around again if she just gave me time.
No, I didn’t have an idea, I just needed time to think of one.
Look, the museum was a great job for me. They didn’t care what I taught in my art classes there as long as nobody complained, so I had a lot of freedom. In fact, as long as I stayed away from politics and stopped twelve-year-olds from painting nudes (Barry Sanderson had a thing for boobs), nobody cared. And I loved teaching art. Plus, I got to work with my best friend, Gracie Kwan, our tech queen, and I was going out with Jason Lassiter, the museum manager, so it was pretty much the center of my existence.
But I was running out of time to come up with that brilliant idea.
I finished dressing in what I considered my work clothes: a sweater set that had seen some action—children are notorious for being sloppy with art—and a pencil skirt that gave the illusion of business wear. Today’s armor was a green merino cardigan and shell with plain red edging and a tasteful blotch of India ink on the hem where Barry Sanderson had turned around just as I looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing and hit me with his brush.
You teach art, these things happen.
I corralled my hair into my favorite, white-flowered clip and picked up my grandma’s purse, another point of contention between Mama and me. “Why are you still carrying that old thing,” she’d say almost daily. “I’ll buy you a new one.” And I’d tell her it was vintage leather and a very good bag—it was Prada—and did not tell her that I loved it, in part because it still had many of the things my grandmother had kept in it, like the bag of M&Ms from 2005 (candy that she’d kept for me) and her small hairbrush and her beaded coin purse with quarters and her hammerless snub-nose .38 caliber revolver with the specially made blue contoured grip Grandpa had given her . . . I still missed my grandma a lot. My grandpa had given me her handbag at her funeral, telling me she wanted me to have it, and I’d cried all over him because she’d remembered how much I’d loved it. And how much I loved her. I was keeping it.
I met my mother and Johnny outside by my sixteen-year-old Prius, another vintage possession of mine that made my mother nuts. “Tell Oliver not to be here or you’ll be dating him,” I told her, put Johnny in his car seat and my bag on the floor, shut the door on my mother’s protests, pulled around to the front of the house, hit the button on my phone to open the gates, and escaped into the outside world, in this case the lovely little river town of Keppler, New Jersey.
Instantly, it was more peaceful. Yes, there was construction noise and horns honking, but none of it was about me.
Well, it wasn’t about me until I stopped my car in the middle of the street to look at the graffiti on the side of the Keppler Town Hall, which was your basic one-story brick abomination from the seventies. It had one blank wall that had been painted white but was now covered with a spray painted, stenciled mural of a rabbit, a parrot, and a cat, all standing around a pile of burning books, toasting marshmallows over the flaming literature and laughing evilly. In the bottom right corner was a signature: Joan of Art.
Johnny put his feet on the edge of the window and looked out and then back at me and whined.
“I know,” I told him. “What the hell was Gracie thinking?”
Actually, I knew what Gracie had been thinking. The mural was because three members of our town council had been trying to ban LGBTQ books to “protect the children,” and they’d organized some irate homophobic mothers to go in, check out those books, and not return them. Those members were Harold O’Hare, Ursula McGraw, and Kitty Prescott. Yeah, the hare, the macaw, and the cat.
I’d thought that sketch was pretty funny when I’d drawn it. Then I’d thrown it out, and Gracie had evidently pulled it out, cut the stencil, and spray-painted the damn mural from it.
As I was watching, a guy in coveralls arrived with a roller and a bucket of white paint and began to lazily obliterate the mural, which was a shame because Gracie had done a good job. Johnny barked at him, and we’d already caused enough notice by parking in the middle of the street, so I put the car in gear and drove to the museum to confront my best friend who was using my secret identity without permission.
So first Jason Lassiter being anti-dog, then Oliver Olivero and my mother fixating on marriage (for me, not her), and now Gracie drawing attention to Joan of Art. And people wonder why I play it safe.
Because everybody around me is nuts, that’s why.
94 Responses
I liked it, it made me laugh out loud twice (Oliver’s girlfriends calling his initials, Barry Sanderson having a thing for boobs). Also liked the emotion of the handbag and the car; the mother’s comments about feminist magazines; the mural and the reason behind it. Really loved that Johnny is in it 😍
It sets the scene nicely and introduces all the characters and the setting whilst leaving her motives (apart from keeping it all going) out there to come.
Already really dislike Jason A LOT, Oliver isn’t looking too good either, nor her mother really, though mother’s are tricky!
The only thing I would really cut is the bit about the cat’s eyes glasses – it doesn’t add anything given that you describe her clothes later – it feels odd in that section.
I wanted to keep reading.
Having read all the comments, I have removed the catseye glasses.
I stumbled over the glasses, too – it seemed too self-conscious of her – and distracted – in that moment.
That was a lot of fun! I agree with Christine that the glasses bit didn’t flow. Maybe the frames could have been Grandma’s as well and go with the bag stuff?
I also appreciate the part about the lgbtq books, having fought that fight. We also had to go through them regularly because a local church would stuff pamphlets and bookmarks in them and leave stuff on the desks in the public areas. I had a regular religious materials sweep… They would also take them off the shelves and hide them behind the furniture… Unrelated, but I also had to relocate a bunch of painted rocks. Leaving them on the edge of a free standing staircase was a bad idea.
I loved it, the characters are all so deftly defined and the set-up very engaging. I cannot wait to see the rest of the book.
I disagree with the suggestion in the previous comment – I read the character much more clearly from the description of the glasses than from the clothes description!
I’m with you. The glasses say Character.
I very much liked it all, and happy to get the dog in right from the start! Slightly confusing element was her mother calling Jason a putz: had to go back and check (sure enough her mother is Italian-American), so it seemed a bit confusing that she’s using Yiddish to describe him.
Huh. I had something about that in there. I must have cut it. Good catch.
I wouldn’t myself use putz, but maybe I would if I lived in parts of NJ heavily influenced by Jewish culture. However, I would certainly use some other bits of Yiddish-derived slang such as schmooze despite not having even met any obvious Jews until college.
It’s basically great. There are some sentences that run on too long and should be broken into two. You could put a period in the first sentence after commotion and take out because.
You could delete “from the counter behind my bed” because who cares where the glasses are? And then break the rest of that sentence by putting a period after fuss, taking out “because, even though” and putting another period after sonsabitches.
Farther down the sentence starting awith “I talked her out of it” should be broken into several parts. You could put a period after popular, take out and put another period after job, put a period after again, take out the parens and put another period after army and delete “as TK had been told”. I also think you could delete “where Barry Sanderson had turned around just as I looked over his shoulder to see what he was doing and hit me with his brush.”
Shouldn’t it be parents not mothers?
Also I’m not convinced either that she’s playing it safe or that others around her are nuts yet. Maybe that whole para goes later ?
I feel long sentences are part of the character, and that first sentence could use another “because.”
I think you don’t need to say that her mom was against her getting a rescue dog. Her mom should be against her getting any dog.
I also think you don’t need to say that Johnny is a dachshund/chihuahua cross. Dachshund mix would be enough, I think. (I have a mixed breed and I just choose the most dominant (in appearance) breed and add mix to that.) A lot of people don’t care about dogs, and it gets to be too much.
I’m not sure, Christine, I quite liked how she equated Johnny’s mixed heritage with her mothers.
Cutting the “rescue.”
Keeping the “mix.”
If you are going to reference the dominant breed, then it should be a chihuahua mix, because real life Johnny is much more chihuahua than dachshund.
I don’t know on my first time reading it. Are you writing a book?
🤣
oh, the shade of it all.
Me? NO.
Take that, Bob.
Okay, you are a brilliant, funny, imaginative author. This has been established, and is clearly evident in this first chapter.
I have questions, which I’m sure would be answered in following chapters.
But my main impression, for which I apologize in advance, is that it feels like the details, her running commentary, are getting in the way of the plot development. Her internal monologue gives us a hundred answers before we realize that we have more in-depth questions, and made me (maybe only me) feel impatient about us moving forward.
The frenetic pace possibly mirrors her life being out of control (like the asthma inhaler in Faking It), but it’s also kind of exhausting.
Mentioning things but not explaining all of them creates curiosity, and finding out the layers of truth is so gratifying (Like in Welcome to Temptation). Here, many, many details are given up all at once—we get a good picture but too much information. (Again, only my opinion, and I’m sorry.)
If I were your editor, I would ask you to slow it down just a bit, simplify it just a bit, to allow the reader to sink into the story like it was quicksand.
(One tiny example: maybe we don’t need to know about the white flower hair clip in chapter one; maybe it becomes important in chapter three. In which case knowing about it now is slowing us down.)
THAT’s what I was wondering.
Also never apologize if somebody has asked for a critique and you’re following through. You’re HELPING even if I don’t agree. Thank you.
On first impression, I generally agree with gcharbonnet.
I do, too. My first impression was “I get it already” about not wanting to go on a date with Oliver.
Details are so important, since they make moments real. On the other hand, too many details can be overwhelming. The question is, which details enhance the moment?
The details about the grandmother’s purse and what’s in it have to stay. That part is great. So is the part about the mural and how it was created. I love that Johnny is in the story, and he’s well-portrayed here.
I like the ending about her playing it safe and everyone around her being nuts. Rather than change it or move it, I think you might want to see about tweaking what comes earlier so she looks more like she’s playing it safe and the people around her look nuttier. (Delete the unusual glasses and tweak her thoughts about her mother so the point is she’s utty? Maybe point out that Oliver is nutty, or that Jason is nutty to think she’d choose him over the dog?)
Anna doesn’t think her mother is nutty, and neither do I. Colorful, yes.
Oliver isn’t nuts, either. And Jason has good reason to assume she’ll go along with the dog; she’s gone along with everything else.
The thing I’m hoping stands out on later re-reads is that Anna brought all of this on herself by playing it safe. These people aren’t being mean to her, they’re acting based on her actions in the past. Which I don’t want in the first read, I want the reader getting as fed up as Anna is. It’s after the book is done and they come back for a reread that I want that to be there in the subtext.
Mission accomplished if that is what you wanted me to read it. I didn’t mind the speed of it either – she wanted to escape her mother’s presence and get to a safer place, and having met her mother I did too.
Referencing your comment, “The thing I’m hoping stands out on later re-reads is that Anna brought all of this on herself by playing it safe”, could you have her self reflect that thought at the end of the chapter tied into the sentence, “Because everybody around me is nuts, that’s why.”
That sets the reader up for thinking she is going to make changes in her life… which having read every single one of your books, is a common theme! 😁💚
I really don’t want to lampshade it. I try to make the scenes something to unpack. They have to work perfectly well on the surface, but if there’s stuff there that readers can get by digging later, that makes for a better re-reading experience. I think.
I loved it. The sentence about her mom talking to the dog made me laugh. I think of SMALL dogs as being yappy, etc., Not rescue dogs. Who has a shelf behind their bed? Was it a headboard with a shelf? Very distracting.
That discussion with Jason about the dog brought back memories of “While you were Sleeping” and the discussion with her landlord’s useless son about the brother of the guy Sandra Bullock rescued from the subway tracks, who seemed to like her. Son: “It’s either me or him”. Response: “Him”.
Whoa. thirty-three. Her “Jesus year”!
Why doesn’t she wear an artist’s smock or apron? Or one of her grandpa’s old shirts? That makes no sense, especially around kids.
When it comes to your writing, it’s hard to be critical in any form. I just want to read more. (Holding out empty bowl. “May I have more?”)
Come back on Friday. You can meet Nate.
YAY!
I agree with you except about the clothes. I teach and am constantly coming home with paint on my clothes but don’t wear an apron or smock either. I think that tells us something about Anna.
Since you ask …
unless Anna’s marital status and Oliver the mechanic are actual plot points, I’d scrap the whole conversation about her mother trying to set her up with her cousin for no good reason. That’s a long passage and doesn’t tell us anything about Anna except that she’s pretty sure she doesn’t want kids. We could get her mother’s lack of boundaries from a much shorter exchange. I mean, barging into the pool house uninvited kind of says it all.
Would agree re: a few descriptive details too many. I would have liked some small hint about why (aside from money) Anna is living in her mother’s pool house.
I felt I could have learned more about Anna and what seems to be the real plot, i.e. chicanery at the museum, through a conversation between her and her friend Grace who is much more interesting than Oliver or Jason. 🙂
Also …”playing it safe” didn’t quite ring true given Anna was apparently sleeping with her boss in an already-unstable employment situation!
All that said, can’t wait to read the whole thing, carry on!
A properly aimed swipe might manage to come in below the smock. Also, if India ink is involved, these are presumably fairly old kids (confirmed by the interest in breasts), and splatter precautions might be less than in lower grades. I can’t remember what clothing protection if any we used in my last art class in 8th grade, although I do recall smocks early on.
Patrick, one of my sons was fixated on breasts as a very young child. I blamed it on having to wean him too soon. That whole sentence about the ink is just confusing, all right.
I taught art to junior high kids for ten years. I have the ink stained, paint stained, blood stained garments to prove it.
They’re explicitly said to be 12-year-olds. What I get for reading too fast!
Marital status and Oliver are plot points and they’ll be front and center, at least through this first book.
Anna lists three reasons she’s living in the pool house.
Conversation with Gracie is coming up in Scene Three.
Technically, Jason is a co-worker; her boss shows up in Scene Three and she is not sleeping with him. But you can’t tell that from this scene, so yeah, I have to fix that.
Well, I think the playing it safe part of dating someone you work with is that it is convenient and easy to fall into. You know them, they know you, you see them all the time and you always have work to talk about so you don’t have to put yourself out there to get to know someone from scratch. Of course it can go very wrong very quickly and then you are left with a whole boatload of consequences, but it is a sort of inertia style of decision making which is where I think Anna is at in her life? With the glasses, the purse and the dog being hints at the person she is suppressing.
For the rest, I think it’s more about tone than information. It’s hard to be impartial I think because I know the way Jenny’s mother/daughter relationships tend to go, which is complicated but still loving but I read this interchange as her mother being worried about her daughter which lead me to read Anna as being stuck in her life. I think that if we started getting to know her in a scene with her friend we would get a more proactive version of Anna and we need the more passive one first to accurately get a sense of her character arch?
This reminds me of the time I stupidly wrote a depressed heroine. If she’s depressed, you have to start with that as a baseline, and a scene with a depressed PoV character is . . . depressing. Took me forever to get that right. Never again.
So I think repressed may be the same thing here. I just have to make sure that she’s not so repressed that she’s flat on the page.
I think that first paragraph is awkward. Too much of a run-on, and as other’s mentioned, don’t care about the glasses or where they are. And maybe too much repeating about her mother. We got it the first couple of times. Otherwise just lovely.
I felt like it’s trying to do too much all at once. Like choose a few character or plot points you need right now.
Lives with Mom, great dog, broke up boyfriend/boss, book ban mural.
Do we need Grandma’s purse right now? Or the glasses? Can we have a direct confrontation with Mom about the handbag later instead of a remembered one? Do we need to hear about date with Oliver before he shows up later?
Good questions.
I wanted it to feel like too much for Anna, not the reader.
Grandma’s purse is important, but yeah, maybe later.
But yeah the whole Oliver bit is important and needs to be there, if only as a concrete example of what Lucianna/Mom is doing.
I do like this, and agree about the glasses.
I stumbled in the first paragraph with two becauses in the same sentence.
I like the emotion of the handbag, but there’s a lot in that paragraph. It was grandma’s, she loved me and wanted me to have it after her death. Do I need to know about the other stuff in there right now? Or can she be searching in her bag some time in the future and have stuff spill out? I’m assuming the gun is going to come into play but the other stuff – are we to equate the old M&Ms and her hairbrush with the gun?
For the most part this is a great introduction. We meet Anna, Johnny, Anna’s mom and we’ve heard about others like the museum folks, her cousin, her best friend and soon to be ex boyfriend. We have several conflicts in place and we’re eager to find out how she deals with them.
Yeah, I may have to move the handbag later. It’s really important so it has to be in there, but the scene’s too long.
That first sentence deserves another “because” for the rhythm. I expected one to show up and now am disappointed for its lack.
I, (like, I suspect, most of your male readers, if that’s a significant proportion) didn’t even know what cat’s eye glasses were (by name, I’d certainly seen them) and I stopped to look them up, which certainly broke the pacing. The important thing here is that they’re glasses and Anna can’t see clearly without them, so that she automatically reaches for them when waking up.
I agree.
I like knowing that she wears 1950s cat’s eye glasses with rhinestones. Maybe it’s the reseller in me, but it tells me that Anna is not entirely practical. Yes, she wears stained and uninspired clothes, but she let herself go on the glasses, refurbishing something vintage or choosing a modern reproduction of something highly stylized and whimsical over plain frames. I think it is a good detail about her, giving us a hit to her more wild artistic side. It’s just the placement/flow/wording that I was questioning.
Are the glasses like the shoes in Bet Me?
The glasses are character and the only place she’s really flamboyant, but she also needs them. So I was thinking the “catseye” part could go, but that’s the character part.
Writing is hard, she whined.
Whereas I had to look up ‘sweater set’ – wasn’t sure whether it meant sweatpants and sweatshirt or twinset. But I’m used to having to look up or guess American references; this is not a criticism.
I didn’t pick up on the glasses being functional/absolutely necessary at all.
I just saw an article about B12 deficiency, which can cause what we are calling “brain fog”. Here’s a link: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/vitamin-b12-deficiency-anemia
I take a B vitamin supplement, because plants don’t contribute B vitamins, and I mostly eat plant’ based foods. I wonder if this could be part of your problem, Jenny?
Also, as we get older, some of us stop absorbing B12 from food, and have to have monthly shots. Ask me how I know.
Not to pile on (which autocorrected to puke on – it has been a trying weekend!), but for me we get going at “get up, Annie.” And the glasses should maybe come later – Jason hates them and wants more modern frames, but they are something Annie loves that he keeps trying to mold into HIS idea of a girlfriend and so on.
(Because Jason is obviously a drip.)
You know, Jason has good reason to ask her to get rid of the dog. She always goes along with what he says because it’s easiest. He really thinks she’ll choose him.
This get rid of the dog trope reminds me of Crazy for You. What is it with guys who don’t want dogs???
Also, I don’t care about the glasses, but as a retired librarian, I worry about the twinset. Too single-lady-librarian stereotype and not reflective of current dress at my library. The women who work there are even tattooed. The horror!
Her mother buys them for her. Path of least resistance.
Okay, the catseye glasses go; it’s practically unanimous.
No, it isn’t.
I agree about the glasses. Also, Checkov’s Handbag? “If you place a gun in the handbag in the first act…”
“Leave the gun. Take the Cannoli,” comes to mind. LOL
Good call, Gary.
I kind of agree about the cats-eye glasses, but if Anna works with art, her vision problems need to be established early on. I feel that the whole handbag thing is probably a plot-point. In fact the grandfather giving it to her right at the funeral makes me suspect there’s something in it Anna hasn’t found yet. Also I loved that whole paragraph.
However, there’s just too much stuff. It doesn’t move forward. (Not that I, the passionate fan of Too Much World Building, would actually complain.)
Yeah. The handbag goes to Scene Three.
Which you all can read when the book comes out (g).
At least, we got a preview.
Boo.
I loved it. I will read it. My only comment is that some of the sentences were too run-on. I kept losing the thread and had to go back and re-read the line because I got lost.
I have a hard time picturing the “counter behind my bed.” I gather that some artsy beds have some such structure, or is it pool house furniture that the bed happens to be shoved against? In any case, if Anna can put her glasses back on it again and “roll over onto [her] side” without sitting up, it sounds too low to be a safe place to leave her glasses at night. The traditional nightstand or improvised equivalent would be easier to reach while lying in bed and safer from knocking things off.
Wasn’t Arresting Anna in third person in an earlier draft? Possibly you need it to be in first person for reasons later on, but I think third person would work better if this scene were the whole novel. (I would not shift persons between scenes, as is occasionally done. That never works that I have seen.). I think there’s way too much background information wedged into this scene, but that third person would bear a higher fraction of it than will first person.
I did like the way that the .38 revolver is casually mentioned after the beaded coin purse. Somewhat later we find we’re in NJ. It would be different in Texas, but in NJ the sentimental attitude toward the pistol, which Anna is routinely carrying despite its weight, plus the Italian ancestry, suggests she’s from a mob family despite her innocent job. But we get only that one hint so far. (If we’re into ethnic territory, it’s interesting that the homophobic council members have respectively Irish, Irish or Scottish, and English surnames, although I had always figured that the mob tended toward cultural conservatism.)
Actually, if Olivero really is running a chop shop, that’s a second hint that Anna is from a mob family. .
On thinking about the confrontation between Anna and boyfriend, maybe this is a scene we should see and not be told about ?
Nope. If we play it in scene then the book has a very slow start, and that relationship takes up too much page real estate.
Normally, I want everything played in scene, but if I can get the basics down in a couple of sentences and it’s not an important event, then that scene will just clog the book’s flow.
Too much background information given in long, rhythmic, idiosyncratic thought are a chief reason I read writer Jennifer Crusie. I vote to keep the cat’s-eye glasses frames, the dog of dachshund-chihuahua mix, the sentimental handbag with all its objects–just everything. But I have always loved the “just everything” of Jennifer Crusie novels. The first sentence begs for another “because.”
Spot on. I’m a reader too. I love classic Crusie and her unique style of writing. It was sheer joy to be catapulted into the mental chaos and general mayhem of the first chapter because, ultimately, I trust that all will be resolved in the end.
I loved it, completely agree with Theodora .As a reader not writer I want as much information as you can get away with.Waiting impatiently for more.
I love that she chooses the dog over Jason after his ultimatum.
Well, duh. Love me, love my dog.
I’m afraid I’m too tired to be helpful. I just felt there were a lot of diverse plot points to take in, and I’d’ve liked to feel more of an emotional connection to Anna.
That first sentence is a paragraph I got lost in. Love the glasses, but I did stumble on catseye because is it “catseye” or “cats eye” or…whatever.
But, I got the ick at second cousin. That is wayyyyy too close. And I’m from Kentucky. They are in New Jersey. Way to close.
Your first scenes always read as a bit of a full out sprint, but, as everyone said there’s too much stuff and not enough crunch. So, you should fix and let us see it again. 😉
She should have absolutely chosen the dog. duh.
Second cousins are sometimes made synonymous with first cousins once removed, but actual second cousins by the official definition share only great-grandparents and those are marriageable even in the notoriously sticky Catholic Church since Vatican II.
Really, it’s not a problem.
Don’t worry about the first cousin. Anna feels the same way, and it turns out so does Oliver. No worries.
Jenny, I love you and I would never want to hurt your feelings, but this intro made me dislike the character. Pencil skirt to TEACH ART to CHILDREN + goofy glasses + odd hair clip + vintage purse tells me that this person is screaming “look at me! Look at me!” This is an exhausting person and I don’t want to know her.
In Welcome to Temptation, the silly sunglasses weren’t a problem because 1) Amy is a tertiary character; 2) Amy is MEANT to be a little immature and a little exhausting; and 3) the sunglasses are the only piece of goofy attire we read about.
What I really, really don’t get is the pencil skirt. No one wears them to work anymore, not even to job interviews. Why would a character committed to zany apparel wear something so formal and impractical?
Second to that is the purse. Who carries one? Why would an artist/art teacher insist on one instead of a backpack, cross-body bag, or pockets?
Rose in Rocky Start wears loose dresses with aprons over them and no bra underneath. But that works because she explains that the need for comfort with the dresses and the practicality of the aprons (and not the minute we meet her). Here, we have to imagine the reasons, and nothing sells the idea that we might agree with her choices.
Please don’t hate me. I can’t wait for this book to come out and I wish you only good things.
I do not hate anybody who takes the time to comment on my stuff, I’m just grateful.
You should have seen what I wore to teach art to children (g).
I carry a purse. Admittedly, it’s a large one, so practically a backpack. But still a purse.
I carry a purse, too. It’s pale blue and holds two bottles of water, a lot of pens, a pad of paper, my inhaler, my wallet, my glasses, my sunglasses . . . I could go on but basically, I want my purse not a backpack. You lose things in a backpack.
Brilliant as ever. You absolutely nailed it! I can’t wait to read the rest.
I think because I have read the past posts on this book from years ago, I didn’t love this scene. I think my challenge with the scene is that this is probably the appropriate place to start the book, and not the scene where Anna walks up to Nate in her sweater set and asks him to have sex with her. However, that’s where I want the book to start. Also, having read the past posts on this, I totally see the need for the gun in the handbag. I do love the details of G’ma’s handbag – they got me emotionally.
There were a lot of details in this opening scene but you did tell us all that you’re trying to accomplish, which is A LOT. I have had my mother wake me up when I’m already an adult and want to sleep in, so I find that part extra annoying. Totally on Anna’s side. Speaking of sides, perhaps the glasses are on a table beside her bed instead of behind it? I think I’m with Patrick on this one. Although I have had a headboard with shelving that would work. I do have a picture of her place in my head from when Nate first saw it. I suspect it’s changed.
I’m stumbling over how to pronounce Olivero. Is it Oliver-o, Oli-vero, Olive-ro? I’m sure there’s a reason Oliver’s parents were cruel to him by giving him this name, and he’s embraced it. I’m hoping we don’t see his last name often in the book.
Oh, I also appreciated the set up for the fake art.
And the action I thought the sweater set had seen had nothing to do with children and stains, but everything to do with her getting physical with a person. Perhaps in later chapters.
Too much stuff and description, not enough action. I’m not sure yet if these people are interesting or likeable.
Sorry, late to the party… I liked it, I liked the details and the description and the setup.
Just a couple of things… a bag of M&Ms since 2005? Whatever about the chocolate surviving, the plastic of the bag would disintegrate. Anyway, that bit took me out of the story. I don’t know what year it is (and may have missed critical references, I was reading quickly), but I was distracted by someone keeping M&Ms for 20 years. Maybe she didn’t keep them but it seemed like that to me.
Also while I like the grafitti bit, I thought there was too much info and at the same time not enough (either it should be a glancing thing without explanation or have more detail). It would be nice to have some more about colour and the actual animals (like how they were drawn, furry, cartoonish, life like, expressions etc). Also a lot of info about Grace and the drawing, but again, either more or less would work well so it would feel less rushed.
I assume it will be important in future, and I was conscious she was holding the traffic up, but if there was a blockage (eg the guy with the ladder who was going to paint it out being badly parked or leaving something in the road) there might be more time for her to look at it and see the detail or maybe she could see it another time (taking Johnny for a quick walk so he could pee).
Very late to the party, but I keep thinking of two things you’ve taught us about writing:
– “Because the reader needs to know” isn’t enough to justify adding details; they need to advance the story.
– Start where the trouble starts.
To me, the trouble starts when she’s driving to work (her ordinary day) and spots the mural (her world about to change).
Anyhow, it does read like you’re having fun–I hope you are!