Feedback from Miss Snark on my 750 words (First pages)
Miss Snark's feedback:
Splat.
Been here, seen this.
I challenge anyone to not see Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox here. The images and the characters are just too familiar to be interesting to me.
Your hook didn't sound at ALL like this and had some interesting fun ideas. Prune all this stuff away and get to your story--the good stuff.
I'm not altogether surprised. I can see how Mark might seem to be like Christopher Lloyd (he's balding and a bit frantic). But Nathan has no similarities to Michael J. Fox except that he's a teenager. They are meeting each other for the first time, nothing like the movie in that. That's about all I could fit into 750 words except to show some of my writing style.
So what part of my hook was I supposed to cram into 750 words? I could show the dollhouse, and I thought about doing that (it happens later, in chapter 3), but that's pretty much it. This is what I expected given that I could only include 750 words.
Other readers' feedback on my 750 words
The reader's comment about including Nathan when I made no mention of him in my hook is ridiculous. So you can't include a character in the 750 words if you don't mention him in the hook? Nathan is a minor character, serving only as someone for Mark to speak to on occasion. A foil, basically. You don't put minor characters in hooks.
I hope the participants in this exercise keep in mind the source when they read these other anonymous comments and not get too upset about them. I find most of them interesting but not that helpful. This is why I don't participate in writing groups. 50% just want to hear themselves talk. 45% try to give feedback but aren't knowledgeable in your genre, so they have no idea how the story starts, what detail/plot to include at what point in the story. And they frequently are too serious to even think about humor. The last 5% have some knowledge and try to give helpful feedback. Of those, very few have much of a sense of humor.
That said, none of the comments above (two so far) were rude or anything. I very much appreciate the feedback.
Anyway, I do think I will add something about Nathan's laziness and marijuana habit, and maybe alter Mark's appearance. I see no reason to alter it any more for the sake of an exercise.
Miss Snark emailed me later with this:
Thanks yet again to Miss Snark for her efforts.
Splat.
Been here, seen this.
I challenge anyone to not see Christopher Lloyd and Michael J. Fox here. The images and the characters are just too familiar to be interesting to me.
Your hook didn't sound at ALL like this and had some interesting fun ideas. Prune all this stuff away and get to your story--the good stuff.
I'm not altogether surprised. I can see how Mark might seem to be like Christopher Lloyd (he's balding and a bit frantic). But Nathan has no similarities to Michael J. Fox except that he's a teenager. They are meeting each other for the first time, nothing like the movie in that. That's about all I could fit into 750 words except to show some of my writing style.
So what part of my hook was I supposed to cram into 750 words? I could show the dollhouse, and I thought about doing that (it happens later, in chapter 3), but that's pretty much it. This is what I expected given that I could only include 750 words.
Other readers' feedback on my 750 words
The reader's comment about including Nathan when I made no mention of him in my hook is ridiculous. So you can't include a character in the 750 words if you don't mention him in the hook? Nathan is a minor character, serving only as someone for Mark to speak to on occasion. A foil, basically. You don't put minor characters in hooks.
I hope the participants in this exercise keep in mind the source when they read these other anonymous comments and not get too upset about them. I find most of them interesting but not that helpful. This is why I don't participate in writing groups. 50% just want to hear themselves talk. 45% try to give feedback but aren't knowledgeable in your genre, so they have no idea how the story starts, what detail/plot to include at what point in the story. And they frequently are too serious to even think about humor. The last 5% have some knowledge and try to give helpful feedback. Of those, very few have much of a sense of humor.
That said, none of the comments above (two so far) were rude or anything. I very much appreciate the feedback.
Anyway, I do think I will add something about Nathan's laziness and marijuana habit, and maybe alter Mark's appearance. I see no reason to alter it any more for the sake of an exercise.
Miss Snark emailed me later with this:
Round 2 is up on the blog.
It's pure Snark-brutal to the core.
I respect your willingness to allow us all to learn from this.
Thank you!
MS
Thanks yet again to Miss Snark for her efforts.
posted by JohnR at
12:57 PM
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