Name: Melanie Meehan
Genre: Middle Grade Fiction
Title: Dancing in the Rain
When my brother let go of the baseball bat and it boomeranged around home plate before cracking my shin, he saved my life. Thwack against my shin. It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did, but I couldn’t stop the tears from breaking free of my eye walls and streaming down my face.
“What happened?” Max asked from first base. He was oblivious to the fact that the bat he had been wielding had twirled its way right into my leg. In his 7 year-old head, he had finally hit the ball against all of his older cousins and father. When batters hit, they throw their bat behind them and race for the base.
The game had stopped as my dad, cousins, and neighbors took a break from the field or approached from the waiting box that were the steps from the deck.
“You can’t throw the bat after you hit,” Dad answered. “You whacked Kelly in the shin. See the bump?”
A welt was growing on my leg just below my knee. If it looked angry on the outside, then there was a tantrum going on inside. At that point, none of us had any idea just how important and devastating that tantrum was going to be.
I knew how sorry Max was from the sound of his voice.
After a little while, I hobbled to the steps and the game resumed. Actually, I’m not sure that you could even call it hobbling since Dad pretty much carried me. Mom brought me some ice and tried to touch my leg.
“Don’t touch it.” My arm darted in front of my leg, preventing her from even seeing the welt, much less touching it.
“Did it hit you that hard?” she asked. “You weren’t that close to him, were you?”
Was she accusing me of faking?
I pulled my arm away and she saw the bump that was growing.
“Rick,” she called to my dad. “Did you see Kelly’s leg?”
Dad was in the outfield and my cousin Jack was up. Jack was the best hitter of all of the cousins, and even with the squishy ball that we were using in the backyard, he was liable to hit over everyone’s heads, except maybe my father’s.
“Rick,” she called again.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I said. “The ice helps. Let Dad try to get Jack.”
She sat down next to me and the two of us watched Jack pummel the ball almost to the far fence. Dad had backed up, arms outstretched to try to catch, but the ball sailed just over his head, and Jack rounded the bases.
“Now come over and look at your daughter’s leg,” Mom said.
Dad came over and I took the ice off. I could tell he was impressed because the wrinkles showed up in his forehead and his mouth got small.
“The bat did that?” he asked. “You didn’t hurt your leg in school or somewhere else?”
I shook my head.
“It didn’t just whack against another injury?”
“No,” I said. Looking at my leg, I agreed that the bump was bigger that you would think a bump should be from getting hit by a bat. It would be one thing if Max had wound up in front of me and cracked my shin, but I had been pretty far away.
“Can she walk?” Dad asked Mom.
“I don’t know,” Mom said. “You were the one who was out here when it happened. DId she walk off the yard? How did she get to the steps?”
Dad looked at me. “How did you get to the steps, Kel?”
I hadn’t exactly walked and the thought of walking right now made my stomach flip.
“We’ll keep the ice on it.” Mom didn’t wait for me to answer.
The game kept going, I kept sitting, and my leg kept throbbing.
After hamburgers and hot dogs and ice cream cake with candles for my cousin Tyler, the grown ups had a meeting and the hot topic was me and my leg. I still hadn’t moved too much, I still didn’t want anyone touching it, and I still had insisted on fresh bags of ice whenever the one on my leg got too watery.
I strained to hear what they were saying.
“You can’t break a leg by having that sort of a hit,” Uncle John said.
He had been watching from the batters’ box on the steps. “I saw the bat hit her and it wasn’t that hard.”
“But why is there such a bump?” Mom asked. “And why can’t she walk?”
“I still think it must have hit a bruise that she already had,” Dad said.
“Sometimes when you whack an old injury, it hurts twice as much.”
“You asked her that, Rick.” Mom was definitely the most concerned of the adults. “She doesn’t remember anything. If something hurt that much, wouldn’t you remember it?”
“We can watch the others, if you want to take her to the emergency room and have it looked at,” Aunt Michelle offered.
Mom looked at Dad.
The conversation continued for a while with the four of them trying to figure out if I was being over-dramatic (possibly), if there was any way that a 10 year-old kid could break a leg from getting hit not very hard by a twirling baseball bat (unlikely...even highly unlikely), if they should wait until tomorrow to see if I was any better (maybe), or whether the emergency room would be full of drunks on a Saturday night (probably). Listening to them talk about the unsavory people that hang out in emergency room waiting rooms on Saturday nights decided it for me.
“Is it feeling any better, Kelly?” Mom asked when the four of them came up for air from their analysis of whether to take Kelly to the hospital.
“A little,” I lied.
“I’d wait until tomorrow,” Aunt Michelle said, and Mom and Dad agreed.
As it turned out, whether the ER trip had happened that night or tomorrow or the next day, the gray image on the X-ray would change all of our lives. Especially mine.
First Five Pages Writing Workshop: Jump Start Your Novel and Career
Howdy, fellow participant. I hope this helps!
ReplyDelete1. You do a great job of giving us a sense of what the story's going to be about. I'm pretty sure she's going to discover she has cancer or something and the remainder of the story will be about her coming to terms with it or fighting it. I've read so many novels that, halfway through, I still don't know where it's going. So kudos to you for straightening that up early on.
2. You have given me a reason to turn the page. I want to know what the x-ray says, but I want to! You do a great job of foreshadowing, so make sure to keep that in your next drafts.
Now, on to a couple things you can work on (in my most humble opinion :) ).
1. I think you need to focus your "lens" on what matters the most. Example: "Dad was in the outfield and my cousin Jack was up. Jack was the best hitter of all of the cousins, and even with the squishy ball that we were using in the backyard, he was liable to hit over everyone’s heads, except maybe my father’s." Do we really care that dad's in the outfield and cousin Jack is batting? Do we care that he hits the best? I don't think so. What do you want your reader to focus on? I'm guessing it's the fact that her bump is bigger than it should be. So focus your narrative on THAT fact. You can still have them playing baseball, but maybe they cast uneasy glances her way. Maybe the entire mood of the players changes. Focus! Focus on mom's worrying. Focus on her internal uneasiness. Make sense?
2. Tonal description. First, I don't know what anybody looks like. That makes it hard to imagine what's going on. More importantly, however, is that you're missing an opportunity to give your story mood. There's a difference between saying, "The autumn sun dipped below the horizon, casting purple light across clouds as birds sung fairytale to the wind," and saying, "The sun loomed over the horizon like an unwelcome visitor, refusing to leave. It's dark presence was felt on the clouds even, who shunned its light with rays of crimson." Both can be describing the same scene, but with totally different moods. Because we're in Kelly's POV, you have the freedom to describe things in a way that's coherent with her mood.
If you can also give us insight into characters through this, even better. Does Kelly pull on the pant leg of her Hello Kitty pajamas? Or are they faded jeans with holes in the knees? Does she remove a ballcap from her head? Or a tiara? (Okay, that's a bit exaggerated, but you get the idea).
3. A bit too much telling, IMO. Example : "Mom was definitely the most concerned of the adults." I'd like to come to this conclusion myself. How can you illustrate this? Maybe you can use #2 to do this--maybe her hair has grayed at the spry age of 35. Maybe her eyes are sunken within dark circles, an image that hadn't left since the great lost sock fiasco of 04. Maybe she's pacing back and forth, always bringing the leg up. Maybe she's asked Kelly like 200 times if she remembers walking to the baseball diamond.
Anyhow, I hope that helps!
Hello! This was a fun little read. I kept waiting for the metaphorical ball to drop. you've set up some good questions here, and I'm interested in how you revise this to make it even stronger.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what Dustin said, and here's a few things as well that you can look at:
1. Emotion. When the bat hit her leg, I didn't feel it. When you say there was a tantrum going on inside, I didn't see or feel it. This may go along with Dustin's comment about telling. I'd like to feel her pain and see the tantrum in her head. I'd like to hear the sorry tone of Max's voice.
2. Summary narration. I feel like a lot of unnecessary time passes between your MC's leg getting hit with the bat and Dad coming over to look at the bump. It happens again later when the game continues. There's a lot of summary description here for the start of a story. Is there a way you could bring more of the action upfront and so we can get to the more interesting parts (the bump) quicker?
3. I'm not sure what to call this, and I can admit that I don't read a lot of MG, but I was a little thrown by how this scene opens and closes (when my brother hit me with the baseball bat, he saved my life; as it turned out, whether we went today/tomorrow, the gray image would change our lives). Is this story about an older kid describing what happened to them when they were ten or is this story happening "now"? If it's someone telling their story from when they were 10, then I understand the style here. If it's happening now, then I'm just a little confused. Do we get to see that day? Is this just foreshadowing that tells us the action is going to happen soon to keep us drawn into the story?
Thanks for sharing, good luck revising, and I'm excited to see what you do with this next :)
Your closing lines are perfect. No one would be able to withstand turning the page! You have such a strong opening line too, that I might set it off by itself to make it really stand out.
ReplyDeleteYou have a tendency toward telling versus showing. One way to help pinpoint this is the word "was." Now, sometimes was is actually the best word to use, and it's not always telling or passive, but if you use stronger verbs whenever possible, you're writing will be improved and that much stinger for it.
I also thinking your pacing is a little off. You talk about how the bat hitting her leg saved her life and then go back to explain how that happened, but I think that explanation can be tighter and more streamlined.
All in all, I would definitely keep reading.
Melanie, welcome to the first five pages!
ReplyDeleteHere are my thoughts:
Your final paragraph hooked me. I'm worried for Kelly, and wonder what they'll see on the X-ray. You did a good job of setting up the confusion over the injury.
My main concern with these pages is the slowish beginning. It takes quite a while to get to the main story problem--Kelly's injury is possibly not a regular injury. The opening sentences could be much cleaner--for instance, you could try something like "My brother saved my life." You don't have to use that, I'm just pointing out that it would be a cleaner, sharper opening.
There's quite a bit of setting the stage and dialogue that I think can be deleted. Some of it gets a bit confusing, like did she walk to the steps or was she carried?
Is Kelly worried? When she's listening to the adults, is she scared? Is the wound pulsating? Is it bleeding? Is there noise from the baseball game? Adding these sensory details and internal thoughts would bring us much closer to Kelly and her story problem.
Just judging from those final lines, I have a feeling this will be a powerful story. Let's get to that part quicker.
Hello Melanie!
ReplyDeleteThis is a great start, but as the people have said above, it could definitely be tightened. Some suggestions.
1. Cut the foreshadowing in all but the first and last lines. You keep repeating how important the injury/tantrum/etc is going to be, and I found it really distracting.
2. Try to add a bit more grounding detail. What does the air smell like? How does the bench feel that she's sitting on? Is it sunny? Windy? Direct sensory detail is like the string of a kite. It keeps readers connected. For you it's going to be especially important, because your story sounds like it's about a kid who's sick or injured. If that's the case, getting the reader inside her body will continue to be very important. How does her leg feel (other than hurts). What kind of pain is it when she walks? How does that ice feel on it? Is she stiff from sitting on the bench. Does she want to cry? Is she angry? How does being angry feel for her? And so on.
3. Read the story out loud. Reading out loud is a wonderful way to catch awkward turns of phrase and slow sentences. I highly recommend it. :)
This is a great set up for what looks like a really impactful story. I'm excited to see what you come up with next!
Hi Melanie,
ReplyDeleteI think you've got the framework for a strong opening here, it just needs some refining.
To echo what others have said, there's a lot of telling without much showing going on here. Here are some examples:
"It shouldn’t have hurt as much as it did…"
"He was oblivious to the fact that the bat he had been wielding had twirled its way right into my leg. In his 7 year-old head, he had finally hit the ball against all of his older cousins and father."
" If it looked angry on the outside, then there was a tantrum going on inside. At that point, none of us had any idea just how important and devastating that tantrum was going to be."
^ This also shoehorns in some unnecessary foreshadowing. You've bracketed this excerpt with it at the beginning and the end so throwing it in here seems a bit heavy handed.
"Looking at my leg, I agreed that the bump was bigger that you would think a bump should be from getting hit by a bat."
I think you should also take a look at filtering language, like this:
"I could tell he was impressed because the wrinkles showed up in his forehead and his mouth got small. "
You can completely cut "I could tell he was impressed because" and just launch into describing what his face is doing. There's no need to separate your reader from that action.
The same is true here:
"I knew how sorry Max was from the sound of his voice."
It might be better to try to describe Max's tone and state of mind for the reader instead of filtering the experience of hearing it through the narrator's assumption of his state of mind.
I think there's also a great deal of repetition here. She's wounded, her bruise is weird. Everyone thinks it's weird. The whole shebang could be streamlined significantly.
The scene would also benefit from some more description to keep it from feeling flat. Take this part:
I strained to hear what they were saying.
“You can’t break a leg by having that sort of a hit,” Uncle John said.
Instead of telling the reader that she's straining to hear what they're saying, you could instead describe the tightness or tension in their voices. Are they trying not to be overheard? Are they shooting looks at her over their shoulders? Paint a picture for your reader instead of simply narrating the action.
Likewise, don't just tell us her mom is concerned. What's her mother's body language? Does she have any nervous tics that her daughter would pick up on that would alert her to an unusual emotional response? Maybe she tugs on the edge of her sleeves or runs a nervous hand through her hair. I don't know. I'd rather witness a human response than have the narrator tell me that someone simply looks concerned.
And while I like a little foreshadowing, I'd be wary of being too obvious with it. I don't think it needs to go completely, but perhaps a lighter hand will benefit the scene.
Good luck with revisions!