Thank you so much for your participation in these critiques. This is the third submission, a middle grade from D.M. Please go ahead and participate with your own feedback in the comments!

Let’s Begin the Workshop Critique!

It was a mild morning at the end of winter when the shrunken human head arrived at three Grange Drive, where, far from being considered a shock or provoking an outrage, it created less of a stir than a fly landing in Mrs McCormack’s latte.

I love a lot about this! It’s funny, it’s jarring, it creates tension. But this is your all-important first sentence and it has too much going on. The focus should be “shrunken human head” and yet we learn the weather, the season, the address, the reaction, and a character name. Too much. Especially for MG. I’d suggest you chop it up and don’t “bury the lede” (or the shrunken human head) in the middle of a paragraph-long sentence.

Amongst all the other curiosities delivered in recent months the head seemed to fit right in. But Angus McCormack should have realised it was different. He, of all people, should have considered it bizarre. Out-of-the-ordinary. Weird. Like last night at dinner, when he’d thought he’d glimpsed a chilli-pepper in his minestrone soup, he should have seen the shrunken head for what it was…a warning.

I’d recommend a comma after “months” in the first sentence. Use contractions for more colloquial voice, for example, “should’ve” instead of “should have.” We don’t need three different versions of “bizarre” (“out-of-the-ordinary” and “weird” do the same work). I get that this provides emphasis, but you don’t need it. The soup mention is … strange. It pulls focus and is distracting. Instead, set the scene for this head’s arrival. What’s he doing when he sees it? The first paragraph also tells us that this head wasn’t a big deal. And in this paragraph, it seems you’re saying the opposite–that it is a big deal. Which is it? You’re doing a lot of description, but keep an eye on what that description is actually saying.

But Angus didn’t always believe his own eyes. The stomach-churning effects of swallowing a red hot chilli pepper were gurgling proof of that. Simply put, Angus wasn’t ready to spot warnings for what they were. He should have been, but he wasn’t.

You repeat a lot of the same information here. I still don’t really see what the pepper has to do with it. Instead of talking about what he didn’t pay attention to last night, TALK ABOUT THE HEAD. That’s what you’re writing about, so take a more direct route. This pepper business seems distracting to me.

Also, you’re dwelling a lot on what Angus wasn’t (defining something in the negative). That’s one way to establish something, but it’s also quite roundabout.

Luckily, there was a girl who was ready. A girl Angus had never met. A girl he didn’t even know existed. And today, as Angus sat on the down-stair’s toilet feeling sorry for himself, she was sitting calmly on a plane, cruising east at thirty-one thousand feet, far above the lightening-stuffed clouds that rolled over the vast Atlantic Ocean.

Love “lightening-stuffed clouds,” that’s great description. I worry that you are establishing one scene (with Angus and his … troubles and the shrunken head) but then zooming away from everything you’ve created to this girl in a completely different place. Sure, it creates tension, but my preference would be for you to stay in your opening scene for longer, three or so pages at least, before you flash elsewhere. Is this going to be multiple POV? Omniscient? The beginning, as is, raises some questions in that direction.

With a sizeable wicker basket nestled on her lap, the girl gazed out the plane’s window, watching other planes crisscross the sky. The vapour trails they etched across the atmosphere were tinged pinkish-red by the rising sun. They reminded her of rumpled scars on a thin blue skin.

Awesome descriptions here! This is very immersive and allows me to sink into her experience. I wonder where she’s going, and the image of scars provides some nice tension. Other than the quick hopping around and some of the wordiness and unfocused description in Angus’s portion of the beginning, I’d say this is a strong opening with good potential.

Thanks so much for playing along, and I hope to see you for next week’s workshop installment!

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