First Pages: YA / French Braid

As I run the silver-backed brush through my hair, I study the large gray eyes reflected in my mirror. They are somber now, veiled with fog, as though they have seen a hundred years instead of just nineteen. My face is young, but my eyes are old.

Too many adjectives.

This afternoon, I’ll attend the dress rehearsal of my father’s latest play.

And she's already a drama queen.

We’ll sit side by side in the empty theatre, and instead of watching the actors he’ll be glancing at me, brows knitted, as though wondering who I am, and where his little girl has gone. I will nod and smile and complement his direction, then speak of other unimportant things. Later, he’ll grin and present me with some small gift, as though a sketch pad or stick of charcoal will somehow bridge this gulf between us. He doesn’t understand. I do not try to explain. I am still my father’s daughter, but I’m not a child any longer.

I remember the day that everything began to change.

There are some nice touches here, but it's feeling overwritten to me. And the 'day everything changed' thing is overused--I'd suggest losing that.

First Pages: MG / Twelfth of Never

Elvis, please, leave the building. I’ll listen to Jailhouse Rock later -- at home, with Mom. Promise. She can dance in front of the window, and I won’t hide when she waves at the neighbors. I’ll even thumbs-up when she shouts over the music how this song inspired my name! Just not now, I’m begging. No warden, no party, no county jail.

It’s torture enough hearing the PA speakers crumple The King every morning in homeroom. Here in the empty cafeteria, the sound rattles off the walls like spoons banging pots.

My stomach’s queasy. It’s 7:50 a.m., and the air is ninety-nine percent Snickerdoodle exhaust from the lunch ladies baking. Plus the Most Popular kids dart in and out of view through the far, far double doorway like hungry sharks in a holding tank.

If I were lucky they’d never come in from the hall. But when they do decide to waltz through the doors -- could I possibly be more visible than I am? Standing in the middle of the stage, next to Mrs. Beemer? Surrounded by a circle of chairs?

Mrs. Beemer bends to unzip her backpack, so the neckline of her dress sags, exposing her wrinkly chest in a giant bra.

Elvis crash-boom-bangs as she cranes her red face at me. “Presley, sweetheart, be a dear and go round everyone up.”

Round everyone up, d-e-n-o-p-r-u-v-y…

Most people’s brains kick into fight-or-flight when they get scared. Mine alphabetizes. Really fast. Without being asked.

The beginning paragraph struck me as out of pace with the rest of this-- a bit stilted. But the rest is better on track, and people are often intrigued by brain quirks like the above. I'd keep reading.

First Pages: YA / Landon Gilbreath Thompson

“C’mon, Dad. This is total BS.” I slammed my fist into the leather arm of his office chair.

I'm not crazy about this as a beginning.
Also: the timing of gestures is very important for believability. The truly genuine fist-slam would happen at the same time as the speech--making it sound like it happens after the speech, like an afterthought, makes your character sound like he's faking.

Cy Thompson swiveled in his chair and looked across the desk at me, his only son. “Hey buddy, if you’re dumb enough to get caught, prepare to pay the consequences. It would be one thing if this had stayed out of the newspapers, but your last couple of months was reckless. In the newspapers? Twice? Ever considered the embarrassment you’re causing your mother and me?”

The father character's speech feels a bit stilted, but possibly in a believeable way... some real blow-hards do speak this way because they are essentially acting/bluffing their way through life.

Anger bubbled up. This conversation was probably the first Cy and I entertained since Christmas.

Bubbled? Entertained? These word choices are distracting me. Are you sure these are the words the MC would use if he stopped to describe the situation?

And now that school was over, Cy’s sole purpose in calling me into his office—to inform me I’d spend the summer with freakin’ missionaries in the Dominican Republic.
“What about me? I’m sorry I got caught. Jeez. But sending me to a third world country? With missionaries? What kind of a punishment is that? That’s BS and you know it.”
Cy laughed. “The kind that keeps you out of the papers for three months. Besides I may not be a big fan of Joe Abram but you’ll be safe with that family. Bored too. Just don’t go getting religion on me and turning into some sort of fanatic. This conversation is finished.”

Most of this was all right, but the last sentence feels rushed. Maybe you're just not giving us enough other clues about these characters-- body language, tone of voice, pauses, looks, gestures.

_________________
Stale air blew out the vent above me, Landon Gilbreath Thompson, and the overweight businessman next to me snored. In fact, he had been snoring ever since inhaling dinner and downing two glasses of wine. Not a drop left over an underaged guy could swipe. I shifted in my cushy first class seat and peered down at the royal blue water. If a first class plane trip to my personal version of hell was supposed to make up for the forthcoming summer of boredom, my father had another think coming. I gritted my teeth and flicked my thumb off my pointer finger as I remembered the last conversation my dad. My mom couldn’t be bothered with the details. She had charity work to do.

This is starting to sound more natural, and I might give it a couple more pages. I'm wondering if you just have a case of first-page-itis (ie, too much stress about writing the first page, thus a rocky beginning) or if you have consistent trouble with dialogue.

First Pages: MG / Stone's Nest

The problem with a castle carved from a stone monolith was that the plumbing was notoriously unreliable. All he wanted was a hot bath. Was that too much to ask? But the spigots sputtered at him, spitting cold water on his hands, and then vomiting huge quantities of the icy stuff into the sunken bath. Also carved from stone.

Interesting... but "vomiting"? Is that the right word?

Stefan had gone to school in the north, where it was cold and castles were built from timber and there was movable furniture. He’d had the hardest time explaining how…organic his home was. The furniture was part of the room, carved into the dark black stone the way the stairs and toilets and beds and bathtubs were.
His grandmother had spent her lifetime making the stone castle less dreary. Every wall hung with colored fabrics, raw satins dyed the colors of rich jewels,

Rich jewels? As compared to the colors of cheap jewels?

or soft, cool cottons tie-dyed in whimsical patterns. While the bed and bedposts were carved from rock, they’d been intricately designed with mythological creatures and personified virtues. (Ten years later when gryphons were discovered to have returned to the land, a hasty amendment was made in the architectural books about the idealization of gryphons in early decoration. “Hmph,” Zac had said. “As if they could apologize for making my beak look that big.” Zac was slightly vain about his beak.)

You had me up until the gryphon speaks. Feels out of place here.

Magic-handlers had figured out a way to make decent mattresses from sea foam – for a rather exorbitant price. The castle boasted no fewer than 500 of the mattresses within its walls.
“But food?” Stefan’s friends had asked. “Do you cook? Or is everything roasted over an open spit?” They’d laughed as though he were the butt of a joke, but he didn’t get it. He’d explained about the great bread ovens, warmed underneath by a fire that never needed to be put out. Breads, cakes, muffins, all cooked as well as any roast.
“Although we don’t eat much meat,” he went on. “Serafina made the decree when she was first made queen.”
Of course, Sera had been made queen when she was three, and her vegetarian declaration was made when, at age five, her favorite chicken found its way into the dumplings. By the time the advisors could figure out what to do, Sera had outlawed the killing and eating of chickens, rabbits, pigs and cows. It was Stefan who had convinced her to allow the eating of deer and fish, and he’d always thought he had an easier time of it because Sera had never been let out of the castle long enough to meet a deer.

I'm definitely curious enough to continue. Could be a promising fantasy.

First Pages: MG / Manna Bend

I didn’t want to sit in the front seat of our car – that’s where Mum always sat – but Dad was begging.
‘Please, Sasha,’ he said. His voice caught and he cleared his throat. ‘We promised. A new start.’
His face was so creased with sadness that I couldn’t say no. I forced my foot and then my leg into the car, and slid onto the dusty blue seat, yanking at the seatbelt. My hatred for Mum burned through me all over again.

Hmm. Interesting.

‘Bye, house,’ Nicky said, waving out the back window at the familiar cream weatherboard we’d lived in all our lives. I refused to look back.
All the way to Manna Bend,

(Sorry to interrupt, but: mum? manna bend? is this Australia?)

I hunched down in the seat and listened to my iPod. Nicky sat in the back seat, clutching his box of magic tricks, staring out the window. Every now and then he’d go, ‘Wow’ and point, but it was only something dumb like a cow or a sheep. I hated how enthusiastic he was, and knew it was mean, but meanness seemed to have replaced blood in my veins.

I'm... cautiously hopeful.

The removal van followed us like a lame dog that was scared it’d get lost before we made it to our new house. New old house. I’d already seen a photo of it, and it was beyond renovation. It needed demolition.
'Manna Bend hasn’t had a policeman for six months,’ Dad had told us. ‘This is a golden opportunity to put the dirty, nasty city behind us and make a new life.’ I’d blocked him out – I didn’t want to leave the city. But I’d lost my vote when I’d got into trouble and ended up in the Children’s Court. If moving to the back of nowhere and becoming a country cop would make Dad happy again, I’d have to give it a try. I owed him that.
‘Here we are,’ Dad announced, trying to sound cheerful. ‘Looking good, kids.’ A big sign flashed past that said 'Manna Bend.'
‘Watch out!’ I screeched, my feet digging into the floor.

No immediate issues, and I'm interested to read more. (Goodness, have I had too much wine? I would want to have a look at the manuscript at the office next morning, in the clearer light of my hangover.)

(Yes, Australian, hence the Mum and the cop, rather than Mom and sheriff.)

Aha! I was right!

First Pages: YA / Final Score

The game was not going as planned.
It was a short season, eight games compared to the ten they’d played last year. With only one stadium, the rotation of football, baseball, and soccer was now shared with track and wrestling teams, in hopes that the added variety would quell the worst of the violence.

Decent voice, but I am immediately impatient with the way you're withholding information. What violence?

It had the opposite effect. The feet of thousands of fans stomped, rocking the stadium in the frigid wind. They were hungry, literally, and wanting entertainment, wanting, Alex Winter knew, as he lifted his head and panned the throngs, to kill someone.

Ok, some good tension. But still no clue for the reader, dammit. Really? The crowd wants to kill someone? Why??

Long ago they’d changed the scoring system. Alex was six when the meteors plunged to the earth, but days before that chaos he remembered sitting with his brother Garrett, eating popcorn from a ceramic bowl, watching football.

That's it. I'm lost, and getting pissed off. What kind of story is this? Where are we? What's going on?

After each touchdown, Alex would count on his fingers, trying to add six points and blurt out the new score before the scoreboard changed. Garrett would punch him if he got it wrong. Their father had just left the family, and their apartment, and minds felt large, liberated from his presence. Watching football with Garrett, Alex could forget the dark figure dragging him from his bed in the middle of the night, forget the terror that had hovered his every thought, forget the piles of papers, garbage, dishes stacked floor to ceiling, hoarded by his father, the telling indication of a sick, sick mind.

Grrr. I'm turning the page, but you've got about a paragraph more leeway before I stop reading.

First Pages: YA / David

I ran for a lot of reasons. To keep in shape. To win races. To stay out of trouble.

Really? I didn't know a lot of kids growing up who wanted to stay out of trouble.

And sometimes I ran just for the heck of it. Today I followed the path by the river. It had enough inclines and twists to make any cross-country runner happy.

You've got a nice voice...

My feet pounded the ground with a steady thud, recording my progress. My muscles burned in that half pain and half pleasure kind of way that let me know that my body was working like it was supposed to. A well trained biological mechanism. Sweat soaked my shirt even though the wind had kicked up. The warmth of the day changed into a strange cloying humidity that raised the short hairs on the back of my neck.

And now I'm getting a little bored with the running stuff. Maybe a little less of that.

The last leg of the run, I think it was maybe at mile nine or ten, stretched out before me. Most of it was hidden in the trees. My car waited somewhere beyond them to take me home to a silent house. I didn’t pick up my pace.
Just past the dead pine with the stubborn cones still hanging from its branches, I jerked out of my running daze. I stopped, not believing what I saw. A woman lay curled on the ground. My stumbling steps took me closer. Blonde hair hid her face so that I couldn’t tell her age. She wore a pair of dark jeans and my attention fixed on the ugly color of red staining her arms and most of her shirt.

Your voice gets a little less confident when we reach what I assume is a murder scene, but I would turn the page. There's something promising in the flavor of this.

First Pages: MG / Last Will and Test-Taking

I, Steven Morgan Carter, being able to read and write, would like to give my stuff away if I die.

I'm interested.

After what happened earlier, I had to be sure the right things would be done. Just in case.
My little brother, Justin, can have any of my toys he wants. Mom can have my clothes, school pictures, and story notebook.

(Snort! Your laundry? She'll be so pleased.)

Dad can have my dictionaries. Andy, my best friend and the only one who understands Doorstep, can have him. And the red wagon we pull him around in. Pieter can have his checkerboard back, even though he’s been dead for five hundred years. I’ll tell you how to find him in a minute.

I'm intrigued. (Congratulations.)

Everything started this morning. We finished eating breakfast, and Dad did the usual kitchen scrub-down. Mom helped Justin with a school project. He had to decorate a potato in autumn colors. It sounds stupid, but Mom goes all out for school stuff. I wanted to go to Andy’s house, so I had to get busy finishing my own work. First thing I did was take off my socks. The only good thing about doing homework is I get to have my feet licked. It’s ticklish and slobbery, and I can sit at my desk for hours.
“Here you go, Doorstep.” I put another dog biscuit between my toes and read Miss Donnelly’s assignment. ‘Write an essay telling what you admire about yourself. Remember to give three good examples.’ Most of her other assignments are pretty dumb, so I’ve been getting bad grades. But this one looked easy. I ripped a blank page out of my notebook and began writing.

Well, I'm turning the page. I would have liked to have a better sense of why he thinks he's going to die by now, but this seems accessibly written and humorous. I just hope he doesn't go on and on in a journal. Writers seem especially prone to that trope (why do you suppose?), and it's quicksand for a lot of stories. Most kids do not spend a lot of time writing.

First Pages: MG / Fat Chance's Magic Map

Tony made a bet with the entire fifth grade class. If he didn’t get Mr. Chance’s magical map by his eleventh birthday, he was going to wash the kindergarten toilets every day for the rest of the school year.

Does fifth grade seem too old to believe in magical maps? Or maybe we just need more introduction to this story before we're supposed to take as a given such a thing's existence?

Some kids said that was desperate. Crazy. Just plain suicidal.
But Tony was a rule-breaker.
Nevertheless, Tony couldn’t ignore the Legend of Mr. Chance, as scribbled in a secret notebook on the back shelf of the Watson Elementary School library. The story filled the entire notebook except for the last page. Tony planned on writing the ending himself.

If I were feeling particularly short of patience on the day this was submitted to me, I might be done reading right here. The Legend of Mr. Chance? A secret notebook?

This is an important, but more conceptual, kind of telling rather than showing. When you deprive us of the experience of discovering the notebook and working through our doubts with the main character, you deprive us of action--and an important piece of the story. But you also place the burden of effort on the reader instead of on yourself. That's what show-not-tell is about: you, the writer, should be doing the work of convincing us of your story, rather than handing us the Cliff's Notes and expecting us to try to invest ourselves in the plot.

He stood in the library, skipping his dreaded math class, and read:
The Legend of Mr. Chance
Mr. Chance had only one purpose in life-to make miserable little kids even more miserable.
Little kids who laugh at his shiny bald head and big bulging belly.
Little kids who hide his glass eye under his wig collection.

Ok, I'm giggling.

Little kids who barge into his magic shop and mess up the fake vomit display.

In spite of myself, I'm a little intrigued.

In short, little kids who fart and burp and sneeze and cough and do all sorts of gross things. Kids who want a little more freedom from their parents and a little more sugar in their lunchboxes.
Kids just like you.
Mr. Chance enjoyed his purpose in life. His daily checklist included:

Spray two boys with girl’s perfume
Chop off the ponytail of a girl wearing a pretty pink dress
Switch the homework of a kindergarten kid with the homework of a fifth-grader
Throw pies at six kids
Throw mud at seven kids

You can probably guess by now, Mr. Chance did not attend the School For Treating Kids With Kindness. But Mr. Chance wasn’t always a half-bald, half-blind, big ol’ bucket of mean.

The last line switches to a different voice.
This has some interest and humor, and it may be going someplace marketable. If I were feeling generous, I might turn the page. But the show-not-tell issue is the kind that is likely to crop up again and again in a manuscript, and if that happens, I'm really sorry, but I don't have the time to fix that with you after acquisition.

First Pages: MG / Big Red

“Mom, look!” Patrick remembered saying. “A playground. Can I go on the swings? Please!” “We can’t stay, sweetie,” Mom said. “We only came so you could have a peek at Grandpa’s magical fishing camp. I told Grandma we’d be back quickly with butter and sugar. You want shortbread cookies after dinner, don’t you?" Sure he did. He loved Grandma’s cookies more than anything in the world. Well, except for Mom and Grandma of course. He’d been hearing about Big Red’s Fishin’ Hole for so long though, he wanted more than just a peek. “Why’s it magical?” Patrick asked. Mom gave him one of those can’t-tell-you-it’s-a-secret looks. “Maybe some day you’ll find out.” “Can’t I swing, just for a minute?” At five years old Patrick was a playground expert and decided this looked like a good one. “We’ll come back another time,” Mom said. “You can then.” But that promise never happened. That night Dad overheard Patrick tell Grandpa that they sneaked to the camp and how he wanted to play on the swings so much. Dad was furious and made Mom swear to never take Patrick there again. And for the next seven years none of them—not Patrick, his mom, nor his dad—had taken been there. That was about to change. In less than an hour he would be at the camp for the second time ever.

I am having the feeling that you write a lot of picture books. The language and feel of this is putting us close to the 5-year-old MC, rather than to the middle grade MC we need to identify with-- it's making this text sound too young.

And I'm worried about the swings. Why are they in here? Why are they important? They're part of your very beginning-- more than that, your first sentence. They'd better be more than a transient plot device to justify the 'coming back' element, which could easily be achieved some other way.

Beginnings are first impressions. Your readers are going to remember yours, so make it count.

After you age-up the tone, and either cut the swings or make their role in the book's plot more clear, I would suggest that you give us a hint--just a foreshadowing-- of what the MC found at the fishing camp, and what he expects to find there now.

First Pages: YA / Shadow Queen

Lady Maya dressed quickly by the dim light of the moon. She glanced out over the balcony where a glow blooming on the horizon heralded the approach of dawn, and her heart skipped a beat as she realized how little time she had left. She grabbed her light cloak and threw it about her shoulders as she rushed toward the door.

Romance novel? I'm unfamiliar with this genre, so feel free to take my feedback with some salt.
If, of course, this isn't a romance novel, reconsider the constellation of 'glow', 'blooming', 'heralded', and 'heart'. A few too many words like that in one place, and the next word we expect is 'bodice'.

The well oiled hinges swung open without a sound. Maya exited and closed the door with a click more felt than heard. She fought the urge to run down the halls in a mad race against time. The sound of her shoes echoed from the stone walls. The soft clicks seemed deafening to her, and the dancing shadows cast by the wall torches felt suddenly ominous, as if ghostly fingers clutched at her skirts, trying to stop her.

Ok, sounding more like fantasy now.

Take out "mad race against time". In addition to being a cliche, it doesn't fit the feeling of the scene. You haven't given us any reason to believe the 'mad' part.

Cut the fourth sentence, and just put 'of her shoes' in the fifth. Always condense where possible.

I would suggest "reached out for" rather than "clutched at" as a bit less melodramatic and more like the effect shadows would have.

Maya dismissed such thoughts, chiding herself for giving her imagination too free a rein. However, the shadows of old tales would haunt anyone’s consciousness while preparing to descend into the castle’s depths in the hours before dawn. Few ventured below the ground level, so the area carried a mystique, a feeling of emptiness unsettling to the human mind.

Oh, too meta. She's supposed to be frightened, feeling, and worried, right? "Dismissed" and "chiding" give the sense of a colder, more rigidly rational nature, and would she really think about how other people would think about old wives' tales?

Consider using another word for 'mystique'. We're back in bodice territory. And what's this about the human mind? Are you implying there are non-humans around to be thinking about this?

Knowing her way would grow ever darker, Maya steeled herself against the screaming of her nerves. She felt a presence following her and looked behind momentarily, but the winding stairwell was empty. She shook her head and silently scolded herself for letting her imagination get the better of her again before she stepped out of the stairwell and into the catacombs.

Take out 'ever' before 'darker'; it's a bit too melodramatic to my ear. I don't think you've given us enough foundation for 'screaming'. Take out 'she felt a presence following her' and just let us intuit that from the way she looks behind her. Show, not tell.

She’d walked these passages in the early morning hours many times before as a game when castle life became too tedious. But this time was different; this time was real.

Not bad. You create some intriguing tension, and I'm at least a little curious about where this is going. Your tendency to overwrite a bit isn't entirely to my taste, but it's within the range of what I've seen in some genre fiction, so this may be perfectly publishable with the right editor. Tell me though--am I right about it being fantasy? I imagine we could have an interesting discussion about what elements pointed me in that direction as early as the second paragraph.

PS to my readers: I made up the title; this didn't come with one.

First Pages: YA / The Outlook Is Bleak

I am death. Some people call me the Grim Reaper. If you're one of those people, I'm probably not what you're expecting. I don't have a scary, black hood that covers my face. I don't have a scythe and I am not silent or 'grim'. My bones are far from frail and skeletal beneath my black cloak -- another item I don't have.

Your voice is very conversational, which is an interesting start to something narrated by death. But for that reason, I don't think you need that first sentence. Punch up the casual feel of this voice, rather than going for the drama. I also think you don't need that last sentence, which is a tad confusing.

My name is Blake Deakin, or at least that's what I call myself around normal people. When I'm with other Reapers – there are about fifty of us – we use another name: Bleak. As in, the outlook is bleak. I'm a teenager. I bet you weren't expecting that, eh? Most teenagers have jobs at the local supermarket, me – well, my job isn't so much a job as a lifestyle. An unpleasant one.

Still interested. "I bet you weren't expecting that, eh?" sounded off to me, though. Who says "eh?" south of Canada?

I do everything a typical teenager does. I live with my parents, fight with my siblings and go to high school, a hell far worse than any other. At the moment, I'm about to do the one thing I do that isn't so typical: write names in a book.

Instantly bored at the start of this part. You're telling where you should be showing. Let us discover these normal parts of his life naturally--and milk those moments of realization for as much irony and humor as you can. They're in there.

I pop open the bottom drawer of my mahogany desk and flip through the things on top impatiently. My English book, a few sheets of loose paper, a dictionary and then, the Book of the Living. I pull out the brown tome and set it on my table, eyeing it with reverence. Picking it up, I trace the spidery words that run down the side. I've read and reread those words so many times that I don't need to read them to know what they say: I decide who lives.

Something about 'mahogany' and 'brown tome' are sounding forced and out of place to me. Keep the language teenaged to best play up what's so interesting about this scenario.

Overall, not at all bad. Maybe publishable. I'd like to see you connecting your reader to your quirky, unusual MC earlier and stronger, though.

First Pages: YA / Worth It

It felt good to hit someone. I can’t say that out loud, but it’s the truth. After weeks of digging my nails into my palms to hold it all in, months of going numb to avoid the inevitable fight, it felt fucking amazing to let loose and beat the shit out of someone. Even if I got banged up, even if I got suspended, it was so worth it.

Intriguing beginning, good voice. Cut "to hold it all in"; make the last sentence into two: "Even if I got banged up, even if I got suspended. Worth it."

That first perfect punch was almost in slow motion, with a hazy comet trail following my arm all the way to Pinscher’s face. But then his nose exploded with a crunch, like smashing crusty ice with the heel of your shoe. Blood flooded Pinscher’s mouth and chin, making him sputter, dripping down what was left of his shirt. Maybe the blood and sound should have made me stop, or at least pause, but they didn’t.
In that moment before the others jumped in, I was The Man. I was a god. For the briefest of flashes, I was a son Dad could be proud of and a brother T.J. could tell his buddies about. I wasn’t me, not really, and in a way, I was more than me. It was like T.J. and Dad were behind me, like their strength was in my arm. And in another way it was like there was no T.J. or Dad: Just me, this strong and strange me, in total control and in total chaos, all at the same time.

Cut "all at the same time".

I wish I had more comments here.
I gotta say, I'm hooked. I want to read the rest of it.

First Pages: MG / Mercy Me

I skip down the stairs from our roof garden, pausing outside the front gate to fish my keys out of my pocket. The stairwell is sultry and smells like wet socks. I unlock the gate and go inside. Mom and my older brother Gavin are at the dining room table.

There's a gate that opens from the outside directly into the dining room? What kind of house is this?

I notice right away that Gavin's eating strawberry shortcake. They stop talking when I come in and just sit there staring at me.
"What?" I say, slamming the gate shut.
"Where were you?" Mom asks.
"Upstairs on the roof."
"In this weather?"
"It's stopped raining, Mom. A long time ago." I kick off my flip-flops under the piano bench and stalk over to the table. I'm wondering why Gavin gets strawberry shortcake. Mom didn't say anything to me about strawberry shortcake when we finished dinner.

'Stalk' drew me up short; it feels out of place. It also doesn't ring true to me-- a girl who slams, skips, thumps, and kicks off her shoes, seems like she has too much energy to achieve a stalking movement.

"Marcy." Mom's voice sounds tired. She rubs her temples with her index fingers.
"What?" I thump down into the seat next to Mom. This is getting irritating. I feel like I'm missing something. Then I notice Mom's nose is red like she's been crying.
"Mom got bad news," Gavin says with his mouth full of strawberry shortcake. "Well, we all got bad news."
"Grandma Duncan had a stroke," she says, blowing her nose into a crumpled tissue.
I gasp. "When?"
"A few hours ago. Uncle Dick called. He seems to think I ought to come home, at least for a few weeks. The doctors … don't know how long she has left."
Gavin holds her hand as he takes another bite of shortcake. Mom settles a grateful look on him. He always knows the right thing to do. Not like me.
"We're going back to America?" I say. "How long can we stay? The whole summer?"
My glasses have fogged up in all the excitement. I take them off and scrub them on the hem of my shirt.
"Well, I'm sure your dad can't go," Mom says.
"Why not?"
"Oh, come on, Beaker," Gavin says. I hate it that he still calls me Beaker after all these years. I haven't looked like a Beaker since at least third grade when my hair finally grew out. I mean, it's still red, and my eyes do look sort of buggy in my glasses. But besides that, I look nothing like a Beaker.

This digression is hampering the pace of the scene. Put it in elsewhere.

Gavin goes on, "You know Dad has to make a good impression at work or else he'll lose his job." Sometimes Gavin treats me as if I'm still in second grade. Of course I know how important this job is to Dad. It's the reason we moved six thousand miles away from home to Hong Kong. Though I don't know why we bothered. We might as well have stayed in Everett for all we see of him these days.

I would cut "gavin goes on" as a tad stilted, but overall this first page shows promise. Good voice, good dialogue. A couple missteps, but editable. I'd keep reading.

First Pages: PB / Be a Princess in Just 5 Steps

When Sadie announced that she was going to be a princess, her brother Josh laughed so hard he snorted.
"You can't be a princess," he said. "You're too little, Baby Sadie."
Sadie stuck out her tongue at Josh and ran to her room.
Safe inside, she opened her newest library treasure: Be a Princess in Just Five Steps!

Does it seem like your story just started when she got to the book? What was the plot reasoning behind the first little scene with her brother?

So you really, truly want to be an honest-to-goodness princess? You've got the right book! Just follow these five steps.

Intriguing. Maybe cute.

WARNING: Don't peek ahead! You must follow all five steps in order if you really, truly want to be an honest-to-goodness princess.
"I'm really, truly ready," Sadie said, carefully turning the page.

Sadie's speech feels like a throw-away line. Seems like you could have something here instead that will tell us more about the character or further the plot in some way.

Step #1: Every princess must live in a castle so she can always find her way home.
Sadie imagined digging a moat around her room. Then she pictured her parents getting mad. So she borrowed a few couch cushions to create her castle.
She pushed and squished and tied them together. On the tippy top of the tower, she taped a paper flag that read "Sadie's Castle."

Cute idea, and very true to children. But I'm not getting how this scene/step builds on the emotional core of the story, and I'm starting to worry that there isn't really going to be an emotional core. I'd read on, but simply being about princesses is not enough. What will make this princess story stand out from the many others already published or in the pipeline?

Intermission: The Open Arms of Critique

I would like to pause a moment to say how impressed I've been with my Anonymati.

After I posted the first few Evil First Pages and it was clear to what degree I intended to be Evil (or perhaps we should just say frank), many, many Anonymati still sent in first pages. So many I don't know when I'll get to them all.

And the people reading this blog have offered quite a bit of thoughtful critique themselves in the comments, which seems to have benfitted submitters as well.

Most of all, the people I've so far critiqued have shown a heroic willingness to hear that critique.

So while critique can be hard to hear, I hope you are all fortifying yourselves with this: It is not the willingness and ability to write well that separates the amateurs and hobbyists from Real Writers.

It is the willingness and ability to rewrite well that makes you Real Writers.

You're doing the evil secret society proud.

First Pages: MG / Orchestra Pits

I can't believe this!
I've counted 341 excruciatingly long days to be with Z, my best friend, soul mate, twin separated at birth! Not sharing a room?
Camp is ruined.

Too much information all at once. This is like the condensed expression of morse code or semaphore signals.
Do expect your editor to be close-reading your work. Don't expect your child audience to.

The woman at the registration table glares at me through her emerald eye shadow. "Cannot change roommate. Go to orientation, Edie Tan. You're late already."

The woman is likewise speaking as though she's being charged per word; she sounds robotic. (How do you look at someone through your eyeshadow? Maybe under instead.)

I drag my luggage out to the hallway, my jeans heavy and soggy from sploshing through the monsoon storm. My inside feels just as sploshed and heavy and soggy.
***
Z and I were roommates at last year's camp, our first. When I arrived at our room that first day, she ran to help me with my luggage and tripped. I jumped out of her way, jabbing the doorframe with my funny bone, and then fell over my luggage on top of her. As we untangled ourselves, Z sang, to the tune of the 1812 Overture: "Oh I can see that you're another Clum-Klutz"
"Yes, let's go celebrate and eat kumquats!" My response came as naturally as saying "Who's there?" to a knock-knock joke.

That's much better. Interesting details. A sense of personality, and humor.

We stared at each other, stunned,
This was the person I'd been waiting for; the person who breathed music and craved giggles the way I did.
And that was just the beginning. We found out we had an instinct about each other. Sometimes all it took was a shared look for us to understand an entire joke and burst out laughing.
We're a two-piece puzzle that finally found each other.
When camp ended, we promised to hone our telepathy by transmitting our thoughts every night across 500 miles. I don't know if stuff like that works, but I do know that I've been waiting so long to see her my neck has grown a foot.

'to see her my neck has grown a foot'? Is this a misprint?

Now that I'm finally at camp, I find out we're not sharing a room.
Oh, I know I'll see her around but it isn't the same. She's a violinist, I'm a percussionist; we're at different tutorials and we sit far away from each other in the orchestra. Sure, we can eat together, but our post-midnight, talk-about-everything sessions are what made camp stupendous, magnificent, unmatched by anything on earth. I sit curled up outside the door and cradle my throbbing head in my hands. Maybe I'll just remain here till I fossilize so millions of years from now archaeologists can have some fun studying a human in shrimp form.

'Shrimp form'? Some good details here, but also a few rocky bits. I'd read on, but I think this would really benefit from a good edit before it's submitted.
What monsoon was that at the beginning? Is this band camp in Thailand, or something?

First Pages: MG / Yeller

Ben opened his eyes. Darkness pressed against him.

Bit of a cliche.

The whole world tilted and spun.

How can he tell, if he's blind?

He tried to reach out into the space in front of him, but he couldn't lift his arms.
He tried to wiggle his toes, to roll over. He realized that he couldn't move at all. He felt his chest tighten.
He gasped for air. Was he trapped? He remembered the museum shaking and rumbling, then collapsing. How long was I knocked out? He thought. Is anyone looking for me?
"Help," he yelled. "Help me! I'm over here!"
Everything started shaking again. Something slid off his face. White light stabbed his unready eyes. He squeezed them shut and yelled again. The room lurched wildly from side to side, like a ship in a storm. In the distance, he heard a buzzing sound. He thought he heard footsteps and voices.

I'm confused about where we are and what's going on. And you know I have a low tolerance for that.

Ben opened his eyes again, slowly this time, so they could adjust to the light. The first thing he saw was the machine.

Isn't he covered in rubble? What machine? How did a museum collapse on him and not crush him?

It was covered in dials and buttons and threaded through with strange tubes.

Wait, it's a familiar enough machine to get the article "the", but the tubes on it are strange? Hasn't he seen this machine before?

A rainbow of wires cascaded from the top of the machine, then ran along the wall and through a hole in the ceiling. Some of the wires and tubes looked like they'd been yanked loose. One tube hung limply, pouring red liquid onto the floor. Is that blood? Ben thought. My blood?

That's it. I'm lost, and getting fed up with feeling lost.

He'd never seen so much blood before. It made a shiny red lake that spread quickly across floor. Why was it spilling everywhere? Why didn't anyone come and make it stop?
The room slowed down, until it was hardly moving at all. Then the people in blue came swarming through the door. They shouted to one another. One put a cuff around Ben's arm, another examined his eyes. A large group of them gathered around the machine, poking and prodding it. Ben tried to understand what they were saying, but their voices buzzed together like a cloud of gnats.
Nurses! Ben thought woozily. Those must be nurses! I'm in the hospital. His throat felt dry and scratchy. He glanced at the machine. He must be hurt pretty bad. "Where are my parents?" Ben rasped. "Are they okay? Am I okay?"
The room trembled again. An Aftershock! Ben thought. That thing at the museum – it must have been an earthquake.

Ok: starting in the action = good. Starting where your reader can't tell what any of the action means = not so good. Maybe clarifying this will only be a matter of adding a little and subtracting a little. Or maybe it will involve starting again. Why not back up to when the museum starts shaking?

First Pages: PB / A Very Nice Rock

Abby found a rock.
It was the size of a plum, dark gray, and roundish.

Good voice, nice pace.

I would like to pause and just remind writers that editors really can tell stuff like this from your first two lines. Already this manuscript has made a good impression... and there are plenty of other manuscripts that I've rejected based on the first two lines. Never underestimate how closely your editor will be reading what you've written.

A very nice rock. Abby took it inside and washed it with soap and water.

I don't think you need that last sentence. Most kinds will feel a rock that doesn't have obvious dirt on it is "clean." And this story isn't about relative cleanliness, is it?

She put the rock on the table next to her plate.
“Abby, rocks do not belong on the table.”
“You’re right, Mom. Pets should eat on the floor.”

Cut that last sentence, too. You're handing it to us. Show, don't tell. It's ok if she just puts in on the floor without comment and it takes us the next couple scenes to see that the rock is a pet/friend.

“That is not a pet,” Mom said. “That is a rock. And it’s dirty. Please wash your hands.”
“He’s clean, Mom. I gave him a bath.”

You could cut these lines, too, I think.

The next day during recess, Abby sent the rock down the slide. She buried it in the sandbox. She pushed it on the swing.

Nice.

Walking home from school, Abby heard a sound. Rumble, rumble. But when she looked, nothing was there.
“Abby, come here!”. Mom was pointing into Abby's room.

The transition here from street to indoors was confusing. Does she need to hear the "rumble rumble"? Other solution?

Abby's eyes opened wide. The floor was completely covered with rocks. Big rocks, small rocks, tiny rocks. Bumpy rocks and smooth rocks. Rocks of every shape and color.
Abby saw the open window. She remembered the rumbling. “They must have followed me home from school.”
"Don’t be silly,” Mom said. “Please pick them up.”
Abby piled all the rocks in the corner of her room. “Maybe I’ll start a rock collection.”

Well, I'm certainly turning the page. Good storytelling, overall. I'm very curious about how this wraps up. If it's clever, you may have something quite publishable here.

First Pages: YA / Gmail

I’ve always hated Nancy Drew. Some relative with good intentions bought me the first 3 books in the series when I was 9-years-old and they annoyed the crap out of me. There was something about a perky blonde sleuth that didn’t sit well with me, even at such a young age. So, if someone had told my 9-year-old self that a few months before my 16th birthday I’d decide to start channeling everyone’s favorite girl detective, there is no way I would have believed them.

"Didn't sit well with me" sounds to my ear like an adult speaking rather than a kid.
Why did your character read all three books if they annoyed her?
Channeling, like psychically? Or...? The word choices here aren't quite adding up for me.

Of course that was before I’d even met Ava, let alone read her e-mail.
I stared disbelieving at my computer, wondering if this was some sort of cruel joke.

The second sentence is a cliche.

The unopened e-mail made my heart pound with joy but at the same time sent shivers down my back.

What?
Dropping your reader into the action = good.
Dropping your reader into an emotional reaction your reader can't share = not so good.

It taunted me, sitting bold-faced in my inbox. It didn’t move or disappear or do any of the creepy things I’d expect an e-mail from a ghost to do. It just sat there.
Existing.
But if Ava was going to email me, she picked the perfect day. It was the first anniversary of her disappearance. The first anniversary of the last time I saw her. The first anniversary of our final fight.
And so, I sat alone in my room, stolen wine cooler in hand, mourning the loss of my best friend. Not pretty.
And, no, I'm not an alcoholic. Do alcoholics even drink wine coolers?
I just have this thing for wine coolers when I'm depressed. And on that night, the sweet fizz of my mom’s Blue Hawaiian wine cooler filled a void that only a stain-your-tongue-blue-quasi-alcoholic drink could fill.

A ghost is emailing her. Ah, I get it, "g-mail".
Don't call it that, it's cheesy.
The ghost aspect is intriguing, but the voice--what the narration focuses on, the words it chooses, the mood it's conveying-- is giving mixed signals. And starting in an emotional place for your main character before we've identified with her puts us on the wrong foot.

So I would suggest backing up just a little so we understand what a shock it is when this email arrives, and then think hard about what information and word choices will put your reader in your main character's head.