Genre: YA
Original
Killing someone's easier than you think. All it takes is decision, aim, and follow through. Like basketball, only you shouldn't expect people to leap to their feet and cheer if you hit the free throw.
The whole thing's a done deal in a matter of seconds.
Revenge, on the other hand, and I mean real, calculated, make-him-sorry-he-was ever-born vengeance, takes time and planning and patience. You have to smile when you want to scream. You have to look your target in the eye when you'd rather claw his eyes out. And you have to ignore the slow spreading burn in your gut until it turns to ice, and sets your resolve so completely, you can't turn away without splintering.
Do it right, and their blood will be on their own hands. Just another tragic teen suicide that ends up buried on the back of page three and gets a memorial sheet in the school annual. Lots of flowers and stuffed animals and card collages stuck to the door. Pretty words and puffy, red-rimmed eyes from people who will question "why", but don't actually look hard enough to find out.
No matter how messy it gets, or how much blood's involved, suicide's a clean kill. And any hunter can tell you that clean kills are what you want. Though any scenario that ends with Brooks Walden in a mangled heap works for me.
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With Suzie's Critique
Killing someone's easier than you think. All it takes is decision, aim, and follow through. Like basketball, only you shouldn't expect people to leap to their feet and cheer if you hit the free throw.
Wow. This first line totally makes me sit up and pay attention. It's short, concise, and a little shocking. In just one line, I'm interested in the character, and I'm also wondering a little about myself--would killing someone be easier than I'd think. (Morbid, I know).
While I like the decision, aim, follow through aspect of the basketball comparison, I'm a little thrown by it. The transition wasn't quite what I expected. I think it works, but contingent on the character. If this character plays or really likes basketball it works. If not...then maybe not. In other words if basketball is somehow important to the story, then I like it, if it's just there for comparison's sake, there might be a better comparison to have. Or we might not need a comparison at all. I can tell after reading the next few paragraphs, our narrator has definitely thought things through. I'd believe it without a comparison.
The whole thing's a done deal in a matter of seconds.
Love this line! It's powerful, and it's a little scary.
Revenge, on the other hand, and I mean real, calculated, make-him-sorry-he-was ever-born vengeance, takes time and planning and patience. You have to smile when you want to scream. You have to look your target in the eye when you'd rather claw his eyes out. And you have to ignore the slow spreading burn in your gut until it turns to ice, and sets your resolve so completely, you can't turn away without splintering.
I was interested before, but this is the paragraph that really gets me. This is paragraph where the voice stands up off the page. It also implies some great details about the character(s) and the conflict. Our speaker for instance is probably a girl (guys don't typically claw each other's eyes out) and she's about to tell us a revenge story--revenge on a boy (make him sorry he was ever born). She's smart, tough, calculating, and maybe a little crazy--but I want to follow her and find out what this guy did and how this revenge plan goes.
Do it right, and their blood will be on their own hands. Just another tragic teen suicide
The bitterness here! Our character definitely has a backstory, and I want to know what happened to her to make her this jaded. I crossed out a few words to just tighten the sentences, and crossed out the last "will" to match the tense of the rest of the sentence and most of the paragraph.
No matter how messy it gets, or how much blood's involved, suicide's a clean kill. And any hunter can tell you that clean kills are what you want. Though any scenario that ends with Brooks Walden in a mangled heap works for me.
If this was the last line on a page, I would definitely turn to the next page and read more. I love that we have a name to our target--and potentially our antagonist. And of course I love that his name is Brooks. (All Brooks' are a little evil, right?) But the image of this guy in a mangled heap has definitely caught my interest. Again, the comparison to a hunter works, but I'm wondering if "hunting" Brooks Walden is going to come up consistently, and I think it works best if that's the case. But again, I think it could actually be taken out, just "And clean kills are what you want" gets the point across.
Also my final thoughts have more to do with what comes next. Because these first 250 words are totally me. I kind of love them--okay, I do love them--but the biggest thing this author has to be careful of is the likability of the protagonist. If this story is about getting revenge on Brooks Walden and making him wish he was dead --or worse--our protagonist is a little bit of an anti hero. The author is going to be flirting with a fine line when it comes to likability. If our protagonist's motives for vengeance aren't severe enough, we aren't going to want to follow her. In other words, Brooks has to be just plain awful, in order for us to root for the right person--at least in the beginning.
As an agent, I would totally without hesitation request this manuscript based on these pages. As a reader and book buyer, I would definitely turn the page.