On Saturday I went to the London RNA chapter meeting, where Julie Cohen (Hi Julie) did a workshop on the first 100 words of our current wip. First she gave us the first 100 words of her recent novel out next week, and asked us what it told us about the character and where we thought the story was going. It brought up a lot of comments, some that surprised Julie. Then Julie read out each of our first 100 words and we gave comments about those. Some of them were really good and you could tell what genre they were and who the character was, and a few of them had telling not showing. Julie's idea to get rid of telling is to circle all the 'to be' words such as was and replace them with emotion eg describe the person feeling scared. Then it came to mine. I gave the first 100 words of Allie and it was good. Everyone seemed to get who the character was, what it was about and where the story was going but it was also said that it needed more action taking out the mundane bit. It starts with Allie having a vision then is interrupted with her mum talking and her walking to school thinking about it. It was suggested that I either have Allie having the vision at the school gates or in a lesson. It put me in a quandary. And after talking to my mum about it, I have decided to leave it as it in until I see the agent next month and then mention it to her and see what she says. I might actually suggest that Allie has the vision in the lesson and is brought out of her thoughts with others laughing at her then she has the vision for real. Watch this space. It was a very useful exercise, and I will bear this comment in mind when I get to work on Georgina again tomorrow.
This afternoon I shall finish Allie, for now.
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