Grace and Theo

Aug Pro Agent Challenge (Open 8am, 8/12)
1

Audience and Genre: Adult Romance

Logline This is the beginning and Grace is on a boring date, she tries to get out of it by sending an SOS to her friend but the date, being a nice guy offers to drive her to the hospital. (Theo isn’t introduced yet)

Entry

Shoot, she was doing it again.

Grace mentally shook herself and willed the glaze to dry from her eyes as she checked back into her date.

“I specialize in the header/footer portions of a webpage, but I’ve been known to dabble in the sidebar portion of it as well,” he chuckled as he speared an asparagus.

“Mhm,” Grace murmured as she sipped her wine. Oh good, she hadn’t missed anything important.

What had been her mistake again? Oh yes, asking about his job, and for the last twenty minutes.

Wait, has it been twenty minutes?

Grace subtly looked down at her phone. Twenty-two minutes; he’s been talking about nothing else. Who knew that someone could talk about IT interface for so long and keep going? It would be one thing if he had bothered to ask her what she did for a living; then at least a conversation could happen.

Maintaining eye contact as he happily spoke about himself, Grace reached back into her clutch and pulled out her phone. After a quick glance, she found one of her best friend’s names and texted:

Grace: SOS

Leah: say no more

“I prefer the command-line to the menu-driven, but-“ he stopped to look at her as her phone rang.

“Sorry about this,” she said as she answered. “Hey Leah, what? Which hospital?” She practically shrieked into the phone. “I’m on my way. I’m so sorry, our friend, she’s NYPD, and she’s just been shot.” Grace explained as she hung up the phone and got up from her chair.

“Oh my God, well don’t worry, I’ll drive you! Which hospital?” His eyes widened as he put his napkin on the table.

“Mercy, but really you don’t have to. I don’t want to ruin your whole evening.” Grace had her clutch and was trying to back away.

“Nonsense.” He was already putting bills down on the table and grabbing his coat from the back of his chair.

Stuck, Grace waited for the valet to bring his car around. Stiffly, she got into the front seat as he held the door open for her. He quickly shut it and ran around the hood to get into the driver’s seat and peeled away from the curb.

“We’ll be there in less than ten minutes.” He glanced at her reassuringly.

“Thank you, let me just see if there’s an update.” She took out her phone and dialed.

“Hey.” Leah answered.

“Hey, we’re on our way. Is there any update?”

“Oh my god, he’s still with you?”

Grace bit her lip instead of letting out a groan at Leah’s strangled voice. Any second she’d release that laugh she was trying to hold in.

“We’re almost to the hospital. Is Meg on call?” Grace’s stomach started to hurt. This was getting way out of hand.

“Hold on, you better pray she’s not busy or in the OR already.”

No kidding. Grace tucked the phone back into her clutch and sent up some prayers.

“Is your friend an officer?” Todd asked as he glanced over at her.

“Hm? Oh, no she’s a homicide detective.”

“Wow, I bet that’s exciting. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I just said that! I am so sorry.” At least he had the grace to blush. Honestly, he wasn’t that bad of a guy, Grace thought as she looked at him. Had she judged him too harshly?

CRITIQUE INSTRUCTIONS:
Your RC1 critique has two parts: The Story Score rubric and a written review.

For the rubric below, give a gut-level reaction to each question: 1 means it reads like a first draft. 3 means it’s good, but not something you’d remember. 5 means it reads like a book from the bookstore shelf. For more info on how to use the rubric, remove the “dot” and type the following into your browser: readychapter1 dot com/critique-guidelines/

For your written review, reply to the post. Your reply should include something positive, something to work on, and should be at least 75 words long.

  1. The author’s Voice is confident and compelling. I’m sucked in to the story.
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  1. The Characters feel distinct, complex, and relatable. I care about what happens to them.
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  1. I sense that the Plot is headed somewhere intriguing, and I’m curious as to what happens next.
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  1. Well-crafted Dialogue/Non-verbal Communication adds personality to the story. I’m intrigued by how the characters talk, think, and interact.
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  1. Descriptions are vivid and detailed. Whether the world is real or imaginary, it feels like I’m really there.
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2

Over all, the start of Grace and Theo is well crafted, being both strong and clean.
The characters feel as if they could be real people, and this is shown through an exquisite blend of dialogue and action.
My only question here is of the plot, I know this is a romance and this man here on the date with her is not the mmc, but I see no promise to the reader of what hope is to come.
Perhaps, and it is my hope, that this is coming soon in the next paragraphs or within the first or second chapter. Other than that, well done.

3

Great place to start your story! I love how she thinks she’s got an easy way out of a boring evening and her lies keep building on each other. A couple of thoughts: I’d use Todd’s name earlier, so the reader knows for sure this isn’t the Theo in the title. I also found myself missing some details, like what the restaurant looks like, the lighting, what kind of car he drives. You don’t have to write paragraphs or anything, just a few little details to break up the dialogue and ground the reader in the story. But I think your hook is great. I’d definitely keep reading.

4

Dialogue is great and says a lot about the subjects. And I agree with how long one can talk about the IT stuff. The physical motions helps in forwarding the story. Biggest question is how she knew the officer was shot…is she watching the news? Being a detective, police officer homicide detective…doesn’t matter…we’re always cops. If I had any complaints which there really isn’t any…the story seems slightly rushed, other than that I like it.

5

Thank you for your comments. The mmc does make an entrance directly after this scene as she kind of commiserates the bad date. 500 wods is kind of hard ha.

6

Thank you, I will definitely be taking this and adding those grounding details.

7

Thank you, her friend on the phone let her know. I wanted it to feel a little rushed to add the urgency of the lie.

8

There are some promising ideas here, but some of the mechanics of crafting a story are missing or improperly executed.

We don’t have a description or name for the date, other than him eating asparagus. The dialog about his job doesn’t seem realistic - more appropriate for him to say he specializes in CSS (Cascading Style Sheets, which covers headers, footers and everything in between), and dabbles in JavaScript (the interactive behavior of a web page). There needs to be an action tag after her last words to Leah, otherwise we can’t tell she’s now talking to someone else. The dialog preceding ‘Grace explained’ should end in a comma, or keep the period and drop the ‘explained as she’.

Nice drama as she’s being driven to a non-existent patient at the hospital - that works.

9

I will admit I am not the best at grammar. His name is said later, there is a hindrance to 500 word count. I will definitely add the CSS and javascript (that’s not my area)

10

Grace is immediately relatable and is funny! I think we’ve all been in that situation of wanting to get out of a sticky date. I think your logline left me a little confused as to what might happen in this sample, so I think if you spent some real time with it, it could reflect the humor and uncomfortable situation of her trying to get out of her date. Your handle on voice is strong! I think the only thing missing was a touch more description, and I think getting this in the hands of an editor or experienced beta reader could help out some of your diction and grammar. Overall, it was genuinely a fun read!

11

Thank you, another person said about grounding details and I agree. For the logline I just wanted to specify that the mmc isn’t introduced yet, he comes in the next scene.

12

Cute start, I’m not connecting with her instint to laugh, but it is an absurd situation. The dialogue is well paced and natural.

I’m not one for a lot of character detail, but you could ground the bad date a little with a quip about his looks.

It’s obvious what’s happening, so it would be nice to see the logline to know where the story is going.