Losing You Backward

Aug Pro Agent Challenge (NOW CLOSED)
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Audience and Genre: Adult fantasy/romantic fantasy

Logline When a woman falls for a man who’s been condemned to travel backward in time through their romance, she must defy the Time God to break the curse before the man she loves is erased from her life and time itself.

Entry

Joric dissolved in the usual way, like a sandcastle at high tide.
The bow-fronted shop corner blanched and fell apart in blotches, and the racket of carriage wheels and hooves grew distant. A tranquil second passed.
The darkness shattered, and the resonant echoes of horseshoes striking the road turned rhythmic. Slower, but harder around the edges.
A train. Oh, shit.
Blobby spheres of light along a canopy of woody brown. A long row of blurry red geometry. Joric’s brain identified the interior of a corridor coach a half second before his thighs slammed into the hardwood top rail of one of the seats.
He doubled over the seat back into the adjacent bay and spilled onto the cushions like an overturned barrel of fish, banging both knees on the way down.
When the air returned to his lungs, he used it for a bout of lunatic laughter. He’d displeased the Time God. More than usual.
The train lurched, as if unsatisfied with his soft landing. The lights flickered, flared, and settled.
Joric wrestled his bruised body into a sitting position and blinked until his surroundings came into focus. Red velvet seats. Mahogany ceiling panels. Gas lamps in pendant fixtures. First class. How delightfully contrary.
On the opposite aisle, a few seats forward, the severe eyes of a blond woman in frilly blue glared at him from behind a book. Not one of his most subtle entrances, but she wasn’t screaming, so she must have missed the first couple of seconds.
He flashed a humorless grin, and the woman’s gaze retreated back to the pages.
Joric straightened his spine and extended one leg, then the other, biting his tongue to stifle a groan. Walking was going to hurt, but he didn’t think anything was broken.
Nothing physical, anyway.
The familiar ache found him again, freed from the disorientation of the skip, now more open wound than ache.
His hand drifted into the inner pocket of his coat in search of Fion’s note. He retrieved it, brushed away a fine bit of lint clinging to his name, and unfolded it.
The paper was fragile after so many months next to his body. Its edges had gone soft, and pinstriped light showed through the worn center crease. The once-black ink was now sepia brown, but the numbers and words were as legible as they’d been the day Fion penned them.
20th of Wintersebb, 1023. 3 days. Books & Remedies.
The last date on the list.
He traced each letter with a fingertip, looking for some small change in the script. An odd slant in the ampersand. An altered flourish in the T.
Every detail was the same. Every loop, every punctuation mark, every change in pressure, each one identical to the one in his memory.
Nothing ever changes. He wasn’t sure if that was consoling or devastating.
“Your ticket, please.”
Joric startled. The train guard stood at his elbow, his stiff black railroad cap pulled too far down his forehead, eyes narrowed, plump hand palm up. Joric closed his eyes and muttered a curse. “I haven’t got one,” he said.
“Then I’ll have you pay or get off my train, sir.” The guard’s mustache bobbed, thick and contemptuous.

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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The beginning is a nice visual effect. The red geometry was a tad too much. Can you shorten the line about having a bout of lunatic laughter. And we have time God with out little more to go on right off the bat. So much exposition and you only need a sprinkle. Then we have the severe eyes of a woman…yikes at first until I continue. She should have been screaming, but no injuries, just description. And why was bite his tongue and what’s up with the groan? Glad it wasn’t physical. The note was interesting. Then back to the train. It’s challenging and does have possibilies of what is about to happen.

3

I absolutely love your logline, it makes me want to read the entire book, it sounds so fascinating. But with that and the first sentence that gives the impression that you’re watching Joric disappear, it threw me as the reader that it was actually all from his perspective. I really like the detail of irritating the time god (does he have a name?) More than usual. It makes the reader ask questions which is really good.

4

I actually love the softness, the way you depict things through the prose.
It can be difficult to communicate soft “timey-wimey” if you will, shifts to a reader. To this reader, it was only the first four paragraphs that had me lost. The part from carriages, to a train and then suddenly being on it with the only mention of transition being what was first opened with.
Other than that, I have seen bits of this work and I remember the names Joric and Fion, I know that this is going to be something spectacular.

5

The opening is rather confusing - who are we, where are we, what’s going on? A sound of horseshoes doesn’t (to me) indicate an approaching train.

The next section is clearer and believable. I feel it would be better to indicate the main character’s driving need/purpose before describing the folded up piece of paper, otherwise the reader has no reason to care what it says.

6

So I thought your logline was really intriguing and well written. When I started reading the sample, I had to read the first couple of paragraphs a few times to fully grasp what was happening. I think you have a very articulate way of describing settings, people, and things - it’s a truly unique style. One thing I asked myself though when I got to the end was “If I didn’t read the logline, would I know what was going on in the story?” That’s when I realized that without the logline, I would be a little lost as to what’s going on or what the main character is trying to accomplish. Your prose and style is truly unique, but I wonder if you could hone it in so the reader gets a better grasp on what’s happening and what direction the story is heading?

7

Terrific opening.

An interesting wrinke, hinting that there could be trouble in the future.

I swear I’ve read this before, but it feels incredibly fresh. Your revisions are paying off. You’ve captured almost a textbook example of the first 500, you entered us into the story and described the fantastical in a tangible way, you’ve given us the plot or mission and then snapped the story into the present with a jarring “cliff-hanger.”

I’m going to have to read this one. The only critique is your paragraphs are a little staccato and choppy, it’s good for advancing the story but some of them might belong together.

8

Excellent opening line. A sandcastle dissolving in the tide is a familiar image that the reader will recognise as “usual” but for a human to disolve this way is definately unusual so right away it is interesting. The next descriptions were a bit confusing to me. Perhaps there could be a bit of dialouge and realism right after the opening line, like at the end of the passage when the train conductor speaks. Perhaps we could here the last thing that was said to Joric before he dissolves? The dialouge grounds the story and creates a nice contrast to the poetic descriptions.