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Somebody Save Me
Kathleen contemplated her eight grade class photo.
My nose is crooked. I look like I have no eyelashes or brows. Does anyone find red hair attractive?? My freckles...God, I am so ugly. Who would date this?!
She stuck her tongue out and made a face.
Yep, bet that's attractive... "No time to waste staring at the circus freak today, I'll miss my bus," she muttered out loud.
After applying some lip gloss, she grabbed her backpack from the hook on the back of her door and made her way into the kitchen. She squeezed around her mother's ample form and reached for the box of donuts on top of the refrigerator.
"Tsk. I thought you were trying to lose weight, dear." Her mother's tone froze Kathleen's hand in mid-motion.
Her fingers twitched slightly and retreated. She gave her mother a light peck on the cheek and squeezed her way back out.
"Do you want a granola bar for the bus?" her mother called sweetly at her retreating back.
"No thanks, Ma. I'll just get some fruit or something at school."
As the front door slammed shut, Kathleen heard her mother yell, "Come directly home after school today, young lady!"
Kathleen sighed and retrieved her walkman from the exterior pocket of her backpack. She rammed the headphones down over her ears and hit play. After adjusting the volume to a satisfying eardrum rupturing level, she began her long trek to the bus stop. Her head now satisfyingly empty of thought.
Kathleen: High School student. Raised in conservative Irish Catholic household with limited income. Suffers from low self esteem, poor body image, major depression, and panic disorder. Hides her conditions from all her friends, teachers, and most of her family. Finds it difficult to form lasting friendships and prefers to blend into the background. Is terrified that the few people who seem to like her will find out about her problems and will abandon her. She is tall, athletic build, dark red hair, startling ocean blue eyes, and heavily freckled.
Theresa (Kathleen's Mother): Stay at home mom with overpowering personality. She is short and excessively over-weight, but her attitude more than makes up for her lack of stature. She runs her home with an iron fist, but shows an almost giddy and boisterous personality to outsiders. She is devoutly religious. She is a control freak and demands perfect obedience from her children. No one can run her house better than she can and no one can do anything the "right way". She does it all; cooking, cleaning, laundry, household finances...etc. She has shocking red hair cut close to her head, pale (almost milky) blue eyes, ruddy skin with tons of freckles, and thin almost non-existent lips on a very round face. Her normal mode of dress is a house coat or caftan/muumuu and white Keds with no socks.
There are lots more characters, but more work needs to be done on my story outline. This is planned to be youth oriented fiction dealing with mental illness and deep secrets. A dash of Judy Blume with some decidedly more adult themes placing this story more with the teen rather than pre-teen set.
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Becky you nut! You never told me you had a story journal.
Hmmmm, okay, though I didn't know about the thing with the starting off looking in a mirror that Andrea mentioned, I pretty much agree with everything she said. This first part is good enough to get me interested in the character and I also got the sense that the mother was overbearing and probably making her daughter's tough teenage years even harder...but it would definitely be much easier to read if it was broken down into more paragraphs.
I have a horrible time with defining paragraphs myself, but there's one good thing I've learned in the writing class that I'm taking that has to do with dialogue. It's a new paragraph every time a new person speaks...i.e. if the daughter says something and then the mom says something, the Mom's speech should be in a new paragraph so that it's easier to distinguish between one person talking and another. I've never even noticed that authors do this but now that my instructor told me that I've been watching and they all do.
Guess I've been so involved in the books I read that I don't even notice how they write...lol, but then I do notice how they write if the book sucks, so I guess the fact that I don't notice the grammer and such of my fav authors just means they've accomplished their task of writing well enough that I'm too deep in the story to pay attention to how they did it...
Sammie :) -
Well I'm not a publisher,Becky, but your story got my attention. I'd read more...... And Andrea, I like the way you critique; it helps to know these things. BTW Andrea, that must have been one really nice favor you did for Ken..I see you everywhere today, hahaa. ~Barbara
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Um, Becky? Is the SOMEBODY SAVE ME your story title or do you want some saving here? LOL!
I know almost nothing about writing for a teenaged audience, but I think I've read almost all of Blume's books for pre-teens, books for older teens, and books for adults. (Guess I'm a fan. Man, when I read FOREVER at the age of 12 -- had to read it on the sly so Mom wouldn't shriek -- I was deliciously scandalized!)
This was an interesting paragraph (even though I wanted to see it broken down into more than just one ... new thought, new paragraph). Already I feel a kind of sympathy for Kathleen. She's in high school! Horrible time. Heh. But even without your recap of who these two characters are at the end, I sensed that Mom was an overbearing sort. Good job at hinting at that.
The only thing I'd caution you against is to begin a story with your main character contemplating herself in the mirror. Editors, agents and pubbers have warned time and time again that this is no longer even a cliche -- it's PAST being a cliche. And if a mirror scene is the first thing they read, your ms is sunk. I'd suggest finding another way (ANY other way) of revealing your character's appearance.
Thanks for sharing this, Becky.
11/18/04 12:27 PM
This is very brave of you. I would like to send you one of my photographs. I'm trying to figure of how to do it.
H