New York Write to Pitch "First Pages"
A forum for New York pitch event alums to post samples of their scenes and prose narrative for detailed critique according to Algonkian Author Connect guidelines. Emphasis on choice of set, narrative cinema, quality of dialogue, metaphor, static and dynamic imagery, interior monologue, general clarity, tone, suspense devices, and routine line editing issues as well.
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apprx. 500 words from Chapter 1: reveals protagonist; core wound -- she doesn't feel like she's good enough -- she did all the right things, guided by principles of integrity, hard work and service, and those bastards fired her, and now the antagonist (who looks like a good guy)) is coming in to throw her a lifeline, she's electrified by him, and he's the one she has to conquer -- or else. The attendant scanned the card, smiling as though he had been expecting her, handed her a pass, and said, “Guest of Mr. Garrett, I see.” He sounded impressed, pointed diagonally across the lobby to the elevator banks. “On the right, top floor.” “Thanks.” She to…
Last reply by Tiffany, -
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April 1989 Southport, Maine Someone had told her once that the red house had withstood years of abuse from the gales and never faltered because it had good bones. But the house that fishermen looked to as a landmark in the fog was now a beacon of neglect. Galene stopped at the front door and scraped her fingernails along the siding. Red paint peeled off in shards. At least she’d had the roof replaced last year. She tussled with the finicky lock and cringed as the door creaked open in protest. The air inside smelled like must. Furniture covered in white cloth. Dust motes dancing. A memory tugged at her. She shook it off. The large windows in the parlor stretched across th…
Last reply by Sheila Myers, -
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The attachment includes my first two chapters introducing the protagonist and one of the antagonists as children. Note, many of these scenes were sprinkled as backstory in past iterations, but I found it slowed the pace and some of my betas felt more inclined to want to be in the moment of the two opposing forces in a crucial school shooting scene (rather than backstory). Though 95% of the book is about the main characters as adults, I felt the reader needed to experience the tragic event in real time with the characters. The school shooting immediately follows these pages. Many thanks Daryl NYPPITCH--PROSE SAMPLE-PERIMAN.gdoc
Last reply by Daryl Periman, -
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Scene 1: Preying As part of her recent nightly routine, Alex Mercer watched from across the street as Henry Shen stepped out from his doorway with his briefcase and firmly locked the door behind him, oblivious to her shadow across the street cast by the streetlights. She saw the gold chain’s glint dangling around his neck as it swung. Embedded around his eyes was his occipital interface – titanium that ran around his orbits like metallic eyeliner. Across the street, the fleeting glow of Alex’s cigarette crumbled to ash when she rose, keeping a watchful distance. Alex followed Shen through San Francisco’s Chinatown night market, passing vendors selling c…
Last reply by MingluJiangP6, -
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BLOOD OF THE BELLFLOWER: THE TRACE HUNTER (Hild's perspective: Leading male protagonist) CHAPTER ONE Hild still couldn’t comprehend why they were hunting him - a young indentured servant, glorified horse hostler, and fence mender. Nonetheless, his parlous escape from the obscure mining village had flared an uproar with the Segaeta guards. Now, he lay stunned and spread eagle in the hot sand, breathing heavily and blinking against a sticky trickle of blood from his brow bone. Three things tumbled through his mind: First, this new life of running and fighting was unsustainable. Second, Razzia was somewhere – on a horse – being h…
Last reply by Laura Neibaur, -
Revised Chapter One - Introduces the Sifting Ceremony and two main protagonists, Hild and Razzia. CHAPTER 1 Hild looked down the shaft of his arrow through a small gap in the foliage, then readjusted his hand on the grip. He felt his heart beating in his fingers as they held the nock of the arrow just behind the blue and gold fletching. He crouched, ready, waiting, and fearful, for today, the Sifting Ceremony began. Hild watched in mute horror as the dark-armored guards appeared, dragging a young girl from a nearby tent. They shoved her toward the center of the large, circular courtyard and dropped her at the base of a polished stone altar shaped …
Last reply by Chief Editor M. Neff, -
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MT. ZION, OHIO 2015 I’ve never met Nomi and there she is, plopped at the family table, grey-haired, frowning, solid as a bulldog, in a speckly green dress she could have worn to a wedding. But this is a church luncheon after a funeral. Her daughter’s funeral. I grip Dylan’s hand harder. The church lady escorting us taps Nomi’s shoulder. “Nomi, here’s Bob, Esther’s husband, and”—the church lady bends over—“what’s your name again, sweetie?” “Dylan,” my daughter says. She drops my hand and seats herself in the folding chair across from Nomi at the same time she plucks from her craft bag a handful of plastic strings. Dylan may be ni…
Last reply by Martha Moody, -
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Scene 1 Terra hoisted the heavy red gasoline canister to her lips and took a swig. “The only thing that ran out of gas is your bullshit story,” she said, her sparkling black eyes trained on him. The young man cuffed to the barbed-wire cattle fence dripped with sweat, despite the fact that clouds had been blocking the sun for the past few hours. He looked ridiculous out here, Terra thought, with his pristine white hoodie and his high wave of stiff slicked-back hair. The hardy foliage and rugged black bark of the massive ebony tree behind him added to the absurdity. Its olive leaves danced in the wind that seemed to be picking up as the afternoon kicked in.…
Last reply by Zona, -
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Prologue (foreshadows protagonist) 1995 So dry was the air that she began to wonder if she’d be better off holding her breath. Its stillness belied the abundance of life that somehow survived here. Thrived here. This desert teemed with life, even while inhospitably threatening it. On top of that was the human threat, maybe worst of all. How, she wondered, could such a place bring forth a living thing. She blinked slowly through drops of sweat, fighting unconsciousness. Her last, nearly empty water bottle, lying on its side just out of reach, seemed to mock her. Its insubstantial, crinkly plastic a symbol of this entire journey. She didn’t even know where she wa…
Last reply by Tom McCarthy, -
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OPENING SCENE - Introduces protagonist, setting, and tone. Hints at the antagonist and sets up the flashbacks that will fill in his story. This was not originally my first chapter, but I pulled this scene forward for a quicker immersion into the conflict and rewrote it as a starting point. Chapter 1 “It’s the police,” Ellen whispered as she walked back in the den. My lungs stopped. People think the heart is the vital organ that arrests in these fixed moments, but no, the heart races forward shooting tiny sparks of stress to the tips of your fingers, toes, and ears. The ends of you burn with the feelings of fear, but you can’t breathe. Your lungs hav…
Last reply by PamOHara, -
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CALAIS JUNGLE July 1, 2016 Stolen Soap Far from the tents and stalls of Calais Jungle, a water spigot stands in a field of flowers. Freydun makes his way past refugees from hot troubled lands toward a language school near the faucet. He is eager to learn the French words he’ll need to make a life in this country with its damp air and people with pale hairless arms. Freydun lopes and slows, afraid to misread what’s before him. He thought he knew his motherland until it turned on him; now he is in France, ceding one fate for another, straddling East and West, swapping privilege for privation. He had no choice. Next to him is his fri…
Last reply by Carmen Gray, -
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This piece is from Chapter 6 and it introduces the inner conflict of the protagonist when presented with the primary conflict of a 3000 mile flying challenge presented by the antagonist. In the aviation business, there are two types of people: those of integrity and complete rascals. Brave souls of high honor stand next to snake oil salesmen, with no population between the two. Flying produces Pulitzer Prize winners, war heroes and drug runners. Pilots are gossips, and I had heard a lot about Harry Forrest: the stint in federal prison, the airport that burned down, the lawsuits, the mechanics who came and went like the change of the seasons.…
Last reply by S Robert Williams, -
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Chapter 1 There was a knock on the door, but Blair didn’t look up from her desktop. Moments later, another knock forced her hazel eyes to roll. “Tessa?” Blair called to her assistant who was putting together the new white leather couches for her office. “Yes Miss?” Tessa stood immediately, smoothing out her clothes as she spoke. Tessa has only been Blair’s assistant for a week. She had applied hopeful, but didn’t expect much other than a phone call saying she didn’t qualify. She, after all, did come from the scheduling department, which everybody knows is the bottom tier job at The Circle. Blair often refers to them as “sadly necessary.” But Tessa is young…
Last reply by Mackenzie Eaton, -
He’d been assigned as their group advisor from the start of her program. He was older than them by decades but his boyish cropped hair, lithe frame, the way he adjusted his glasses to sit just so on the bridge of his nose, the way he folded his sleeves up perfectly and fixed that tuft of hair with vanity, his quick wit, the way he used catchphrases from their generation in perfect tandem with paternal truisms…all made him a favorite with almost everyone. But of all these little things dwarfed in comparison to the way he yelled her name across the hallways. Waking up late that morning and being off schedule, not even having the time to get a quick bite to eat from th…
Last reply by unwritten, -
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Work in progress after the incredible "Write to Pitch" in NYC and advice from the amazing Paula Munier...
Last reply by Shannan Dugan, -
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SORIN Something about the sunrise in Elvenspear could make even the most worried person in the world feel like everything was right with it. And Sorin could hardly deny the view. The expanse yawned on, the capital city before him, with shimmering buildings where the sunrays danced on their glass windows, bathing the streets below in a shower of orange, red and gold. Sorin came up here sometimes as it was a place of refuge when nightmares sent him straight out of bed in a cold sweat. The same dream, over and over again. But by the time he was out of bed and walking, he couldn’t even remember the details. Only the fear that lingered, the anxiety that…
Last reply by Jack Weaver, -
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The excerpt below is the novel’s second scene, introducing the main character, Ursula, and her predicament. The previous (first) scene is set in an ambulance that is taking Ursula’s mother, Marilyn, to the hospital. She is dying of cancer. The year is 1971. Ursula and the sailor sat at a picnic table on the upper terrace of the Surf ‘n Sand Lounge, looking down at the nearly empty boardwalk. Children weren’t allowed here, but it was a Tuesday afternoon, mid-September. The waitress had taken a long look at the sailor with Ursula in tow and shrugged. It was her first table in over an hour. Ursula looked around the terrace. She had often stood…
Last reply by Rae Strickland, -
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The following is an excerpt from chapter one of "Clean." Darla, the protagonist, is experiencing a flashback as she cleans a client's house. She looked at the wall to the right side of the bed. Another secret panel hid there, protecting the Parson’s safe and family photo albums. Unlike those in bank robber movies, the safe wasn't anything special. Every so often, she’d peruse the photographs of long-dead Parson ancestors. Occasionally, Darla would find a new, crisply developed photo of the couple off on European adventures or relaxing Caribbean cruises. A life she would never know. Still, even hiding spots needed dusting. It'll be fine. They're not b…
Last reply by Tucker Bomar, -
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OPENING SCENE - Introduces antagonist, provides initial setting, establishes tone, introduces protagonists, and foreshadows the primary conflict. CHAPTER ONE. Everyone knows that just about everything in the U. S. is shipped by trucks, more than 10 billion tons of freight each year. Trucks are indispensable. Fruit, razor blades, computers, lumber, chickens. This is the linchpin of American commerce. Put another way, trucks move 72 per cent of the nation’s goods. But not everyone knows that trucks deliver all the U. S. nuclear bombs from the factory to the military! A person might drive past a convoy full of nukes just rolling along Interstate 95 at the pos…
Last reply by Christopher, -
Prior to the birth of Grace, a young couple named Mary and Angelo met and fell in love during WWII, in a combated and destroyed tiny island of Gozo, Malta, which floats in the center of the Mediterranean, and is filled with mystical history and magic. During the war, Malta was one of the most central English colonies of destruction. To say it was decimated, is being kind. Everyone wanted this jewel in the sea, the most perfect entry point into Europe with Africa and the Middle east not being too far away. Once the devastating war was over, and Angelo was able to return to the love of his life Mary from his time at sea while serving on war ships…
Last reply by Maureen Valerie Hummel, -
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The dispatch rider saluted the staff sergeant, threw the satchel over his shoulder, and bolted out of the reception to a row of BSA M20 motorcycles. He straddled the next workhorse in line, pulled his goggles down from his helmet, and gave it a sturdy jump-start. Off he sped, down a narrow road stretching north across the countryside. He knew every second mattered. The whistle blew its high-pitched farewell and the train jerked forward as it pulled away from Euston Station. Tommy’s heart rate accelerated in synchrony with the revving up of the engine. What am I in for? He pushed his spectacles further up his pointy nose, not to bring the scenery into clearer view …
Last reply by jgkulyk, -
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Intro I didn’t pray as Kremlin tanks groveled past my Polish driver’s abjectly new American F150 hidden pat in a forest thicket. Instead, from the observer’s backseat, I internally rewound a brassy Shostakovich overture to piss off any reapers who dared take me in a soviet killing field at 37. My frontal cortex, still soused with greasy hair and plum slivovitz drug out for the previous night’s Warsaw embassy meet-and-greet, failed to reconcile the compulsory musical pomp of 85-odd years ago with the brute, pulpous appendages floundering for the same nationalistic vision before my incurably dispassionate face. God! Too many kiddie arms were leaking blood way too early…
Last reply by Francis Rose, -
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Chapter 1: Lost in Fog The air was filled with a thick and oppressive industrial fog as Constant worked. It hung across the workcamp in a uniform haze almost suffocating in its intensity, forcing Constant to breath slowly throughout the day lest he find himself gasping helplessly for breath. Was this fog the work of the Panathema Box and its opening, or was it merely the work of mankind’s industrial greed? The answer was beyond Constant’s vision. The pun was almost funny. Constant was busy hauling. It was the job that had been given to him by the Assignment Bureau three weeks ago. He had been visited by one of their agents, in a military uniform, flanked…
Last reply by Nick Galluzzi, -
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Early on the morning of June 13, 2022, Jake MacKay walked through the mist of Dunrobin Castle’s hedged gardens. The twin spired castle was the northernmost in the Scottish Highlands, a white fortress jutting from the hillside against the sea. Jake crossed the vast lawn to the wooded spot, where the caged birds of prey watched, their heads pivoting— massive eagles, falcons owls. He found Tavish Kerr, the falconer, in his thatched hut picking over rabbit parts for the birds on a long table. Older now, stooped— still with his worn, tweed cap, he nodded. "Today is the day." He sized up Jake. "You shrank.” “I lost my rugby weight a long time ago.” …
Last reply by Tom Jessiman, -
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Hi Everyone, I'm attaching another story of mine, Crime Warp. It's the first installment in a planned series of 5 stories (sequel written, 3 others fully outlined). The main premise of the series are my MCs use a technology called Projection (similar to time-travel, but with differences), to solve famous unsolved mysteries and cold cases. I've pasted a plot summary below and a short, but not sweet, chapter one. I appreciate all feedback. ==================================================================================================== When you want to solve history’s greatest cold cases, you don’t find the witnesses, you become the witnesses. Seasoned…
Last reply by Matt Leyshon,
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