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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Introduction Everything I’ve ever done, I did for her. Chapter 1 The Shot November 6, 2018 — Bethesda, Maryland My chest sears, a fiery jolt tearing through me as blood soaks my shirt, gushing out of me as if God himself is pouring a glass of wine from deep within my soul. Years of buried pain flow out with it, like branches and twigs swept away in the stream. “No!” Tara screams, her voice cracking with horror as she crawls over the shards of glass scattered across the front seat of the SUV. She throws herself on top of me, shielding my wounded body from any more gunfire. Her breath, minty and sweet, drifts across my face,…
Last reply by Christopherewing, -
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Danny gave the taxi driver a five dollar tip and stepped out into the drizzle. Despite being early spring, winter was pushing back hard, and a damp, cold evening like this could cause a man to try and hide his head under an umbrella, or pull the collars of his trench coat up tight to his cheek bones, but Danny walked tall, anticipating a profit. The only acknowledgements to the weather that he wore were a dark grey water resistant polyester soft shell jacket, a pair of worn leather gloves, and a faded black baseball cap. The sun had set and with the help of the heavy clouds, darkness was coming quickly. A gust of wind gave him a momentary chill and splattered icy droplets…
Last reply by Gerard Simon, -
Everett, Washington, November 5, 1916. The steamer Verona glided into sparkling Port Gardner Bay as more than two hundred strong belted out “Hold the Fort.” The Union men aboard had passed their short voyage up Puget Sound’s evergreen coast singing the anthems from the red songbook they knew by heart. With the smokestacks and warehouses of Everett in view, their voices boomed: We meet today in freedom’s cause and raise our voices high! We’ll join our hands in union strong, to battle or to die! They were members of the Industrial Workers of the World. Most called them the Wobblies, though nobody could say for certain how they earned the nickname. From p…
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The Hook & Pitch.docx
Last reply by BethRusso, -
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Flowers By Melissa Rea Teeth, as long as her head, ripped through the green underbrush where Flowers and her mother crouched, hiding. “This big brute does not eat flesh,” Mother whispered. “It might still bite off your head if you got in the way.” She clutched Flowers tight against her. The two held completely still and waited for the beast to finish its favorite meal, juicy green leaves. Flowers knew the enormous, gray-skinned water-pig could waddle over her if she were not careful, but it did not want to eat her. Mother had told her of all the dangerous animals and how to protect herself. When to run, when to hide and how to kill quickly to stay alive. …
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CHAPTER ONE.docx
Last reply by BethRusso, -
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This is the opening scene, it introduces the protagonist, presents the setting, and establishes the stakes. Non-fiction, memoir.***** Day 1 Chapter 1: "Where am I?" Ol' boy (OBCC) I was shackled, with arms cuffed behind, and riding in a prison bus; it was impossible to maintain my balance. The late summer sun burned my face through the dirty glass, smeared with the sweat and oil of the thousands of prisoners who'd traveled this route before me. The alcohol from a day earlier still insulated my veins and only intensified the heat. Sitting sideways to accommodate my 6-foot height in a space designed for someone 5'5", I…
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Chapter One: My Capture, My Kingdom September 2, 2224 – Morning The Last Forest – Minor 17 – Andromeda Minor The world is now ninety-nine percent female. Virus X took the rest. They say it was men who carried it first, how it spread like a second skin, seeded in blood, bone, and breath. Now, after generations of death, indigenous blood and estrogen reign above all other defenders to our existence. Cities have fallen. Nations have dissolved. And in the vacuum left behind, women rose, no longer just to survive, but to rule, with precision, and with purpose. The memories of living with men died with the old world, lost now to our daughters, except for the u…
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Opening Scene: Introduces the protagonists, sets the tone, and foreshadows the primary conflict. Sophia had been wide awake for 15 minutes, but her eyes remained tightly shut, an act of passive resistance she hoped would deter the intrusive morning light. But when the musical chime on her cellphone rang out blithely a third time, she resolved to snooze no longer. There was no escaping this day. Sophia rolled from her side onto her back and gazed up at her bedroom ceiling, momentarily hypnotized by the fan affixed to it. Clutching her kol balish close to her, she watched as the fan whirred sluggishly, as if it too were weighed down by the oppressive su…
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Tristan Lador clutched at the side of the decrepit wagon as it hit a particularly deep rut in the road, causing his brain to rattle. He glanced sidelong at Ghent, of a mind to tell him to watch the road. “My mum says she’ll send my brother to check in on your ma and Kea every day, so you don’t have to worry about that, at least,” Ghent said, hitting the rump of Elfie, the donkey, with his lead. The donkey tended to find distraction in the many bushes they passed, nipping away at the fresh buds of spring when Ghent got lost in conversation. Which was often. “I’m not worried,” Tristan replied, grinning at his long-time friend. This was true and not t…
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Sample Entries - Morris.docx
Last reply by Madison Morris, -
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Thursday, September 5, 1935 Lakeland Drive Baton Rouge, LA Yvonne Yvonne controlled the pace of the front porch swing with the tap and drag of her toe, her cool cotton skirt wrinkling in her lap under the weight of her 12-week-old baby, Carl Austin Weiss, Jr., or Carlchen, as they called him. She’d worried the German moniker meaning ‘little Carl’ sounded too forceful when her in-laws first suggested it, but it had already come to fit him perfectly. Cupping her hands under his arms, Yvonne wrapped long slender fingers around the back of his neck and sang to him, her voice soft and breathy. Carlchen pressed his bare feet into her thigh …
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Opening Scene: Introduces the antagonist and protagonists, sets the tone, and foreshadows the primary conflict. Secrets can be cancerous. Eating away, slowly, at every cell of the keeper’s soul. In the McBride/Johnson family secrets were a toxic epidemic, weaving themselves into the very fabric of their family history. They were unspoken, subterranean stories not told around the holiday table. The offspring were all unwitting carriers of their family’s carcinogenic lies and betrayals. The McBride/Johnson clan was a walking petri dish ripe for a viral explosion of family drama. Their matriarch’s death would be the match predestined to ignite the fuel of revelations th…
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Opening Scene - Introduces protagonist, antagonists, setting, tone, and conflict 1977 - SUMMER Church bells toll outside my open window, asserting God’s ownership of the day. He must have caught me humming. Better Him than my mother. I squeeze in two more scribbled lines at the bottom of the page, rhyming ‘begin’ with ‘sin.’ Catholic, if you couldn’t tell. Hearing my mother’s nasal twang down the hall, I grab my pitch pipe from the nightstand and crane my head out the window between my bed and Elena’s. It’s dicey, making music at all, but I’d be wasting my last day of confinement if I didn’t write about it. With a gentle blow into the pipe’s metal spokes, I turn …
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(Revised version posted June 3, 2025) Epigraph: In the fifteen years since contact with Formicaran hives, the study of Tokic has challenged fundamental assumptions about linguistic structure, particularly in relation to how languages encode identity and collective cognition. Tokic is a spatial, signed language whose holonic grammar explicitly encodes the whole-part relationships of distributed entities. The existence of humans—corporeal, individuated beings—posed a fundamental problem for Tokic’s grammatical categories. The existence of cyborg humans posed an even graver problem, because the hives initially believed that the first-contact team had enslaved thei…
Last reply by Michael Chorost, -
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(First two chapters - introduces the protagonist and antagonist, setting, and inciting incident) Chapter One “Don’t touch that!” Michael’s hand froze in mid-air, poised next to the prominent nose of a giant stone head. Gwendolyn ran over and grabbed her brother’s arm, yanking him away from the statue. While she was sure the Colossal Granite Head of King Amenhotep III was firmly anchored to the pedestal, she had no desire to test it. They backed off to a safe distance and she breathed a sigh of relief, releasing his arm from her grip. The last thing she needed was a cross British Museum curator seeking damages over the ruination of a priceless artefact…
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The Legacy of Light_ The Awakening (Submission) (1).pdf
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ALGONKIAN SUCCESS STORIES
What should you accept as credible?
Where it All Began
