The Gauntlet: Results and Reviews

Southern Saturday Nights (Round 3)

Reader 1: No

Reader 2: No

Reader 3: No

Reader 1: Wow, the first chapter could almost be called "The Adventures of the Liberal White Girl." The demonstration of racism in the church parking lot is done WAY too heavy-handedly and almost reads like a moralistic Sunday school text.

How to remedy this? I'd suggest just letting the characters act as they do and not explaining it. The MC knows what her family does, how they are, who is she explaining them to? Who is she saying "Yeah, they're idiots, but look I'M NOT" to? Why is she so keen to tell us how different and, yeah, better, she is? I don't know if you were going for a type of caricature of young, white liberal women who don't know how arrogant and self-congratulatory they sound, but you've done a pretty good job presenting one here. She's so textbook, it hurts. (This scene is scraping the edges of a "White Saviour" story. The young white girl out to help the poor pregnant black lady from a nasty racist by giving her water. )

Of course, you want to get across that she doesn't like it, but you have the perfect sequence already there -- when she moves for the water bottles and gets a slap. That is the 'show' that speaks louder than words. I'd suggest taking out all the preaching and self-aggrandising and spend a lot more time on that slap. Show us how she and her mother face off over this issue. Body language. Old memories flying to the surface. They face off over the little brother, they can face off here.

The writing might need one or two more passes to work as smoothly as you might like it to. I understand this is YA, but the "I" comes in far too often, and disrupts the flow.

Chapter 2. The best part here is the description of Daxon. That's done very well and you should really be proud of it! The first part of the chapter does a good job with establishing the college scene, but the dialog with the roomie is a bit too averagely normal to go on as long as it does. (read: kinda boring) Perhaps some foreshadowing could be done there, or some hints about how Allyson has been adjusting to college would work better there.

I also think you're spending WAY too much time on Allyson and her brother. Or rather, Allyson's feelings about her brother. It reads like this: my brother, my brother, my brother, my asshole mother, my racist dad, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my brother, my roomie, my brother, my brother, my brother, a new friend, hot guy.

In general, you've got a good basis to work with, and the concept isn't bad. It's just perhaps too, I don't want to say 'typical', but there's not much here to fully engage the reader that we haven't seen several times already -- until Daxon appears, that is.

Reader 2:
While I think the bones of this story are incredible, these first few chapters didn't pull me in. There was a LOT of big stuff going on. Lots of really deep subjects introduced in the span of only a few paragraphs, which means there was a lot for the reader to unwrap, unpack and think about. Blatant racism, Autism, abusive/neglectful parents, social stigma, the MC's rather moralistic reactions to all of it, and then boom, it's over, and the MC is moving on, which puts a neat little bow on the end of the chapter. There isn't enough time to really wrap my brain around anything, much less get attached to the MC, before we're in another place and situation entirely, meeting new people.

I want so much to like this story. I enjoy deep, pithy reading that makes me think, and this story could be just that. Unfortunately, BECAUSE it's heading into the Genre of the Deep and Pithy, it has to compete with some really heavy-hitting and well-written stuff.
  

The over-reliance on drama is what is killing it for me. There's too much, too fast, and it's all over the place. Right, left, center, coming at the reader like fists to the face. The MC is apparently the lone virtuous white person in a tiny town full of pretentious backwoods southern Christian racists (which isn't a racist stereotype at all *sarcasm*), AND her father is obviously part of the KKK resurrection, AND the MC is the only source of love and protection for her special needs little brother, AND her mother is a narcissistic witch who has driven the MC into a severe identity/eating disorder, so it's no WONDER the poor little white girl wants to get out of Dodge. (Actually, if her life really was this awful, and she was SO attached to her little brother and protective of him, I would more readily fall for this story if the poor little white girl in this case wound up moving out, getting a job of her own, and fighting for custody of her brother rather than escaping off to college on her daddy's dime – but maybe that's just me over here in my grown-up chair, appreciating women with a little spine.)  Since this is such a character driven piece, it's imperative that the MC doesn't come across as whiny. Her near-constant focus on how bad/evil/gross/abusive/unbelievable her parents are might be a tempting tool to make her seem like a virtuous victim, but unfortunately it's a low-hanging blunt instrument as far as writing tools go, and she's coming across as juvenile instead. 

At the moment, it's too dramatic to feel real, and this story needs to feel real. It deserves to feel real. The subject matter doesn't make for an easy read. I commend you for tackling it, but be warned, heavy topics take patience, an incredibly sophisticated touch, and a lot of finesse. This is something I want to dig my hands into and absorb, and instead I'm grabbing at bits and pieces flying by so fast I can't catch them before they're gone. Take your time with it. Build it up in careful layers, don't dump it all on the fan at once, aim it at me, and crank that sucker to full blast on oscillate.

As a mature woman who has been through my fair share of crap, I would put this down. Not because I don't like the story itself, but because I think it needs to be honed into something I can get lost in, and re-read more than once.       

Reader 3:

Going heavy with the "I'm so much better than my family" here. Dad's a racist, yes and so is the whole family, but the ugly hatred doesn't fester inside the MC? It's all a bit holier-than-thou. Of course, he is being an absolute waste, but there is a way to go about saying "my family sucks because they're bigots" and this just isn't it. She isn't even annoyed by it, or angry, despite knowing that it's wrong, instead just using it to show how much better she is because of her moral high ground. In the end, instead of reading like a story about a girl with garbage parents, it reads like a info-pamphlet about racism. Especially with the "truth of the matter is..." sentence in chapter 1.

This is an incredibly important topic you are touching on, but the way you are doing it comes across preachy and self-serving. As if it doesn't matter that the child is crying, that the woman is pregnant etc, only that the MC feels sad about it. This continues into the second chapter, with her meeting Daxon, all she seems to think about is her dad. She barely seems to be looking at him as a human, instead something to rebel against her dad with. Because, after all, she is so much better.

I think the issue here might be what I've talked about in the previous round, the lack of emotion in the story. You tell us all about the thoughts behind the emotion, but don't actually show us any.

Not exactly on topic, but - the mother painted over the wallpaper? And it's still intact how many years later? Now I just feel sorry for the mother. No wonder she's still annoyed after having to paint over wallpaper.