REFERENDUM FOR MURDER

There is potential in the concept of this but you need to work on the presentation. You could make it easier for the reader to identify with your MC if you write directly from his point of view rather than tell us of his history, which is more the remote technique. e.g. He looked at the graffiti on the wall but his mind was way back, walking up the bank with his Pa, the smell of ... in his nostrils etc
Backed as a gesture of support and expectation.
lara
A RELATIVE LOSS

Read the first chapter. You describe your fanatical character well. Interesting motivation for lashing out at abortion clinics. The usual nut is usually stereotyped as a right wing Christian. This guy is much more interesting. My only criticism is too much back story for the first chapter and not enough action. Well done and I liked your book very much. Dina Rae

Dear Mickey,

From the long pitch, ‘Referendum for Murder’ sounds like a fast-paced realistic political thriller. From what I’ve read so far, I have no reason to believe otherwise. But I was curious; do you have a special reason for calling it ‘capitol punishment’ instead of ‘capital punishment’? To make sure, I checked Wiki for Wisconsin. It says ‘capital’ over there.

The writing needs to be tightened a bit, e.g.
• The alarm clock buzzes in... (Portland, Oregon) – you’ve already mentioned this
• (brief) moments – you can lose ‘brief’
• (blood-shot blue) eyes – this description can come a little later when he looks into the mirror, e.g. ‘Blood-shot blue eyes stared back at him.’
• Staring and rubbing one’s eyes simultaneously sounds a bit odd. You can rework this part.
• ‘His pudgy nose (begins) to breathe in the cigarette smell from last night.’ – Why ‘begins’? He was breathing already. I think you may want to put it as, ‘Stale cigarette smoke assaulted his nose.’ (I won’t use ‘pudgy’ here)
• ‘He expects that to change after today, (he thinks).’ – ‘he thinks’ is not needed

No point mentioning more of these minor glitches which I’m sure you can spot and fix yourself once you peruse through the full text with a careful eye.

As far as the narrative is concerned, you need to ‘show’ more and ‘tell’ less. I know that it’s difficult when you have a single character in the scene and there’s no scope for dialogue. Try voicing his thoughts instead. If he coughs, just write that and maybe say something like ‘Too many cancer sticks’ after that. Know what I mean? The reader wants to ‘see’ and ‘feel’ things. He doesn’t want to be told what’s happening.

Next, the tense seems inappropriate. I’m not too good with these things either. So I won’t go into details. But it’s my sincere advice that you have someone check the grammar.
I believe that you have a very well conceived storyline here that just needs to be tuned a bit. Once that is done, there will be no stopping you. Hope that you find my critique relevant and useful.

Regards,
AGC

To begin, this is well-edited and intriguing. However, I did have some thoughts along the way that might help you improve this.

The play-by-play of Jim's morning reads a bit too much like a screenplay at first, and I found it difficult to enter into the story. There's no need to give us every little movement he makes. For example, "When he stands, he places the case on the bed and opens it to look at its contents. While his eyes review the contents..." It's implied that he's looking at the contents. It's unnecessary to give us every detail.

You also fall into a few traps. First, you have a couple of tired clichés. You use the infamous mirror scene. I've read from numerous agents and publishers that they're tired of seeing the main character look into the mirror to be described. It has been done. You also begin the novel with him waking up. This is another cliché agents are tired of seeing.

I'll also echo what has already been said. The paragraphs are unnecessarily long. Long paragraphs, especially right up front, have a tendency to intimidate your reader. It's also easy for a casual reader to lose key ideas in a long paragraph. I think this opening would be stronger if simply divided into shorter paragraphs.

When you say "He expects that to change after today, he thinks" you don't need "he thinks" since you already have "he expects."

The info-dump about his past feels a bit too long this early in the novel. There's very little conflict here in your opening chapter. I wonder if this would be more effective if you began the story with his plan in action, rather than him waking up and thinking about his plan.

You certainly have the ability to write and this has the makings of an excellent story, but as of right now, this still needs a bit of work. I'd be happy to read any changes you make. Feel free to shoot me a message when you do. Best of luck!

On a side note, have you considered changing your title to lowercase? It feels a bit like you're shouting at your reader.

REFERENDUM FOR MURDER

In the short time between me agreeing to read and today I noticed that you had already re-written the pitch from the one I downloaded. Glad I double-checked! So, I see what you are about here – a moral social argument based around the actual legislative situation that you are familiar with and cast in the form of a novel. OK so your pitch to potential readers should sell them the idea of the book. My guess is that writing the book like this is a way of getting an otherwise potentially dull debate out into the open in an engaging way. Laudable but tricky because you have to sell the idea as something people will want to read. You must decide what angle to take but I would go with the contents of the fiction for your first short pitch. So, exciting brief grabby couple of sentences that present the bare bones of the plot.

In your long pitch I think it is acceptable to mention the actual situation but be wary of, for example, potential mix-ups – as it stands it might suggest Thomas McCormick is a real figure. I presume he’s fictional.

My first impression is that your paragraphs are too long for this somewhat journalistic style of writing. Too many ideas in that first one for example, so look for ways to break that structure into smaller bites. The descriptive side of your language seems fine, not too flowery for the kind of approach, yet containing enough to get the reader into the scene. However, there are two classic clichés of writing together in that first paragraph: your MC wakes up in bed (yawn – gotta start somewhere) and then looks in the mirror (handy overworked method for self description). Sorry, but true. And it’s not even strictly necessary because you’ve just described him as having long blond hair, so it’s repetitious as well.

There are other over-writing examples. In this sentence: ‘He expects that to change after today, Jim thinks.’ The tag ‘Jim thinks’ is completely unnecessary – the reader already knows that it is Jim doing the thinking. And again ‘he figures’. I felt you needed to ask yourself how much of all that detail was really needed for the plot in, for example, that second paragraph. It comes out a bit too pedestrian: he gets the case, he puts the case on the bed, he opens the case he looks at the contents. This is like screen play instructions rather than fiction narrative. Your reader will rapidly grow bored with such a level of trivia. Here’s a perfect example: ‘and, after arriving at his desired parking spot, turns off the engine.’ Everybody knows and, when reading, anticipates, that a car driver arriving at a parking place will turn off the engine. An author would only mention this if there were some special plot significance to the action. Do you see what I mean?

For such an horrific action sequence as the actual killing this almost matter-of-fact style runs the risk of underemphasizing the emotion that your character must be experiencing. You certainly want to avoid that in a piece that is supposedly designed to elicit sympathy or, at least empathic understanding, for the perpetrator.

Mickey,
Good start for an intersting story, but much needs to be cleaned up here. You should re-write your pitch to attract your readers, not say that this is a story you have written, that much is obvious. Say/write something like: a politicain wants justice, a widow wants revenge, an assassin wants them both.... (see what I mean).
Saw nothing of the politician Thomas in chapter one and I think you should start with your main character (IMO). Chapter two should have Jim the assassin striking down this abortion doctor with a sniper rifle, then reveal to the readers that he is now off to WI (in the same city where Thomas lives) and then proceed to chapter 3 where this cop is killed and the wife is informed of it. Then build up the meeting between Thomas and Barb. Perhaps make Barm meet up with Thomas to build up tension, etc.
This is how I would structure the story.
I hope this helps
Kirk