“A familiar set of tropes, done perfectly.”

“A familiar set of tropes, done perfectly.”

I just got my contest package back from the RMFW contest. Would you believe I’d /forgotten/ there was actually a cash prize involved in it? Pretty cool, hee hee hee.

TNH wrote All Over my manuscript. In red pencil. I have never been so happy to see so much red pencil on my writing in my life. *cackles of laughter* Well, except where it’s green pencil. She even made notes on the synposis, including, at the last paragraph, “Don’t!” Which… I understand, although I’m going to be cryptic because I don’t want to spoil the end of the story. :) Anyway, the way the story is wrapped up, from the synopsis, it looks sort of… plot devicey. I don’t think it is, in the actual book, and I’m *really* curious to see what she thinks of the end now that she’s got the complete ms. There’s also a note in the synopsis about something she brought up when we had lunch, how she was worried that separating the kids from one another would be plot devicey, and when I explained in brief how it worked, she seemed satisfied with the answer, so possibly the way it comes out in the end will be all right, too. :)

(notes! all! over! desire! to rewrite! strong!)

The RMFW contest scoresheets have scores 1-7, where 1 & 2 are ‘needs significant work’; 3 & 4 are ‘average for a writing contest’, 5 & 6 are ‘above average for a writing contest’ and ‘7’ is ‘of publishable standard’. My lowest scores from TNH are 5’s — one on character development, where she put a note that says, “Five kids, twenty pages, only so much you can do with that,” *laughs out loud* and also on “genre elements” and “synopsis: plot development” (which only go up to 6, actually). Everything else is a 6, except for “storytelling craft” which she gave me a 7 on.

Which, y’know, basically adds up to a lot of numbers, but it’s really, really cool to read feedback from her (*and* from the other judges, who also had some very useful commentary, and one of them had a question which I should’ve thought to answer in the synopsis, so I gotta email Jessie and have her tell the judge what the answer is *laugh*), especially lookign at her edits on the manuscript, because I can see almost entirely that yes, yes, she’s right, okay, good point, okay, worth considering, okay, yes…

Amusingly, she re-wrote my first sentence so that it was nearly exactly what it had been in the rough draft. *laugh*

(Now, please, let her enthusiasm sail all the way through to buying the book!)

Chipper, chipper me!