Kapoor is Teh Fail

[rodant_kapoor]

Kapoor entered Gone to Earth's first ten pages in the SF & fantasy category of the Writers' League of Texas 2009 Novel Manuscript Contest, and just got his report card back. The result: FAIL. Kapoor got 50 out of 100 points. Here's the complete text of the report card:

• Synopsis (needs work): Both too much and too little info in synopsis. Feels like writer is just piling one scene upon another with little sense of purpose. The last line is problematic since writer doesn't tell what Praluna decided. A synopsis recounts the plot along with the ending. No cliffhangers!
• Hook (needs work): At first, it creates a little curiosity. Then the goddess appears and it becomes muddled and far less interesting. From that moment on, I had to struggle to finish the ten pages.
• Structure (needs work/shows promise): Does an adequate job. Too many info dumps slow down the narrative.
• Characters (shows promise): Fairly standard character whose motivations are not entirely clear or realistic. Early appearance of the goddess exacerbates this.
• Conflict (needs work/shows promise): The conflict is needlessly complex tale that needs more time to unfold. The goddess appearance so early in the tale rushes things before reader gets a feel for the conflict.
• Dialogue (needs work): Dialogue between the goddess and Praluna is confusing and poorly executed. For no apparent reason, the goddess dialogue changes from being off set and italicized to standard dialogue and back. Makes the theoretically important conversation unreadable.
• Setting (shows promise): Some hints at potentially interesting world. Needs to spend more time developing the setting before introducing a goddess.
• Plotting (needs work): Unnecessarily complex that reads like a series of action scenes with little importance. Don't tell us a goddess appearance is rare then have her appear in the first chapter! Her appearance loses all meaning. Show us the scarcity.
• Technique/Style (needs work): Needless use of semicolons just muddy an already complex idea. Would an alien culture that doesn't refer to their world as Earth use the phrase "gone to earth?" That's a uniquely Earth phrase.
• Mechanics/Presentation (very strong potential): Fairly clean except for the semicolons and inconstancies in formatting the goddess speech.

Hoo boy. This book is definitely not for this person. Yes, the synopsis was teh lame because Kapoor found out at the last minute it was supposed to be 1 page. The judge got hung up on the Advent of the goddess, as if expecting it to be a climactic event rather than the incident that incites the action. Kapoor would love to know where the judge thought the info-dumps were in the first 10 pages, because none of his beta readers have complained - they've said the first 10 pages read pretty well, in fact. Developing the setting before introducing the goddess was a non-starter: When Kapoor did that in the first draft, everyone agreed it should be dropped. Anyone who's read the story should find the phrase "a series of action scenes" hilarious - the first encounter with cops doesn't take place until after page 100, and the first actual physical danger doesn't appear until around page 180; it's a most inactive "series of action scenes".

Kapoor is still puzzling over the phrase "Show us the scarcity." I has a nothing. Let me show you it.

Oh, and being judged by someone who doesn't know the phrase "gone to earth" refers not to the planet, but to the act of going into hiding doesn't impress Kapoor, either. Kapoor has heard "gone to earth" and "gone to ground" since his schoolvixen days, so it's not just a turn of phrase the kids have invented this year.

So it looks like Kapoor's entry ended up in the lap of someone guaranteed not to get it. The judge apparently gave up on the manuscript the moment the goddess appeared, which was the whole point of the first ten pages. It's nice to get this point of view, as it could very well be a preview of the responses of some agents and publishers once Kapoor starts sending the novel out in the autumn. Kapoor would like to have had more comments so that he could better understand the judge's point of view, but whoever the judge was (s)he disliked the story so much it was cast aside quickly.