Harper Collins Publishing Review for "YOUR LITTLE PORCELAIN DOLL" (poem)
Your Little
Porcelain Doll is a very strong, sad poem. There is so much confused emotion
poured in, it’s impossible not to feel an emotional connection with the work.
The title
is great, it really says so much about the poem without even knowing you’re
going to use the porcelain doll analogy later on. By declaring yourself ‘Yours’
you’re already explaining that you are not your own and describing yourself as
a porcelain doll paints a picture of frailty and a delicate, very breakable
character, both physically and emotionally.
I actually found the first two stanzas to be
the weakest points of the poem. While the sentiment of your work isn’t original,
heartbreak is something we all go through, the rest of the piece is so authentically
wounded and you use some really fantastic devices making it feel very fresh.
The first two stanzas for me, felt a little clichéd and overused – being on the
outside looking in, not seeing the signs and feeling a fool – this has all been
said before. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it again but find a way to say
it that is more you, more personal.
Following
on with the reinterpretation of the old bedtime prayer was fantastic. It’s a
message that would echo with the readers, taking something that should be safe
and comforting and making it unsettling and sad. Very powerful. Structurally it
also changes up the pace and gets the reader’s attention.
The
heartbreak in the poem is clouded by lots of different emotions, envy, anger,
despair and even grief. This confusion make the piece seem very genuine and
relatable. Even when we’ve been hurt very badly, there is often a part of us
that just want what we have lost back in our lives. You capture that perfectly.
Moving
towards the end of the poem, I felt that it became very dark which was great,
really gave me chills. The idea of the author being free but without hope –
definitely something that would resonate with a lot of people and oh so sad.
You created a very powerful kick here, really asking the reader to put
themselves in your place. The image of the dolls is also very strong. As I
stated earlier, by bringing in the idea of a porcelain doll, you add a lot of
emotive content without actually having to overwrite. The object itself is so
loaded with sadness and fragility that you immediately apply that to the poem
but do it in a way that isn’t clichéd or obvious. A small editorial note, I
would stick with ‘dolls’ rather than ‘dollies’ which seemed a little out of
place here, too young or anachronistic a word.
I loved the
last line, I loved that the author was laying all of this on the doorstep of
the boy who has broken her heart. He has made a mess and she is that mess. A
really powerful, abrupt ending.
Overall,
it’s a great piece of work, taking a relatable emotion and making it very
personal and powerful.
Harper Collins Publishing Review for "A BRIDGE AND YOU" (poem)
inkpop_editor wrote on January 20, 2012:
A BRIDGE AND YOU, like it’s title, is a beautiful, simple poem. I’m not surprised it spoke to the Inkpop community, between the deceptive simplicity of the language and relatable theme, it’s a piece of work that would speak to almost anyone who reads it.
You take a very simple idea, a parallel between taking a physical chance – jumping of a bridge – and an emotional one – confessing your feelings for someone, and layer it with the peer pressure and fear of rejection. The language feels very intimate and as the poem progresses, I felt a huge sense of relief at the end. At the same time, the language is very imagistic. You paint a very clear picture of both the protagonist’s physical situation and also their feelings.
There is a very classic sensibility to your language particularly the phrasing ‘As I stood on that bridge/Over a river of green’ rings with elegance. Your form and punctuation is perfect, you put together an easy rhythm that lets the reader flow through the poem, with well-timed breaks and pauses that work to great effect. At the same time, it isn’t pretentious or overwritten, everything is very honest and it feels like a genuine and authentic experience. I felt as though I could hear the crowds of friends yelling, I could feel the eyes of your crush watching you and I could hear the water rushing around your ears as you jumped into the water. Even though yu didn’t write any of these things into the poem, they were there.
Your command over language shows great restraint, you don’t try to over do anything or blow anything up. The section ‘They knew I was scared/ But you were there, watching/Waiting.’ Was absolutely pitch perfect. It actually made me hold my breath.
The tone of the piece is very intimate and personal but it would appeal to anyone who has ever been afraid to take a chance on revealing their feelings. I enjoyed your use of repetition at the end, they felt refreshing and reassuring, like diving into the river and finding it warm and comforting when you had been afraid it would be cold and scary.
This genuinely is a beautiful and honest piece of writing and I am excited to see work of this calibre on Inkpop.
HarperCollins Publishing Review for "KNIGHT'S END" (novel)
Your world is carefully considered, your characters are vivid, your writing is rich with detail, and you give readers a huge gift even before the book properly opens, creating a situation—the Rogue putting the royals in the kingdom on notice—that will naturally make for a significant amount of drama and intrigue in the ensuing pages. For a story such as this, with so many players, so many agendas, and so many plotlines, having a thread that ties them all together is an ingenious and satisfying way to pulling things together and keeping them moving. For this reason, the first portion of this manuscript flew by, for this reader.
Regarding what still needs work: The thing that I was most hoping for as I read was a bit more nuance to the characters and the situations. You set up such a complex world that I was often a little disappointed to find that the majority of the characters we meet fall into to one of a few different stereotypes. In general, royalty is presented as corrupt or ignorant – this is certainly the case with Prince Orion in the opening, Prince Talbot, Jade’s family, etc. Their adherence to either tradition or destructive extravagance feels a little expected at this point, and little is done to complicate this. Likewise, our heroes aren’t very complicated – Ernst, Aston, and Jade are all cut from very similar cloth, and while Jade is obviously of a different class than the other two, she shares the same disdain for authority, and so aligns with them without too much complication. This setup—the decadent, despicable royalty and the brave, pure-hearted heroes—felt just a tad expected, and I suppose that I wished they were just a little more complicated, given how intricate your world is. The problem, for me, is that it diminishes what the Rogue is doing, to know that the royals are all so universally despised and so primed to be cut down, as it seems a bit of a foregone conclusion. What if one of our heroes complicated this notion a bit? What if Talbot were actually a good fellow, a member of the royalty who Aston admires? This would certainly complicate things, especially for the reader, who would be forced to reconcile their respect for what the Rogue is doing with the fact that not everything about the royalty is worth cutting down. I’m not saying that this suggestion in particular is the right idea, but it would help to complicate things a bit, to really put our heroes—and, thereby, the reader—to come complex decisions.
I’d also suggest you might consider cutting the prologue. I usually don’t give this advice, I’m usually a fan of prologues, and it is certainly a fun, action-packed way to open the book. But you’re juggling a large number of characters in the book, and what all of them have in common aside from Ernst is that they don’t know who the Rogue is. If we don’t have the prologue in place, if we don’t know why royals are being targeted, then it puts us as the readers in the same position that Aston and Jade are in – unsure of his motivations, of what his endgame is. This being the case, it would be reasonable for Jade to fear for her life, or for Aston to fear for the life of his King, which adds a new dimension to what is happening. Although it is clear that Aston, Jade, and Ernst are all cut from the same cloth, it would be interesting to set them up as enemies from the start, so that as we get a better understanding of what it is the Rogue is doing, we realize, along with them, that it’s more complicated and sympathetic than we once thought. And this will especially be satisfying when we eventually meet Ernst and find out who he really is. Does this make sense?
Speaking of perspective: It seems to me like you’re going for an omniscient perspective, but what it ends up being is more of a collection of various third-person limited perspectives, which provides for a few jarring moments. For instance, when Aston and Talbot run into the castle to try and apprehend the Rogue, we are exclusively privy to Aston’s point of view, until we get this sentence:
Immediately, Talbot went from terrified to courageous at the thought of a damsel in distress. He ran off in the direction of the scream, intending to be a hero.
It’s something that puts us inside Talbot’s head, but only for a moment. A true third-person omniscient perspective is difficult to maintain, and if it is presenting a bit too much of a challenge, I’d recommend sticking with only a couple – say, Aston and Jade. It would take some significant reworking to accomplish this for the entirety of the manuscript, but I think the benefits it would pay in bringing the reader closer to Jade and Aston would be worth it. Something to consider?
Finally, you’ve probably heard the old editorial adage “show, don’t tell” before, and I’m going to echo it here. Often it seems like you’re trying to get exposition out of the way, and so end up telling the reader things that might be better to demonstrate through dialogue or action. I’m thinking specifically of lines like this:
Talbot always thought he deserved the best of everything, and King Donn normally agreed.
There’s a lot to juggle, here, especially in the beginning, but glossing over things in this manner isn’t quite as satisfying the reader as allowing him or her to observe this for him or herself in the prince’s actions. It also serves to make generic something that might otherwise be more nuanced. Something to think about as you’re going through the manuscript, to give us the details we need, cull those we don’t, and make sure that we’re getting information like this through observation rather than having it told to us.
A quick note on the market: Historical fiction in the teen space provides a bit of a challenge, but I think that the interplay of action/intrigue and romance you’ve got going here still has potential in this space. Whether or not it can deliver on that potential will depend on how much you can deepen your world – how much nuance you can add to the characters, how intricate you can make the interactions and motivations of the characters, and how much you can strengthen your writing to provide the kind of description and characterization that they deserve. You’ve got a solid foundation here, and the next task will be to really dig into the world and into the characters, to throw in some more complications and the potential for more surprises. Good luck!
