OPENING LINES Results from Clare Wallace and Lydia Silver

In Opening Lines, Natalie Yates gets expert advice from top literary agents to help you tune up your concept, pitch, and opening lines to create the strongest ‘hook’

OPENING LINES gives SCBWI members a chance to get some professional feedback so they can fine tune their submission. Clare and Lydia very generously offered to look at ten randomly chosen entries and chose their top three for detailed feedback. 

Clare and Lydia– An Introduction 

At Darley Anderson Clare represents picture books, middle-grade, teenage, YA and illustrators as well as a boutique list of authors in adult fiction in the UK and US. She wants to be completely gripped and is delighted if a manuscript makes her miss her stop on the tube. She’s always keen to see funny younger fiction, a bit of magic, stories for all ages about modern life and is still holding out for a YA love story that will bring tears to her eyes.

Since recently joining the agency, Lydia is looking to build the children’s list. She is particularly looking for magical middle grade adventures, funny contemporary stories and YA novels with an unusual voice. Above all, she wants to find stories with wit, charm and heart. She’s also got an eye out for clever, engaging picture books and is developing the non-fiction side of the children’s list. 

Both Lydia and Clare are actively looking for submissions from Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic, LGBTQ and all other under-represented writers.

Submission #1

TITLE 

Winona Boot

Pitch

When the kids of Possum Hollow start to disappear, Winona Boot, a bright, brave, 9-year-old girl, stands up to the evil force she thinks is responsible – the town's menacing school teacher – and uncovers a terrifying, 200-year-old secret.

Opening Lines

In the three days leading up to the unhappiest hour of Winona Boot's life, she couldn't help but notice a thing or two.

"Papa, what is the meaning of this here book you're reading? It is called '101 Ways to Lose a Child'."

Papa, small, smelly and thin-haired was sitting in his comfy chair and had been caught unawares by Winona, which meant that the boiled candy he had been enjoying popped right out of his wet mouth and banged onto the dusty floor of the Boot Family Trailer.

I would say the clock ticked two or three times before Papa's face peered out from behind the book he held in his stubby, little fingers. "Well, Winona, your Mama and I want to educate ourselves regarding the dangers a child like you might face in life, so that we may advise you on how best to avoid them dangers." 

They locked eyes for a short while. And then Winona said, "Thank you, Papa. That is a kindly thing for you and Mama to do."

LYDIA & CLARE'S FEEDBACK

Pitch Feedback

We were immediately grabbed by the names in this pitch – Possum Hollow and Winona Boot are wonderfully imaginative, and give us a great sense of the tone of the story too. The pitch itself is nice and concise, but we do think it’s possibly a little generic. The names suggest so much imagination, so we suspect that this will run through the story too, and it would be nice to see a bit more of this individuality in the plot and set-up too.

Opening Lines Feedback

The very first line of this immediately pulls us in, and raises some intriguing questions. What’s the unhappiest hour of Winona’s life? And what’s making her suspect it’s coming? We also love the wry humour in the book title and in Papa’s response, and it makes us think I’ll enjoy this storytelling. We are slightly confused by the narration style though – is the narrator another character? Are they a character, but also the narrator, like Lemony Snicket? Or is it something else? We’d need to read a bit more to get an idea about who they were – but these lines are a lot of fun, so we’d be happy to!

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Submission #2

TITLE

The Hanging Tree

Pitch

Whilst working the summer at her estranged Uncle’s Inn, Lucy Paxton (16) laughs off the ghost stories and superstitions about the old Hanging Tree. But when an accident leads to death and a shadowy figure begins to stalk Lucy, it seems the blood-soaked roots of the Hanging Tree have chosen their next victim. The terror and violence increases, tragic secrets are revealed, and Lucy must overcome her greatest fear to defeat the Hangman’s Ghost.

Opening Lines 

I’m heading into a world of darkness and shadows.

It feels like a lifetime ago since Uncle David turned off the main road onto the narrow lane that’s twisting and turning between tall hedges. To be honest I don’t think there’d be a lot to see even if it was daylight: there’s only the occasional cluster of lights that might be a farm or some lonely house.

LYDIA & CLARE'S FEEDBACK

Pitch Feedback

Anything that opens with ghost stories and shadowy rumours would catch our attention, and there’s a lovely spooky atmosphere that pervades this pitch. The first two sentences here are really solid, building this creepiness and setting up the scene. However, we think that the final sentence could be a little more specific (perhaps Lucy’s greatest fear could be mentioned earlier, to set up what it would mean to defeat it) and more dynamic. If it was changed so that it read ‘As the terror increases […], Lucy must…’ then it would be more dramatic and intriguing.

Opening Lines Feedback

We weren’t sure that the dark atmosphere from the pitch was quite reflected in these opening lines. It’s always hard to create atmosphere from the beginning in a ghost story, which relies on things building up and up. There’s a clear attempt at creating it in the first line but it comes across as slightly melodramatic. That being said, the lonely setting and the looming dark are well done, and the voice is strong here – we feel like we’re in safe hands with this writing, and we’re willing to wait for the scares.

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Submission #3

TITLE

The Audacious Adventures of Drippy the Dragon

Pitch

Drippy the Dragon has had it. He’s running away from home. Enough with the teasing and bullying—all because he can’t shoot fire like the other dragons, only water. Gallons and gallons of water.

Of course, it doesn’t help that he just flunked Flame Throwing 101. 

Now he’s tramping through the woods, frantically trying to avoid the Flying Dragon Search & Rescue team sent out to find him. That’s when Drippy stumbles across an eager young girl-knight, Meena the Magnificent, who suggests they should go on a quest to find a cure for Drippy’s strange affliction. 

They visit two quirky doctors, Dr. Death and Dr. Doom, who decide Drippy isn’t suffering from an illness—just a magic spell. They go to wise old Cantankerous the Cranky, who sends them to the kingdom’s most powerful witches—who can’t cure him, but do give Drippy a splendid new set of wings.

Still desperate to find a cure and win acceptance of his fellow dragons, Drippy learns that marauding villagers have attacked his family’s caves and stolen all the dragon eggs. Now his dragon clan is off to wreak revenge and Drippy realizes he must use his unique water-spewing talents to prevent all-out war—or start planning his parents’ funeral.

Opening Lines

Drippy shivered from the damp and cold of the River of Riddles that flowed past him and into the night. He peeked out from under the mouldy bridge, knee-deep in mud. Water from the wooden beams above dribbled onto his already wet nose. He couldn’t hide here forever. He’d have to come out sometime.

LYDIA & CLARE'S FEEDBACK

Pitch Feedback

We really like the concept of this pitch – a watery dragon trying to find his flame, in a topsy-turvy, tongue-in-cheek fairytale kingdom sounds like so much fun! However, this pitch is currently too long and complicated, which meant that we found ourselves asking lots of questions rather than being pulled into the story. We think the author needs to decide if the quest or the dragon eggs are the most important parts, and focus their pitch on that… and we suspect that might mean redrafting or reshaping some of the manuscript too.

Opening Lines Feedback

These lines work well on two levels – they give a sense of loneliness and atmosphere to the scene, and they raise a lot of questions. Why is Drippy hiding? What has he done? We want to find out what the problem is, so they work well in making us want to read more. We also like the nod to the world in the name of the River of Riddles, and again we want to read a bit more to find out what this is. There isn’t a lot of the humour here that we felt the pitch promised, but we’d read on to see if it came in later.

Look out for our next Opening Lines opportunity in January 2020!

Header image: Courtesy of Darley Anderson

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Natalie has been a SCBWI member since 2015 and is now Networks Coordinator for the North East. When she is not working as a Teaching Assistant for a local secondary school, she writes for YA and is a member of the GEA North contingent. You can find her very occasionally blogging and more often on Twitter.