Real Life Diagnostics: Is This YA Opening Strong Enough to Hold Your Interest?

Critique By Maria D'Marco

Real Life Diagnostics is a weekly column that studies a snippet of a work in progress for specific issues. Readers are encouraged to send in work with questions, and we diagnose it on the site. It’s part critique, part example, and designed to help the submitter as well as anyone else having a similar problem.

If you're interested in submitting to Real Life Diagnostics, please check out these guidelines.

Submissions currently in the queue: Three

Please Note: As of today, RLD slots are booked through June 9.

This week’s questions:

Is the opening strong enough to hold readers’ interest (especially that of prospective publishers)?

Have I successfully woven background information into internalization?

Is it enough to have internalization as a response/reaction or should a physical/visceral/ physiological effect precede it?

Is the voice reflective of a well read, intelligent, yet insecure, 15-year-old?

Market/Genre: Young Adult / Coming of Age / Literary

On to the diagnosis…
Read more »Written by Janice Hardy. Fiction-University.com