Do you think this would turn into a good book?

Question

Tell me if you this this beginning would be attractive if it were a book. I am debating if I should continue it or not. Tell me what you think. I wrote it from my imagination today and typed it out.



I woke up feeling rather sore. I had gone on a long walk with my neighbors mutt yesterday afternoon, but that's a whole different story. 
My mother opened the blinds and the sun glared at my face. It felt like a hot iron rubbing the sides of my cheeks. I jumped up and let out a faint scream. She muttered "Pancakes are ready, get dressed". That got me looking forward to crawling out of bed. I checked my text messages on my blackberry, and just remembered something. The time read 10:07 AM. I was supposed to meet my father for coffee at 9:45 AM. Ever since my parents signed those divorce papers, my life has sort of, well, let's just say turned upside down. 
Many of my friends parents are divorced, but I would never fathom my parents divorcing. They were so perfect together, until that one day they signed those bloody papers! I ran into the bathroom, brushed my teeth, washed my face, and threw on my favorite set of clothes. My white-black pinned stripe Nautica shirt, it was linen, which feels so nice on a hot summer day in Florida. As well as my khaki shorts and my favorite Tommy Hilfiger shoes. I always like to dress rather neat when meeting my father. Please don't ask why. Your probably wondering what made my parents get divorced. They had a fight back in mid January of this year. My mother accused my father of sneaking out of the house on new years night, and ultimately, was sly enough to get on his phone without him noticing. What she found on his phone, let's just say wasn't exactly what she thought she'd find. She confronted him the next morning, and that's when he admitted to cheating on her. What a shame. I would never expect it out of my father, but hey, **** happens, right? My mother told me they are getting a divorce a few days later, which made me attempt suicide. I just couldn't seem to handle it. I grabbed a pancake, and headed out the door. The coffee shop wasn't far, but on such a hot day, driving is always at the top of my mind. ever since I got my license, I have been addicted to driving. All of my friends got their license at sixteen, but I just waited until eighteen, even though I felt very left out being the only one riding a bike to school. When I arrived at the coffee shop, which is probably the best one in the entire city of Palm Coast, FL, I  didn't see my father there. It was 10:41 AM. I had texted him earlier, at roughly 10:09 AM, and asked if we can meet at 10:30 AM instead, and added as an excuse that I didn't set an alarm because I don't have school since it's the beginning of summer. He said "that's fine, Nathan boy, see you at 10:30". My father always called me that, it got so annoying. I went in, and ordered my usual iced caramel macchiato with soy milk, tall, never vente or grande, always tall. 
I sat by the window waiting for him while scrolling through Facebook, which is such a cool website. Came out a month ago and already has so many people signed up! I bet Mark Zuckerberg  gets all the chicks. Anyways, I happen to lose time like usual when I browse Facebook, and it was 11:05 AM. My father still didn't walk through that door. So I called him, no answer, called him again, no answer. It made me feel worried but at the same time angry at him for not showing up. Maybe he had a wreck on the way, maybe he wanted to get me out of the house so he can go kill my mother for interrogating him for his filthy actions. Who knows, things were flying around in my head. The caffeine probably boosted my anxiety even more. I drove back home and told my mom, which she replied "he's fine, just don't think about him". 
"Well", I mumbled, "atleast I'm not the one who's a *****", which set her off. There goes our human behavior.  After arguing for half an hour like animals, my blackberry rang. It was my father. He told me he had a conference call that lasted longer than he could imagine. It was 12:15 PM. Not sure if what he said was true, but I just said "alright, whatever, another time", and right when I was about to hang up, he muttered "I have something for you, let's meet tomorrow at 8:00 PM", and we ended the call. My father is such a strange man, I thought. I wonder what it is he wants to give me. 

Answer 1

Slow down.



You are rushing this too much, and you're way too eager to tell us everything. Try deciding what you can prioritise (i.e tell us immediately) and what you can reveal through dialogue, events that happen in the future etc. Don't feel that you have to tell us every single little thing on the first page.



Paragraphs are very important too - they help break up subjects, which are vital in sentences where one moment you're talking about suicide then the next pancakes. Remember the paragraph "Tip Top" rule; you need a new paragraph for a new time, place, topic or person.

Answer 2

Overall, your writing isn't bad at all, however I feel like there's too much info-dumping here. The history of her parents going through a divorce, what led up to it, and your MC's suicide is all very much crammed into a few lines and it's very overwhelming and rushed, especially for an opening page where you want to grab your reader's attention. I have a feeling you only rushed it because there is only so much room on Yahoo answers to post writing, and you believe that, if your reader does not immediately know about your character's ill endeavour, then they'd be uninterested and unsympathetic to your MC.

This is wrong!

It read as such, and it made me more uncomfortable than anything else because you talked about divorce and suicide so fleetingly. My advice would be to hold off on this information just now. There will come a point where it is necessary to put it in. Simply address that his parents are divorced, but the whole suicide thing can be brought back later on, maybe through a flashback or perhaps when his mother becomes scared when he goes missing for a few hours, reliving old feels that he might have attempted suicide again. This way it is important to the story, and it is not simply to make the reader feel for the MC (because it doesn't always work that way, either).



A few times you slip up in tenses, and sometimes you break the forth wall and talk directly to the reader 'please don't ask why', this sort of pulls us out of the story a bit because now we feel like an audience to a person sitting in a chair telling us a story rather than living the story with him.



A small suggestion? Don't start with your MC waking up and the sun glaring at her. Although I liked the description of the sun like hot irons on his cheeks, it really is cliché. I know it sounds very cliché to say it's cliché, but well, it IS lol. Even if you just start with him brushing her teeth and looking at himself with a frown, asking himself 'Well, I'm sure I'm forgetting something...something I was supposed to do...somewhere I'm supposed- "DAD!". That way it's still your opening but it opens in a different place and immediately starts the story.



Like I said, your writing itself isn't bad, this just isn't a very stellar OPENING. Does that make sense?

-more showing, less telling!

-SLOW DOWN. You HAVE time to develop your MC's back story.



Good luck!!

Answer 3

First of all: information overload. It's the first couple of paragraphs and you've already introduced the main problem along with things like a suicide attempt which was just kind of casually tossed in there. First thing you need to do is slow it down. You don't want to throw in everything you have from the very beginning otherwise you won't have anything to work with later on and everything will seem rushed. You need to space it out more. Add more detail and dialogue. Describe things a bit more. It sounds more like a documentary than a story. You've got potential, but you need to slow down and let the story flow naturally.

Answer 4

Sorry, but to be honest it's not very interesting, nothing gripped me and made me want to read more, and the number of spelling and punctuation errors was irritating.



Try thinking of a subject which will really grab a reader's attention, and check your English!