One thing that I've been paying a lot of attention to lately as I read other people's work is how long it takes to really get me into the story. I just finished reading "The Uglies" by Scott Westerfeld and I also recently read "The Last Summer (of You and Me)" by Ann Brashares.
Both books had very slow beginnings, where it took so long to get into the real conflict or real action that I considered giving up a third of the way into the stories. By the time I finished "The Last Summer," I really liked it. Eventually, Brashares hooked me in so that I cared about the characters and wanted to hang in there until they resolved their relationship issues in a satisfying way by the end of the book. I might read another one of her romance novels.
With "The Uglies," Westerfeld took far too long to get into the action, saving the final battle between the Uglies who rebelled against the Pretties and the Specials for just a chapter or two somewhere in the last 100 pages of the 400-page book. There was a long, slow build-up to the romance and the final conflict, and the romantic moments were short and contrived. The battle came and went too quickly. Then the Specials gave up looking for the rebel Uglies after just one night. It was disappointing. I mean, this guy got a book deal for a four-book series, but I'm one book into it and I'm not sure I want to buy the second one.
So, as I read my own teen novel, that's one of the things I'm thinking about. Does it take too long for me to get to the romance? Decidedly, no. Does it take too long to get to the major conflict? Maybe. Fortunately, it's not a terribly long novel -- about 282 pages, since I've cut eight pages during my editing, so far. We'll see how I feel about it when I finish my first and second edits. So far, so good, I think.
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