“It’s finally here! It’s finally here!” – Me, running around my house this morning.
It seems like forever ago that I first announced Novel Boot Camp. I asked for topic ideas, your most common editing problems, and I spent hours upon hours (upon hours) writing and perfecting the course. Whew! It almost felt like Boot Camp was never going to arrive!
But here we are at the kickoff party – you with your manuscripts in hand and me ready to do nothing but eat, breathe, and sleep (or not sleep) Novel Boot Camp for the next month. It’s going to be a wild ride!
Before things get too crazy and some of you are inevitably reduced to tears with a bloody manuscript in your hands, let me say that the excitement and enthusiasm for Novel Boot Camp has reminded me of why I do what I do. It is the passion and dedication of writers like you that keeps me blogging, editing, and mentoring. You guys are the greatest!
To celebrate the kickoff party, keep meeting up with writing friends and critique partners (though I know some of you are at more than capacity in that department!) and let your friends and family know that you’ll be putting your pen where your passion is and might be a bit busier (and crazier) than usual. In order to keep the blog comments focused on the workshop, post your kickoff party excitement on Twitter and the FB group.
And now on to our first workshop!
Workshop #1: Genre Guessing Game
June 30 – July 6
For our first workshop, I want to focus on the most important aspect of editing – seeing your novel from the outside.
This is no easy task! You’ve toiled and slaved over your novel. You know it inside and out. If you’ve been editing it long enough, you can probably recite passages from heart. All of that is lovely and wonderful and passionate, but terrible for editing.
So for this first workshop, I want you to send your book out into the world – just a tiny piece of it – to see how it’s perceived by those outside yourself, by the people who know nothing about it.
Participants will submit the first 200 words of their manuscript. Guessers will attempt to identify the genre, tone, and basic plot of the novel. The objective is to have a bit of fun while exploring how your manuscript looks from the outside. Do people think your romantic comedy is a horror/thriller? Do readers expect your story of redemption to be a story of revenge?
Remember that how the Boot Campers perceive your novel is likely how agents and editors will perceive it too. We’ll be talking about why the reader’s perception of the first page is important in our first lecture tomorrow.
Warning: This is a new and totally untested workshop process. Please bare with me if there are any technical kinks or if things seem awkward. I wanted to do something unique so I hope it works!
How to Play the Genre Guessing Game
***Read the FULL directions and follow them or you will not be eligible to participate!***
Firstly, I understand that not all readers are comfortable sharing their work online. If you do not want to submit, you may still participate in the guessing.
How to Submit Your Opening
To streamline the process, decrease cheating, and increase participation, I will be posting all of the first pages anonymously (meaning that no one other than me will know whose first page is whose). If you attempt to submit your own first page, it will be deleted!
The submitted novel openings will be posted as quickly as possible, but since it must be done manually, there will likely be some delay.
Submit your novel’s opening in the form below. It will go to my email and I will manually post the first 200 words only (not your name, genre, tone, etc.) into the comments section.
Note that your novel’s opening is the very first 200 words. If you open with a prologue, use that rather than your first chapter.
How to Guess the Genre
In the comments section below this post, leave a reply to the novel openings submitted and post some or all of the following:
- Guess the Genre – Is it a contemporary romance? A YA paranormal? A horror/science fiction hybrid? Post your best guess. If you think it’s middle grade or young adult, please also include a genre (adventure, comedy, romance, etc.).
- Guess the Tone – What do you think the overall tone of this novel is? Is it creepy? Heartwarming? Spiritual? Disturbing? In other words, what adjective would you use to describe the book?
- Guess the Basic Plot – What do you think this novel is going to be about? What do you expect to happen?
- Do NOT post a critique of the opening or any comments about the writing quality or style. We will have a novel opening critique later in the month.
Please do not post your guesses anonymously unless you do not want to be eligible to win the prize for best guesser!
Sample comment/guess: I think this is a middle grade adventure story with a dark tone. I expect it to be about how the main character learns to overcome his fear of the water to defeat a sea monster.
What Should Writers Take Away?
The reader’s perception of your novel is more important than your own. Keep an eye on your novel’s opening this week to see how Boot Campers perceive your work. Is it right in line with your vision or way off?
Is the novel going to deliver what readers seem to expect? We’ll be talking about the importance of the first page’s promise in our first lecture tomorrow.
Prize – Free Edit of Your First 1,000 Words!
This workshop will have two winners! Due to the labor involved in posting, moderating, and then judging the posts, it may take me until after Novel Boot Camp to choose and notify the winners. How long it takes depends on the level of participation.
Award for the Best Guesser: This prize will go to the Novel Boot Camper with guessing power from the gods. In other words: the camper with the most correct guesses.
Award for the Best Opening: This prize will go to the opening that had its novel, genre, and basic plot guessed correctly the most often.
Both winners will receive a free edit of their first 1,000 words.
Connect with Other Novel Boot Camp Participants
Need a writing friend? Got a question? Need a shoulder to cry on? We’re there for you!
I will be answering writing and editing questions on our Twitter hashtag as time allows. Due to the insane volume of emails I’m receiving, I cannot provide free advice or assistance via email. Thank you!
What is Novel Boot Camp?
Novel Boot Camp is a free online novel writing course focused on identifying and correcting problems in your novel. Learn more about Novel Boot Camp and find past (and future) posts here.
Ellen Brock 
Genre: adult (possibly YA) horror. IMHO this is a prologue, so that makes it a bit tough to get a really accurate read on the story.
Tone: Dark.
Plot: Somebody/some group of people will have to save the world from this evil Ancient One.
Hey fellow writers/future authors,
Eleanor Roosevelt famously quipped, “Do something every day that scares you.” For many of us (myself included) that’s posting our craft here.
For me, it also includes a surprise summer job offer that will take me from Florida to Wyoming for a two-month gig with the National Forest Service. I am plenty scared (Eleanor would be so proud) and I apologize if I am, therefore, a less-involved Boot Camper than I originally planned.
I will certainly join in where possible, but in two weeks I will be on the road to a great adventure with hopefully plenty of fodder for my imagination along the way.
Keep writing and go be awesome!
Pam
Nonfiction/Adventure The tone is light and breezy, full of hope. This is probably exactly what it is–a letter of apology for not posting in Boot Camp but it also works as a great first page for a non-fiction memoir of a young woman’s first big adventure. I hope that’s what this is because it is intriguing and the voice is engaging.
I began my new life sitting down surrounded by children my age in a yellow bus that is too slow to drive. Leather seat against leather seat; an uneven bumpy road shakes the floor as the bus rolls over rocks. I shake with any movement and my shoulders shuffle from side to side. My eyes are still heavy from just waking up and the ache in my calves is unnoticeable. I stare into the grey skies and into the foggy ocean abyss outside of my window. Heavy droplets of sweat roll down my head despite the window being down. The cold winter morning air kisses my face and the suns glare bounces off the ocean sending a beam of light directly into my eyes. The sweat from my head is not from my body being too hot or at a wrong temperature, but from being so nervous that even winter can’t stop my forehead from being sweaty. My back is sunk into the warm hard seat and with another jolt I shake from side to side. Unforgiving sounds of medal hitting each other and the engine roaring fill the bus. What an awful way to spend my last hours as a free kid, I think.
I think that this is a Young Adult Distopian novel with a Dark tone. I feel that this novel will be about a child who’s put into a system and treated like a prisoner. They will have to make friends with other kids to form an alliance so that they can break out.
Young Adult story in a dystopian setting. The main character is a teenager who will find his/her courage and self-worth in the way he/she deals with the circumstances of his/her imprisonment and ultimate escape. Could be the first in a series. The tone is somber.
Genre: YA
Tone: Dark/Serious
Plot: Normality slips away as a first day at school becomes a lesson in slavery. The narrator struggles to keep their identiity as reality is slowly revealed to them.
My guess is Young Adult, a dark Mystery/Adventure genre, the I, along with other children has been captured, guessing that the I character makes friends and that the alliance in their bid for escape defeat the villain.
G: YA drama/fiction
T: serious
P: MC and other kids are send to a camp. The purpose of that camp is to train them and prepare for their future role that is planed very carefully.
My Guess is also YA, perhaps going to a reform school or military boot camp
Genre: Creative Nonfiction
Tone: Oppression
Plot: An account of a child who is a victim of human trafficking.
Genre: YA Science Fiction
Tone: dark action
Plot: alien race being transplanted into other races to defeat an evil race. MC will educate a group of kids in the new environment to defeat a universal foe.
Genre: YA
Tone: disappointment
Plot: Boarding school is the destination and the child is being shipped off to school so his parents can travel for work.
I think this is a middle grade adventure story with a dark tone. I expect it to be about how the main character is being sent away to somewhere bad and the main character overcomes the new challenges.
Mick Mallory was a newspaperman who possessed uncanny powers of observation. He spied whatever was around him, whether he was awake or asleep. His perception was so extraordinary it was as if an invisible third eye peered from between the worried folds on his forehead. The unseen eye never slept, never blinked or ever cast down in shame.
He listened with equal intensity. Freckled ears, still boyishly cupped after five decades of using his head as a battering ram into other people’s business, funneled nearby sound with the acuity of a bat’s ear trumpet. They monitored the telltale thrum of the night; the strained vibrations of lies, and the faintest metallic clacks of tooled devices.
In the past, he could rely upon his enhanced senses for harvesting news stories and for saving his life. They failed him now, as they had in New York.
The story of his lifetime, the story that could give him life, cried for his attention. Its headline could have been written and inked the length of the Golden Gate Bridge to read, “Conspiracy to Steal Alcatraz!”
Yet, he could not detect the story, its promise or its perilous ramifications, though its markers loomed all around him. The tale that began with a Camino Real of vanities and crossed more than one hundred fifty years, tumbled to earth two miles away from the cemetery in which he hunkered. No one heard its splash.
Genre: Period/Historical Fiction
Tone: Light
Plot: After having tried so hard to utilise his natural gifts, Mick Mallory is almost at the point of giving up when suddenly the perfect story almost falls into his lap and uncovers secrets that would give equal measures of renown and danger.
The genre is Horror/Suspense. Mallory is either a vampire or a sorcerer and the story will lead us on a quest to find redemption and perhaps another chance at life. The tone is serious.
Paranormal, Detective story, Mallory might be dead, but he gets his story.
Ghost detective, suspense, tongue in cheek
Genre: Adult Fantasy
Tone: tense, fast-paced
Plot: Vampire has to find a way to save San Fran and overcome his own demons from the past.
Genre: Paranormal Romance
Tone: Reflective
Plot: The protagonist has special gifts and he meets a woman who he has to save with them after she’s been kidnapped.
I think this is a vampire story with a light tone. I expect it to be about how the main character uses his vampire powers of perception to make a name for himself in the newspaper industry.
G: paranormal/mystery
T: serious
P: Mick is desperate for story that would be a hit, perfect for a front page. When he chases the lead he finds himself in danger, he needs his power to save himself.
Midnight and a shift change was in progress for the security guards at the Idealic Software campus. A rain storm had just passed and a crescent moon lit peeked between clouds in the night sky. From a vantage in a greenbelt next to the campus the Barefoot Burglar studied a layout of the campus on her small palm computer. The building she wanted to breach was in front of her.
A few moments passed as the second shift security guards left the building. This was the perfect time for her to make a move. Shift changes created a lull in operations. The shift leaving could not wait to go home and the shift arriving had yet to get settled.
As she adjusted a small black backpack in place, warm breeze blew the skirt of her black mesh mini dress while her black laced gloved finger touched the frame of a pair of sunglasses she wore. The glasses were large and black. They covered her face like a mask. The glasses were equipped with a small micro-chip which allowed the lenses to change vision modes from normal vision, night vision, thermal vision, and electronically enhanced vision. She put the glasses in night vision mode and then she tip toed on her bare feet along the greenbelt toward the backside of the building.
Genre: Crime
Tone: Playful
Plot: A young burglar attempts to steal an expensive artifact from the archaeological society of a university.
Suspense with possible overtones of Police Procedural. This will be an action drama about a female cat burglar who steals high end merchandise, possibly encountering the love of her life who is either a competing burglar or a cop. Either way, she’s conflicted. The tone is chic-sophisticate.
Genre: Crime/Adventure
Tone: Dark (though I struggle with this, so probably not accurate)
Plot: The story of the Barefoot Burglar who is on a quest to right something that should be out in the open – freedom of speech, right to know etc. It’s a personal battle for her, but she works for a covert team that sometimes asks her to do things she doesn’t believe in. It’s a one-woman against the corporate type novel…?
YA to main adult fiction, female anti hero, similar vein to the girl with dragon tattoo, suspense, thriller
Genre: Science Fiction
Tone: Suspenseful
Plot: A story about industrial espionage in the not too distant future, but ahead enough of our time for technology that’s speculative now to be viable though not yet obsequious.
Genre: thriller
Tone: hard, action
Plot:girl takes job to steal software and gets caught up in industrial warfare. Both companies are after her – the one she robbed and the one which hired her – and she has to find a safe way to get herself out of the situation.
Genre: Crime/Mystery
Tone: Action
Plot: She’s a hired thief to steal artifacts for auction.
G: Adventure/Crime
T: Serious
P: MC works for no one but herself. She often stills whats currently in demand. When she gets what shes after then she sells it to the highest bidder. She’s young and careless. But this time the buyer wants to outsmart her. She finds herself in a dangerous situation where her life is at stake.
Genre: Cyber-punk SciFi
Tone: Action/Suspense
Plot: The Barefoot Burglar is a notorious thief by night, unassuming college student by day. She is for hire to the highest bidder until this job she’s about to pull. She ends up drawn into a choice between betraying the new love she stumbles into and taking the retribution of betraying the corporation who hired her.
“$5,000,” declared someone the moment bidding opened on 11-year-old Teddy Tremaine. The woman who stood to his right gasped and Teddy couldn’t help but reflexively look at her.
The second bid came just as quick as the first, a hand shooting up near the back. The number on the screens covering the stained glass windows flashed red and then doubled to $10,000.
“$11,000,” a woman near the front announced calmly, nodding and holding up her hand as well.
Teddy looked toward her as she spoke, aware he was staring. She was maybe old enough to be his grandmother. She didn’t look away from his gaze, but simply looked back at him–almost as if she could see right through him.
The whole room was full of people looking through him; it was packed. Every chair was filled with a bidder, all of them intently gazing at him instead of each other. There was a ring of reporters and photographers crammed into the spaces behind the chairs; the flashes of the cameras had been blinding when Teddy had first stepped in the room and he had flinched reflexively. There wasn’t a bigger story: Teddy, the first Ascendant to be sold.
Some sort of child slavery but possibly in the future? Being the first Ascendant makes me wonder what that is? The tone seems lonely and sad.
YA Dystopian
Genre: YA
Tone: Apocalyptic/Post-Apocalyptic
Plot: Some great disaster has yet to cause distruction and malady about the planet, when Teddy the first Acsendant is created. Promised by his maker to hold great protective power, he sells him to the highest bidder.
Young Adult in a dystopian setting, possibly the first in a series. This story will see Teddy through the process of becoming property, his struggles and growth into manhood as a New Millennium Fredric Douglas and his eventual freedom from bondage which may or may not result in freedom for others like him. The tone is somber.
Adult, dystopian, the auction could be for orphaned children, perhaps there are issues with fertility as in the Handmaiden
Genre: Adult Dystopian/Sci-Fi
Tone: Bleak
Plot: Teddy isn’t human, he’s from a race of human-seeming aliens who were conquered by the now infertile humans of Earth. The children of these aliens are being sold to humans who have always wanted children. It turns out that the war with the aliens caused the humans to be infertile in the first place.
Genre: YA dystopian
Tone: fear
Plot: children are auctioned off as slaves or maybe even partners for their living children.
YA Dystopia where Teddy is sold into slavery and overcomes his bonds using his Ascendant superior intelligence to win his freedom.
G: Fiction
T: serious
P: Teddy finds it hard to adjust with new settings. Being an ascendant gives him great power but that comes with responsibilities that he wished he didn’t have. He’s not being mistreated as he is to important, no harm should come to him before his time to fulfill his destiny. Unfortunately that doesn’t mean happiness, lack of love and the wrong kind of attention is not what a boy should grow up with. As he gets older he thinks of a ways to free himself.
Genre: YA Fantasy
Tone: dark suspense
Plot: Something has stopped most people from having children. Those few born are adopted out at puberty to people who can afford to raise them well. Teddy will find out what is wrong and with a band of fellow young Ascendants, he will right the system.
I took my job as a Magen angel serious. Six millennia of a perfect record defending believers from the Darkness, not to mention a few above-and-beyond moments of glory throughout the ages. But today was different. Ryan was unlike any assignment I’d ever had. And the pair of uglies that tracked us down were more than mere demons. The Darkness had sent two of their finest.
I stood, as always, on the hilltop that overlooked Gimbals’ Grille at the edge of town, watching Ryan while he went about his work chopping onions and stirring soup. It was a stupid mistake, really. I knew better than to establish a pattern for evil eyes to follow.
A pair of massive beasts rammed into me as they emerged from the frozen earth beneath my feet. Too stunned to flash away, I took off running into the woods to the north. I was an impossible target, even reduced to something as human as running. My assailants evidently had impossible aim. I felt something hit me in the back that burned fiercely. I stumbled to a halt and covered myself with a divine shield, the only tool a Magen is granted.
Genre: Fantasy
Tone: Serious
Plot: An angel tasked with the protection of certain important person. Unfortunately, the angels perfect record is almost broken as all hell breaks loose in the darkness’ attempts to get the angels special ward.
Horror of the Supernatural variety with possible Spiritual or even Christian or Muslim overtones. This promises to be an action adventure with one man’s salvation in the balance and one angel’s reputation on the line. The tone is noir with a dry wit, not quite sarcastic.
Genre: Fantasy
Tone: Adventurous
Plot: Good vs Evil with a spot of potentially impossible romance thrown in. The story of how this Magen Angel’s perfect record is broken and how the Darkness comes the closest they ever have to ruling because of this angels mistake – a mistake they have to put right in the end at great cost.
Genre: Paranormal/Fantasy
Tone: Action
Plot: Good vs Evil. I feel like these “angels” are here to save mankind from evil. But there are also fallen angels who are battling for human souls as well.
Fantasy, how the guardian angel goes about her daily work
Genre: Fantasy
Tone: Violent combat.
Plot: Tells the story of what guardian angels really are, why they protect the seemingly most humble of people, and what sorts of threats are out there for those people.
I think this is a fantasy adventure story with a dark tone. I expect it to be about how the main character navigates through a world of monsters and demons while trying to achieve his “Ryan assignment” goal.
G: Fantasy adventure
T: Serious
P: Ryan is of importance as much to the angels as the to the uglies. The story will follow Magen Angel in his battle against evil forces as well as watching over Ryan.
Genre: Christian fantasy
Tone: action-laced
Plot: The Magen angel must protect Ryan until he is ready to fulfill his destined place in the fight against the Darkness. They are intent on bringing him down, because he plays a major role.
I was always taught life was about choices; some would be heroic and honorable, but in your weakest hour––only then would the darkest evil choose for you. I feared weakness for that very reason but sometimes it was out of my control.
My parents rarely let me go into Boston without them. They always kept me at an arms reach and were overprotective to the excess. By some miracle my best friend Jax had convinced my parents to allow me out on my birthday. His argument being that it was the big one––my eighteenth––but mostly it was because Jax always found a way to get what he wanted.
We pulled up to the club just after ten. It gave off a desolate, abandoned vibe.
“What’s the name of the club again?” I asked the guys as we climbed out of Jax’s new Range Rover.
“It’s called Hades,” Jax said, wide-eyed with excitement.
I stood completely still unable to move my legs another step forward, they grew numb and heavy––injected with fear. Internally an alarm blared as the word ‘Hades’ rolled off Jax’s tongue. I was conditioned as a child to never discuss my nightmares…
Genre: Modern Fantasy/ YA
Tone: Serious
Plot: The narrator is desired by members of the greek panteon, and his friend Jax is in on it. His purpose is revealed to him and begins a journey of self discovery.
YA Horror. This is a coming of age story that will see a young man, probably a teen-ager, endure his worst nightmare, the choices he must face and which decisions are heroic, which are cowardly and what is the ultimate outcome. I believe he will make one cowardly decision that he will regret early in the book and spend the rest of the book making brave ones until he achieves full redemption. The tone is serious.
Genre: Christian apocalyptic. The story is about overcoming fears and choosing the heroic and honorable
YA, about peer pressure in a mysterious (tone) setting.
Genre: YA Urban Fantasy
Tone: fearful fatalism
Plot: The character is some kind of seer, possibly of divine origin. Parents might be adoptive. His “friend” might be an antagonist, but not the worst of them; if anything, Jax is the person who ultimately helps the protagonist realize an important destiny.
Genre: YA Fantasy
Tone: fun and light
Plot: The protagonist is a fallen angel who’s memory has been wiped to live in society as a human so that she can redeem herself.
Genre: YA Supernatural/Fantasy
Tone: Ominous but with comic relief
Plot: MC and friend (Jax) get tangled up in an unforseen Good vs. Evil conflict where MC plays a key role that could benefit either side (seeing the future through dreams/nightmares) He (assuming a “he” but not entirely clear yet) must figure out how to survive the outcome when the evil force uses him against his will. Jax provides comic relief and moral support when MC is at his low point.
G: YA fantasy/paranormal
T: Serious
P: MC has a power of premonition that he/she is not fully aware of. His/hers bad feeling, he know that if he enters into the club something terrible is going to happen. This is his first bad decision and he will have to face consequences for his choice.
YA, perhaps adventure. Serious stuff. Likely some tones of the underworld; perhaps spiritual in nature. Plot?–not sure.
Cottonmouths can jump.
Robert Franklin lunged forward with his left foot, with his right foot firmly planted on the bank of Little Cypress Bayou. He swung the machete hard, deep into mud and chopped off the snake’s head. Robert held the reptile by its tail and looked at the shimmering beauty of its skin, the animal’s head lying only feet away.
I could have been bitten. That would’ve sucked.
He unstrapped his pack and slung it to the ground. He took the folding shovel from his pack, buried the head to put it safe to rest. He took a deep breath, regretting the adrenaline rush, then gathered his shovel and pack, loaded it all onto his back, and made his way back from the end of his oldest trapping line. It’s been a good morning for a lawyer, turned trapper.
This pack was a sight. Large spots of dark dried blood and fluids soaked what used to be white cotton bags, tied on the green camo background of his old Army surplus pack. Robert’s recent prey was slung over the posts that served as the frame of his favorite trapping pack. Today’s score; a skunk, two raccoons, three rabbits and a squirrel. Oh yeah, and a snake.
Genre: Humour
Tone: Light
Plot: A lawyer takes on the wrong case and is whisked away into the witness protection program. He must learn to adapt to his new way of life and pick up skills that will eventually find his life when his old world catches up to his new one.
Action Adventure/Law Procedural. Robert is a reclusive courtroom burn-out who will be brought out of self-imposed retirement either to represent himself in a trial or to represent some innocent victim of a frame up. His survival skills and knowledge of the outdoors will come in handy either in as folksy anecdotes in the courtroom or in the swamp when the bad guys try to put him away. The tone is straight forward but with an undertone of humor.
Genre: Adventure
Tone: Humourous
Plot: How Robert survives in a world different from the one we know and the story of how he turned from lawyer to trapper.
Adult suspense, could be a detective novel, light tone, reminds me of Lee Childs
Genre: Murder/Mystery
Tone: happy
Plot: A lawyer leaves the busy world of the civil system to get away from it all but when he finds a dead body in the woods, and begins to question everyone in the area; he realizes that you can take the lawyer out of the courtroom, but you can take the courtroom out of the man.
I think this is an historical novel with a light tone. I expect it to be about the challenges of the new life the main character experiences as a lawyer turned animal trapper.
G: Adventure
T: Light fun
P: Robert loves his new settings and enjoys being outdoors. His choice of carrier was a mistake. Now he fills like his life began all over and its going to be life full of joy. The story will follow es lawyer as he sets of on a numerous adventures.
“Oliver, wake up!”
Oliver Rose slowly opened his eyes to peek around his room. The sun was shining through his tinted glass windows, giving everything a shadowed appearance. He closed his eyes and slowly began to drift back off to sleep.
“Oliver!” his mom shouted, banging on his door, “You need to get up now or you’ll miss your test!”
At the word “test” Oliver jumped out of bed and quickly scrambled to get dressed. He glanced at the empty spot on his dresser where his alarm module had been the previous night and regretted his foolishness. He’d taken it apart to try and reprogram the alarm to emit a more soothing sound other than the obnoxious squawking that it normally did, but was unable to upload the new tones before he fell asleep. He glanced out the window as he shoved his legs into his pants and took in the view.
A vast city was laid out before him. Silver and black buildings covered in multicolored lights stretched into the sky. Those rich enough to afford anti-gravity boots zipped through the air as they made their way to work, but most of the movement was from the hover cars.
Genre: Sci-Fi
Tone: Informal
Plot: A young boy tries to better his life and the lives of his family by excelling in school. Unfortunately, his over-achieving leads him to a well kept secret by the powerful and wealthy corporations and he becomes a target.
YA Science Fiction. A coming of age story about a boy who thinks he’s only taking a test at school but, as the story progresses, comes to realize life is a series of never ending tests and it is the intrinsic nature of our characters that will determine the final outcome. The tone is hopeful.
Aimed at 8-14year olds a modern day Tom Sawyer about to have an adventure with his best buddy. Suspense for this age range.
Genre: YA fantasy/sci-fi
Tone: urgent
Plot: A young boy must save the world.
I think this is a middle grade or young adult science fiction with a light/humorous tone. It’s about a boy who is living in the future but still has the same problems of modern day kids.
G: MG adventure
T: Light
P: Oliver is leading a life of normal teenager until he notices a commotion in a small alley. What he saw changes everything.