New York Write to Pitch "First Pages" - 2022, 2023, 2024
A forum for New York pitch event alums to post samples of their scenes and prose narrative for detailed critique according to Algonkian Author Connect guidelines. Emphasis on choice of set, narrative cinema, quality of dialogue, metaphor, static and dynamic imagery, interior monologue, general clarity, tone, suspense devices, and routine line editing issues as well.
258 topics in this forum
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Scene 1 Terra hoisted the heavy red gasoline canister to her lips and took a swig. “The only thing that ran out of gas is your bullshit story,” she said, her sparkling black eyes trained on him. The young man cuffed to the barbed-wire cattle fence dripped with sweat, despite the fact that clouds had been blocking the sun for the past few hours. He looked ridiculous out here, Terra thought, with his pristine white hoodie and his high wave of stiff slicked-back hair. The hardy foliage and rugged black bark of the massive ebony tree behind him added to the absurdity. Its olive leaves danced in the wind that seemed to be picking up as the afternoon kicked in.…
Last reply by Zona, -
He’d been assigned as their group advisor from the start of her program. He was older than them by decades but his boyish cropped hair, lithe frame, the way he adjusted his glasses to sit just so on the bridge of his nose, the way he folded his sleeves up perfectly and fixed that tuft of hair with vanity, his quick wit, the way he used catchphrases from their generation in perfect tandem with paternal truisms…all made him a favorite with almost everyone. But of all these little things dwarfed in comparison to the way he yelled her name across the hallways. Waking up late that morning and being off schedule, not even having the time to get a quick bite to eat from th…
Last reply by unwritten, -
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Friday One Every night starts the same. The pregame. The debauchery before the debauchery. An excuse to get drunk before the actual drinking starts. Tonight, the pregame is at my apartment. Graduating college was supposed to have magically matured me. I took enough social science classes, to have crawled from my cave. If the exhilaration of “SOC 2200 – Working Women” doesn’t get the engines revving on the quest to grow up, well, what possibly could? Oh, that last blue book. This was all supposed to end after shutting that last blue book. What could another keg party do for me when equipped with the weapons of knowledge? What ne…
Last reply by Alexander Muka, -
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CHAPTER 1 I didn’t officially exist until I was nearly thirteen. The State of Oregon marked this achievement via a document inscribed “Delayed Certificate of Birth” across the top. We were all born during the Vietnam war, and Mom and Dad weren’t about to let The Man know, so it was just the two of them bringing us into this world. Dad had no medical experience, and later I wondered what would have happened if something had gone terribly wrong. But nothing did, not at first anyway. My brother was born on the road. Mom was about to give birth in their red 1957 International TravelAll but then decided that’s where she drew the line, making my dad stop at the neares…
Last reply by Chloe Johnson, -
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REBELRY- YA Science Fiction, American Royals meets Divergent Opening chapter - introduces main character, setting, tone, inciting incident CHAPTER 1 Summoned “. . . though we have toiled and emerged from the War victorious, now our labor truly begins. Today we grant our oppressors an amnesty they have not earned. We shall not exact vengeance, but they will learn to follow and serve. With wisdom, mercy, and compassion, we will build a magnificent world and show our oppressors that we can create paradise on Earth. And so, let it be shouted in every street, the Age of Man is no more. For I proclaim to you, the Age of …
Last reply by Sharilyn, -
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THE BELLS OF ATHERTON Chapter 1 The sun was setting over Atherton, North Carolina when Patrick Bell turned onto Seacrest Drive and headed for home. As the large oceanfront house he shared with his wife, Pamela, came into view, he reminded himself how lucky he was to live there. His life in Atherton was a huge step up from the way he'd been raised and he never took it for granted. He'd felt like the luckiest guy in the world since marrying Pamela six years earlier. They had moved to Atherton shortly after the wedding. It was a small town, a fisherman's paradise on the Carolina coast. He smiled as he pulled into the driveway, brought his silver sedan to an abrupt st…
Last reply by Malekeh, -
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Seven Assignments.docx
Last reply by Lynn McCall, -
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- 180 views
Chapter 1 There was a knock on the door, but Blair didn’t look up from her desktop. Moments later, another knock forced her hazel eyes to roll. “Tessa?” Blair called to her assistant who was putting together the new white leather couches for her office. “Yes Miss?” Tessa stood immediately, smoothing out her clothes as she spoke. Tessa has only been Blair’s assistant for a week. She had applied hopeful, but didn’t expect much other than a phone call saying she didn’t qualify. She, after all, did come from the scheduling department, which everybody knows is the bottom tier job at The Circle. Blair often refers to them as “sadly necessary.” But Tessa is young…
Last reply by Mackenzie Eaton, -
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Paul Allen
Last reply by PJ Allen, -
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OPENING SCENE - Introduces the setting, tone, antagonistic forces, and highlights key themes. If Solomon absolutely had to jump out of a plane, 0100 hours was not the time he would have chosen for it. Actually, scratch that, never was the time he’d actually pick, but since the Westsylvania Zone militia liked to hand out wall-to-wall counseling like a candy dispenser drone on Halloween, Solomon had little choice in the matter. Taking a deep breath, he climbed out of the cattle truck with the other dozen drafted teenagers, and began to help unload the parachute gear onto the departure airfield. One of the plastic crates resisted his attempts to open it. He managed…
Last reply by JINJUP6RICHARDS, -
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LWH Opening.docx
Last reply by Lynn McCall, -
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Ryan stared unseeing into his oak paneled stall inside the Baltimore Blaze locker room. A decades old photograph was tacked to the wood grained back, safely secured in the plastic Ziploc baggie that Ryan had plucked from the box inside his mother’s pantry when he was eight years old. He remembered delicately placing it in the flexible, plastic pouch after carefully cutting it from the page of a sports magazine he had found discarded on the front lawn after the garbage trucks had made their weekly pickups. Every season since he started in the league it had made its way from the top drawer of Ryan’s bedroom dresser to this exact same spot. The seven by eight and half inch …
Last reply by Cindy Berry, -
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Dragon Nightmare? Only two more centuries. I’m never going to make it. Quarter to midnight, six hours left. Kay Linda Taylor worried she wasn’t going to make it and then jumped when her mother came to check on her. Angrily she said, “Why are you up? You don’t have to worry about me, I can worry about myself. It’s my own fault I have to cram for this history test.” “You and Mary had fun taking care of Grandpop, before he died. There is more to life than A’s,” her mother said. “If you’re Mary, and are rich with a legacy, there is. But not me. If I want to go to an Ivy league school I have to get As. All As. But you wouldn’t understand because you don’t underst…
Last reply by K LMHS Turner, -
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Into the Breach - Chapter 1 Genre: Sci-Fi Space Opera Lieutenant Gabriel Halfast just happened to notice a single pixel glowing on the scopes. He had been leaning over the shoulder of the radar operator, helping her to retune one of the antennae. At first he thought the pixel had gone bad and flicked his finger against the screen. “What is that?” he asked. The pixel hadn’t disappeared despite his insistent taps. Radio Operator Olliver swatted Halfast’s finger away from her screen. “It can’t be a ship,” she said. “There’s no signal, no emissions-- wait--” She twisted some knobs to refocus the sensing equipment. One pixel became many as the…
Last reply by Jonah Schrowang, -
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Scene: Chapter Four. Jo returns to New York from visiting Madeleine in Florida after receiving a telegram from Orson Welles asking to meet. He wants to premiere "Citizen Kane" at the Palace Theater and needs someone to show him around. The scene captures Jo's passions and core decency - and why the movies matter to her. He wanted to meet at midnight.docx
Last reply by Saladin Ambar, -
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⸸ or Sinner’s Descent Into the Depths of the Unreal or Thomasin Sinclair 1 A Deo, Omnes Sapientia “Rosie!” The Beast’s intoned cry shook me from my train ride nap, interrupting a pleasant window-dream. I would look out the window and see one landscape: green plains on rolling hills. Then I’d close my eyes and see another: a lush vineyard stretching for miles. I lost track of whether my eyes were open or closed. “There you are. I’ve been looking up and down the train for you,” Hannah said, pushing her voice into the shrill, sing-songy tone she used to speak to me. “Hello, Hannah,“ I croaked out. Hannah dropped her luggag…
Last reply by ProductionBlues, -
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He regarded his plush surroundings through the haze of his standard weekday hangover. Duff was a music journalist by trade, and of a type that was vanishing into extinction. Which was to say he drank frequently and well, was friendly enough with his weed dealer to have read and offered notes on his screenplay, wore a full mustache, and possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of rock music and its forebear, rhythm and blues. He was sitting gingerly in a beautifully upholstered chair with blue and cream stripes in a suite at the Waldorf Astoria, his husky 6’3’’ frame threatening the collapse of the beautiful piece of furniture and his self-esteem at any moment. H…
Last reply by Mike Wackenreuter, -
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Astray is a psychological suspense novel featuring the story of a young woman who returns to Alaska to confront the family she believes to have abandoned her and to reopen the case of her mother's supposed death by overdose. Aurora blinked hard, squeezing her eyes tightly before squinting into the darkness of the poorly lit trailer she called home. The living room was a foreign blur, and while the ashtrays and open bottles of her mother’s party littered every surface around her, the only image she could pull into focus was the huddled mass on the stained and faded carpet. Mama. Daddy. Their heads so close and their limbs so intertwined that for a mo…
Last reply by LBS, -
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Chapter 1 Galen Tailing the car wasn’t as easy as I’d hoped. A smarter man might have written the whole thing off after having their bumper clipped by an SUV. I didn’t think it would be so difficult to stay close to Elise on the highway, but I’d almost crashed twice chasing her taillights through the dense heart of downtown Austin. Difficult as it was, I had to keep my wits about me. She would kill me if she realized I was following her. I focused on her car’s rearview window, straining to see beyond the tinted glass. Was she alone? I hoped beyond hope that she was, but it was impossible to tell even after forty-five minutes on the road. Sweat beaded…
Last reply by hannah_geiser, -
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My novel is about a heartbroken, modern-day science teacher who is wooed by a man who claims to be Shakespeare. 1 Joy looks up at the autumn sky and sees a sign: a white “H” within a bright green square, a logo that reminds her of summer vacations. “Who knew we had a Holiday Inn?” she says to Fredrico. “Who cares?” She could change the subject to something more relevant to him—like the spa facilities at the new Ritz Carlton, or his resemblance to a 1970’s George Harrison—but instead of working that hard, she lets the conversation drop. The restaurant is just a few blocks from his West Village apar…
Last reply by Emma C. Pasternack, -
Gwen sat on her daughter's twin bed, staring at herself in a mirror they'd attached to the back of the door. It refracted the room's ambient light and gave the illusion of space. It also multiplied the flower decals Sophie had stuck on the walls and the Janice Joplin poster above her bed. Their realtor had called it a one-bedroom, but they all knew that was a lie. It was really a studio with a walk-in closet. But Gwen had been desperate to leave the Victorian townhome she'd shared with Jeremy down in Grammercy Park, and this place was the first thing she found. In hindsight, the signs of infidelity were everywhere--on Jeremy's fragrant coat, in Jeremy's smile--b…
Last reply by jodi daynard, -
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Opening Scene/Chapter One: Introduction of protagonist, setting, tone, and primary conflict - son has been hauled to jail in the middle of the night, and his mother is, essentially, lost Chapter 1: I want him to know how sorry I am. I want to beg his forgiveness. For all I didn’t understand, for all I never knew, for all I still have to learn. But the police have him and I can’t reach him. My baby. My child. My son. Why am I hesitating to say it? To use the most obvious description? Because I generally gloss it over, try to act like it doesn’t matter - why make everyone uncomfortable and bring it up? But it does matter. It is important. So here it …
Last reply by Lea, -
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Work in progress after the incredible "Write to Pitch" in NYC and advice from the amazing Paula Munier...
Last reply by Shannan Dugan, -
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Opening scene: introduces the protagonist and antagonist, establishes the setting, tone, and foreshadows primary conflict. Aren’t we a pair, Amber Ray? Mom and Dad must be so proud of their long-lost daughters. You, moldering in the grave, and, as for me, a murderous whore. Yes, I might as well be buried right next to you unless they come for me. Please come for me, I think, clasping my hands tightly as if I’m praying to Jesus Christ himself. Until then, I’ll wait, but not patiently, not in this nut house. So, I spin around in the swivel chair, clinging to my book of Edgar Allan Poe’s best works. Creeping in my head since I sat down is …
Last reply by SE Reynolds, -
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Nobody ever shows the bodies. In all the post-apocalyptic films a billion people always manage to magically disappear into thin air, leaving the survivors to walk the earth in isolation. Believe me, that sounds like heaven compared to the present situation. My name is Cody Armstrong. I am nineteen years old and even before what I’ve come to call the Great Extinction, I was all alone. I didn’t start out that way. Until I was eight, I had lots of friends. Then we moved, and I skipped three grades. The school didn’t want to do it since sixth graders don’t really hang out with eight year olds, even smart ones, but I was bored with third grade work and wa…
Last reply by Lora D.,
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