Preview - Premium Post - Writer's Workshop #3

How Not to Vampire - A Humorous Urban Fantasy - by Rodney V. Smith

Hello there! Today I’ve got a preview of Writer’s Workshop #3, here on The Breakdown, for you. I want to thank Rodney V. Smith for letting me analyze the first five pages of his snarky and edgy urban vampire tale: 

How Not to Vampire

Here’s a story summary:

Vampiring is HARD.

Things Bob has on his checklist when he accidentally becomes a vampire: a) forget everything he knows about vampires b) Google vampire survival tactics c) don’t get brutally murdered by vampires.

Apparently there are vampire LAWS, and Bob, a young, romantically challenged black man living in Toronto, never got the guidebook. Even though it’s not his fault that he’s broken every rule, a secret vampire society is hellbent on giving him a more permanent death. With the help of his best pal, Claude, Bob tries to stay alive and hopefully turn around his screwed-up existence in the process.

For those new to the newsletter, as far as these breakdowns, here’s the drill. While I might mention something cool that stands out, the main focus of this exercise is to look for areas of improvement. And while I’m drawing on years and years of story analysis and story development experience, these are just my opinions. It’s always up to the writer to take and use what works for them.

The “Top 3” I See:

Now that we’ve covered the summary, and I’ve read the first five pages, here are the top three issues that jumped out at me.

Again, this is for all five pages, not just the samples highlighted in this post. Readers can read these first five pages here.

1. Rhythm & Flow - You’d asked if pacing was an issue, and while the plot pacing is great, the density of the rhythm, of both the prose and internal monologues, is slowing down the pace of the story and smothering Bob's voice—and due to this—some of his humor. I recommend that you look for a more natural "conversational" rhythm to the narrative and dialogue and more prominently emphasize the spaces in between these elements in order to give the story a better flow. I’ll show you some examples of how you can do this down below.

2. Repetition - This became an issue on two fronts. The first is in the character of Tanya. You did a great job of making her compatriot, Doreen, interesting and dimensional, even though she doesn’t say much. Tanya, however, comes across as a caricature. We’ll take a look at how repetition comes into play there. There’s some other repetition that I felt was problematic, in terms of language that I’ll expound upon down below.

3. Character Introductions - I love that you start the story, in medias res. That’s my favorite sort of opening. And you introduce a lot of characters and a lot of their relationships, in rapid succession, in the first five pages (and the first chapter, really.) All that is great! However, some of the relationships were very unclear—not unclear in an intriguing way, but more of a confusing way—such that I found myself feeling a bit disconnected from the action and the scene.

Alrighty then! Given that overview, let’s dive deeper into your work and see how some of these issues can be addressed…

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So, that’s the end of the preview! 

If you have any thoughts or questions on the preview version, please leave a comment below.

Remember, if you’re a Premium Subscriber, either gifted or by supporting the newsletter, read the full review here: Writer's Workshop #3

You can also submit your First Five Pages or a Query Letter for review via The Breakdown Writer’s Workshop Submission Form. Again, only Premium Subscribers can submit and read the full reviews.

Also, just a reminder, you can access all past issues of The Breakdown in the Archives.

And so you have an idea of what’s coming up in the Premium department, we’ve got:

• Writer’s Workshop #3 - An analysis of Rodney V. Smith’s edgy and snarky urban vampire tale: How Not to Vampire.

• Industry Deep Dive #2 - A deep dive into the agent’s brain, where I’ll provide you with some of the best (and probably more obscure) resources for learning what agents want and how you can best position your work to snag their attention.

• Query Workshop #2 - This is where I helped a writer who wrote a one-page synopsis, thinking it was a decent query, identify the key elements of that synopsis that he could, and should, use for round two of his query draft.

That’s it for today. Happy reading and writing and I’ll see you in the next issue!

~ Paula

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