Click below to view the opening chapters of The Mediocre Magician by Harry Helfer. Genre: In the next post is the critique of the chapters by literary professional Gillian Stern. Genre: Comedy, Novel, Fantasy

http://www.youwriteon.com/books/bookdetail.aspx?bookguid=7cb36c3c-212f-421d-a50a-a6920f1204d6


About the reviewer: Gillian Stern works as a Literary Editor, following many years as a Commissioning Editor. She works with all the Literary Agents at Curtis Brown, reading, critiquing, and editing novels across the genres. She reads novels that the agents have signed or are thinking of signing (Curtis Brown Director Jonny Geller for example is well known for work with new authors) and provides constructive edits, and her opinion on how a novel works/does not work and how it could move forward. She works on novels that are definitely going to be published, and which may also be the author's second or third novel. Gillian provides detailed opinions, and is well known for her constructive approach, and ability to help authors move forward with their work.

She also works with Luigi Bonomi and Associates; A M Heath and The Literary Consultancy, as well as directly with authors who know of her work and approach her directly for a constructive edit. She has worked on many well-known and very successful contemporary novels.

I would also suggest that you do a little more work on the scene with the reporter in chapter two. At the moment this has a touch of unreality about it and while I am not suggesting you turn away from the humour and ridiculousness of the meeting and what ensues, I do think you need to make the dialogue and outcome more convincing. I am not sure I understand or am convinced as to what it is about the encounter and what transpires that results in the headlines that appear in The Weekly Globe. It feels a little fast and far fetched and while I can see the intention, there needs to be some added depth here for there to be more conviction. If this is given more grounding, then the loss of jobs and the parallels to the ‘witchcraft and other anti-American activities’ of past times, will be more credible.

In addition, you need to make the collapse of the marriage more believable and this I believe can be done by giving the characters more depth and internalisation. I deal with this below.

There are some really funny, innovative and fun elements in the story, for example, the electrons in the underwear, the territorial nature of spiders, the electrons in soda drinks, the scene with the broomstick and I have no doubt that you have enormous fun in thinking these ideas up and that there will be more inventive and amusing incidents and ideas as the novel progresses. There is an intelligence behind your humour that engages the reader and this is not something that is easy to achieve.

In summary then, I do believe that you need to do some further work on developing back story and context and to making some of the situations seem more credible. It might be an idea to divide these two chapters into about four. Publishers like the first chapter of a novel these days to be no more than five or six pages.


Characterisation

Peter is, of course, the voice we are drawn to – this is his story. Almost as soon as the novel begins we want to know more about him and it is a little frustrating that we don’t really get beneath the surface. Again, I do not think that if you add a layer of texture beneath the veneer, then you will lose the tone of the novel. However, I do think that it is essential the reader gets to know him and ultimately (and fairly quickly) cares about him enough to want to read his story. Let’s have a little more back story, a little more on his beliefs, motivations, outlook on life – and as outlined above, what he it is like to have given up on his magic or to have been such a marginal magician.

We also need to know why he is such a pushover, so weak and powerless in his marriage. It seems incredible that he talks about leaving his children so that his wife can get a job or that he is so passive in the face of his wife’s cruel hostility. We need some reaction to Tanya’s treatment of him – he claims to have been happily married for fifteen years, so her treatment of him must come as a huge personal shock and cause him a lot of distress. We need some reaction that takes us beneath the surface – something a reader would relate to if they found themselves in a similar position.

As outlined we also need to delve deeper into how his magicianship defines him. What is his story? How does it feel to have forced himself to repress this gift, to hide it from everyone for so long. How does he feel when he can’t help himself but use his magic? Is he tempted to use it a lot? Doesn’t he feel a need to show off – even if he is marginal, something here is better than nothing. Perhaps for example, he could have always done all the magic tricks at his children’s parties – and is renowned for giving a fantastic party that baffles everyone once a year.

In short, we need more of Peter – more depth and development, more insight in to who he is and what it is like to be him.

I am not sure what you are trying to do with Tanya. Is she really supposed to be as awful as she is?! Clearly you are showing her to be a totally shallow, materialistically greedy, snobbish, un-maternal, career-fixated and horrible but I wonder if that is your conscious intention. While of course it is important that readers get a sense of someone’s true values and their goals, however horrible and shallow these are, it is important that they are not completely alienated from a main character from such an early stage in a novel. There is no real basis for her rejection of Peter – from finding out he went to magician’s school, then demanding a bigger house and not getting it – she practically divorces him and makes his life miserable so that he contemplates moving out. Why? Is it because she feels deeply hurt and manipulated, angry at having been kept in the dark because her husband has withheld something about his essence? Whatever it is, this needs developing and contextualising – Tanya is just too horrible and her responses too shallow and unfathomable at present and the reader needs a layer of context, a richer texture of her to allow them to think of her as a real character.



The twins are precocious Californians and a product of their mother’s shallowness. However, they do need to act and talk like thirteen year olds. The conversation they have about whether they should stay together as a family and then when they read Peter the riot act, is just a little too far fetched and I would advise you to make this more realistic and even.



Setting

I immediately liked your Californian setting and the snapshot of Californian suburban life. You write well visually – I could see Peter turning off El Camino Real into his home and could envisage the inside of his home. I also liked the more implicit background of American society at large and the disdain for certain value systems that this encourages. I would like to see more of this and hope you develop the wider observations and commentary in more detail as the novel progresses. I hope too that you bring out the setting in more detail – mapping the lay of the land is an appealing element of many novels set in contemporary American society.



Writing Style and Voice

Your writing style is fast and vibrant, colourful and humorous. The pace is good (a little too quick at times as mentioned above), the observations sharp and witty and I liked the attention to detail. I would watch that there is not too much dialogue or that you contrast external dialogue with Peter’s inner voice. There needs to be a little more tone, an injection of modulation between how Peter thinks and how he speaks and we need access to his internal thoughts in more depth. I like the way we the reader, can hear Peter, as if he is speaking directly to us – this immediacy will appeal to a wide variety of readers.

Conclusion

This is a humorous and enjoyable start and I would be interested to see where the narrative is heading and how your story evolves and the characters develop. The synopsis certainly promises a busy and lively story and with your obvious zeal for writing and your sense of fun and fizz, I predict an enjoyable read. As outlined above, I would encourage you to inject a layer or two of depth, development and context into the narrative so that the situation feels more realistic and the characters more textured and layered. All this can be done, I feel, without making the novel too serious or slow and will result in a much more satisfying read.

I wish you all the best with your writing.