New Random House Critiques

Random House is the publisher of bestselling authors such as John Grisham and Bill Bryson. Each month on YouWriteOn editors from Random House provide an indepth critique of one highly rated Top Ten novel opening, and 3 mini-reviews of three other top ten stories.

View The Top Ten Stories

The stories reviewed are Billy Button: Super Hero, Autumn Flush, Considerate Vera, and A Candle in the Dark.

Alison is this month's Random House editor professional reviewer.



Billy Button: Super Hero

Mike Hanson

Congratulations on being selected for a professional critique! It’s a wonderful achievement on such a popular site and I hope my comments and suggestions will be helpful to you as you continue to develop your story.

Plot

Your premise is a charming one, and the blend of humour and adventure is sure to appeal to young readers and their parents. What works particularly well is how you end each chapter with a mini-cliffhanger. Young children can often be reluctant readers and I think you’ve done an excellent job of ensuring that when they reach the end of each chapter they’ll be eager to read on.

I did wonder whether it might work better to leave the cliff-hanger at the end of the last chapter supplied a little more open-ended by finishing after ‘I’ll phone your father’. We can tell by his mother’s reaction that the name Mighty Mouth obviously means something to her, and we know from Billy’s description that Mighty Mouth seems a dangerous character, so I didn’t think you needed to have her say that ‘We’re in a huge amount of trouble’ and that it would be more exciting if it was left a little more open.

Quality of writing

Your novel is well paced and full of exciting incidents – I loved Billy falling out of the window and the conversation with the postman was beautifully done, I could really picture poor Billy, squirming on the floor! Your writing is generally good, with a few lovely images like the crockery in the washing up bowl becoming ‘submerged like shipwrecks’ and I’d have actually liked to have seen you incorporate a few more descriptive lines such as these.

You don’t want to over-complicate your writing style however, so I’d recommend avoiding slightly awkward sentences such as ‘He never came back to his mother’s house on a Saturday night fed up because he’d had a boring night’ as it might confuse younger readers into thinking that it meant Billy had had a boring night with his father so was pleased to come back to his mother’s house.

You also want to avoid using brackets to clarify your meaning, as you do in Chapter One ‘He’d only be told…that he had to be left alone and that he (Billy) would understand when he was older’. I would just replace the second ‘he’ with Billy – you shouldn’t use the same pronoun in the same sentence to refer to different people as it becomes confusing.

I also wanted to raise Robbie’s exams, you say at one point that it is the middle of summer but in that case wouldn’t Robbie’s exams be finished? Most school exams take place in May or June, which I wouldn’t count as the middle of the summer, and I wouldn’t have thought he’d already be studying in his holidays for exams happening in the next Spring?

Structure

One aspect that is key to a successful children’s book is structuring the book around chapters of equal length so I would suggest that you look again at how to maintain this consistency throughout your book. At the moment, we have a first chapter of around 3 and a half pages, but then the second chapter is only just over a page in length so you’ll need to look again at how you can re-work this; perhaps you could split the first chapter into two shorter chapters?

I also thought that the news report on the robbery at the local shop might work better coming separately from the appearance of Mighty Mouth on the television. I know you want to have an excuse to have Billy watching the television so that Mighty Mouth can appear but I felt that it might work better if the two episodes were separated out, so that the reader isn’t entirely sure whether the events Billy remembers (the unidentified blast, the man eating sandwiches on the side of the plane) are definitely happening, or were just tall tales. The appearance of Mighty Mouth removes any doubt over their nature so it might be better to introduce them on an earlier occasion allowing the reader to speculate over whether they might be made up or not. Remember many children might be reading these books with their parents/teachers so it’s good to have points where the adult can ask them what they think is really happening, or what will happen next.

Characterisation

Billy is a lovely hero, at the age of ten he’ll be older than the majority of readers which is ideal; most young children want to read about characters they can look up too. He comes across as a very energetic, curious young boy and his relationship with those around him, particularly his mother and his nemesis, Tom, felt very believable to me.

My only concern was over the visit to the hospital; I can understand Bill’s mum’s exasperation at him falling out of the window but I was a little surprised she poked Billy in the shoulder when he was obviously in pain. I know she wanted to prove he had hurt himself but I didn’t think she would want to inflict even more pain on her son. Maybe she could just pretend she was going to prod his shoulder and see how he reacted?

Tone

Your tone is great – your narrative voice is light and lively and the revelation about Billy’s father’s magical powers is beautifully done. You have taken care to make sure the reader sympathises with Billy, even if we don’t really think he has super powers, and the result is an entertaining read.

Setting

This is one area that it would be good to focus on in your re-drafting as I didn’t really have a clear picture of where the story was set as I read. I presumed that the book was set in Britain from the references to conservatories and greenhouses but I think your novel will be even better with a little more scene-setting.

You need your readers to be able to picture the story for themselves and many young readers may only be familiar with the area they themselves have grown up in so I’d like you to focus on incorporating a few details that will help build up a picture of Billy’s neighbourhood. Is Billy’s house big? In the centre of town or in the suburbs of a city?

Market

The children’s book market is an incredibly competitive one but this could be a lovely addition to the genre. At the moment, however, I’m not sure your title is doing enough to really sell the great story that follows. As it is, the title isn’t really telling the reader much about what is about to unfold – it could be a very straightforward story of an adult superhero – and I think you want something a little more exciting and attention grabbing to really intrigue a prospective reader. Perhaps you could consider something along the lines of ‘Billy Button and the thrilling adventure of….’?

Conclusion

This was a lovely, lively story and I can see why you’ve done so well on YouWriteOn! Billy is a great central character and the opening chapters are energetic and well paced and filled with enough events to keep readers eagerly turning the pages. Once you’ve re-worked the structure so that the chapters are of roughly equally length then I’d recommend that you look at how you can help build on your scene-setting so that your words really come alive on the page. Good luck!

I'd like to offer my thanks to Alison @ Random House for such a thoughtful review. There are some really good suggestions, which I shall work on over the next few days. I didn't realise until I read the review what some of the issues were, but they seem so obvious now (studying for exams in the summer holidays: really!)

Writing's all about re-writing and a review like this is so useful. Thanks Alison. Thanks Ted. And thanks to everyone on YWO who reviewed Billy Button. www.mikehanson.co.uk

Ted

Please thank Alison for a kind review of Autumn Flush. She noted the confusion, which is the general sense I wanted to convey, but it seems that I over did it.

Nice to see longer reviews for the shorts creeping in.

Regards

Andrew Memory... What was that?

Thank you also to Alison for the helpful and encouraging advice on A Candle in the Dark. I will certainly look again at Susannah's character and try to make her as alive to the reader as she is in my mind.

My thoughts exactly, Andrew. I've asked Ted but haven't had a reply as yet. Karen.