The Wog Manual-feedback appreciated
May 24th, 2006 § 11 Comments
I’ve been toing and froing for the past few months as to whether I’d be able to enter the Vogel
literary competition for unpublished manuscripts. I’m working my guts out and I’ll make it, just. I really struggle with writing synopsis and telling people about my novel so thought I’d use this forum to seek feedback on my one page synopsis and my first page.
My questions are:
Does the story sound interesting?
Are there any images/sentences/paragraphs you find problematic and think should be improved on?
Is anything unclear?
Does the first page reflect the tone of the synopsis?
Anything else you want to say?
I’d be happy to receive feedback in the comments or you can email me amrapajalic@yahoo.com.au. I’d appreciate any comments by Sunday as I have to post it off on Monday.
Anything you have to say whether it be good, bad or indifferent will be helpful. I’m back to the trenches. Proofreading my novel for the last time as I have to post it Monday to make the 31 May deadline. Talk about cutting it close.
THE WOG MANUAL ONE PAGE SYNOPSIS
Wog is an Australian slang term used for people of Mediterranean ancestries that was originally offensive, but has been transformed into an almost affectionate term. The Wog Manual explores the wog life in the Bosnian community just as the movie The Wog Boy (2000) did to the Greek community. It is a 90, 000 word young adult novel set in Melbourne, Australia in 1994. The main character is Sabiha Cengic, a fifteen-year-old Bosnian-Muslim girl.
The Bosnian community considers Sabiha and her Mum white trash because of her Mum’s manic depression and man-chasing ways. After growing up outside of her community Sabiha is yanked into the Bosnian way of life when her grandfather and aunt come to Australia as refugees during the Balkan War.
As the Bosnian community reluctantly accepts them back into the fold Sabiha has the chance for the one thing she’s desired, respectability, until her Mum gets engaged to Safet, a former university professor who claims his wife and children died in the war.
The one place where she could drop the wog tag and pretend to be a normal girl was in school with her best friend Kathleen. When Kathleen’s parents discover they went to a male stripper show Sabiha is wrongly identified as the instigator and they’re not allowed to see each other.
After being bullied she’s forced to change schools and the only thing going for her is that she’s popular for the first time in her life with girls using her to be close to her spunky cousin Adnan. And she is making some new friends, if you count Jessie James the school oddball who’s pastime is making lists of people he will kill and his best friend Brian O’Connor who wears foundation and denies that he’s gay.
Then there’s her fake best friend, Dina. Their friendship is a necessary cover to hide their extracurricular activities from their Born-Again Wog parents. Dina is hiding her Macedonian boyfriend and Sabiha her friendship with Brian.
As if she doesn’t have enough on her plate she’s involved in a love triangle. Or is that a love quadrangle? She and Brian are tempted to cross the line from best friends to something more, she can’t decide whether she and Jessie should be just friends, while Edo, the hunky Bosnian apprentice hairdresser, wins her mother’s vote. After all he’s Bosnian, he’s Muslim, he’s available. What more could a girl want?
In her zeal to be a Born-Again-Wog her Mum stops taking her medication and her mania reappears. As Sabiha fights to get her Mum back on her medication before her imminent breakdown, she learns about the meaning of family and friendship.
THE WOG MANUAL FIRST PAGE
Our house was under wog siege. Again. She sent me to the kitchen to make coffee like a performing circus monkey, but this time I was going to teach her a lesson. I picked up the canister she’d bought from the two-dollar shop to store sugar, salt, flour and coffee. There were fruit pictures on the front of the canisters. The orange picture marked the sugar canister. The apple contained salt. I put the spoon in the apple canister and tipped it into the frothing coffee.
“Everything okay here?” Mum rushed in and clucked her tongue.
Now I was in for it.
“You didn’t put enough sugar.” She took the tablespoon from me and shovelled in another two spoonfuls of salt. “That’s better,” she put the spoon in the sink.
I choked back my laughter.
Mum returned to the living room and I finished preparing the coffee. You’re probably wondering what’s with the coffee. To tell you that I have to take you back to the beginning.
In the late sixth century Slavs moved down the Balkan Peninsula and established settlements. I’m just stirring you. I’m Bosnian. A few months ago that word would have meant nothing to you, but now that the Balkan war has broken out you don’t need me to draw you a map, do you?
Coffee to a Bosnian is like Guinness to an Irishman. Bosnians in the war ground rice when they didn’t have coffee beans. It’s more than a social custom, it’s a source of national pride and identity. And I was shitting on that. I picked up the tray and headed for the living room. Sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
I am going to look at this over the next few days if I can…when’s the deadline?
Hey Sandra-Sunday night is the deadline as I have to post it Monday. Cheers.
This is not an informed opinion (beyond being that of a voracious reader always on the look out for good stuff), but your first page has me wanting to read more. Well done!
In the synopsis, I didn’t get how/why her mum’s engagement threatened their respectability.
I won’t get into typos and grammar stuff. In my thesis t’other day I realised I’d typed munity instead of mutiny and had left it, unchanged and unnoticed, for days. Oh well.
Thanks Mas. That’s a really good point and something I’ll expand on. Now you’ve got me all paranoid. I can see typos and grammar up to a point and then I go blind. What is it about that? I know I’ve got a few run on sentences I have to add comma’s in, but is there any other really bad boo’s?
Hubby read my comments and pointed out my arch enemy the apostrophy has struck again. Sigh. Even though I know it’s my weakness it just keeps happening.
Yes, I agree with mas. I do like your first page. The synopsis needs to be tighter though I think. You might be able to combine paragraphs 4 and 5. A thing that helps me for some grammatical proplems is to read it out loud or into a microphone. You will hear where you naturally should pause for a comma or if your sentences run on until you are out of breath. It makes them easier to find and easier to fix.
Good luck!
Thanks Stacy. I’ll be doing that.
A friend also sent a comment via email about the sentence “Bosnians in the war ground rice when they didn’t have coffee beans,” as it’s past tense. This paragraph was bothering me and she hit the nail on the head as to why.
The first page is fantastic, Amra. It definitely makes me want to read more, and I can see the humour and depth already. Well done.
I agree with Mas about her mum’s engagement and his family that supposedly died in the war. Expand and tell us why it threatens her respectability. From what I understand, editors say don’t keep secrets in the synopsis, reveal the important characters, the turning points of your main character, and the conclusion. Hope that helps and best of luck! I really mean it.
I received comments from Stephanie Bose (http://stephaniebose.blogspot.com/) via email and she had some really useful points to make about clarifying the action in my synopsis.
1. Why does the university professor threaten their respectablity?
2. If Brian is gay why is Sabiha attracted to him?
3. Clarifying Edo’s age?
She’s also given me a line edit of both extracts (thank you so much). And she’s made me think about the suitability in marketing this as a young adult novel. There’s a lot of adult content (swearing, talking about sex, a sex scene) and by putting that tag on it I’m setting out a certain reader expectation so I’m going to remove that tag.
While in Australia young adult fiction is much more open this still might be crossing the line. Ultimately if it was published a publisher would decide but for now I have to give myself the best chance possible to achieve that goal.
Thanks Renee. I think I need to expand on the end more and explain the actual turning point and give an indication of where the build up is going, as well as those other things.
Hi Amra
I think you are very brave to have people read and make suggestions. I am sending you my comments to your email addy.
Good Luck. I’m coming to your book launch remember?