Thank you to all the brave souls who entered this month’s Four on 400 contest!

Sharing your writing takes courage, and we appreciate your enthusiasm for our contest.Below, we’ve posted the first 400 words from this month’s winner, along with feedback from at least four of our members. We also encourage our readers to share their (constructive) suggestions and encouragement in the comments section below.

Middle Grade Fantasy, The Huntress

I swiveled my ears against the howling winds, but even narrowing my eyes didn’t keep out the driving snow. I scanned the street for something familiar— anything. My plan today was to stay alive, and panicking about being lost, or about the ice building up under my feet, or even the snow collecting on my whiskers, none of them were part of my plan.

I was going to keep moving through this storm. I was going to find a landmark and figure out where I was. Plenty of streets in Montreal looked the same if you weren’t careful, and suddenly you were lost.

And I was going to find something to eat.

When I got home, I would happily put up with Matteo’s lecture on his Five Safety Rules for Alley Cats, and how I had broken each and every one of them. And maybe, if I were lucky, he had saved a scrap of fish head for me.

I was feeling very dedicated to this plan, so even as a gust of wind nearly knocked me off my feet, I decided I was not going to freeze to death and die right here in the storm.

My belly growled, I hadn’t eaten all day. I shook to throw the snow off my back but it was nestled deep into my fur and I could feel its chill along my spine. I shivered and thought instead of the warm bits of meat the woman at the Moroccan café would save for me sometimes.

Had I tried the café today? Maybe she had something right now! I’d rest, just for a bit, and than I’d head straight to the café. I just needed to find a place out of the wind to curl up for a while. Then I could be on my way to home and a hot meal.

You have to keep moving, Matteo’s voice whispered in my mind. If you fall asleep when you are cold and wet, you might never wake up.

So I sat down in the snow and chewed ice from my paws. I looked around for a path out of the wind. Through a sudden lull in the snow, I could see an alley between two mansions. It looked so peaceful there, as if the snow wasn’t as deep or maybe the wind wasn’t blowing as hard.

Jessica: Thanks for sharing your story! I enjoyed the sensory details in this opening. In terms of suggestions, I’d encourage you to continue working with your sentence structure; first person POV can be difficult to write and I was more aware of the “I” perspective than I wanted to be. In addition, I’d love to see this written in present tense–it would add a sense of immediacy to the scene and help draw me in. Good luck with your revisions!

Laurel: The cold, snowy, Montreal atmosphere is lovely! I’m curious to meet Matteo and find out what exactly the narrator has done that she/he shouldn’t have. Two things about verb tense: there’s a bit of an -ing outbreak in this passage in my opinion. Also this question: “Had I tried the café today?” feels like it would be better if it were re-cast. Even though it’s cold and snowy and overwhelming, it’s hard to imagine the narrator wouldn’t remember trying the café. Maybe the weather is so bad that night and day look similar? In that case, maybe it’s hard to tell if the café would be open. I wondered what happened that made the narrator break the first rule. Is there room for a hint? Is the narrator the Huntress of the title? Or the prey? Nice work! Happy revising!

Richelle: There are a lot of great visual and sensory details in this opening — I got a little cold and hungry myself as I read! I agree with Jessica and Laurel that you can continue to refine your sentences to make them clearer. I also wondered about voice. With a non-human narrator, you have a chance to really explore a different view of the world, and expressing that with more voice-y details would really draw readers in. How does a lost and hungry cat see the world differently from a lost and hungry human? How does your narrator feel about the different humans and animals in his/her world? What shorthand does he/she use to express those feelings? Best of luck with your writing!

Gabrielle: You have some great tension in these first 400 words. I was drawn in by her relationship with Matteo, and some of the sensory detail you share. I love the snow settling into her fur and icing her paws. These are great details I can really feel. I agree with what Jessica’s saying about moving this into present tense. The nice thing about 1st is how close you can get, and you still have some work to do on removing the distance between us and your MC.

Breaking up the sentences will help, as will expanding your focus to include not just the weather, but more of the setting. For example, I’ll use your first sentence: “I swiveled my ears against the howling winds, but even narrowing my eyes didn’t keep out the driving snow.” You have some great active verbs, but there’s too many ideas/images packed in one sentence. You can accomplish more by breaking it up and using the setting (or  other characters to build the scene). Something like: I swiveled my ears to keep out the wind. It howled so hard I had to narrow my eyes just to see around the corner of the building. The driving snow just kept coming. There was nowhere to hide.

To bring us closer you can also take out all the “I was going” or “I was feeling” or “I was dedicated” and move these into direct action statements. Long flowing sentences have their place too, but in general, if you can use fewer words to construct the sentence, it’s going to pack more punch. So this paragraph, for example, can be reconstructed to amp tension instead of removing us from it, like so:

I was feeling very dedicated to this plan, so even as a gust of wind nearly knocked me off my feet, I decided I was not going to freeze to death and die right here in the storm.

Instead:

A gust of wind nearly knocked me off my feet. I would not freeze to death out here. I would not die in this storm. OR — even, This storm would not kill me. I wouldn’t allow it.

You’ve got a great beginning here. Good luck with it!