I sit back to read the opening of Melody’s manuscript:

14.

 

Tianna was named after Tiananmen Square, her Chinese mother romanticising the homeland before she fled to Australia – or West Australia, to be precise, where she met Dylan Copley, a mail sorter sorting mail in the city’s central post office, although at different stages of his life he had aspired to play lead guitar in a band, become an actor, to be a stand-up comedian, before life’s little cruelties had sorted his aspirations into the impossibles basket.

Of course, Tianna knew none of this as she picked at her lumpy mashed potatoes during family dinner. Mother insisted they all sit down to eat at the same time and woe to anybody who disagreed. She was an exotic beauty, magical as some woodland sprite, a sixteen-year-old who had enchanted all and sundry with her petite features, sharp brows, and delicate upturned nose.

“You are not to see that boy again!” Tianna’s mother, Chun, said, her voice the shriek of a steam engine’s whistle as it tiredly chugged up a mountain track, a journey it made so often but which inevitability suggested it may one day fail to complete.

“Why not?” Tianna said, as calm as she could muster, although she slammed her chopsticks down and folded her arms imperiously, her forehead knitting in the most foreboding displeasure. She did not know it, but her father so often thought she resembled her mother during these times, and was loathe to challenge her.

“He has a criminal record,” Chun said. “His father is in jail. He’s been suspended from school so many times.”

“You don’t know anything about him!” Tianna said.

“Do not speak to your mother like that!” Dylan said, although he dared not look up, dared not confront her wrath, because as Dylan had done so often in life, when he was faced with adversity, he folded like he was a bad hand at poker for fear the risk of losing something far greater – something he couldn’t afford, although he knew not what that might be.

“I will speak to Mother as I like!” Tianna said. “I am sixteen! An adult! I can make my own decisions!” She threw her head back dramatically, the hair she’d dyed violet – much to her mother’s chagrin, and her father’s bemusement (and envy, for he would never have taken such a risk), furling back dramatically.

“We are telling you for your own good!” Chun said. “This love you pursue is forbidden. And it … it is wrong.”

“Wrong?!” Tianna said. “How!?”

“This boy is beneath you,” Chun expostulated. “He is not respectable. He is not for you.”

“Because he’s black!” Tianna said. “That’s what you mean!”

“Let us all settle down,” Dylan said. “We are alarming poor Hao.”

He gestured to Tianna’s little brother, eight year old Hao, who sat opposite Tianna, shaping his mashed potatoes into a sculpture. Poor little Hao was often Dylan’s fallback, a way to try to keep the peace, although the truth was that the young little boy was quite accustomed to such explosive detonations at the dinner table and had grown to think this was the way families communicated.

“I am sick of this!” Tianna screeched, her voice the wail of the siren, and she shot to her feet, a skyrocket that cannot break gravity, spun dramatically, and charged out. Soon, her bedroom door was heard to slam and the whole house might’ve shook in fear.

“You should have backed me up,” Chun said.

Dylan did not comment, for although he did take Chun’s side in most matters when it came to their children, there were times he felt Chun was being unfair, or perhaps it was not unfair, but overprotective, not allowing Tianna to live her life, or make her own mistakes and learn.

And that was what Tianna wanted, once she’d thrown herself onto her pink bedcovers, burying her face in a pillow that smelled of lilac, as she sobbed and raged and thought that while Chun had left China, she had never adopted the freedoms of Australian life.

 

15.

Here are my comments to Melody with her responses underneath, and under those my thoughts:

• • The story has this omniscient point of view, although as it goes on it becomes Tianna’s story. Did you want to consider paring back the omniscience so we can immediately orient the reader?
    I feel we need those multiple points of views before context. Also, I don’t really think they’re points of views.
    [I can let this past to some extent, although I think for a novel like this, we should be immediately rooted into the protagonist’s head.]

   

  • Would Chun really name her daughter after Tiananmen Square given the massacre in 1989 that saw three-hundred people die?
    Oh!. Was there a massacre!?? Anyway that was back in 1989. Chun would’ve only been a baby then.
    [Grrrrr.]

   

  • Also, “Tianna” doesn’t really have Chinese origins. It’s a name that comes from Russian, Greek, or Slavic.
    But they’re Australian now and we’re multicultural.
    [This is one that if I can logic it out, I’ll let it go.]

   

  • In the second paragraph, you have a sentence, “Mother insisted”, and then the next sentence is, “She was an exotic beauty …” The “she” would seem to be referencing Mother, instead of Tianna.
    Good point. Let’s change it to, “Like her mother, Tianna was an exotic beauty …”
    [I’m unsure how we got to this revision from my proposed correction.]

   

  • Most of Tianna’s dialogue ends in an exclamation mark. Should we pare that back a little?
    I really want to show how fiery she is, but if you feel we should get rid of a few, okay. But just tell me which ones to see if I agree.
    [In this nearly-seven-hundred-word excerpt, there are thirteen exclamation marks. Tianna uses ten of them, including two times she pairs it with a question mark. There’s not a single bit of dialogue that doesn’t have an exclamation – although, to be fair, it does become tempered through the rest of the book.]

   

  • Hao doesn’t appear for over four-hundred words. Should we introduce him earlier? When he is introduced, it’s a surprise, because it feels like it’s this family of three. When Chun first remonstrates with Tianna, that might be a good time to introduce Hao – he could look up alarmed, or something.
    But he’s not alarmed. I think he’s okay being introduced where he is.
    [She’s right. He’s not alarmed, and that’s fine. But, honestly, doesn’t it seem strange when he appears? He also has no bearing on the book whatsoever until the climax, when he goes missing, and everybody bands together to find him, rescuing him from a paedophile ring – there’s no foreshadowing for that – before they hustle him into a van. In case you’re wondering, Tianna’s boyfriend rescues him, which prompts the family to accept him.]

   

  • Would they really be eating mashed potatoes with chopsticks?
    That’s a good point. Should we change it to rice? Although I really want to Australianise it with the mashed potatoes. Is there something else we could use that’s very Australian?
    [Here’s one concession! Sorta.]
     
    
  • The dialogue is very formal at times. I can understand that being the case with Chun, given English is her second language, but surely Dylan would be a lot more informal considering his background. It would be worth reading the dialogue aloud, if not acting it out, to see how it sounds. Sometimes, dialogue that reads great on the page doesn’t come across as well when acted.
    I think Chun’s influenced them all so they are this stately family. That’s part of Tiana’s journey to become her own person.
    [Her first book has similar dialogue. A critic lauded it as, “Regal”, like it was intended to elevate these characters.]

   

  • Sirens don’t “wail”. They sing. And it’s to lure people to their doom.
    A siren’s song can also be a warning, in which case I think it would be a wail.

The rest of her responses are similar – minor concessions, then long stretches of justification. She would’ve also done this before she came in today, knowing she’d win through at the meeting, and then she could email me this as corroboration.

I think the only reason she used a Chinese background for the mother is because Melody’s grandmother is Chinese, although she came out to Australia when she was four, speaks with an Australian accent, and (from what I’ve heard) doesn’t have much to do with the family.

The biggest shame of it all is that Melody has talent, she has a developing voice, but nobody challenges her to improve, so instead of evolving as a writer, she keep releasing problematic prose, and while the industry will humour her (unwittingly) for a while, it’s just a matter of time before somebody else starts seeing this shit, too.

Or maybe it’s just me, and I’ve got it wrong entirely and everybody else is right.

That’s always a possibility, too.

A wail of a possibility.