# Morning Star



## wee_clair_064 (Nov 10, 2012)

Hi, 

I've been thinking of this idea for a while now but I've just never got around to writing it. I'd love to hear any opinions on it.


It was just another day at the office. That’s what Elijah told himself. Another day earning a living. Only his job wasn't exactly the capital earning type, it was more the fulfillment earning type. Looking down at the small nervous girl stood in front of him, watching her scraping at her nails, he remembered feeling the exact same way on his first day only probably a lot worse, he had bitten his fingernails right down. “What a dirty habit,” his mother would have scolded. Extending his arm out he placed his hand on her shoulder, “You’ll do fine dear,” he said accompanying it with an encouraging smile. Turning around, his hand pushed the door to the room open and without looking he knew that she was following behind. 


The new room they entered was filled with bright light that bounced off the walls making the yellow paint look even more like sunshine. Elijah had seen this scene a million times - the glass cribs, the cooing mothers and fathers stood outside, the nurses busying themselves with work and the smell of newborns. He knew what he was here for, he knew what had to be done. Navigating himself through the makeshift isles lined with glass cribs, he stopped by the one they were looking for. The small girl collided with him, not expecting the sudden halt. He chuckled and filling with embarrassment, she turned a shade of red and began to scratch her nails more erratically. He had also seen this a million times. Young adults who had been given a lot of responsibility before their time, but he understood it had to be done. They had to learn sometime, after all it was how he had learnt. “Breathe dear. You’ll do great, I can feel it,” he spoke aloud with a cheeky wink, trying to ease her nerves. It was his duty to guide and help the younger ones along with the process. He held his hand out and offered it to her and when she took it he closed his eyes encouraging her to have more strength and more belief in herself, when he opened his eyes she was nodding as if she understood the demand. 


Peering down into the crib stood in front of him he noticed blue, innocent eyes staring back. Smiling he guided the girl’s hand towards the blue bundle of joy squirming in the crib and removed his hand from hers, allowing her to connect with the baby. “James. This is Melissa. She will be your Guardian Angel. She holds the blueprint of your perfection and knows how you will best evolve. She will protect you from danger and bring you messages of inspiration. She is not permitted to alter your free will, but she is permitted to influence you towards a higher good. She will stay with you throughout your lifetime here” Elijah spoke the words full of authority, after all he had created the tree of life. He was authority. “Personally I think your lucky. She’s the best we have,” he whispered causing Melissa to smile. 


He watched as Melissa still held her hand to James, waiting for him to accept her guidance. She no longer looked like the shy girl who had stood outside hiding behind her brown hair but rather, well, an Angel. Suddenly she became full of confidence, hope and love. When she opened her eyes Elijah noticed that the blue reflected the sun shining walls of the nursery, like she was the sea flowing underneath the sun. In that moment he knew this was why he did his job. It was tiring, but he loved it. He had brought protection to an innocent child, protection against the world.


Leaving Melissa alone in the room he searched for a chair to rest in. Time was creeping up on him, quickly adding more years on without comment. His eyes caught the empty blue plastic chair a waiting room so he made his way towards it, helping to connect sure was exhausting. The waiting room in hospitals was strangely his favourite place in the building. It was filled with hope from family members. Drawing on that hope he started to rebuild his strength.


The cry of a child pulled him from private thoughts. Letting his eyes scan the room, searching for the disturbance, they fell upon a child no older than a year perched on her mothers’ knee. Studying the child he rose slowly from the chair, his breathing quickening from excitement. 
Impossible. 
Impossible. 
Was it?
 He felt a pull from her and moved closer to assess the situation. The child noticed him and held out a hand towards him and he took it, her small fingers closing around his. Watching her carefully he began to feel the connection.


He knew who she was, it was him who assigned her guardian. How could he not have noticed before? Disbelief began to overwhelm his mind. This was her. Shock caused him to pull away. The child began to cry however the mother made no attempt to calm her. Placing his hand on the mother’s head he began to read her. For the second time in a matter of seconds shock made him pull back quickly. The mother’s thoughts were muddled, full of resentment and anger towards the child. Elijah hated when this happened. He was supposed to be able to protect the innocent but he could do nothing in this situation. Knowing her life would end soon upset him, a life that wouldn't end through a natural cause. He couldn't let that happen to this child. She was important. He felt it, this is who they had been searching for all along. There had to be something he could do. “Cassie. Be quiet now,” the mother scolded.


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## empresstheresa (Nov 10, 2012)

I read it.  I don't understand what's going on.

There's lots of hints, but they don't add up to a story. 
I feel that I missed a lot.  The hints may refer to what happened, but what is it? 

I don't think readers like to be confused from the beginning.  They want what's going on to be clearly understandable.

Sorry.   :apologetic:


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## wee_clair_064 (Nov 11, 2012)

Thanks for your feedback. 

I was trying not to give too much of the story away but rereading it with your opinion in my mind I realised that maybe I need to be more clear. 

Thanks.


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## Kevin (Nov 11, 2012)

There's a story there. Angels, guardian angels... who get old and tired, while doing their jobs; teaching, and looking for something, someone...

Just some nits;

"The cooing mothers stood outside, the nurses busying..."- In this case, either "stand*ing"*(which matches_ busying_) or "stood outside, _while_ the nurses.." 

"He held his hand out and offered it to her and when she took it _he closed his eyes encouraging_ her to have more strength and more belief in herself, when he opened his eyes she was nodding as if she understood the _demand_." - _that _is a doozy. Long, a little unclear. 

options: Add a bunch of commas and/or break into multiple sentences. Add some words to clarify. Ex. : Does closing ones eyes _cause_ encouragement? Demand(?) or something more of a communication of desire; request, appeal, ask, bid... (which one? oh, thesaurus, where art thou?...fun stuff  )

There's some questionable word choices: _navigating, scan, demand, erratically_. Actions and results that don't _exactly _match. English is so precise. 
It's easy for me to say, looking at it from the outside. (now if I could just apply it to my own work)


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## empresstheresa (Nov 12, 2012)

> Thanks for your feedback.
> 
> I was trying not to give too much of the story away but rereading it with your opinion in my mind I realised that maybe I need to be more clear.
> 
> Thanks.



Consider this first page:....I’m Theresa, the only child of Edward and Elizabeth Sullivan,  and I hope it’s not bragging to say I was cute as heck at age ten.  Everybody in the Sullivan clan said so.  I was the princess in the Sullivan family of Framingham, Massachusetts because besides being cute I was a whiz in school.  All the Sullivans expected great things from me.​.....Nobody could have dreamed of what I would do a few years later, and nobody would have believed it if they’d been told,  but when this story began I was a little girl who didn’t have much of a clue about anything.  My job as a kid was to figure out what the heck was going on and what to do about it.  It’s not easy when you’re young and everything is brand new.​.....My father was in the Navy.  He said I had to be the captain of my ship but sometimes the seas would be rough.  I had to learn all I could about the world.  Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it in the fourth grade?​.....I was home alone at age ten while my parents worked but I was safe.  Mom and dad installed one of those new child safety alert systems.  All I had to do was quickly squeeze two buttons on my bracelet three times andthe whole street would be blasted with a siren’s earsplitting wail.  Neighbors were always around and the security company would alert the police.​.....I had good parents.  By the time I was ten they convinced me I should get myself through the school years without drug or boy problems.  There are girls like that, you know.  You wouldn’t think so to look at the news.  I find it strange that people are interested in news about troubled girls, but wouldn’t want to associate with them.​

Nothing has happened yet,  there's no confusion about what's going on because nothing is going on,  but you already know so much.  

Some remarkable things will happen years later and Theresa _*will do them*_, not just be there.

You know everything there is to know about Theresa.  What else can be said about a ten year old girl who hasn't done anything yet?  She likes her "good parents".  She has good self-esteem.   She thinks: "Yeah, well, why should I be worrying about it"  etc  Hints of her personality are given; there are no significant flaws. 

The idea of being alone has been suggested.  Does this mean Theresa will be alone, or that she will do things on her own as opposed to being part of a team or something along that line?  The title of the book is_ Empress Theresa_.  Unless the title is deceptive, Theresa will apparently become important, or famous, or both.  Yet she comes from the most ordinary of circumstances ( she must have working parents because she's home alone, and the alert system suggests this is routine ).  How does she become an empress?

Some themes of the story have already been introduced: the necessity of learning all you can about the world, and the necessity to keep out of trouble.  Somehow, these must have something to do with Theresa doing remarkable things later. 

Now the reader wonders how can this ordinary girl can do remarkable things?  What will they be?  It's still in the future.  It will all be explained as events happen.

The action will begin on page two.


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## Deleted member 49710 (Nov 12, 2012)

Hi wee clair - I enjoyed this and I thought it was quite clear what was going on, for the most part. Maybe not in the first paragraph, but sometimes letting the reader figure out what's going on is part of creating suspense and I think that's what you're trying for here. You don't say whether this is an excerpt, but this felt like it stopped before the end so hopefully you're still working on it.

Most of your grammar and spelling is fine, there were just a few sentences you'll need to look at:


_Peering down into the crib stood in__ front of him_ "that stood in front of him"

_Personally I think your l__uck_y "you're"

_His eyes caught the empty blue plastic __chair a waiting room _"in a waiting room"?

helping to connect sure was exhausting. This seemed like it should be its own sentence, maybe rephrase a little  - "It was exhausting, helping to connect"?

_The child began to cry however the mother made no attempt to calm her _"but" rather than "however"

with the phrase "bundle of joy" - it's kind of a hokey phrase, I think, it only works if you're being a bit ironic, which you're not. I'd try to replace that.


Good luck with the continuation!
*
*


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 12, 2012)

Overall your writing is good, but I sometimes feel it could do with a little tightening up here and there, look,

Turning *around,* his/he *hand *pushed the door *to the room* open, *and *without looking* he* knew *that* she was following *behind*. 
Take out the bolded words and I don#t think the meaning changes.

Those transparent cribs are plastic in my experience.


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## empresstheresa (Nov 12, 2012)

> I enjoyed this and I thought it was quite clear what was going on



I could see that somebody was visiting a hospital, a maternity wing I guess, 
but not why, and all the other comments and descriptions were overwhelming.  What's important, what's not?  I forget what was said ten lines earlier because there's new information to digest.

This is the children's and young adult section.  You have to present one idea at a time without meshing the ideas together in a complex that even seasoned adults couldn't explain.


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 13, 2012)

empresstheresa, I know I am not a young adult or child but this,





> “James. This is Melissa. She will be your Guardian Angel. She holds the blueprint of your perfection and knows how you will best evolve. She will protect you from danger and bring you messages of inspiration. She is not permitted to alter your free will, but she is permitted to influence you towards a higher good. She will stay with you throughout your lifetime here” Elijah spoke the words full of authority, after all he had created the tree of life. He was authority.


seemed a pretty thorough explanation of what was happening to me, and it is only the third paragraph where they have barely entered the maternity ward. I think you are overstating things a little


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## empresstheresa (Nov 13, 2012)

> empresstheresa, *I know I am not a young adult or child* but this,_
> 
> 
> 
> ...



All right.  Let's take a look at it from the viewpoint of a 15 year old reader.

1.  What's a Guardian Angel? 
2.  What's a blueprint?  
3.  How can a newborn baby protect me from danger?
4.  What are these messages of inspiration and who "texts" them?
5.  How do you alter somebody's free will?  Torture, maybe?
6.  How does anybody know the baby will stay with the guy all his life?  Is it his baby?
7.  What's a tree of life?
8.  What kind of authority does Elijah have?  Is he a Senator?  General?  Mafia boss?


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## Deleted member 49710 (Nov 13, 2012)

Empresstheresa, you seem to have a very low opinion of fifteen-year-olds. I cannot recall Clair's exact age but IIRC she is quite young and probably has a good idea of what a teenager's level of reading comprehension may be. There is more than one way to tell a story and ultimately it's up to Clair to decide how she wants to do it.


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## empresstheresa (Nov 13, 2012)

> Empresstheresa, you seem to have a very low opinion of fifteen-year-olds. I cannot recall Clair's exact age but IIRC she is quite young and probably has a good idea of what a teenager's level of reading comprehension may be. There is more than one way to tell a story and ultimately it's up to Clair to decide how she wants to do it.



Let's take a look at a book's opening.  Notice the clarity of every sentence.  Only one word is mysterious:  reaping...................When I wake up, the other side of the bed is cold.   My fingers stretch out, seeking Prim’s warmth but finding only the rough canvas cover of the mattress.   She must have had bad dreams and climbed in with our mother.  Of course, she did.   This is the day of the reaping.​......I prop myself up on one elbow.  There’s enough light in the bedroom to see them.  My little sister, Prim, curled up on her side, cocooned in my mother’s body, their cheeks pressed together.  In sleep, my mother looks younger, still worn but not so beaten-down.  Prim’s face is as fresh as a raindrop, as lovely as the primrose for which she was named.  My mother was very beautiful once, too.  Or so they tell me.​
That's from The Hunger Games.

In the U.S.,  kids have been assigned the Hunger Games trilogy for their classroom reading.
The situations raise some eyebrows, the themes are not Shakespearean, but teachers are glad to get the kids reading anything.  

The kids read it because it's easy reading,
_*and has a situ*__*ation that's sure to interest them.  *_:ChainGunSmiley:

( They already know the basic premise before they start reading, 
which is why they start reading.  :encouragement:   )


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## Olly Buckle (Nov 13, 2012)

empresstheresa said:


> All right.  Let's take a look at it from the viewpoint of a 15 year old reader.
> 
> 1.  What's a Guardian Angel?
> 2.  What's a blueprint?
> ...


This strikes me as just silly, by the time I was fifteen I knew what a guardian angel was and that Elijah was a book of the bible, as an angel he might not have been as familiar as Peter or Gabriel, but it would have been an easy guess. I had learned to read blueprints in technical drawing class, I was reading Neville Shute and Nicholas Monserrat. I think my comprehension was better than yours is now, there is no mention of a newborn baby protecting anyone, and the girl will stay with the baby all her life, not some guy. Religious instruction was a compulsory lesson, I had a fair idea about free will and the tree of life. There may be semi literate teenagers out there who only write texts and need very simple things to read, on the whole they are not the ones who buy books or have them bought for them, as a quick illustration, I bought "Alice in Wonderland for my friends eight year old last year, she devoured it then spent her birthday money on "Through the Looking-glass", unfazed by their complexity and Victorian English. Rather than dumbing down to the lowestdenominator I suggest you challenge children a little, quite often they will rise to the challenge.


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## empresstheresa (Nov 13, 2012)

> This strikes me as just silly, by the time I was fifteen I knew what a guardian angel was and that Elijah was a book of the bible, as an angel he might not have been as familiar as Peter or Gabriel, but it would have been an easy guess.




So did I, Olly Buckle.  But times have changed.

You appear to be about the same age as myself.
I recall seeing the first hand calculator in college around 1972.  It was the Hewlett-Packard 65, a programmable hand calculator. Cost: $400 !  We all stood around amazed that such a thing could exist.

Now the kids all have home computers,  half a dozen cell phones, text messengers,  video games and every movie ever made  on DVDs they play at home.   They're too busy and  distracted to learn what we did.  Forty percent of adults in this country, never mind the kids, couldn't find England on a map.  

I work with people aged around twenty.  They've never seen "Gone With the Wind". DeMille's "The Ten Commandments", or "Lawrence of Arabia".  If it wasn't made in the last two years, they're not interested.

There is a remedial reading course for students with reading deficiencies at Harvard University!  :deadhorse:


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## wee_clair_064 (Nov 24, 2012)

Thanks for the comments on the writing, and the spotted mistakes - it seems grammar is not my calling in life. I should have mentioned when I posted this that it was only the beginning of the prologue which is still being worked on. I was aiming for the reader to be confused in this - no one ever wants to open a book and have the whole story poured into the prologue. 

As for all the comments surrounding 15 years old not being able to understand - they are alot smarter than you give them credit for. Times may have changed and they may have grown up with computers, cell phones and video games but it doesn't mean that they can't understand English. I've grown up with all of that stuff and I've still managed to read the classics (of my own free will). 

Also, as a twenty something year old I find that a bit offensive. The reason most of my generation hasn't seen them things is because they feel like they can't relate. Don't dumb us down because we are younger please and the remedial reading course for students comment - that depends on the person, not the age group. My mother didn't grow up with the technology available to me but she still will not willingly lift a novel to read whereas my nose is never out of one.


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