First Pages: #1

MR / An Unsettling Lack of Giraffes

He was Australian – I remember that part distinctly. It was the first time I’d seen an Australian outside of television and it made me immediately suspicious.

Nice opening, but we have no idea where we are. The tone is set, but nothing else. Which is fine if we get oriented really quickly.

He didn’t have a boomerang or a knife, and neither his boots nor his belt were made from animal skin. He was just tall and bearded, kind of in the way that the president on the penny
looks. Was he legit?

"Kind of in the way that the president on the penny looks" sounds like an attempt to overwrite your way into a kid's POV. Make it simpler. "Legit" clashes in voice. What age are we aiming for here?

“G’day,” he said. Other adults sounded awkward when they used that expression, but he didn’t at all - like it was natural for him.

That last line's wordy and intrusive. "Used that expression" sounds adult. Even when you're reporting a childhood memory as an adult, you want to capture that younger perspective.

I liked him immediately.

"Immediately" seems to have quite the window here. And what happened to the suspicion?

“Which came first: the chicken, or the egg?” he asked us.
I was in the 2nd grade at the time, and my school had gathered the student body together in the auditorium for a special assembly. The Australian opened his lecture with that question and nobody raised their hand to reply.

This would be more engaging if we were getting this from the second grader's perspective. It's not yet time for the narrative to dry out any. What are the really salient parts of grade school assemblies?

“Which came first?” he repeated, but the room was still silent. “Does anyone want to guess?”
Some of the hands in the auditorium went up. He called on several of us (including me) and got some typical elementary school answers.

Sounds accurate to a memory, which isn't exactly what we want to read. Punch it up a little. "Some of the hands" and "several of us" could be more specific and colorful.

“The Chicken, because eggs don’t come from nowhere.”
“The egg. Chickens can’t come from nowhere.”
“They both came at the same time?”
“Well, those are all good ways of looking at it,” he said. “Does anyone else want to take a guess?” He called on one of the 4th graders.
“The Chicken! It came first because God made it,” She said.
“Right!” he said. “It’s designed to do what it does do, what it does do it does do well, doesn’t it?”

This is probably hilarious spoken, but it's hard to follow written. Is it from something? Is this a cute line you can use a little later, when he's discussing the chicken's "design?"

We giggled.
“The chicken came first because God made it,” he repeated. “This is a Christian school so I’m sure all of you have heard the creation story by now. You know, seven days. All that good stuff.”

His tone sounds a little forced and awkward here. He doesn't seem terribly reverent, either.

All the hands went up around the room.
“Great! But I wonder – have any of you heard of evolution before?”
And again, hands shot up.
“Well, good! But can any of you tell me what it means?”
Less hands went up this time. He went around and had several kids give their explanation before he got the answer he was looking for, which was something to the tune of “evolution means God didn’t create anything.”
“Right! Evolution means that God didn’t have any part in creation at all. Evolution says that we were an accident. An accident!” he repeated with emphasis. “That we just happened to show up here; that we just happened to turn out the way we did. But that’s not how the bible says it happens.”
He stepped up to a slide projector.
*click*
A graphic of a timeline was projected on the screen with dinosaurs on one end and humans on the other. I don’t remember the dates exactly, but the gist of it was that dinosaurs existed several million years before humans did.

Voice is getting really adult here. We're losing the cute "immediately suspicious" second grader.

“This is a timeline. See how the dinosaurs are on one end and the humans are on the other? This is what evolution says. Evolutionists say that humans and dinosaurs never existed at the same time.”
He pushed another button on the slide projector.
*click*
The timeline changed to a picture of dinosaurs in a large, spacious garden. Near the bottom of the picture were two half-naked humans, conveniently covered by some low-hanging branches. One of them was petting a raptor.

WC: the bird or the dinosaur? Avoid ambiguity, even when it's obvious to you. Using a great-sounding word isn't usually worth the risk of interrupting your reader. Here, I think "velociraptor" rings just fine.

“Who remembers what day God made the animals?”
Kids shouted out several numbers between two and six.
“The fifth day!” he said. “Very good! God made all of the animals on the fifth day, and that includes the dinosaurs. And then God made us on the very next day. Now, see anything wrong with that timeline we just looked at?”
He switched back to the previous slide.
“Dinosaurs didn’t exist millions of years before us. They existed one day before us. One million years. One day. Big difference, right?”
We giggled again.

Hm. He'd be really interesting if he were more sarcastic and crazy, or insidiously smarmy. Ramp it up! We want to see his eyes bulge and his hair frizz and his teeth show right from the get-go. He's kinda just a voice right now.

I'd keep reading. Even though I know my house wouldn't touch it. Promises to be interesting.