Hi, Janet:

I enjoyed reading your first chapter.  You have a good feel for people and
relationships, and it shows in your writing.  Also, it looks like you have a
good story to tell.

How you tell that story, of course, determines whether a publisher will pick it
up.  And that is where I see a problem.  The opening’s fine.  We have
immediate action.  Betty and her partner have a back-and-forth in real time,
and there’s conflict.  But for the rest of the chapter, except for Betty going to
her car, driving, and arriving at her home town, nothing happens.  There’s no
conflict, no give-and-take between humans.  You spend substantially the
whole scene TELLING what happened way back when, and almost none of it
SHOWING what’s happening now.  

Editors insist on things happening now, in real time.  That’s what attracts
readers.  They—both editors and their readers—want give-and-take dialogue
and immediate, happening-right-now conflict.  Something happening last
week is not action, no matter how exciting it might have been at the time.  
Editors say that manuscripts opening with musings by car drivers (or
whatever) are a real turn-off.  They simply don’t buy them.  You can see the
truth of that in the stories they do buy.  What you present in much of this
chapter is “back story,” which some indelicately call an “information dump.”  
Everything’s already happened.    

One way to handle this is to leave the opening “meeting with partner” scene
intact.  It’s good.  Then open the second scene with Betty pulling up to the
hotel in her little town.  And there, lo and behold, stands her good friend
Janet, who learned from Betty’s partner that she was coming.  So they can be
together when Betty picks up the message from Meg, and they can discuss
it.  They can also discuss the old days, how nice the old lady was, and so on;
all the things Betty mused about in the car.  Think of your here-and-now
story as a Christmas tree, and hang the necessary back-story pieces onto it as
little ornaments.   They’re still back-story nuggets, but you’ve put them into
context of the living story.  

I marked up your chapter and believe you are a good writer.  I did, however,
note wordiness throughout the piece, and edited to take out “editorial fog.”  
An unnecessary word here, an unneeded phrase there soon take the vigor out
of otherwise good writing.  Professor William Strunk Jr., in his definitive
"The Elements of Style," characterized the fog problem this way:  
Editing Samples
As I edit your chapter I'll explain exactly why I recommend the changes, as I have
done in the manuscript pages below.

An accompanying 4- to 6-page (or longer) letter (also see below) will give even
more detail.  It will target your specific writing problems and offer their solutions.  
Combined, that edited chapter and letter will be a personalized mini-course you
can refer to time and time again, as you edit the rest of your manuscript and later
write other manuscripts.  

Your first-chapter tune-up will do much more than smooth your copy.  It will make
you a better writer!
That's right: Your "first-chapter tune-up"
will make you a much better writer!
McNair Edits
    "Vigorous writing is concise.  A sentence should contain no
    unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the
    same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a
    machine no unnecessary parts.  This requires not that the writer make
    all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his
    subjects only in outline, but that every word tell."  

Put another way:  

    The more words you eliminate without changing meaning and
    sacrificing detail, the clearer and more powerful your writing will be.

Foggy phrases: There are several types of editorial fog.  One is made of
foggy phrases; using more words when fewer will do as well.  I noted and
edited several such phrases in your chapter, and list some of them here:  

    Alongside of (with) . . . everyone else in the field (competitors) . . .
    we have these high-paid assistants who can (those high-paid
    assistants can) . . . the funeral for Miss June (Miss June’s funeral) . .
    . with a quick tap of her finger she pushed the button (she tapped the
    button) . . . they had been some of (they were among) . . . dimness of
    the parking garage (parking garage’s dimness) . . . smooth roar of the
    engine (engine’s smooth roar) . . . bridge that would have taken her
    into (bridge leading into) . . . stood along the edge (edged) etc.

I’m attaching a list of 250 such phrases gleaned from other people’s
manuscripts and from poorly written (and edited) books, which you might
find of interest.  

Eliminate unnecessary phrases and words:  You’ll note I also deleted
several unnecessary words and phrases without substituting other words.  
For example, when you said, “. . . brought a smile to her face.”  I deleted “to
her face” and commented, “where else would it be brought?”  While that
sounds flip, it’s the type of question you should ask yourself often as you
write.  

Use stronger verb forms:  I found several instances of –ing verb usage in
your chapter, and changed some.  What’s wrong with them?  Well, a lot.  
Consider this sentence:  She started walking toward the door.  

You say, "She started walking."  Did she get one foot into the air and stop?  
No?  Well, did she take a step or two and then freeze?  No, again.  What you
meant to say was, "She walked toward the door."  This change eliminates a
word while it strengthens the action.  She didn’t just start something, she
actually did it.  Here’s another example:  “She began pacing the floor.”  
"Began" is a replay of "started."  Change this to, "She paced the floor."  

Let’s broaden our search for troublesome -ing verbs.  Consider this sentence
in your chapter:  "Patricia was walking with her head down."  Let’s change
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