Flogometer: if only something was happening…

The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective. Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.

What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, etc.) there should be about 16 lines on the first page (first pages of chapters/prologues start about 1/3 of the way down the page).

Some homework. Before sending your novel's opening, you might want to read these two FtQ posts: Story as River and Kitty-cats in Action. That'll tell you where I'm coming from, and might prompt a little rethinking of your narrative.

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This is for Steve. Here are the first 16 lines:

August 1918 -- There were few childhood memories Jonathan Spence would recall with delight; only one brought him back to better times. On a warm August morning, restless in his bed, he waited for the sun to peek over the horizon. His mother had promised this would be a day of celebration, and he could have whatever he wished for breakfast. Today was his birthday, and he was seven years old. Jonathan asked his mother for one thing -- a stack of soft warm pancakes, dripping in soft butter, and maple syrup.

The furtive light of a rising sun arrived through tattered hand sewn curtains announcing the start of the day. Jonathan Spence flung his bed sheet in a single transfer, and sprung from the well-worn mattress. He grabbed his overalls off the bedpost, pulled up one leg while bouncing on the other, as he dashed down the hallway toward the kitchen, as fast as his gangly legs would carry him. Running up behind his mother, he wrapped his arms around her legs. The softness of her handmade dress against his face, and the smell of fresh air from her clothing gave him comfort. Surprised with his arrival, she smiled.

"Good Morning Jonathan!" she said, in a soft sweet tone reflective of her Southern Appalachian childhood. "You're risin' up awful early this morning. Is something going on I should know about?"

For me, there was no real tension in this opening, no compelling story questions raised. What happens is that a boy wakes up on his birthday morning and runs downstairs to get the breakfast of his dreams. There's no real hint of trouble to come.

In fact, the opening sentence seems to tell us that we're about to endure read a lot of backstory -- we're talking about memories right up front. That suggests we're not going to get the real story at the start, but the backstory that "helps" us understand the real story.

I was a little torn on voice, too. The opening line suggests that this story is narrated by the adult Jonathon, but then it goes into the experience of the boy. But (for me, remember how subjective this is) then there were references to details that would not have been part of a little boy's perceptions or thoughts. For example, that the mother's dress was handmade. I also felt a case of overwriting coming on, and that's what I found in the narrative that followed. Some notes on this opening:

August 1918 -- There were few childhood memories Jonathan Spence would recall with delight; only one brought him back to better times. On a warm August morning, restless in his bed, he waited for the sun to peek over the horizon. His mother had promised this would be a day of celebration, and he could have whatever he wished for breakfast. Today was his birthday, and he was seven years old. Jonathan asked his mother for one thing -- a stack of soft warm pancakes, dripping in soft butter, and maple syrup.

The furtive light of a rising sun arrived through tattered hand-sewn curtains announcing the start of the dayRising sun equals start of day, so this is redundant -- some of that overwriting that I mentioned.. Jonathan Spence flung his bed sheet in a single transfer I have no idea what is meant by "a single transfer", and sprung from the well-worn mattress. He grabbed his overalls off the bedpost, pulled up one leg while bouncing on the other, as he and dashed down the hallway toward the kitchen, as fast as his gangly legs would carry him. Running up behind his mother, he wrapped his arms around her legs. The softness of her handmade dress against his face, and the smell of fresh air from her clothing gave him comfort. Surprised with his arrival, she smiled. The details that don't "sound" like a little boy include "furtive light," "gangly legs," "hand-sewn," and "handmade dress." This writing takes me out of the experience of a little boy and distances me via details described with language only an adult/author would use.

"Good Mmorning Jonathan!" she said, in a soft sweet tone reflective of her Ssouthern Appalachian childhood. "You're risin' up awful early this morning. Is something going on I should know about?" This whole phrase -- "soft sweet tone reflective of her Southern Appalachian childhood" -- is clearly nothing that would be going through the mind of a 7-year-old with pancakes in his future, IMO. It's an author telling me something he/she thinks I need to know.

There you have it. I believe good fiction, to be truly good fiction, needs to evoke in the reader something approximating the experience the protagonist is having. In this case, it's more of a relating of a story, not an immersion into experience.

I think, Steve, that you can get to where you need to go. There's some nice writing, and a clear picture of what's going on. But the pace is slow, and the tension not there. I suggest you locate the inciting incident for your character and start as close to that as you can.

Comments, anyone?

For what it's worth,

Ray

Public floggings available. If I can post it here,

1. send 1st chapter or prologue as an attachment (cutting and pasting and reformatting from an email is a time-consuming pain) and I'll critique the first couple of pages.
2. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
3. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.

ARCHIVES .

© 2007 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[gypsy]

What I got from reading this is that perhaps the mother has forgotten his birthday or is at least pretending to. I think there is some story question there but maybe the pace could be picked up a bit so we might know that for sure sooner.

Also, the use of soft three times in such a short span distracted me from the story at hand.

[Steve]

Interesting comments and appreciated. Somethings I understand, others, I don't.

" details don't "sound" like a little boy . . . details described with language only an adult/author would use."

The story is narrated by an adult (the author/memoirist) so wouldn't the voice be of an adult remembering the past event?

You mention "inciting incident". A man dies (commits suicide) less than 500 words in the story. Soon after, the mother finds that her husband is dead. Is this not "inciting incident"?

"You're risin' up awful early this morning." If this were the manner in which the character speaks, why would an editor change the voice?

[Clayton Lindemuth]

Steve--

Your first question involves voice. One of the things I've noticed a lot of authors do is stick the narrator between the action and the reader. The idea Ray is getting at is that you want nothing to prevent the reader from experiencing the action or emotion of the story. When the narrator filters a childhood memory through an adult paradigm, it prevents the reader from climbing into child and experiencing the story directly. Instead, the reader has to climb into an old narrator and watch the story from there. Have you seen "Being John Malcovich"? You're forcing the reader to sit in the narrator's head and watch things from there.

As to the inciting incident--that's where things start to go wrong. It is where reader interest will pick up. It's the best place to begin. The longer a reader has to wait for the tranquility to be broken, the less likely the reader will wait. Five hundred words is fine, if everything that leads to it is compelling. Tension, conflict, make it compelling. A simple element that would improve the tension in your excerpt would be to give a hint of not just what the boy wants, but what stands in his way. That's conflict, and if he begins to take action in the face of conflict, there'll be tension. For example, what if the door was somehow jammed? He'd be in a panic, and as he scouts his room for an implement to pry it open, your readers would become engaged. The excerpt lacks obstacles. Without them, the story has nothing but the writer's wit to carry it.

Finally, I don't think Ray was saying your character can't speak that way. The comment was that a seven year old wouldn't think of his mother's voice as soft, sweet, and reflective of her Appalachain background. The narrator telling the reader that she sounds like this is a clear instance of forcing the reader to understand the seven year old first through the paradigm of the narrator.

Clayton

[Ray Rhamey]

Great comment, Clayton--I could turn FtQ over to you.

Steve, it's not that your narrator can't use adult language, and I'm sorry if that was confusing. And your opening line does tell us that this story is told by an adult. I was just writing about, as Clayton says, delivering the experience of the boy rather than telling us about it.

Both techniques are valid, especially on where your story is going and who the narrator continues to be.

However, to be involving, I think the adult narrator needs to include how he feels about what was happening back then, to share his insights about what events really meant to the boy. That way we're still in the narrator's mind. The closer we can get to the child's experience, the better.

For example, instead of telling us that her soft sweet tone was "reflective" of her Appalachian childhood, unless it's critical that we know it was specifically Appalachian in origin rather than just southern, maybe something like "her soft, sweet southern way with words that always warmed him" can both give us the nature of her speech and its effect on the little boy. This example is not intended as to be a sample of great writing, but an illustration to weave all those things together.

About the inciting incident--it needs to relate to the protagonist. My comment included a link to an article about it.

I reviewed your sample, and there was no mention of a man committing suicide in the first 500 words. There was a man found dead in a store, but there was no apparent connection to the narrator or the mother, so that could hardly be an inciting incident.

It's "inciting" only when the protagonist learns of it. The text does say, "The demons of liquor had destroyed her life, and marriage, taking the father of Jonathan Spence to a place from where he would not return." But that's about her, not the little boy.

The inciting incident can be delayed, and that's not a problem as long as the narrative before it has tension. Agent Donald Maass writes about using "bridging conflict" to get you to the main conflict. Check out his books on writing.

There was nice writing in your work, it's on the storytelling side that you could improve. In my opinion, that is.

Thanks again for sharing your work.

Ray

[Steven LaBri]

Ray and Clayton,

Thank you for the insight and suggestions. I see what you mean and will apply. I will look into Donald Maass.

Great site -- keep up the great work.