Flogometer for Ajaya: would you keep reading?

---

Today's flogee is a writer in Nepal, although he stayed in the US for several years for his PhD. The worldwide reach of the Internet sometimes amazes me.

It looks like I'm going to have to crank up the frequency of floggings to 3 per week -- there are 20 writers lined up in the queue, and at the old rate it would take 10 weeks to get to the most recent submission. I'll try to post on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, but may miss now and then.

---

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.

---

Ajaya's first 16 lines:

He noticed how the morning rush began. An elevator in the passage opened, letting out a stream of flight attendants. As suddenly, they vanished round the corner, chatting. A janitor began to take the rounds, pushing yellow bucket-on-wheels. The mop swung like an antenna, splashing washing solution on the floor. For several minutes, the drops lay there, freezing, until a machine wiped them. Occasionally a golf cart would wheeze by, toot tooting in regular intervals. The flashlights flitted to coincide with the horn, lagging by a fraction of a second, like the delayed heartbeats of an arrhythmia patient.

Khemman, who was waiting for the airline staff to open the ticket counter, knew how the ailment felt. Deep in his heart, he had added uneasiness -- partly due to the recent loss of Kanchi Nani, and partly due to the signals his wife had given when he was about to leave for Kathmandu.

Khemman felt in his pocket for the three-headed monster, a bronze statue he had uncovered among cloth-wrapped Sanskrit manuscripts in his grandfather's chest. He always carried the monster in his pocket, but it wasn't there now -- he had been forced to put it in his luggage because of security restrictions. Khemman began to fidget, and peel off the dried flakes of a festering wound on his left arm.

It had not been two weeks yet, but his memory of the events leading to his mother's death…

Almost

While there is some very interesting writing and description here, for me there wasn't a compelling level of tension. My belief is that you need to devote as much as possible in your opening to introducing the story. In this narrative, the first 98 words were devoted to description of a place and the activity in it, a place that eventually has little do to with the story. In my view, those 98 words were not well spent. You only have seconds to hook a reader, so pile on the bait. This description of a place isn't good bait.

I read through the rest of the chapter that Ajaya sent, and it was about what it's like to be Nepalese in today's world, and the mourning of his mother's recent death. Yet the title of his story is The Curse of Archalswara. The "monster" in the protagonist's pocket is the only hint that I saw in 15 or so pages of a curse. In other words, Ajaya, it appears to be a lengthy case of throat-clearing. I have to say "appears" because I really don't know enough to judge. Some notes on the narrative:

He noticed how the morning rush began. An elevator in the passage opened, letting out a stream of flight attendants. As suddenly, they vanished round the corner, chatting. A janitor began to take the rounds, pushing yellow bucket-on-wheels. The mop swung like an antenna, splashing washing solution on the floor. For several minutes, the drops lay there, freezing, until a machine wiped them. Occasionally a golf cart would wheeze by, toot tooting in regular intervals. The flashlights (headlights?) flitted (flickered?) to coincide with the horn, lagging by a fraction of a second, like the delayed heartbeats of an arrhythmia patient. (I found elements of this confusing. For instance, it seems that they are indoors, yet the solution froze. As mentioned, this description doesn't seem to contain any real story element, it's just a view of a place.)

Khemman, who was waiting for the airline staff to open the ticket counter, knew how the ailment felt. Deep in his heart, he had added uneasiness -- partly due to the recent loss of Kanchi Nani, and partly due to the signals his wife had given when he was about to leave for Kathmandu. (The signals from his wife raises an interesting story question. The reference to Kanchi Nani doesn't add anything, but would if the narrative included the fact that she is his mother. As it is, it's just a name. This points out the need to give the reader the clues she needs to make the narrative meaningful.)

Khemman felt in his pocket for the three-headed monster, a bronze statue (I think "figurine" would be a better noun here) he had uncovered among cloth-wrapped Sanskrit manuscripts in his grandfather's chest. He always carried the monster in his pocket, but it wasn't there now -- he had been forced to put it in his luggage because of security restrictions. (Then why did he feel for it if he knew it wasn't there? I think the writer means something like "reflexively" or that habit sent his fingers searching for the figurine. This needs clarification.) Khemman began to fidgeted and peeled off the dried flakes of a festering wound on his left arm.

There are other nits I could pick, but these are the things that I think interfered with pace and clarity. More than anything, I think Ajaya needs to get something related to the story up front. As it is, his opening chapter is, as nearly as I can tell, all exposition and backstory while he flies back to the U.S. from Nepal.

Comments, anyone?

For what it's worth,

Ray

---

Thank you, Heather and Katy, for your generosity. It’s much appreciated.

---

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 .

© 2008 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Ajaya]

Dear Ray, and others

Thanks for your comments. Although I have been closely following the FtQ for some time, I didn't quite have the guts to comment. Every comment by Ray and others are brilliant and have made me realize my own weaknesses. But I guess having your own work as the topic of discussion obliges you to type in some comments.

I just want to let you know at this point that I am working on a new opening, which now starts two weeks before:

Thick fog covered the golf course behind the soldiers who lined up the street, their rifles poised to shoot. As the taxi clattered down the ramp, Khemman noticed the gate with "Welcome to Nepal" etched in gold. The monument of hospitality was barricaded by barbed wire, and he could see a long trail of passengers dragging their suitcases past the security check-points set up on the street.

That's the King letting us know that we are not welcome, Khemman thought. But then, he did not care. There was no way he was going to live in this god-forsaken place.

Mickey, who came to pick him up at the airport, sat quietly at the back, jostling with the luggage for space. As they neared the ring road, he instructed the driver to turn right. Khemman realized that instead of going home, as usual, Mickey was taking him to the Pashupati Temple.

[tomdg]

I quite liked the opening paragraph. It "describes" the airport in terms of its human landscape, things that are happening: there's no decription of any of the static features (furniture, walls, room). I think this is really good description because there's no effort made to try to describe systematically what the place looks like (which would be dull), but instead we get the place conjured up through apparently random but actually carefully selected details.

I'm sure someone will say it's absolutely wrong to start a novel with a pronoun, but if there's ever a counterexample to that, this is probably it. It works for me because we see the narrator through his own eyes: he's someone having a pensive moment, people-watching: not watching the great and the glamorous, but with an eye for human detail in the mundane. I have no idea at this point what the story is or anything like that, but what I do have is a modicum of faith in the perception of the narrator (author and / or character) that means I might just be willing to spend some time seeing the world through their eyes.

All that said, I'd probably echo Ray's "Almost", mainly because in places the writing feels a little heavy. (There are also a handful of grammatical errors as have been pointed out by others, but I've seen a lot worse from native English speakers).

Some examples. The opening sentence is heavy on simile - like an antenna, like the delayed heartbeats, which can be nice but is so easy to overuse. The first picture doesn't add anything for me, "swung from side to side" would work better.

The word "arrhythmia" in the second simile jars with me; unless the narrator is a doctor, it feels like author voice rather than character. That said, it might work better if the link into the next paragraph was made stronger: he's reminded of arrhytmia, and then following that simile into how he feels, that emotionally his heart is troubled because .... With changes, I could see this link working really well. It might also work better if you replace the medical word with a layman's description: "like a tired heart beating out-of-time".

This excerpt also contains several long sentences with complex structure, some with several subordinate clauses, carefully linked by commas. They're all correctly formed, but for me, it makes the writing harder to read. (It's certainly not unpenetrable, but it could be even clearer). The second para, for example:

Khemman waited for the airline staff to open the ticket counter. [I might have said "waited for the ticket counter to open", but I like that the narrator sees the world as people and not things.] He knew how the ailment felt. His heart, too, was troubled ...

I'm not sure whether I like the original opening or the new one better. The new one also has some great details: Soldiers who lined [remove 'up'] the street, fog [dire warnings about starting with the weather aside], welcome to Nepal, barbed wire - great contrast - passengers dragging cases, long lines, security checkpoints; again, conjuring up a scene. Where it doesn't work for me personally is when we start getting the story in the 3rd paragraph - we've gone suddenly from this lovely observation into some action which is both puzzling and mundane - "turn right" feels really vague.

In the 2nd para, "But then, he did not care" sounds a bit weak. The two sentences either side are great: full of passion, voice and character. How about something like "As if he cared."