Flogometer for Loren: would you keep reading?

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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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Loren's first 16 lines:

The morning started like any other on our farm outside St Joseph, Missouri. Dawn lightened the gloom in our cabin, cocks restless to leave the roost began to crow, and the smell of my sister's cooking wafted from below. I lay on our corn shuck bed in the loft listening to my father heading out the back door. He would soon be calling for my brother and me to bestir ourselves and start the day.

Drowsiness evaporated as I became conscious of an uncomfortable chill. My kid brother Caleb had managed as usual to hog all of the old quilt that constituted our bedding. To pay him back I rolled off the bed, grasped the edge of the quilt with both hands, and gave a hard yank. The results were better than average as he shot clean off the bed and landed with a satisfying thump. Before he had time to untangle the quilt or his wits I threw my shirt and britches to the floor of the cabin and slid down the ladder.

Angeline turned from stirring eggs at the stove. "Caleb's just going to lay for you all day to get you back, so why do you do that to him?"

"Because the little bastard steals the covers every night."

"I know he does. I also know that if he was your size you wouldn't dare, just as you wouldn't dare exercise your mouth like that if Pa were here."

No sale here

Despite some fairly clean writing and the fact that Loren started with a scene (good), I didn't have enough interest in a day like any other on a farm to want to keep reading. I did skim ahead to see if there were more interesting developments, but not for me. The brothers have a fight or two, the sister throws rocks at them (quite a violent brood), and then they work, and then they talk. In terms of compelling, that part of the story had yet to show up, in my view.

Loren, I suggest you take a look at the Story as River. We're lacking that incident that creates a desire in this character, and that's the key to story. Some notes:

The morning started like any other on our farm outside St Joseph, Missouri.  Dawn lightened the gloom in our cabin, cocks restless to leave the roost began to crow, and the smell of my sister's cooking wafted from below. I lay on our corn shuck bed in the loft listening to my father heading out the back door. He would soon be calling for my brother and me to bestir ourselves and start the day. (Unless the Missouri location is vital to what happens, we don't need that. The rest of the description is nice, though. Not much tension, but sometimes a good voice -- and this is a good one -- is enough to buy a paragraph or two more of reading.)

Drowsiness evaporated as I became conscious of an uncomfortable chill. My kid brother Caleb had managed as usual to hog all of the old quilt that constituted our bedding. To pay him back I rolled off the bed, grasped the edge of the quilt with both hands, and gave a hard yank. The results were better than average as he shot clean off the bed and landed with a satisfying thump. Before he had time to untangle the quilt or his wits I threw my shirt and britches to the floor of the cabin and slid down the ladder. (It may be just subjective, but the "evaporated" lingo felt slow and unnecessary to me. I didn't quite get the action here, either. The character gives the quilt a yank, and (without better direction) I assumed he pulled it toward him, as if to yank it away from the brother. That action would not have shot the brother off the bed, nor left him tangled in the quilt.)

Angeline turned from stirring eggs at the stove. "Caleb's just going to lay for you all day to get you back, so why do you do that to him?"

"Because the little bastard steals the covers every night."

"I know he does. I also know that if he was your size you wouldn't dare, just as you wouldn't dare exercise your mouth like that if Pa were here." (These last paragraphs are nice, and work at promising more story, but the trouble coming (a squabble between brothers) wasn't compelling for me. It could be for others though. I have a brother with whom I fought, and this just didn't interest me all that much. Sorry.)

Loren, I'd look further down in your story for something more gripping that happens to your protagonist. You're developing character and laying groundwork here, but not getting the story going. What happens to this character that jolts him out of his ordinary life is what the story is about, and I urge you to get to it.

Comments on the opening, anyone?

For what it's worth,

Ray

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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.
4. If you're in a hurry, I've done "private floggings," $50 for a first chapter.

ARCHIVES .

© 2008 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Theadra Leilani]

I would've keep reading. It reminds me of simplier time and I like the characters. When I started reading, I thought I was reading from a girl's point of view.

It's not until the end of the second paragraph that it's clear this is a boy, and only then because of the britches reference.

I'm not sure I understand what Angeline means when she says Caleb's going to lay for you all day to get you back. The reference to lay as a get back loses me.

Other than that, I like this. It's clean, clear writing, and I definitely would have read more.

[Kamila Miller]

You had me to where I couldn't wait to see what happened next, but only because of a misconception, and then you lost me.

I thought when the character (which I read as a boy from the beginning) said that the bed was colder than usual, and referenced a brother, that his brother had died in bed. And I was utterly gripped. But that proved to be false, and like Ray and Theadra I felt this didn't have any questions posed or tension or promises of conflict.

Some of the language threw me out of the story, specifically:

He would soon be calling for my brother and me to bestir ourselves and start the day.

The archaic language 'bestir' didn't fit with the rest of the prose, especially 'my brother and me' (which with more archaic language would definitely be 'my brother and I.')

Angeline turned from stirring eggs at the stove. "Caleb's just going to lay for you all day to get you back, so why do you do that to him?"

My reaction to that was 'huh?' It's so convoluted I couldn't figure out what she was trying to convey. Unfamiliar turn of phrase aside, I couldn't believe that a real person would say something like that and it threw me out of the story.

Good luck! I hope you keep writing.

[mai]

The first para seems to be trying to say too much all at once. Phrases like "Dawn lightened the gloom" and "the smell of my sister's cooking wafted from below" put me into the scene, but many of the rest of the phrases read like an inventory. For the most part, the first para is too dense with description, and its reading speed is too tight and fast. If your style causes you to want to retain a lot of the denseness, adding a few commas would help create a more forgiving, open reading rhythm.

The protagonist wakes and listens, then anticipates his father asking him to bestir himself, then he becomes less drowsy. The sequence seems wrong here. If he wakes and listens, he has already bestirred himself, and he is alert, not drowsy (though he may be passively alert, from a physical point of view).

The story seems to be set at least decades go, when a kid would not dare to call his brother a bastard. Even now, in rural areas of the US, I think it would be unusual for a kid to use that kind of language. Also, if this is a farm family, it would be unusual for the kid to play that trick on his brother, as the children would have to work hard on the farm, and they would tend to respect each other's need for rest. And I also think the older brother would be caring towards his younger brother, unless he were an incipient sociopath.

I get a sense of a very paternalistic father, two trouble-making brothers, and an almost dispassionately powerful, liberal Angeline -- cook, or family member? These personalities seem a unrealistic mix, for a rural family. If the father is that paternalistic, the older brother would not exercise his mouth like that even when Pa is not around. And if Angeline is as powerful as her coolness seems to tell, she'd have the boys well under control, too.

[Loren DeShon]

Loren here.

First: Thanks to those who have commented so far and most of all to Ray for his time and effort and for providing the forum.

Second: I realize fully that for a writer to explain means that the writing itself failed to explain, but to perhaps satisfy anyone's curiosity....

The setting is 1848 and I'm striving for period flavor in the choice of words, thus "britches", "bestir" and "lay", meaning "lay in wait", which I stole from Mark Twain's Life on the Mississippi where one person advises the other to "lay" for a guy, i.e. wait in ambush. Being 1st person I think I need to do this as the narrator would supposedly be writing this in the 1800's. I recognize that I can't go too far with archaic speech patterns or it will be off-putting to the modern reader, but I want to impart that flavor. How to walk that line?

I've had doubts over the use of the word "bastard" by the protagonist. Yes, it's mighty saucy for a brother to use in that time period, but my protagonist is, to use modern parlance, kind of a big-mouthed butthead at times. Perhaps I need a word that's further away from profanity.

Interesting that one commenter had doubts as to Angeline's relationship to the family. Originally the paragraph started with "My sister Angeline turned..." and I cut 'My sister' because I thought that it would be evident that the family was waking - I never thought that the breakfast cooker might be assumed to be a servant. Thanks for that observation - 'My sister' will go back in.

My biggest problem, which Ray has of course pointed out, is that I'm trying to convey another day on the farm (boring), which is the reason the protagonist is anxious to leave the farm. A cathartic event at the end of the day propels him into leaving. It feels like I need to lay the groundwork (typical day on the farm) before the event so the results of the event make sense - but how to do that without losing the reader? Aye, that's the rub.

Again, thanks to Ray and the commenters. If there are any lurkers out there with something to say - please say it. This is my first novel and I need and crave all the feedback I can get.

[Sheila]

Try starting with the event that leads the main character to leave, maybe. I don't think that there is a reader out there who doesn't know that life on a farm in the 1800s was hard, or that many young people strove to get away from that life. You can fill in backstory as you go.

"big-mouthed butthead" I like that!

Good luck!

[Scott from Oregon]

I would just start with the sentence or idea that-- "the only difference between this day and all of the other boring days, was that on this day I left the farm..."

I understood your use of "lay" straight away.

[Kamila Miller]

Aye, there's definitely the rub. I think reading more Mark Twain may help with the flavor thing. With 1848 as the time period, I don't think you have to worry too much about the language of the era dragging on the modern ear (unless you use the style of Cooper--heh, a little inside Mark Twain joke.) In other words, I don't believe that you don't have to go halfway because the language of the mid-1800's would weaken your prose or distance the audience. I think (I may be wrong on this, of course!) if you just go for it and emulate the prose of the day rather than dropping in the occasional 'flavor' word or phrase you may be better off in the long run.

The author of Jonathon Strange and Mr. Norrell certainly experienced a huge amount of success with using 'period' language. That book was very well received. I know I enjoyed it immensely!

[tomdg]

Hi Loren.

I picked up the period language almost immediately (it was the word "bestir" which did it for me). I wouldn't have guessed a date, but I figured this was somewhere out in the midwest where folks are a bit behind the times :)

"Bastard" stood out for me too, just because it felt very contemporary and therefore out of place. And old-fashioned insult might work better, adding to the period feel rather than detracting from it.

I liked the writing in this generally, I liked the structure of the first paragraph but would have cut "outside St Joseph, Missouri" from the first sentence. The description in the second sentence works for me, and the fact that you list three things is just the right number.

The only other issue I have is whether sometimes you are at pains to mention e.g. "my kid brother Caleb" in order to explain the relationship to us, when the character wouldn't say it like that. I'd have thought he'd use the name Caleb in the first para, then maybe just kid brother in the second. But then, as some people have pointed out, the confusion about Angeline shows the potential problems with this. Reading it again there's enough there to show who Angeline is, but if the narrator were somehow to call her "sis" in their first exchange, that would help a lot :)

I was particularly interested by your comment about wanting to start with a normal day on the farm, because I've had exactly the same problem myself. A deviation from normality is meaningless without knowing what that normality is, but normality is not gripping. And if the characters have no idea that the change is coming, then any foreshadowing is out of character.

Sadly, I don't know the answer to that one yet. I might go into a bookstore and hit the bestsellers pile and read through the first chapter of each to see how they do it. But if you figure it out, let me know!