Flogometer for Terri: 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, 12-point type, 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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Terri sent a prologue and a chapter. Here are the first 16 lines of both.

Prologue:

Janet Malloy sat at the conference table with her shoes kicked off and her sleeves rolled up. She had the newest murder file spread in front of her and couldn't believe what she was reading. After eleven years in the District Attorney's office, she got to pick and choose her cases and this one was just too good to pass. Opening her notebook to a fresh page, she started making notes. The first step to prosecuting a case was preparing an outline of the elements of the crime.

She started with the crime scene photos. Not a lot to look at, the victim was little more than a skeleton partially covered by a water-sodden quilt. Four kids had found the body in the well at an abandoned farm near the county line. As she had often done as a child, they had ignored the "Danger" and "No Trespassing" signs to explore the ramshackle buildings. Pulling the cover off the well, they were rewarded with the sight of a skeletal foot poking out of the water. Janet laughed at the thought of a bunch of preteen toughs running and screaming for their mothers. One of those mothers had called the police and now the remains were on a tray in the morgue. She made a note to call the mother to testify about calling the police and directing them to the body. That was the first link in the chain.

Next, she reviewed the coroner's report. The victim hadn't died easily and he hadn't died accidentally. The cause of death was blunt force trauma. The fatal blow, apparently (snip)

And now Chapter 1.

Jessica Wayne was an eighteen-year-old drama student at the local junior college who also waited tables at her parents' bar and grill. Slim and pretty, with dark hair and eyes, Jessica dreamed of being a model or an actress. A decent enough girl, she had never appeared on one of Malloy's dockets as a defendant. However, she had very poor taste when it came to friends, so trouble sometimes found her whether she was looking or not.

Ten days ago, she had gone to a party after work. Joey Peterson lived outside of town at his parents' place. His dad had given up farming for a foreman's job at the transmission parts factory, so the big hay barn was empty and unused except for Joey's parties. That night it had blazed with spotlights rigged to an old generator. Jessica had wound her way through the maze of parked cars and went inside. Fueled by beer and weed, the party was rocking with the smoke so thick she'd caught a light buzz during the walk from the door to the keg.

"Hey guys!" she said, shucking her coat and grabbing a beer. There were at least a dozen people she recognized, mostly locals she knew from high school. Joey was on the college rodeo team, so there was also a sprinkling of cowboys in the crowd. Jessica smiled at particularly good-looking guy and thought about going over to talk to him. She changed her mind when her best friend, Misty, waved her over and made room on one of the broken-down couches Joey kept in (snip)

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Good writing, but little drama
First, the prologue. For a mystery fan, this might be enough. Interesting case, good writing. But no tension as far as the protagonist is concerned. I wasn't moved.

The first chapter: pretty much an info dump to start off with, and no drama. Both of these samples are almost lawyerly in the way they carefully give us lot of information about story elements. But they don't, in my view, give us story.

For me, the best openings are what I call "living scenes." They have action/movement, dialogue, characterization, and tension of some kind. I didn't feel that either of these had that.

Rather than give you lots of notes, here's a snippet from later in the first chapter. It comes a lot closer to my definition of an opening that can compel a reader forward.

Mike Leavy looked scared. No, he looked terrified. He stood stiff and unmoving, staring at the mug with glassy eyes. Jessica didn't like what was happening and started to back away from the circle.

She was two steps back when Mike Leavy screamed. He was tall and beefy, but the scream was high-pitched and shrill. Later Misty would say he sounded like a little girl. Jessica looked at Mike and saw he was crying.

"It's him, it's him," Mike said, sniffling and wiping his nose on his shirttail.

"Who?" asked the girl standing next to him. Jessica didn't know her.

"The old man, it's him," said Mike.

"What fucking old man are you talking about, shithead?" said Joey, pissed because his game was spoiled.

"Old man Blueriver. The old Indian. He's coming back to get me," said Mike.

Before anyone could say anything else, Mike Leavy ran from the barn.

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Now I'm engaged. I think Terri has a good story in mind and the characters to deliver it. Were I editing her novel, I'd advise her to start here and weave in the rest as needed, with a little scene-setting to be done here first. It can be done, and it's not really that difficult once you get the hang of it. Focus on story first, and give me something happening that makes me want to know what happens next. As interesting as the details were in the prologue, nothing much was happening, and I wasn't compelled to wonder what would happen next. That goes double for the opening of the chapter as it now stands.

Comments, anyone?

For what it's worth,

Ray

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Donations go to the cost of hosting FtQ.

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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.
5. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it's okay with me to update the submission.

ARCHIVES

© 2008 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Jessica]

I'm a huge mystery fan, but neither the prologue nor the first 16 lines of the first chapter grabbed me.

That segment about Old Man Blueriver, though, gave me the shivers. If the book had started with that, I'd have bought it. In hardcover.

[kathy]

Yes to the prologue. There was just enough information to catch my interest.
Chapter one contained too much info. Action was what I would have liked at that point.

[Sheila]

I agree with Ray and Jessica, I think the Old Man Blueriver scene was the most compelling. I would say I liked the prologue second best, because it laid out some interesting story questions.

The DA has a case that is too good to pass up, we're told. But then the crime scene seems run-of-the-mill. Someone was hit on the head and dumped in a well. I think I would have been more compelled if you added a little hint about what makes this case so special to her - is the victim someone important, or the suspect? Why does she think "I can't believe what I'm seeing," as she looks at fairly routine crime scene photos?

In the prologue, we're in close third person, which I liked. The next chapter steps way back and I'm not sure at first who's perspective we're in. "A decent enough girl, she had never appeared on one of Malloy's dockets as a defendant" - that sentence made me wonder if we were back in Malloy's perspective because this isn't how Jessica would think of herself. But as we go on, it's clear we're seeing things from Jessica's perspective.

Good luck!

[Cheri]

Old Man Blueriver gets right into the action. Pacing and drama are solid. Well done.

[mai]

The Blueriver scene would have been the best opening. It wasn't enough to get me to turn a page, though.

The POV isn't clear.

Also, I was connecting with Mike, but Misty's remembered opinion of his voice ("Later Misty would say he sounded like a little girl.") turned my attention to her and the future of the story -- a dead-end in both cases, at this point in the book. For me, that broke the flow of drama, story and connection.

[Patty]

Same for me. Neither prologue nor chapter compelled me. There was a lot of telling and very little emotion, implied or otherwise. I thought Janet's observations on the victim were plain callous. She didn't seem to have many redeeming thoughts.

There was a lot more telling in the chapter. It felt distant.

But the snippet with Mike... I definitely liked that.

[benwah]

Terri - I'll echo the sentiment that both the prologue and opening lack some tension, in part because there seems a great deal of distance between the reader and the characters, but the segment that Ray has exerpted is definitely a page turner.

What if you opened your prologue with a description of the body/photograph of the body? Then you could "dolly out," as it were, and place the DA in the scene. As it is, you have a woman turning pages; not terribly engaging.

I, too, thought Janet's reaction to be a bit off-putting: not horror, dismay, disgust at the crime but laughing at the thought of the childrens' reactions (which she's just surmising anyway).

[Kami]

I found the prologue opening more compelling than the first chapter opening, but they both tossed me out. In the prologue, when the pov character laughed, I was done with her. It seemed inappropriate and too far out of line with what I personally would have done in the same circumstances for me to find her sympathetic.

There were also some subtly but still noticeably clunky constructions in there. For example she couldn't believe what she was reading, but she'd picked and chosen this case so she had to know something about it, right? And so it made no sense that she'd be surprised by the initial details spelled out for the reader. Also, the first link in the chain--huh? What chain? As far as chain of events, the discovery of the body by the kids seems like the most natural first link and the mother would be second. Anyway. There were similar issues in the first chapter opening. The sentences need to follow one another in a natural flow of thought. These seemed to jump around a bit--not enough to throw me completely out of the story, but unfortunately just enough to catch my attention like a pulled thread in a length of cloth.

The passive beginning to the chapter and plain ol' description didn't work for me. Also, the sense that all of this had already happened stole the immediacy of the situation. This is a common contrivance and some people like it, but I'm not a fan of reading events that have already happened and having them informed by 'current' knowledge with comments like "she would later ..." The only time I've done all right with it, and I still think the story would have been better without it, is when the 'current' narrator has a charming voice.

I hope these comments help. Good luck!