Flogometer for Lynda: would you keep reading?

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What does FtQ do for you (if anything)? How does it help you (if at all)? Please email me with your feedback. And thanks.

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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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Lynda's first 16 lines:

Just hold on. Wren would shout out loud if she thought it could control the numb weakness invading her muscles. Her blood warmed the cool steel of the steer grip in her palm. Her thighs ached from the wide stance she struck, trying to maintain her balance as the ship spiraled at a sickening speed.

Her grasp slipped. Hold on!

A clanging claxon drowned out all beeps from the control panel. A large asteroid flashed in the view port before the ship spun away.

Desperate not to yield to fear, she turned her attention to Shuna O'Reill. The tall woman leaned over a bright consol screen. She keyed commands with concentrated intensity. O'Reill's short hair bounced up and down and back and forth with each movement of the careening ship.

Wren kept her voice calm. "Hurry up."

She clasped the grip harder, and pushed against the pain screaming up from her raw and ravaged fingers. Letting go meant spinning out of control, it meant death - not an event she intended to experience so soon. Just a few more moments.

A hacking cough exploded behind her. Nok's deep, ragged, baritone came out in a chilling whisper. "There's too much smoke."

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I turned the page
This is a good example of "bridging tension." Not the main conflict, jeopardy, or whatever drives the novel, but still fraught action that has a chance of moving us on to the main situation. Lynda has high action that also lets us know a little about the world we're in. This opening did the job, for me, to give the next pages a chance to hook me. Some notes:

Just hold on. Wren would shout out loud if she thought it could control the numb weakness invading her muscles. Her blood warmed the cool steel of the steering grip in her palm. Her thighs ached from the her wide stance she struck, tryingas she struggled to maintain her balance as while the ship spiraled at a sickening speed. (Little things here. I made it "steering" for clarity. I think that it might be more dramatic if the weakness is invading her hands (the part doing the gripping) rather than the vague "muscles." A coming clarity issue: this mentions the steer grip being in her palm, but later it seems as if she holds it with both hands. And wouldn't she do that if she was struggling to hold on? The little bit of suggested rewriting is to "crisp up" the action a little.)

Her grasp slipped. Hold on!(For me, "grasp" was a softer word than "grip." However, Lynda may be avoiding "grip" because the thing she's holding is a "grip" -- that would account for instances of "grasp," "clasp," etc. Maybe a different term for the device would free up this descriptive language.)

A clanging claxon drowned out all beeps from the control panel. A large asteroid flashed in the view port before the ship spun away.

Desperate not to yield to fear, she turned her attention to glanced at Shuna O'Reill. The tall woman leaned over a bright consol screen, keying . She keyed commands with concentrated intensity. O'Reill's short hair bounced up and down and back and forth with each movement of the careening ship. (It turns out that Shuna is an android. I'd substitute "android" for "woman" here to let us know more about the nature of Wren's world. For me, "turned her attention to" seemed too leisurely for an action in the midst of a calamity.)

Wren kept her voice calm. "Hurry up."

She clasped the grip harder, and pushed against the pain screaming up from her raw and ravaged fingers. Letting go meant spinning out of control, it meant death - not an event she intended to experience so soon. Just a few more moments.

A hacking cough exploded behind her. Nok's deep, ragged, baritone came out in a chilling whisper. "There's too much smoke."

So, a good action scene. In the remainder of the chapter I found spots that could be crisper, but it was a well-imagined world with hints of conflict and danger. Keep at it, Lynda.

Comments, 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 plus 1st chapter 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

[Norm]

I would have turned the page. There are, to my thinking, some shifts of POV or less than clear writing that kept me from racing forward. Such as, "A large asteroid flashed in the view port before the ship spun away." The way I picture this, I'm looking through the viewing port and so it should be the asteroid that spins away. It sounds to me that the asteroid somehow becomes a ship that spins away.

I agree with Ray. The tension of the situation carried me forward.

Good luck.

[Pam]

I would turn the page. Aside from the quality comments already made I would add to watch out for the unintended consonance like "clanging claxon" and "keying commands with concentrated."

Some points about the physical exertion: 1) I was OK with muscles being vague because it sounds like this was a full-body response to an emergency, but not if you're only going to single out thigh muscles. If Wren is gripping tightly, her forearms are going to be burning and probably her shoulders too. 2) I like what it says about Wren that she's calmly encouraging O'Reill to hurry, but if she's straining that hard, it'll show in her voice. Sorry, no suggestion on how to include both strain and calmness, but I think it's important. In the same vein, I would think Nok's voice would "rasp" rather than "whisper."

Good point from Norm about the astroid, but at this point of the story I thought, yup, you're in a world of trouble if you're spinning away from an asteroid. Hold on!

Good writing.

[Mai]

I would have turned the page if this had been more tightly-edited, maybe something like this -- some changes below are for economy, others for clarity or authentic action:

- - -

Just hold on. Wren would have shouted, if she'd thought shouting could counter the weakness invading her muscles.

The cool steel of the steer grip warmed in her palm. Her thighs ached from holding her position as the ship spiraled at a sickening speed. Her grasp almost slipped. Hold on!

The clangs of the ship's warning bell [or: The sound of the claxon -- claxons don't clang] drowned out the control panel beeps. An asteroid loomed and flashed by the view port, as the ship spun.

Desperate not to yield to fear, she turned to Shuna O'Reill. The tall woman leaned over a bright console screen, keying commands with concentrated intensity, her short hair bouncing with each movement of the careening ship.

Keeping calm, Wren told Shuna, "Hurry up." Grasping the grip harder, she resisted the pain screaming up from her raw fingers. To let go meant spinning out of control, it meant death - not an event she intended to experience so soon. Just a few more moments of holding on.

Behind her, Nok's normally deep, ragged, baritone came out in a chilling whisper between hacking coughs. "There's too much smoke."

- - -

This is just my take on what might work better for me-the-reader. For me, this is another opening where the author can get into her characters more deeply, to convey scenes and feelings with a more condensed kind of realism, a more powerful authenticity.

[Eric]

There’s clear conflict, which is good. But I got bogged down in adjectives and lack of clarity.

A sprinkling of adjectives is good, particularly to set a scene, but we’re in the action, and you’ve given us enough (an asteroid) to know we’re on a spaceship and not the deck of a clipper ship. Too many adjectives slow things down, and the pattern makes the reading less interesting.

Numb weakness.
Cool steel.
Wide stance.
Sickening speed.
Clanging claxon (repetitive).
Large asteroid.
Tall woman (is O’Reill’s height at all important in the midst of this crisis?).
Concentrated intensity. (This is just confusing and sounds like a focused beam of light. What’s wrong with “with concentration?”)
Short hair. (Is O’Reill’s hair length at all important now?)
Hacking cough
Deep, ragged baritone
Chilling whisper. (Which is it? Because you can’t have a deep whisper.)

Then some clarity issues, like the very first line. “’Just hold on,’ Wren would shout out loud” is how my mind’s ear first read this. That’s not what you mean, but I had to go back and re-read to be certain.

The earlier comment by Norm is spot on.

“Blood warmed the cool steel” made me think Wren was bleeding. Then I thought it was just the heat from her hands. If she is indeed bleeding, as the later “raw and ravaged fingers” imply, perhaps you could splash a little around. Make the steel handle slick, for example.

Two things in this opening suggest real, serious danger: the bleeding and the smoke. Play those up. I want to know about that, not the girl’s hair bobbing. Go with the action, let that carry us along.

Good luck.

[Eric]

Not sure if your spaceship escapes the opening chapter, but I stumbled across this comment recently from a roundtable of SF editors: "I would definitely like to put a short-term moratorium on stories that lead off with exploding spaceships."

http://www.johnjosephadams.com/?p=1689

[Sheila]

I would read more, this is a good starting scene.

Some things:

"Her grasp slipped." Hold on. There's no noticeable consequence to her grasp slipping, and that bothered me. You emphasize throughout this how important it is that she hold on, then when she slips - nothing.

Also, the woman's "short hair bounced up and down and back and forth with each movement of the careening ship." This is not a quick observation, it is noticing the hair over a series of ship's movements. That's not realistic here. I don't know why she would be noticing the hair in this situation. To me, this shows a detachment from the view of your MC.

[Wendy]

I'd have turned the page if the writing were a little tighter. There were some things that took me out of the story, both grammatically and logically. The grammar stuff has been mentioned, and the logical stuff was:

- "numb weakness" is almost redundant, and either numbness or weakness on its own would be enough, I thought.

- I agree with the commenter above who thought that "Her blood warmed the cool steel of the steer grip in her palm." meant that she was bleeding all over it.

- I thought that steel was a bit of a rubbish material for a handle grip, personally, too, especially for something as important as a steering mechanism. Even little kids' bikes have plastic or rubber handgrips.

- "clanging claxon": it's spelled "klaxon", and it's an electromechanical device that makes a particular kind of sound (e.g., OO-gah), not a clanging bell

- "Desperate not to yield to fear" is a change of POV, from the close third of what comes before.

- Shuna O'Reill's height isn't something that Wren would be noticing in this extreme situation, and neither is her hair.

- "consol screen" should probably be "console".

- If Wren's hand was numb or weakening, she'd have a hard time "clasp[ing] the grip harder", and if she were really clinging on for dear life, she's unlikely to be able to speak calmly to her crew.

- If there's a lot of smoke, why doesn't it get mentioned before Nok coughs? Can't Wren see or smell it? isn't she choking on it?

Overall, however, the scene had tension and story questions, and I was interested. Good work!

[Mai]

I was reading others' comments & wanted to say something about detachment in crisis situations, and what your eyes and mind see and retain:

In a crisis, your body is pouring chemicals into your bloodstream. One of the effects in this flood of stress hormones is your sense of time changes radically -- you're noticing and retaining more detail, so by contrast to the usual ratio of things-seen-to-time, time seems to slow -- you're seeing more things. You might well notice that someone is tall, or that their hair is moving. One of the side-effects of this kind of experience is emotional detachment. You can feel as if you're standing outside yourself, in fact. You can sometimes get strangely metaphorical and/or philosophical. Your eyes and mind are working optimally, and are capable of way more than they normally are. This is how our bodies help us survive crises.

Because of having experienced a few heavy crises, I took the observations of height and moving hair as authentic-seeming evidence of a crisis response.

[Kathryn]

I think the concept is great, a woman fighting to steer an out-of-control spaceship, and I /would/ read a story about this, however not this one in its current form because the sentence structure and pacing do not match what's going on in the scene. I ended up feeling more confused than "grabbed" by the action. I was also distracted by repeated sentence structures eg. this one 3 times in a short excerpt:
- A clanging claxon drowned out ...
- A large asteroid flashed ...
- A hacking cough exploded ...

If the whole piece was tightened up a little, it would be more compelling. Here's an edited version - definitely not perfect, but it shows another view of what's possible - and I hope it helps.
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Hold on. Must hold on. Wren would have shouted the words out loud if it would stop the numbness invading her muscles. She fought to control the ship's sickening spiral, her eyes burning from long concentration, her thighs aching from trying to maintain balance, her grasp sliding on the steering control. Hold on. Must hold on.

A raucous klaxon sounded, drowning out the warning beeps from the control panel. She glanced up as a large asteroid flashed past the view port, trailing a blaze of fire. She shuddered. Close call.

Determined not to yield to fear, she turned to Shuna O'Reill. The tall woman leaned over a bright console screen, oblivious to everything as she feverishly keyed commands, her hair bouncing wildly with each movement of the careening ship.

Wren kept her voice calm. "Hurry, O'Reill. We can't keep this up."

She clutched the grip harder. Pushed through the screaming pain from her raw fingers. Braced her legs. Must... hold... on. Letting go meant spinning out of control, meant death. An event she did not intend to experience. Not for a long time yet.

Just a few more moments. Hold on.

A hacking cough exploded behind her. Nok was back from the engine room. Then his chilling whisper. "No use. There's too much smoke."