Flogometer for Paul: would you keep reading?

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Submissions, anyone?

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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Paul has sent both a prologue and a first chapter. The first 16 lines from his prologue:

There was no apocalypse. The old world of men died slowly of neglected and festering wounds, like an old man gasping for his last breath. Like giant, fat beasts we drank the blood of the earth and threw our excrement into the air, the sea, and buried it in the land. The world began to reek of human waste. You couldn't drink without tasting it, you couldn't step without stepping in it, and you couldn't breathe without it filling your lungs. We created law after law, and technology on top of technology…but it was all for not. The tipping point had come and gone; civilization, as it was once known and celebrated, was doomed.

As resources became scarce, governments began to panic. Alliances were made, lines drawn, and armies assembled. Ironically, humanity finally made its greatest leap into the stars; exploring other worlds for habitation. But the desperation and devastation of earth called all of our explorers home to fight for their families. Great fleets of low-orbit warships were assembled by all the warring factions in an attempt to command the skies above the skies. But a want of basic resources, such as food and water, eventually grounded them before they could annihilate each other.

But all in all, "civilization" ended in a whisper. Overcome by starvation, plagues, and even suicide, the human population that once filled every available corner of the earth dwindled (snip)

And then the first page of the first chapter:

The young girl struggled against her two captors all the way up the hill, her mane of red-golden hair slapping their dirty faces as she pulled against their grasp. Despite the fact that her hands were tied at her back, she threw them off balance as she flexed, for even though she was young, they stood no taller than she. The men made their way with their catch along a stone wall and eventually to a gate.

"What's your business?" said the man with the painted red face and the black circles drawn around his eyes. He held a spear and stood on a small platform inside the wall and he spoke with the arrogance of one who knows who his friends are.

"We've got a girl for the Great Father," said the man with the balding head. "She's young. Guaranteed to be fertile."

The guard came down from his perch and walked slowly around the petrified girl. He looked up into her eyes and smelled the air around her. He then reached out to touch her skin making her flinch.

"Ain't me you gotta worry about, sweetheart", he said. The younger of the two captors laughed as a bit of tobacco juice dripped from his chin. The guard shot him a look that shut him up quickly. "She'll do. Take her to the captain at the end of the walk", he said as he opened the gate.

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Not there yet for me
While Paul has created an interesting world, and the first chapter does open with action and conflict, there are craft issues that need work before this, for me, is ready to go.

I wouldn't start with the prologue. It seems to me that this information can be folded in later. By the way, it's "all for naught." The first chapter has more promise, but. . .here are some notes.

The young girl struggled against her two captors all the way up the hill, her mane of red-golden hair slapping their dirty faces as she pulled against their grasp. Despite the fact that her hands were tied at her back, she threw them off balance as she flexed, for even though she was young, they stood no taller than she. The men made their way with their catch along a stone wall and eventually to a gate.
(On page 2 it turns out that we're in the girl's point of view. I suggest starting there instead of this distant, omniscient POV. You'd have to work in her hair color and height in a different way, but we'd know right off who to root for.)

"What's your business?" said the man with the painted red face and the black circles drawn around his eyes. He held a spear and stood on a small platform inside the wall, and he spoke with the arrogance of one who knows who his friends are. (Clarity issue here. The speaker could be one of the two holding the girl, especially because the narrative hasn't included anyone else yet. This guy needs to be established before he talks. I suggest using "guard" rather than "man" to give the reader an instant idea of his role.)

"We've got a girl for the Great Father," said the man with the balding head. "She's young. Guaranteed to be fertile." (Two reasons I cut "young" from the first paragraph: "girl" usually denotes youth, and the narrative tells us that she's young here.)

The guard came down from his perch and walked slowly around the petrified girl. He looked up into her eyes and smelled the air around her. He then reached out to touched her skin making her flinch. She flinched away from him. (When did she become petrified? She was struggling, and there's no reason for her to have stopped. And "petrified girl" evoked an image of a statue, which was amusing, and that's not what you want here. One nice touch was that he had to look up into her eyes, thus emphasizing her height compared to the men.)

"Ain't me you gotta worry about, sweetheart," he said. The younger of the two captors laughed as when a bit of tobacco juice dripped from his the guard's chin. The guard shot him a look that shut him up quickly. "She'll do. Take her to the captain at the end of the walk." , he said as he opened the gate. (For me, there's too much narrative spent characterizing these noxious men (shot him a look, balding) and not enough bringing me into the girl's experience. Paul uses the "as" construction here and on subsequent pages, sometimes when "when" is more accurate. I suggest you do a search for "as" and find ways to eliminate it and show the action in another way. After a while, it wears on a reader, in my view. I've a post on "watch your as" here.)

Comments, anyone?

For what it's worth,

Ray

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Thank you, Mike, for your generous donation. 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 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

[Kami]

I also had serious issues with not being in the girl's pov right away. Also, despite the fact that I like prologues, this one would have made me put the book down. Reading it would have given me the idea that the writer really likes to employ generalized exposition. Fo me anyway, specifics are more interesting. If this is about the girl, I'd rather learn about what happened to the world from her perspective. And her perspective here is critical. I won't care about her or anyone else without it.

[Eric]

Paul,

The prologue came across as a bit heavy-handed to me. As Kami says above, the specifics can be more interesting. I enjoy prologues, but somehow I wonder if you provided a particular instance which encompasses this non-apocalypse -- somebody on one of these deep space cruisers recalled to earth, say -- if this might work better. I found some of the logic questionable as well. Deep space exploration doesn't necessarily mean warships capable of bombing the earth. And how many people are we talking? The population of the doomed earth must be several orders of magnitude greater than the crews of these ships. Why would these ships even return? If the air, sea and soil are so feculent that people are inhaling waste, it's too late for laws. There's a temporal disconnect there. These logic questions are nitpicky, but the questions they raised would've stopped me from reading.

As Ray says, this is the kind of backstory that can be folded in elsewhere. It might even prove to be more interesting as we learn, as the story progresses, that this story takes place on a burned out earth. (Think Charleton Heston on the beach at the end of Planet of the Apes)

I didn't have a problem with not being in the girl's POV...until Ray pointed out that the story moves into her POV. I don't see any reason to start with a character by describing her from afar.

I agree with Ray's comments on clarity (dialogue tags, the confusion about which/how many men there are).

If this is earth after the great environmental catastrophe, are they wasting resources growing tobacco to chew?

[Mai]

No turn on either, for me. The reasons were: the writing wasn't seasoned enough; the actions weren't thought-out enough, so action descriptions often seemed off-kilter.

An example of unseasoned (in the sense of not fully mature or experienced) writing: "...neglected and festering wounds..." The word "festering" already carries an implication of previous neglect. If the author had written "...festering wounds...", nothing more would have been required to make the point.

An example of actions not being thought-out enough: "...mane of red-golden hair slapping their dirty faces as she pulled against their grasp..." Even the longest, thickest mane of human hair won't slap anyone, no matter what the person's actions (or weather conditions) are, if it's open (unbound or unbraided). Like a squirrel's tail, it appears to have form -- but in fact it's mostly air, and it acts chaotically -- the feel of it, when it hits the men's skin, would be soft. For hair to be able to whip or slap anything, it needs to be given some structure, by being braided or twisted.

(Disclosure: In the second chapter of my WIP, I use an image of hair slapping a woman's shoulders. She's in a high wind. Under such conditions, when braided hair hits bare skin, it can feel like a slap.)

Another example of somewhat-fuzzy action writing is how the woman's struggles affect the men surrounding her, when all are about the same height. Typically, men have significantly more muscle mass, stronger joints and a lower center of gravity than women. For several men to be powerfully affected by a single woman's struggles, they'd have to be much smaller and more finely-made than she is.

There's an interesting story in the works here. I'd love to read a revised version of both prologue and chapter opening.

P.S. -- It's hard to write accurately about things one has never experienced, and would never do. As I read this opening, I realized I based my sense of how a woman struggles on an action sequence in a film I saw today, called Deja Vu. Thank goodness for films, as source material for more authentic action writing. And thank goodness for Netflix and its Instant mode. It could be looked at as a library of sorts, for action sequence writing.

[Mai]

By the way, I thought it was was a great touch to have a post-apocalypse guy chewing tobacco, and spitting. It shows humankind's amazing ability to adapt, prevail and stick to old (and often vile) habits under almost any circumstances. :) Though I smile, I also mean it.

[Cheri]

Paul,
One word that caught my attention in a good way was "flexed," though in its context the word is unclear. I'd recommend revising the sentence to keep it in.

I would not have known about the POV issue, had Ray not mentioned it, but I agree that it would make a more powerful beginning and let us immediately identify with the girl if we were deeply in her head. Try showing us in paragraph one a particular trait of hers that will carry through the story, e.g., she spits in their faces, or shows a cool disdain, or says something profound, etc. This will strengthen the identification even more. As it is I cannot tell what kind of personality she has from this snippet, and I think we need something to grasp onto.

I'm a rabid fan of prologues, but your chapter one is the stronger choice. The prologue is too omniscient to be felt. In other words, until we know and love the people in this world, we cannot care that their civilization is dying.

I agree with Mai about the slapping hair, but that's an easy fix.

Also, if you can, weave in just a bit more setting detail right off the bat. Just a sentence--maybe two. If we're in her head, you can let us see the details she would catch in snippets.

A few revisions, and you're on your way! Good luck!!

[Jessica]

I agree with Ray that the prologue, though well written, would best be folded into the action later.

But I thought the opening chapter was brilliant. The image of the tobacco juice was so evocative. I'd have turned the page based on the opening chapter.

[Jon]

Prolog: lost me. While I share in the narrator's angst about our poor abused planet, the narrative was too heavy-handed by half for my taste. Great starting line, though.

Actually, reading it again, I liked most of the first paragraph. Brought forward by the first line and the authoritative tone, I read through the first paragraph pretty well (petering out toward the end), but the second paragraph lost the voice that the first paragraph started with.

First chapter: very close, but ultimately no. The content was compelling, but the writing style lost me. The wandering "Despite the fact..." line typified it.

For an easy-to-recommend-a-change line, consider the difference between:

"He then reached out to touch her skin making her flinch"

and

"He reached out to touch her. She flinched."

Note how removing "then" and "skin" doesn't really affect the sentence in a negative way; it's just as clear what's going on. The writer could as easily say "...to touch her face" or "bare back" or whatever if precision were judged useful.

And also note how giving each of them their own sentences for actions helps clarify what's going on. Sometimes that's not what's wanted--a battle scene where everything's convoluted and confusing, frex--but in cases like this, where there's a clear action/reaction, it can be useful.

That stuff aside, there was the foundation of an engaging beginning. There were also some very nice details here - the way the guard smelled the air around her (to check for diseases, I'd imagine) was one I particularly liked, as was the way the guard had to look up at her. (That detail works well enough to eliminate the "...they stood no taller than she", possibly).

Good luck with this!

[Kathryn]

I hate books with prologues, so I'd nix that as Ray suggests.

As I wrote about another excerpt posted on the Flogometer, this piece provides visuals and sound-track only. If we are going to be in the girl's POV, how is she feeling, how is her body reacting to what's happening? Please show me so I can feel some emotion myself as the reader, and be drawn into the story straightaway.

[Kathryn]

Oh, forgot to mention... Beware of repeated sentence structures which make the writing sound dead after a while, eg.
- The men made their way with their catch along a stone wall AND eventually to a gate.
- He held a spear AND stood on a small platform inside the wall AND he spoke ...
- The guard came down from his perch AND walked slowly around the petrified girl.
- He looked up into her eyes AND smelled the air around her.