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). Directions for submissions are below.
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.
Doug‘s first 16 lines:
No go hereShannon didn't see how dealing with a computer crash at four in the morning could be Destiny, but that's what Phyllis insisted and there's no arguing with one's spirit guide.
Destiny or no, Shannon needed her paycheck so she rolled out of bed and switched her computer on. She buried her shame at her materialist motivation and took a moment to center herself before logging into the techstaff channel of the popular online game Outlandia.
[Ops-David] Heya Shan. Goofy crashed and won't come back up.
[Dev-Shannon] Anyone seen Kyle? He's supposed to be the programmer on call.
[PM-Larry] He didn't respond to the page. Don't wait for him, Shannon. The East Coast is waking up and we need that server running pronto.
Larry wanted everything pronto. Maybe her boss thought that saying it made his minions work faster, but it pissed Shannon off. Pressure wasn't what she needed. How about some respect for her intelligence and computer skills?
She let that negative energy go and buckled down to investigate the server crash. After half an hour of methodical sleuthing, she turned up the cause of the problem.
[Dev-Shannon] Someone replaced the program code on Goofy. Anyone here do that?
Nobody owned up to making the change, and it sure hadn't happened by itself. Either Kyle had done it (where was he?), somebody had screwed up, or Outlandia had been hacked.
Despite good, clean writing and opening with an immediate scene, the story question raised—who hacked the server—didn’t provoke much tension in me. There were no significant consequences to come if Shannon doesn’t get the server back up, and it’s only a game, anyway. I thought there was a better opening later, and I’ll show you that in a moment. First, some notes:
Shannon didn't see how dealing with a computer crash at four in the morning could be Destiny, but that's what Phyllis insisted and there's no arguing with one's spirit guide. (A spirit guide named Phyllis? This is an interesting tidbit, but it’s summary—we don’t see or hear Phyllis doing any guiding. And Phyllis, because she’s introduced in the first paragraph and seems like she would be important to the story, never returns.)
Destiny or no, Shannon needed her paycheck so she rolled out of bed and switched her computer on. She buried her shame at her materialist motivation and took a moment to center herself before logging into the techstaff channel of the popular online game Outlandia.(A point of view glitch—Shannon, who works on this all the time, would never think of it as “the popular online game.” This is the author slipping information in. But we’re in a close POV, and this jolts us out of the character’s experience (which would not include this thought).
[Ops-David] Heya Shan. Goofy crashed and won't come back up.
[Dev-Shannon] Anyone seen Kyle? He's supposed to be the programmer on call.
[PM-Larry] He didn't respond to the page. Don't wait for him, Shannon. The East Coast is waking up and we need that server running pronto.
Larry wanted everything pronto. Maybe her boss thought that saying it made his minions work faster, but it pissed Shannon off. Pressure wasn't what she needed. How about some respect for her intelligence and computer skills?
She let that negative energy go and buckled down to investigate the server crash. After half an hour of methodical sleuthing, she turned up the cause of the problem.
[Dev-Shannon] Someone replaced the program code on Goofy. Anyone here do that?
Nobody owned up to making the change, and it sure hadn't happened by itself. Either Kyle had done it (where was he?), somebody had screwed up, or Outlandia had been hacked.
Now take a look at another set of 16 lines from the very next page.
What Kyle noticed first were the noises: distant chatter that he couldn't quite make out and a regular electronic beeping that was much more distinct. Pains: he hurt almost everywhere that could hurt, and some places that he didn't know could hurt. Nothing excruciating, except for his headache. He went to put his hand on his head and found that a bunch of stuff dragged along with the hand. Between the antiseptic smell, the crinkling of paper underneath him when he moved, and the cervical collar keeping his head pinned, he had a good guess where he was.
The scary part was that he couldn't seem to open his eyes.
He tried to think what he was doing here but he couldn't remember.
There was the sound of sliding shower curtain rings and a female voice, "Ah, you're finally with us."
"I guess. Who's 'us'?" At least his voice still worked.
"You're at CalWest Regional Hospital, in the Emergency Room. I'm Sheila, an ER nurse."
"What happened? And what's wrong with my eyes?"
"You were in a car accident. You don't remember?"
"No, I don't. What's wrong with my eyes?" That was still an important question.
I did. This one had a character in jeopardy in a situation I could empathize with, and a possible negative outcome—blindness—that I could feel concern about. The story questions—what happened, will he be able to see—were enough to get me to turn the page. Doug, you can work the stuff in the Shannon opening into the rest of the chapter during the dialogue when she comes to see him in the hospital, either as dialogue or internal monologue. Even so, the consequences of what happens don’t seem terribly, well, consequential. We need some serious stakes, I think.
Comments, please?
For what it’s worth.
Ray
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Public floggings available. If I can post it here,
Submitting to the Flogometer:
- Email your 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter as an attachment (.doc or .rtf preferred, .docx okay) and I'll critique the first page.
- Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
- And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
© 2009 Ray Rhamey
I liked the original entry. It had enough story questions to pull me forward - what happened to Kyle, who hacked the game and why, and what is a spirit guide. I thought the opening paragraph had humor (the spirit guide named Phyllis), and the promise of something fresh and unique.
I also liked Ray's version. The hint at blindness and how he got there are compelling. But I think someone waking up in a hospital and wondering how they got there is not exactly original. It doesn't have the promise that I'm going to be reading something new.
Ray, I thought opening with a character waking up was a cliche? Nathan Bransford called it a "common trope" in his recent 1st paragraph contest. There were tons of variations of waking up (from a dream, in a panic, in a burning house, waking up dead, etc.) I'm not saying it's not done well here, I just think an author would want something more original for his/her first impression.
Just my $.02.
Posted by: Sheila | October 23, 2009 at 07:51 AM
There were elements I liked in the first piece: the voice, the spirit guide, the mostly-smooth writing, the humor. And you're intimating some harm has come to Kyle, so that intrigued me. But because it's a game and the problem easily solved, I didn't turn. Shannon herself doesn't seem more than annoyed.
The second one is definitely more gripping. But like Sheila, the waking up part concerns me. (Also, note the POV violation with the cervical collar being named as such when he hasn't open his eyes.)
I wonder what would happen if you started in the mugging scene - at least, that what I imagine happened to Kyle. Particularly if whoever takes his passwords from him are disproportionately interested in the game or disproportionately violent. That would make the stakes feel bigger to me, as though we're dealing with something ominous instead of just some juvenile digital outlaws.
Posted by: hope101 | October 23, 2009 at 11:49 AM
Thanks, folks. That's what I was afraid of: the initial stakes are simply too low to be interesting. I was trying to avoid "body on page 1"--as is my antagonist, who's running a covert op and making it a point not to do anything remarkable.
As it is, I have deeper problems than that: my leads aren't able to sustain a novel. Shannon needs to be redrawn and Kyle might well end up being a redshirt.
I see a lot of reworking in my future.
Posted by: Doug | October 23, 2009 at 12:40 PM
While I agree that more tension could be injected into the first 16, I wonder if it would help Doug to consider whether he is simply assuming too much knowledge from the audience about his subject. As a gamer myself, that the East Coast was waking up was an obvious tension builder and the suggestion that the game had been hacked was an inciting incident that drew me in. The mention of the spirit guide in the first par indicated to me that there was going to be a supernatural element and that was enough for me, in the first 16 lines, to wonder if we would be moving into some ./hack-meets-Ghost-in-the-Shell territory - definitely to my taste.
Which brings me to the "it's just a game" point: might this not be a little too subjective? The point was that the character's job was about to become a nightmare (and potentially dangerous if the supernatural element played out.) If "it's just a game" were a relevant point then the extension might be that we must only have characters who are doctors, police or other such professions in which the jeopardy (and nobility?) is obvious - a little boring, no?
Posted by: Danielle | October 24, 2009 at 08:22 AM
I was really confused in Version One. Did Phyllis the spirit guide wake Shannon up at 4 a.m. and tell her to check the computer, or did she get a phone call from her boss that woke her, as in "Larry wanted everything pronto."
What do "[ops-David] [Dev-Shannon] [PM-Larry]" mean?
When it says that she "took a moment to center herself" I imagined her sitting in a yoga pose on the carpet, eyes closed, breathing deeply. Is that what it means?
I like Version Two, despite Nathan Bransford's post. I think it was handled well and interesting enough to turn the apge.
Posted by: Christine H | October 24, 2009 at 12:13 PM
Christine, that's what puzzled me. How did Shannon know to get up and work at the computer?
I voted Yes to both openings, but think the first could be clearer.
Posted by: lexi Revellian | October 25, 2009 at 04:28 AM
I am not a gamer, so I was confused by parts of the first version. Since "Destiny" was capitalized, I wondered briefly if it was someone's named. I also wondered if "spirit guide" was a gaming term I wasn't familiar with.
I didn't have the "it's-only-a-game-therefore not-important" reaction some others had, however. Since this is Shannon's job, even if it is "only a game" to others, it would be of importance to her. Maybe to up the stakes, Shannon could be at risk of her losing her job if she doesn't fix the problem ASAP? Maybe she is already on probation at this job, is seriously in debt, and cannot afford to lose this job?
In spite of some of the confusing bits, I found the story interesting, and was drawn in and wanted to continue reading it.
Posted by: Bdub | October 25, 2009 at 10:42 AM
Kill the spirit guide paragraph and I would read the first version before the second, but as it is I had to vote no. And I would like just a touch of the books Genre to come through. I usually am picking up books in the sci-fi section, so I read this as that, and would read at least the second page to see if it was the kind of Sci-fi I like.
Posted by: von | October 25, 2009 at 04:05 PM
No on the first. The capitalized Destiny and Phyllis were confusing, and the emotions (buried in shame, etc) and stakes (it's only a video game after all) seemed manufactured. Yes on the second.
Kyle seems to be coming too following a concussion (unconsciousness) in the second one rather than waking up from sleep, which is where the cliche originates. So I had no problems whatsoever with it.
To me, there is really little intrigue in the first one. The second one raises greater intrigue and much greater stakes. Your call, though.
Sounds like an interesting story. Good luck with it.
Posted by: Marcel | October 26, 2009 at 01:06 AM