Flogometer for Jayme—would you turn the page?

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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). 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.

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Jayme‘s first 16 lines:

The pages were brown and crumbling beneath her fingers as she held the book close to her face, reading the fine cursive. The last entry:

"August 26, 1865-Today I shot him in the belly and killed him. I had wanted to do it for a long time. Mama had us roll up his body in our fancy rug and we buried him in the yard, by the garden. I had to scrub the floor for a good hour after we buried him, but the blood stained the wood. I would think Ma will need a new rug."

Samantha let the diary fall to the floor. Heart pounding she ran down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. The sky was gray, the ground soggy under her shoes. Samantha scanned the yard. Where the hell would the garden have been? There was a line of ten rose bushes that paralleled a little stone walk way from the house to the back side of the bakery, a pile of rocks, and a plastic lawn chair lost in the abundance of thick weeds. Think damn it, think! There was clearing in the center of the yard, over grown but familiar. It could have been the place where grandma had her tomato plants and cucumbers. Grabbing a rusty shovel that was propped up against the side of the farm house, she ran across the yard to the side of the garden. It was a shot in the dark. The rain was really coming down now. Plunging the shovel into the wet dirt frantically she dug. A couple shovel fulls and nothing. Moving a few feet over, nothing. Another hole and the shovel hit (snip)

I turned this page

Despite a few craft concerns, the story question—will she find the body—was strong enough for me to want to know what happened next (she finds it). Notes:

The pages were brown and crumbling beneath her fingers as she held the book close to her face, reading the fine cursive. The last entry: (Would the pages really be crumbling? Doesn’t see likely, it’s not that old. Fragile, perhaps, but not crumbling.)

"August 26, 1865-Today I shot him in the belly and killed him. I had wanted to do it for a long time. Mama had us roll up his body in our fancy rug and we buried him in the yard, by the garden. I had to scrub the floor for a good hour after we buried him, but the blood stained the wood. I would think Ma will need a new rug." (Strong hook. One nit—why “Mama” in one place and “Ma” in another? Seems like it should be consistent.)

Samantha let the diary fall to the floor. Heart pounding (cliché) she ran down the stairs, through the kitchen and out the back door. The sky was gray, the ground soggy under her shoes. Samantha scanned the yard. Where the hell would the garden have been? A line of ten rose bushes that paralleled a little stone walk way walkway from the house to the back side of the bakery, a pile of rocks, and a plastic lawn chair lost in the abundance of thick weeds. Think damn it, think! There was clearing in the center of the yard, overgrown but familiar. It could have been the place where grandma had her tomato plants and cucumbers. Grabbing a rusty shovel that was propped up against the side of the farm house, she ran across the yard to the side of the garden. It was a shot in the dark. (cliché) The rain was really coming down now. Plunging the shovel into the wet dirt frantically s She dug. A couple shovel fulls of shovelfuls and nothing. Moving a few feet over, nothing. Another hole and the shovel hit (snip) (I think this should be broken into smaller paragraphs—a large block of text can be offputting)

The rest of the chapter needs work, Jayme, but you’ve a good start. Watch out for overuse of adverbs.

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:

1. 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.
2. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
3. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
4. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
5. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
6. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

ARCHIVES

© 2009 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Tim]

I agree with Ray's suggestion of breaking up the riveting but long paragraph. Just the sight of a lengthy paragraph at a story's beginning - regardless of its contents - is enough to turn off many readers and encourage them to stop reading. Great beginning, though. I wanted to read more.

[Sheila]

I liked the scene here, it's filled with good story questions. I would definitely read on. I liked the "think, damn it, think!" because I could feel her urgency, and that hooked me.

Couple of nit picks: "I would think ma would need a new rug." I didn't really like that sentence. They just buried a guy in the old rug and there's a stain on the wood. Of course she's going to need a new rug. If your going for irony or humor, I think you could word it better.

Also, "the rain was really coming down now" - implies that the rain had been doing something different before. But there had been no mention of rain, just grey skies.

Good luck!

[Jenny]

I definitely would have turned the page. The story questions were compelling, and the scene opens right in the middle of the action with no forays into backstory to slow us down.

I really liked the voice in the diary entry, and I thought the "I would think Ma will need a new rug" line was the best part. The killing of (presumably) a person is recounted with the same detachment as a report on the slaughter of an old hen that had stopped laying. That in itself raises questions. The fact that its author personally scrubbed the floor implies that it was a young woman who pulled the trigger. If I had been in a bookstore and if the diary entry had been set in italics, I would have flipped through the book to see whether that intriguing voice from the past figures again.

I agree the last paragraph could stand to be broken up. I wasn't crazy about the "Think, damn it, think" line because it felt a bit cliché, making the urgency it injects seem artificial.

I had a problem visualizing how a "clearing" could be "overgrown", and also why it should be described as "familiar".

And I have my doubts about how long a body wrapped in a rug and laid in raw earth would survive in such a climate. But there may be a good reason for that (or perhaps the body itself was not what Samantha was seeking), and I would have read at least long enough to find out.

[Doug]

In general agreement with Ray's comments and the comments above. Personally, I'd break the long paragraph into three: the action of running to the yard and the description of the sky, the "where would it be" rumination, and the action of grabbing the shovel and digging. Action/thought/action.

Pet peeve of mine: I don't see any reason not to name Samantha in the opening sentence. I don't much care for personal pronouns running around without antecedents. :-)

For me the big question that I'd turn the page to find the answer to is, "What's the all-fired rush?" The person had been buried almost 150 years ago, but Samantha is clearly driven to act immediately, and she rushes out into a fairly heavy rain to begin the digging.

I also thought the reference to "grandma" was a bit off. Presumably we're looking for the place where "Ma" from 1865 had a garden, and she couldn't really be "grandma" for anyone currently alive (the plastic lawn chair was a good telling detail for the setting).

Definitely could use a fair amount of editing work, but definitely a strong opening scene.

[hope101]

I turned the page because of the story questions raised. However, I'm going to need a very good reason to justify Samantha's sense of urgency given the time that has elapsed, and that she's willing to ruin a crime scene. (If it's that urgent to her, chances are it will be to someone else as well.)

Also, to avoid problems with detection and animals, the body would have had to be buried deeper than a few shovelfuls of dirt.

That said, you've certainly got tension and some good story questions for me. I'd turn the page.

[Christine H]

I thought it was definitely compelling, but the rain bothered me. Anyone who has actually tried digging in a downpour knows what a mess it is... the rain washes all the dirt and mud right back into the hole. Anything you tried to dig up would only settle deeper, and be so obscured by mud it would be nearly impossible to find, especially since it wouldn't be near the surface (as someone else pointed out). If it was raining that hard, I would think she would wait a little longer. After all, it's been almost 150 years.. what will one more day matter?

Otherwise - great tension, great story questions. I do think that the paper of the diary would probably tend to disintegrate into flakes, depending on the conditions in which it was stored. My husband found a confederate bill between some floorboards while helping a friend move, and it was so fragile it nearly fell apart in his hands.

[Marcel]

I voted no despite starting with what should have been a great scene. Just about everything, to me, felt forced.

What I couldn't get around was best articulated by Doug. He said: For me the big question that I'd turn the page to find the answer to is, "What's the all-fired rush?" The person had been buried almost 150 years ago, but Samantha is clearly driven to act immediately, and she rushes out into a fairly heavy rain to begin the digging.

To me, the natural way someone would approach this situation is the following. They would read the journal entry, as done here. That would evoke some kind of reaction (disbelief, outrage, confusion, etc--pick one). This would lead to internal monologue assessing what the protag just read (I'm assuming it's a brand new revelation). Only after this would the protag do something (personally, I'd find it much more suspenseful if she apprehensively looked out the first floor window at the back yard--either while having that internal monologue I just talked about or after the monologue as she tries to figure the spot where the body was buried). And as mentioned, there is no reason to rush. Where's the fire, to insert another cliche?

She seems too eager to find the body. Not believable in the context presented so far.

So, the set-up has potential (more than I give it credit for given the feedback you are getting), but I'd like more plausibility. Or realism. Maybe this is YA and these issues aren't as essential.

But I can't deny there's something interesting. I'd just flush it out differently. Good luck with it.

[Q of D]

"but what about the words of Renni Browne and Dave King, who wrote the much-recommended tome Self-Editing for Fiction Writers? In the chapter entitled “Sophistication,” they ascribe overuse of ingy words to hack writers and profess that “awareness of them when revising will help your work look like that of a professional rather than an amateur”..."

http://www.mcrw.com/lovenotes/participialphrases.htm

Same with passive writing, btw.

[Jodi]

Overall, good. The journal entry was unusual, and I want to know why the character wants to know about the body so much and why that entry was the last entry in the journal. My only real concern is the journal entry doesn't sound very period.

Jodi