Flogometer for David—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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Note: this is SF, but don’t let genre likes/dislikes stop you—storytelling considerations are still valid. David’s first 16 lines:

High noon in Mare Orientale: Terra hangs lambent in a black star-shot sky. Invisible to optic and electronics alike, synth-ceramic spheres ring its blue-green orb. Gravitic com-links flickered like summer lightning as the red icon of a gravitic source bloomed in the Mediterranean Sea. Wing pinions thuttering in consternation, the Seeker moved to investigate.

Primary A’Rwth blinked yellow eyes. A grizzly-sized, saurian heavy-worlder, his fearsome exterior belied a nature moderated by thousands of years of civilisation; yet his task was clear. The Triune Protocols required that gengineered species have gravitics before contact; but they also had to be unitary with mores acceptable to the Star Concordiat. Mankind was a long way from that. Worse they were feral. A’Rwth bared glistening sabre-like teeth at the very thought of gravitic-equipped humans raging along the starlines. He rumbled “Deploy the Juggernaut. Confirm the gravitic sighting and waken the Mentor. A decision will be needed on species annihilation and that needs all of us on-line.” The others moved to obey.

* * *

Deep in the asteroid belt, gravitic arrays awoke. A continent-killer moved in-system; others close behind. Unless checked, Apocalypse would fall within a month, scrubbing Terra clean. The decision would not be taken lightly, for it would set aside a plan millions of years in play. It called (snip)

Okay, I wanted to find out if mankind is doomed

I’m a long-time science-fiction reader, and this “forerunner” tale felt familiar in style yet fresh enough in execution to me to want to pursue that story question—will we all die?—a bit further. As with the kind of world-building that goes on in SF and fantasy, there’s an omniscient approach to description, which is admittedly more efficient. But the writing is solid and well within the expectations of the genre. Notes:

High noon in Mare Orientale: Terra hangs lambent in a black star-shot sky. Invisible to optics and electronics alike, synth-ceramic spheres ringed its blue-green orb. Gravitic com-links flickered like summer lightning as the red icon of a gravitic source bloomed in the Mediterranean Sea. Wing pinions thuttering in consternation, the Seeker moved to investigate.

Primary A’Rwth blinked yellow eyes. A grizzly-sized, saurian heavy-worlder, his fearsome exterior belied a nature moderated by thousands of years of civilisation; yet his task was clear. The Triune Protocols required that gengineered species have gravitics before contact; but they also had to be unitary with mores acceptable to the Star Concordiat. Mankind was a long way from that. Worse, they were feral. A’Rwth bared glistening sabre-like teeth at the very thought of gravitic-equipped humans raging along the starlines. He rumbled “Deploy the Juggernaut. Confirm the gravitic sighting and waken the Mentor. A decision will be needed on species annihilation and that needs all of us on-line.” The others moved to obey. (This exposition and description is clearly from outside the point-of-view character, and ordinarily I’d suggest using experiential description to picture it. But this is not likely to be a major continuing character, and the approach works to get us to the annihilation story question and set the scene, alien-wise. On the other hand, rather than “fearsome exterior,” which is blatant “telling,” wouldn’t it have been more fun to see some fearsome body parts instead? “Showing” is still a good idea, even in this kind of opening. I challenge David to rewrite this paragraph from a strict third-person limited pov to see if he can pull it off. Get inside the character’s head, don’t think/do/say anything it wouldn’t ordinarily [such as “I have yellow eyes.”] and give it a try. If you’re in that pov, you can even give the reader a hint of how A’Rwth feels about these developing events. Maybe his years of observation have created sympathy or hatred for mankind. Something to consider . . .)

* * *

Deep in the asteroid belt, gravitic arrays awoke. A continent-killer moved in-system; others close behind. Unless checked, Apocalypse would fall within a month, scrubbing Terra clean. The decision would not be taken lightly, for it would set aside a plan millions of years in play. It called (snip)

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

[Voter]

No turn due to the excessive jargon. I do like science fiction, but you need to introduce new terms at a pace absorbable by the reader. It all makes sense to you as the writer, but I struggled and would have put it back on the shelf.

From what I did understand, it seemed like the beginning of hitchhiker's guide, but serious.

[Darla]

I like sci-fi, but there was just too much at once here, and I felt overwhelmed rather than drawn in.

I didn't make it to the last paragraph the first time around because I was already turned off by all the world building description in the first paragraph, then all the character description in the second paragraph, and by the third, at a glance, I was thinking 'and now we leap to yet another thing'.

After reading Ray's suggestions and getting to the third paragraph there, I liked it. I'd rather start there and expand into who was making that decision. As a resident of Terra, I was more engaged at that point and wanting to know just who was deciding our fate and why.

[Jami G.]

I used to read hard sci-fi years ago, but I still had to read this passage twice before understanding events. As someone else mentioned, there was too much jargon (and yes, I think that's possible, even with hard sci-fi).

For example, look at the 3rd sentence - 'gravitic' shows up twice. Using a word twice in a sentence is bad form in general, much less an unusual word like that. Is the first one even necessary? Would it hurt to say "Com-links flickered..."? I don't think so. And paring back some of these would help with the readability issue as well.

Similarly, watch your use of 'as' when 'when' would be more clear (such as in that same sentence). Since 'as' can mean either 'when', 'while', 'because', or a bunch of other things, I try to use the other words when appropriate to improve clarity. I think readability would be better if the sentence read like "Com-links flickered...when...a gravitic source..." This makes the cause and effect more clear.

The other part that tripped me up was in the second paragraph with "The Triune Protocols..." section." Maybe something like "According to the Triune Protocols, a prerequisite for contact was not only the development of gravitics, but also the gengineered species had to be unitary with mores acceptable to the Star Concordiat. Despite their technological advances, mankind was a long way from the second requirement." Yes, that's still rough, but I'm trying to give an example that shows how to turn the sentence around so it's more clear that gengineered species refers to mankind and that just development of gravitics is not enough, etc.

I hope that helps give some ideas anyway. :) The story question is great, so I think there's some real potential here.

Thanks!
Jami G.

[Adam]

I guess I don't have a sci-fi mind because I wanted to stop reading after the first paragraph. The wording felt very heavy to me, as if the writer spent too much time with his thesaurus, looking up stronger, weightier words when simpler ones would have sufficed. Simplifying some of the jargon and cleaning up the "show don't tell" will go a long way toward improving this.

[Doug]

My preferences in reading lean toward speculative fiction, but this opening drove me away. Initially, I didn't get as far as the part about Terra being in peril. I had to go back and reread after Ray mentioned it.

Too much irrelevant world-description. This early in the book I don't yet have a reason to care. My advice would be to save it for later.

The writing is heavy for my taste. I had to read the second paragraph three times before I understood (at least generally) what was going on there. It wasn't until the third reading that I realized that A'Rwth was not the protagonist.

I'll echo the other commenters about too much stuff being thrown at the reader on the first page. Seeker, Primary, Triune Protocols, Star Concordiat, Juggernaut, Mentor, plus all of the tech terms. Humans are a "gengineered" species? What does that mean?

In the first paragraph I not only don't understand what a Seeker is (creature? sentient? machine? vehicle?), I don't know what "thuttering" is, and I don't understand why something on the atmosphere-less Moon (Mare Orientale) would have wings. I also don't know what the Seeker is off to investigate.

I don't know where A'Rwth is. Is he with the Seeker, or at some unmentioned base at Mare Orientale?

Finally, count me among the many people who tend to avoid SF work with unpronounceable names.

[Lexi Revellian]

Eek! I don't understand what they are saying, but it sounds bad for humanity.

I feel there are too many made-up words. A'Rwth - what kind of a name is that? How does the reader pronounce it?

It did make me laugh, which gains you points.

[disorderly]

David, DO NOT give up on this. I noticed a shift of verb tenses in the first graf, but that's about all I saw that set my teeth on edge. You've done a masterful job here, IMO, of setting an ominous tone. If the story is as good as your tone-setting, I think you're onto something.

Somehow, I suspect at least half the audience bailed at the word "lambent" in the first sentence. Uncommon words, combined with the immediate introduction of foreign concepts, turns off a big chunk of contemporary readers. That may be why "hard sci-fi" is not as popular today as it once was. Heaven forbid Heinlein, Bradbury, Asimov [who not only used big words but also -- gasp! -- dove into deep science] or Le Guin should try to publish a novel these days. I see echoes of all those authors in what you wrote.

I would read more. The last complete sentence thoroughly hooked me.

[Beth]

Having read Asimov,Heinlein, Bradbury & LeGuin et al I wouldn't have turned this page. The techno babble in the first paragraph is too densely written to draw me in.

Start at the second paragraph and I probably would have kept reading.

[von]

It was heavy but, like Ray, I turned this one. There are some sci-fi stuff where you get the heaviness in the prologe, and then suddenly you get some guy sunbathing on a yacht, and things work from them on.

I agree with the double use of gravitic, and lambent.

[Marcel]

I wanted to stop at lambent, but continued because that's what you do with these short critiques.

I too have read Asimov, Heinlein and Bradbury, and this opening did not conjure the image of any of these authors. Sure, their works were heavy on science, but the prose was smooth. Heck, we had to read Heinlein in high school, so that says something about the level of prose he used.

Anyway, I thought the third paragraph read smoother and was a better start to the story. It grabbed me. Unless you are purposely targeting a specific niche (and a small one), I think beginning the story there would work better.

Good luck. Any story that starts with the potential annihilation of the world is an eye catcher.

[Christine H]

I didn't know what 'lambent' meant either, but I love books that send me to the dictionary. I love learning new vocabulary!
(it means: flickering, or softly radiant).

However, I only got about halfway through before I was hopelessly muddled. I'm not a heavy sci-fi reader, but I have read some Heinlein, Bradbury and Asimov.

I got stuck at the synth-ceramic spheres. To me, this sounded like a kind of light fixture for an alien home. I thought that the POV character was looking out his living room window at Earth, the way we look at the moon.

Then I got hopelessly lost.

Some thoughts from a casual reader:

1. If it's noon (implying mid-day) why is the sky black? Well, perhaps there is no atmosphere on the POV's planet, or whatever the heck he's on. Okay.

2. Why are the synth-ceramic spheres invisible to optics and electronics? Is the alien a spy, hiding from other life forms or from the earthlings? Is he living on the moon, observing Earth from a distance? Mare Orientale implies a moon location; I've had enough French to know that "Mer" means "Sea" and a lot of places on the moon are named after bodies of water.

3. I'm assuming a "gravitic source" is a source of gravity. How can a source of gravity bloom in the ocean, i.e. on the surface of a body that has its own gravity due to its own mass (i.e. Terra)? If a huge source of gravity suddenly emerged from the center of a planet, would that not mean that the planet itself was imploding (or exploding) due to the huge shift in its mass? Would it not then careen off its orbit, or something else truly catastrophic?

In that case, external annihilation would be moot.

4. Wing pinions fluttering implies to me that the Seeker is a mythological figure like a seraphim. But, space is a vacuum so what is he fluttering against? He could only propel himself with that motion if there was something like air present. Or is he truly angelic and insubstantial? I'm assuming the angelic, which then puts this in the metaphysical realm.

5. Primary A'rwth - This is just my personal pet peeve, but what is it with names that have apostrophes in the middle? I keep encountering this phenomenon, and am not sure how I'm supposed to pronouce or interpret it. I'm assuming this is "uh-rith"? And he has yellow eyes, and a physical body. So how does he relate to the insubstantial seeker and this living room window vision?

I know I'm being nitpicky here, and I hope you don't hate me for it. I just wanted to give you a sense of my thought process as I read (and re-read) this, to help you think of ways to make it a little more accessible. I have read some sci-fi in my younger days, but it's been a long time.

[Christine H]

P.S. To clarify, I should have said that "I've had enough French to know that "Mer" (which is pronounced "mare") means "sea" and so "Mare Orientale" means "Oriental Sea" and not "Oriental horse."

[Christine H]

This is more of a question than a comment... Am I the only reader who looks for meanings and links in sci-fi and fantasy names? I don't expect randomness, I want some consistency of language / meaning.

Am I overanalyzing?

[Christine H]

After going back and re-reading 8 hours later, I feel totally stupid for not getting it the first time.

[Darcy]

I haven't read any heavy science fiction, so I don't know anything about the conventions and terminology common to the genre. My comments are from the point of view of an avid reader who is interested in a variety of genres.

I really enjoyed the combination of cold technological terms with warm, earthy images such as blooming and summer lightning. Also, the potential destruction of Earth and mankind is definitely page-turning material. However, I found it so hard to orient myself in the first paragraph that I stopped reading and had to make a second attempt when I was feeling more like decoding.

I didn't know if our POV character was on the moon, in a spacecraft hovering above the moon or on Terra. I assumed on the moon looking at Earth. The next sentence confused me further, as I thought at first it was Terra that was invisible to electronics.

I'm still not entirely sure what was happening in the third sentence, but after several readings, I'm guessing that "Gravitic com-links flickered" on a monitor or informational panel of some sort? I was originally picturing something literally flickering/blooming in the Mediterranean.

By the last sentence, I decided that the POV character was in a ship hiding in the shadows of a moon crater, but by that time I found my enjoyment of the prose was far outweighed by the effort involved in following the story.

I was glad I went back and tried again later, because the next 2 paragraphs were much easier to follow. As much as I was turned off by the first paragraph, I was hooked by those 2. I think the first would have been clearer if it had read something like this:

High noon in Mare Orientale. Terra hangs lambent in a black star-shot sky. Synth-ceramic spheres, invisible to optics and electronics alike, ring its blue-green orb. On Primary A'Rwth's screen, the red icon of a gravitic source blooms in the Mediterranean Sea. Corresponding com-links flicker like summer lightning. Wing pinions thuttering in consternation, the Seeker moves to investigate.

Forgive me if I've totally mangled it--I'm still not sure I grasped what was going on, but hopefully the gist of my comments will be helpful. I think if you're aiming for a general audience, you need to help them visualize more clearly. On a side note, I would find the tense switch less jarring if it happens along with the shift to the closer POV instead of randomly after a couple of sentences.