Flogometer for Ellie—would you turn the page?

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Have you checked out my book trailer video? Would you mind sharing it with friends?

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The Flogometer challenge: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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Ellie’s opening lines:

Demas was fourteen when his parents sent him away.

Early that morning, he had woken with a feeling of unrest only a rollicking horse could settle. So he decided to race Mama around their property.

A tall black man, large and regal as the mountain kings, lay in wait beside the gate on a tall black stallion. His bearing was bored until he caught sight of the duo approaching. They brought a joyous smile to his lips.

"Karla. Demas. Have a good race?" He trotted out to meet them.

"No," Demas said.

"Yes," Karla said.

Kenan reached his hand to Karla and they entwined fingers for a moment.

"Did my boy get beat by his Mama again?"

"She's fast," Demas said, then shot a look at Karla, hoping she would say nothing about his fall off his horse. “But I’ll beat her one of these days.”

The horses took five steps before she replied. “Yes . . . when I’ve lost all my teeth and my bones are rattlin’ in my skin.” Demas smiled.

"Not if you keep up your obsessive riding disorder,” Kenan said.

Needs tension

The writing is clean and we start with a scene and an opening line that raises a story question—but then we sort of trail off into greetings and conversation about nothing much (for this reader, anyway). The next few pages lay out this world for us, and includes plenty of exposition—but not much in the way of tension. Finally, on the fourth page, something dramatic happens. I’ll include that in a moment. Notes:

Demas was fourteen when his parents sent him away.

Early that morning, he had woken with a feeling of unrest only a rollicking horse could settle. So he decided to race Mama around their property.

A tall black man, large and regal as the mountain kings, lay in wait beside the gate on a tall black stallion. His bearing was bored until he caught sight of the duo approaching. They brought a joyous smile to his lips. (The double use of “tall” should be avoided. In addition, “tall” is a comparative term—unless we know tall in relation to what, it doesn’t really mean anything. Is there a way you can show this tallness? Is it important that the horse is tall?)

"Karla. Demas. Have a good race?" He trotted out to meet them.

"No," Demas said.

"Yes," Karla said.

Kenan reached his hand to Karla and they entwined fingers for a moment.

"Did my boy get beat by his Mama again?"

"She's fast," Demas said, then shot a look at Karla, hoping she would say nothing about his fall off his horse. “But I’ll beat her one of these days.”

The horses took five steps before she replied. “Yes . . . when I’ve lost all my teeth and my bones are rattlin’ in my skin.” Demas smiled. (The horse taking five steps is a bit of overwriting, in my view—detail that doesn’t really contribute. I noticed more of the same in the later pages.)

"Not if you keep up your obsessive riding disorder,” Kenan said.

Here’s another set of lines from later in the chapter. They won’t work as they are because names are introduced that you don’t know about and the scene isn’t set, and it needs to be trimmed here and there, but don’t you think the potential for a compelling opening is here?

A flaming sheep burst out of the poplars.

Mouth screwed in anguish, it issued forth a high-pitched wail. Its fluffy down was smothered in greasy tar; puffy smoke trailed its wild bucking. In between frenzied leaps and curls, the creature smashed its face into the ground. Finding no relief, it would start its panicked twirling again.

The three watched in spineless horror until the sight of another flaming sheep startled Kenan into action. The second sheep came from the same pasture, furiously running down the road away from them.

"Demas, shoot them." Kenan voice grew deep and rumbling, as it always did when every second mattered. Demas strung his bow taut with an arrow before Kenan finished his next words. "Shoot to kill. Put those beasts out of their misery."

Demas hesitated only a moment before silencing the hysterical sheep. He notched another arrow into his bow and let it fly through the other sheep's heart.

Kenan, Karla, and Demas kicked their horses and jumped the fence. They saw twelve more bonfires with legs, running wildly around the grassy pasture.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

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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.

© 2010 Ray Rhamey

Chapter 4 Lester seeks revenge

Ray Rhamey's Podcast

Comments

[Aimee Laine]

I said 'yes' because I laughed at the last line. Made me think of my OCD kids. :) However, without a good handle on who was who ... this line ... "So he decided to race Mama around their property." made me think Mama was the horse! :)

[mcd]

The first selection didn't work for me on several levels: the situation wasn't fresh enough, or tense enough, to keep me going. And I stumbled on some of the word choices: I also thought Mama was a horse, and when I figured out she was the mother, I thought she was abusive, because of the "did my boy get beat by his mama again?" phrase in the context of him getting sent away.

The second selection, with the flaming sheep, though? Absolutely. It set up a great story question (did someone do this maliciously, or is it a wildfire somewhere), and, very importantly, it put the hero in terrible personal situation that the reader can sympathize with (putting down a suffering animal). I'd read that. Good luck!

[hope101]

I had some of the same issues as mcd. At first I thought the MC might be human, and because of the "sent away" line, the father's regal manner seemed more ominous. As a result, I construed the beating as a literal event.

It also seemed the story might be narrated from the viewpoint of a horse, given the "trotting" verb. It was only the use of fingers that firmly oriented me.

The second scene, however, was fabulous. I'd definitely turn the page for that one. I prefer to be pulled into the story as it unfolds, rather than be told in advance it's going to be a bad day for the MC. That's just my personal bias.

[Liz Tee]

I was completely confused about who was who in the first scene. I thought Mama was the horse until a commenter noted otherwise. I had no idea who Karla was. If Demas thinks of her as Mama in the beginning, he would think of her that way throughout the scene, wouldn't he? The second scene was much more intriguing.

[jon]

Hiya, Ellie!

This one was a no for me, alas.

The first line is good, definitely had me going on to line 2. I liked the "no/yes" responses - I knew right away who'd won. That was a really, really nice touch. The dialog as a whole was very nice. I liked it a lot, and I liked the way the question of what's going to happen to Demas hung over the whole excerpt. Nice work.

But the not-so-good unfortunately overwhelmed the good, for me.

The second paragraph... I thought Mama was his horse! Boy was I confused through the rest of the excerpt! Plus, the "so he decided" bit made me think of a kid's chapter book.

Then we jump to a gate, and the tall guy there. He was regal, he was laying in wait... and his bearing was bored. Until he saw them, when presumably it changed again.

That's FOUR different positions this guy is in in my head, in the space of a single paragraph... and to boot, we jump from Demas' POV to (Kenan?)'s, three paragraphs in to the story.

We have name and character confusion - Demas, Mama, Karla, Kenan, and a large black man. It took three reads to figure out who's who -- most readers won't give a piece that much time.

We have Demas smiling in a the same paragraph in which someone else is speaking - which makes it seem like Demas was the speaker, which he wasn't.

And to cap it off, we have Kenan saying something to Demas in response to Karla's reply!

The first fix you'll probably want to make here is to pick a POV. If the POV character is Demas, then Karla can always be Mama and Demas can always be Father (or whatever) - that will clear up a lot of the confusion.

Good luck with this piece! Thanks for sharing!

-j

[Doug]

Perfect English (surprisingly rare) and a fine feel for laying out narrative was undercut by poor content choices in the opening.

Opening with an interesting sentence and then changing the subject to something much less interesting is not going to win friends and readers. As Anne Mini writes, "since agents don’t like to be tricked — better write that one down, so you don’t forget it — they tend to instruct their screeners to stop reading as soon as it is apparent that such a bait-and-switch has occurred."

I admit to having gotten confused/lost many times while reading that first page. It started with the "feeling of unrest only a rollicking horse could settle", continued with thinking that Mama was that horse, or maybe she was another horse in which case maybe the narrator is a horse, too, or not.

The large black man "lay in wait", which is a phrase that carries ominous connotations, but then he turns out to be a good friend. He trotted out to meet the others, but I thought he was on a horse. Maybe the horse trotted.

For just an instant, I interpreted "get beat" as physical violence, but then I figured it out.

In all, reading that first page was a relatively disorienting experience.

I disagree with Ray about removing the "horses took five steps". I think it's a lot better than the alternative "There was a long pause."

I'd suggest a double-dash rather than an ellipsis: "Yes--when I've..." An ellipsis in dialogue indicates a voice trailing off.

The "Demas smiled" at the end of that paragraph was out of place, since it's Karla's paragraph. Personally, I'm not a fan of lots of smiling in fiction anyway; most of the time (as here), it's the spelled-out equivalent of a :) emoticon. We're in Demas's point of view, so it wouldn't hurt to let us know what Demas was thinking that made him smile.

Speaking of PoV, the distant PoV isn't all that popular these days. Getting in closer to Demas's thoughts and feelings would be better.

In the end, though, the killer was that nothing much happened on that page. Demas and Karla raced their horses (told and not shown), Demas fell off (in flashback), and Kenan rode up for some small talk.

As for the burning sheep:

I realize that no animals were harmed in the writing of this scene, but the image of multiple burning sheep still made me uncomfortable enough that I didn't want to read on. I might've handled one sheep, but not a multitude of them.

The word 'down' is not usually used in conjunction with sheep.

I'm not convinced about Kenan's voice growing deep and rumbling when every second counts. People's voices go up in pitch when they're mentally stressed.

Demas is still with Karla, not sent away. The "bait and switch" tag is now firmly attached to the opening line.

The horses, sheep, and bows and arrows make me think that this story is set in the past. But Kenan's comment about "obsessive riding disorder" made me think that it was contemporary.

This is a much more interesting scene, and the opening line is a real attention-grabber. Except for my squeamishness at the ovine abuse, I certainly would've read on.

[jon]

doug @11:19:

I'm a big animal fan, and I'd certainly feel awful at seeing a real burning sheep, but it sure made for a powerful image.

The thing the author should worry about with the dozen burning sheep, though, is that for some readers, what is horrifying in the singular actually becomes kinda funny in some multiple that varies per reader and per [item]. And then past some further threshold it may well become horrying again...

One zombie shambling after the protag? Ack! Run, protag, run! Ten zombies? Ack! Run faster, protag, run faster! Exactly one hundred zombies? So that every turn he takes there's another zombie right there? We're getting kinda slapstick.

A million zombies, crowding the streets so you can't see the pavement, it's all dripping flesh and ruined faces? Back to horrifying...

The writer kinda got that, I think - at the end, called 'em bonfires with legs. Which is, animal cruelty aside (and this is all electrons, so there's no cruelty involved except to the squeamish), a pretty amusing way of phrasing it.

FWIW.

-j

[Margo Kelly]

I was confused with the beginning. I thought Mama was a horse, and then I wondered if the horses were talking?... too confusing for me.

The second scene Ray posted was more compelling, easier to follow, and I wanted to know what was going to happen next.

[kathy]

No. I was confused as to if these were mythical horse/people. People with horses etc.

[Trip Volpe]

I'll second what everybody else said about the name confusion. I had to go through a couple of times before I was sure who was who — in fact, I'm still not completely certain. As Jon said, pick a POV and stick with it and you'll be a long way towards dispelling the confusion.

I also have to echo the sentiment about burning sheep becoming hilarious instead of horrifying at a certain threshold! For me, that happened when you described "twelve more bonfires with legs." I actually laughed out loud at that one; as terrible as it would be to witness burning animals in person, in literature an escalating succession of tragedies can become absurd or humorous in short order, especially if you're not careful about tone. If you didn't mean for the reader to chuckle at the field full of flaming fleeceballs, I would replace the language "bonfires with legs" with something that more appropriately expresses the horror or surprise you're going for.

And there were a few other small issues in that section:

>> "...it issued forth a high-pitched wail."

A bit of oververbiage here that I think does not have the intended meaning. "Issue forth" as a verb phrase doesn't usually take an object. So a knight can issue forth on a deadly mission, but he is less likely to issue forth a chilling battle cry. Probably he would simply issue it instead.

But personally, I would avoid using "issue" here at all — go with something more direct.

>> "...the sight of another flaming sheep startled Kenan into action."

We are told that Kenan was startled into action, but then he doesn't do anything except tell Demas to shoot the sheep. Also, "startled into action" here borders on plain telling and seems to come mostly from Kenan's POV. As mentioned before, it would be a good idea to improve the consistency of the POV. Whose thoughts and feelings should we be hearing in this scene?

Also, you have a sheep "furiously running" here, and a little while later you have more sheep "running wildly." I'd probably get rid of at least one of these adverbs, and maybe rephrase a little to better describe what the sheep are doing.

>> "Shoot to kill. Put those beasts out of their misery."

A minor nitpick, but this felt to me like a slightly overlong statement given the stressful circumstances. Just "put them out of their misery" would be a better fit, IMHO.

>> "He notched another arrow into his bow..."

I think you need "nock" here, not "notch." To notch something means to cut a notch into it, whereas to nock an arrow means to set it to the bowstring. You probably don't need "into his bow" there either — omitting it would make the sentence flow faster, which is probably good in this situation.

All that said, the story questions raised in the burning sheep scene were definitely enough to get me interested. Why are the sheep on fire? Whose sheep are they? Are they weaponized sheep maybe, intended to spread fire through an entire village? I want to know! This got me much more interested in the characters — and what part of their lives or livelihoods might be threatened by this new development — than the introductory conversation did. If you tidy that up a bit and make it your first page material, you'll have a much more gripping opening.

Good luck!

[Victoria Dixon]

I will vote no. I wasn't even sure at first if Demas was a rider or a horse. That said, beginning your book with a flaming sheep, bows and arrows and fire is hard to beat.

[Marcel]

Since you received great advice, I just wanted to add in my small monetary denomination to say that beginning with the flaming sheep seems like a more natural, and interesting, beginning. It hooked me. Good luck.

[Doug]

Ellie: my earlier comment didn't really convey my enthusiasm for the burning sheep as a first page.

It's got a killer first line that immediately makes the reader wonder what's going on. The main characters take action (Yes!!) to minimize the damage. Then they find that the situation is much worse; we wonder if they'll be able to contain it (how many arrows do they have?) It's clear that something major's afoot.

If we don't keep reading, we'll never find out how the protagonists dealt with the other sheep, and we'll never find out what is behind this clearly man-made atrocity.

Plus, that page shows off your solid writing mechanics.

Start there, if it's at all possible. And don't worry about folks like me who might be squeamish at a flock of flaming sheep. You can't please everyone.

[Ellie Ann]

Thank you everyone with your incredible advice. It was all so helpful and now I know exactly where I should start the MS.
-Ellie Ann