Flogometer for Melissa—would you turn the page?

What happens if you throw a contest and nobody comes? Nobody wins. This is pretty embarrassing—no one wanted to win a signed book and maybe some gear enough to enter the BuzzBlast contest. Ah, well. I’ll try something else next week. I still need help spreading the word to visit www.vampirekittycat.com. Will you?

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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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Melissa has sent a prologue and first chapter. The prologue’s first 16 lines:

The cool spring morning carried the sounds of children running and playing. A father was taking his daughter for a ride on a pony. The daughter held onto the reigns tightly, but completely trusted her father to keep her safe as they rode up the mountainside.

“There you go now. I think I will be letting go soon.”

“No, father, wait!” the child cried. “Not yet.”

“Okay, okay.”

“Don’t let go!” the child persisted.

“I think you have it, Ella. I am going to let go.”

“Okay,” the child said warily.

The father let go, watching his daughter with pride. He adored her, and everyone they knew said that she had him tied tightly around her little finger.

“Father, I’m scared!”

“You’re doing fine, Ella. Keep going.”

The pony began trotting faster and the child lost all confidence and security. She let go of the reigns and leaned backward as the horse continued to move. The ground caught her after (snip)

And now the opening of the first chapter

If you drink water and breathe air, then you have heard the story of Cinderella. And, if you drink water and breathe air, you have heard it…wrong.

There was no fairy Godmother, no glass slipper. There was no wicked step mother or wicked step sisters. There wasn’t even a prince, at least not in the way that you might think. And if you are expecting everyone to live happily ever after, you might as well stop reading now. For a happy ending is not something that can be expected or predicted, and the story is still unfolding, even as you read.

The true story of Cinderella is about a family, which consisted of a father, a mother, and four sisters. The family lived in a small cottage on the side of a steep mountain. It was embedded deep in a grove of aspen trees, and was a great distance from any other structure in the kingdom.

For a time, the family was happy. The father and mother found joy in their daughters, played with them while they were still small, took the time to tuck them in at night, and treated them all as precious jewels. The sisters played together well, and grew in friendship and love, with only the occasional sisterly squabble, like when the eldest would rip from the hands of the youngest her favorite toy merely to see her wail.

For me, the first chapter was irresistible
A strong, confident narrative voice assured me that I had one of the most famous stories on the planet all wrong—how could I not turn the page? The prologue, on the other hand, didn’t manage to create much in the way of tension or raise story questions. The child did fall off the pony, but the tone and mood of the narrative suggested that there would be no harm (there was none).

But the chapter opening, in addition to challenging what I “believe” about Cinderella, also raised story questions with this line: For a time, the family was happy. There was also the suggestion of cruelty ahead from the eldest sister. With that foreshadowing, I knew something bad would happen to them, and I wanted to know what it was, especially in the context of this unfairytale. Nice work, Melissa.

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.

ARCHIVES

© 2010 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Lexi Revellian]

In brief: prologue bad, first chapter good.

The prologue has POV shifts that even I noticed, fancy speech tags, unnecessary adverbs, vapid dialogue, and no tension. The first chapter is authoritative, thought-provoking, with a beguiling fairy story quality.

It's difficult to believe they were written by the same person - you don't suppose Melissa is pulling your leg, Ray?

[Doug]

The prologue was not in the same class as the first chapter. It also didn't seem to be anything that I needed to know in order to understand the first chapter. Without having seen the rest of the work, my immediate reaction is to recommend that you dump it and work it in as needed later. Prologues are a warning flag for manuscript screeners, so don't use one if you don't need it.

The prologue suffers some craft problems. The word is "reins", not "reigns". I didn't understand how the father was protecting Ella -- how he could "let go". The dialogue section was repetitive and none of the dialogue tags were necessary.

The first chapter is much better written.

Directly addressing the reader, as is done in the first two paragraphs, is usually called "authorial intrusion" and is frowned upon in some quarters.

A couple of aggrandizements put me off. Lots of humans (and animals) "drink water and breathe air" without ever having heard the story. And you're not telling the "true story" of Cinderella, you're telling a work of fiction.

I guess I'm saying that for my taste, I'd cut the prologue and the first two paragraphs of Chapter 1, and remove the word "true" from the first sentence of the second paragraph.

Minor wording quibble: "a family, which consisted of" was a bit clunky for me. I'd have gone with something simpler like, "A family with four daughters lived in a small cottage...". We readers can fill in the father and mother from the word "family".

In the following sentence, the "It" at the start doesn't have a clear antecedent. I'd start with "Their cottage..."

At the end of the first page, the ordering of the words, "would rip from the hands of the youngest her favorite toy" made me think that Yoda had picked up the narration. It also left me unclear as to whose favorite toy it was.

Also at the very end, "see her wail" seemed rather synesthetic.

The Chapter 1 sequence shows very good writing ability. The prologue, not so much.

I voted 'no' on the prologue because it was uninteresting and not well written.

I voted 'no' on Chapter 1 purely because I've read so many Cinderella re-imaginings that you'd need something really, really special, and I didn't see any promise of that here. (For the record, my favorite re-imaginings are the movie "Ever After" and the relevant bits of Sheri S. Tepper's "Beauty".)

With a different story, or the promise of a truly original re-imagining of this chestnut, I probably would've voted 'yes'.

[Nicola]

I voted no on the prologue and yes on the first chapter.

I'm a fan of fairytale reimaginings, so there's enough going on in the first chapter excerpt to interest me. Not so the prologue. But it's the change in tone and style from the prologue to the first chapter that I find most problematic.

[Chris]

I'm afraid I passed on both.

In the prologue, there just wasn't enough going on to grab my interest. But besides not having anything captivating happening, it has a very distant feel. Using "the father", "the child", and other generic pronouns without identifying the characters by name (even after the father uses "Ella" in his dialogue) holds them at too far of a distance. Maybe the intent is to build mystery as to who these people are, but it doesn't work for me. Plus, the writing is all "telling" without enough "showing" which also adds distance.

I also passed on the chapter beginning, even though the writing is better. For one thing, I really don't care for the whole, "sit back and let me tell you a story" style. To me, this makes this section feel much more like a prologue than the 'live scene' of Melissa's actual prologue. It also makes it almost impossible to NOT have it feel like 'telling' instead of 'showing' -- Heck, the author is intruding to address me directly as she is telling me the story. I'm even expecting a few 'dear readers' thrown in at points ahead.

It's personal preference, but a story has to work overtime to captivate me when written in this style, and this just failed to do it. Yes, the writing is much cleaner in the chapter snippet than in the prologue, but without enough to pull me and and overcome the alienating style, I have to vote 'no'.

Sorry...

[Jon]

Hiya, Melissa.

No for the prologue, yes for the chapter 1, for me.

Loads of "telling" in the prologue, to go with headhopping from Ella to father and back again.

The piece may have the same pattern in chapter 1, but you've established a very strong narrative voice, one I liked listening to, and thus the headhopping would be that narrator's way of telling the story -- but because the narrator is the focal point of the story due to the voice, that becomes more acceptable. (We're never leaving the narrator's voice, after all.)

A second prologue problem was the dialog. For me, it was too on-the-nose, the words adding nothing to a narrative summary of same. It can be argued that asking for subtext and layers of meaning behind this type of conversation is too much to ask -- and it might be a successful argument as far as I was concerned. That's why I'd let the narrator handle most of the dialog, not the characters. (On the other hand, what if the daughter really wanted to show her daddy she wasn't scared, even though she was terrified? What would THAT dialog look like? Voila! Subtext!)

In Chapter 1, the first paragraph was captivating... but did make me wonder if, then, fish had the right story. Which sent my mind in all sorts of curious directions.

Unfortunately, I don't have time today for nitpicks, but generally I'd say I'm very happy with the chapter 1 opener, and would gladly read on... the hook for me is finding out what the consequences of me not knowing the real story are. What don't I know? And how is that secret history more interesting/darker/scarier/whathaveyou than the known one?

Because these are the questions in my mind, if I don't at least start getting payoff on them on page 2, though, I might not turn to page 3. Not saying that everything needs to be laid out (it very much doesn't), but I at least need to know why I should care that the Bros. Grimm and all the subsequent storytellers have been telling the wrong tale all this time.

Good luck with this piece! Thanks for sharing!

-j

[Kath]

Oh. Shame no one entered the contest. It's a bit hard for me, what with living in another country and facebook etc being banned from the school computers, but, oh well. Better luck next time.

:(

Also thought chapter was good, prologue, not so much.

[Marcel]

I too thought the prologue and chapter one might have been written by a different person.

I agree with everyone on the prologue.

Despite the wonderful voice and great writing, I voted no on chapter one (based on the 16 lines, of course). I didn't mind the authorial intrusion (although I'm not big fan of it either), but I did mind the very distant POV (remote?) it provided to the story. I wanted something closer. As well, I'm also one of "those" that like scenes and showing. So far, this was all telling. Maybe you segue to a scene soon after, and I'd be all over it, but there's no way to know that.

Also, I'm probably not your target group given the story's premise. But good luck with it. There's a lot of promise.

[Victoria Dixon]

I voted no and yes respectively, but the yes was a timid response. If you continue to tell the story instead of allowing the character to do so, I think you'll lose readership fast.

[Michael]

I have to agree with the majority regarding the prologue. The dialogue was clunky and unnatural. I realize after reading the first chapter that maybe there was supposed to be some sort of fairy tale feel, but I wanted a contraction or two so that it felt like I was reading real people talking.

As for the first chapter, I wanted to have character names, not roles. It was too distant.