Flogometer for Tami—would you turn the page?

But first . . .

"Just when you think that the vampire genre is pretty much exhausted and headed toward cookie-cutter, assembly line style repetition, along comes Ray Rhamey's "The Vampire Kitty-Cat Chronicles" to shake things up! Patch is a rather undistinguished and ordinary calico tomcat -- until he gets turned into a vampire! Now his 'life' is complicated by mobs with torches, hostile undead, daylight, and perhaps worst of all -- politicians.

“Superbly crafted by Ray Rhamey, who demonstrates and documents himself an inventive and skilled storyteller, "The Vampire Kitty-Cat Chronicles" is enthusiastically recommended for fans of the vampire genre -- and anyone who would enjoy a terrifically original and thoroughly entertaining action/adventure fantasy yarn! Incidentally, it's no accident that Ray Rhamey is also the author of ‘Flogging the Quill: Crafting a Novel that Sells.’"

Midwest Book Review.

A sample of The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles is here. You can order a paperback or e-book copy there, too.

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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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Tami is new to this novel-writing thing. Here are her opening lines:

I was a sophomore when it started. Eighth grade ended with the onslaught of puberty, my freshman year wrought with the awkwardness of certain body parts trying to morph from bony and girlish to womanly, and by the time I entered my second year of high school I had curves in, according to the boys, all the right places.

I never intended to let anyone get so physical… Jake just caught me off guard. He was the kind of guy I would fantasize about- the most popular boy in school, a baseball star in the junior class, who would miraculously see me, to whom I’d stand out from a sea of anonymity, and he’d whisk me off my feet and fill my life with joy.

I wasn’t the type to pursue anyone for anything, let alone a boy for a relationship, so I was flattered when Jake- Super hot Jake! Interviewed by ESPN when he led the team to the state championship last year! Sought after by popular senior girls! THAT Jake!- plopped himself down at my solitary table in the corner of the library during lunch one day. I don’t remember exactly what he said- but I do remember that he was so smooth, caressing me with words pertaining to my beauty, what a special girl I must be, and when he walked away I felt a glow in the pit of my stomach. That was the awakening of the hunger.

A few times a week, Jake would do something- wink at me in the hall, find me at lunch and ask me when I would let him take me out, saunter up to my locker and whisper in my ear that he was (snip)

Not there for me

I like the voice, and the writing is clean, but the narrator is telling me stuff that she thinks I need to know when I’d rather be experiencing something that changes her life in significant ways. Rather than do a detailed critique of these lines, I thought it might be more helpful to Tami if I looked deeper into the narrative (only 4 pages) for something that would draw me in. Here’s a candidate, at the end of the piece:

When Jake used a key to get into a supply closet and immediately began kissing me, I kissed back. I didn’t know what I was doing, but he whispered about the glory of my body in my ear, telling me that he’d dreamed about this moment since the first time he laid eyes on me, and when his hands went up my shirt, he told me my breasts were even more incredible than he’d imagined, and so I did not stop him. When he began to unbutton my pants, he said that no one had ever affected him this way, made him so needy, and so I did not stop him. Instead, when he begged me to need him the way he needed me, I clumsily fumbled with his jeans and when he pulled a condom out of his pocket and wordlessly sought my virginity I freely gave it to him.

Afterward, he zipped up his pants, said something along the lines of, “I hope we can do this again sometime,” and left before I could even pull my own pants back up. While in Jake’s passionate embrace I felt cloaked in love. When he shut the door, leaving me in the dark, surrounded by glue sticks and rulers, I struggled to grasp the shreds slipping through my fingers.

Filthy girl! Horrible, ugly, disgusting, vile little harlot.>The accusations rang through my head, as clear as if someone were speaking to me aloud, their lips inches from my ear.

I had heard that voice before. I knew it well. It started around the time my dad killed himself.

I would definitely turn this page

I felt sympathy for the girl who was so terribly misused, and strong story questions were raised. Keep at it, Tami, it sounds like you have a story to tell and the writing ability to do it. If you don’t mind a commercial message here, I suspect some of the coaching in my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells, could be of help. Perhaps readers who have read it can tell you whether it’s worth purchasing or not.

Thanks for sending your work.

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

Comments

[Deb]

One thing about starting with the second, you definitely know where the story is going. However if this intended for YA I find it too graphic and no reason to care the character. I'm sorry if that sounded a harsh, but as a parent of two teen girls, neither one of them would want to accidently pick this book up. They were upset with PC Cast's semi-detailed sexual scenes, and the story had appeal up until that point for them. My daughter's are 14 and 18. You can use less detail to describe the same scene and make it viable for a young audience. So far to me this hasn't got anything to draw me into the scene. It just sounds like an everyday teenage nightmare and very depressing. Definitely not something I would want most teens reading whose lives are bleak enough.

[hope101]

Tami, I said no to both, but I was very close on the second. I have suggestions about what would have pulled me in.

The first piece, IMHO, is tantamount to backstory. While it raises story questions that interest me, and I like the clarity of the voice, the narrator feels too distant from events to compensate for the fact they're already past. I did like this line, though: "That was the awakening of the hunger."

In the second, you've raised a few pretty critical issues. The problem for me is that I don't feel them. That's a function, IMHO, of the narrator still telling the story above the level of sensory detail, as experienced by her. She's analyzing. The psychic distance is too much for me to feel the punch in the gut of losing her virginity in such an ill-thought out way and having so little insight into how she's going to feel about it after the fact.

This is very clumsy, but I'm sometimes better at showing what I mean. What if you went deeper, so that the first paragraph went something like this?

He had barely closed the door behind us when his lips found mine. They felt firmer than I'd expected, and...etc.

If you can sink into the POV of the character so that we live it with her, you'd probably also catch what I feel is a POV error with a modern-day adolescent saying words like "glory of my body". When he's breathing it in her ear, and we hear what he actually says, it'll be so much cruder and real. (Unless he's swallowed a Compendium of Longfellow. ;)

Anyway, my 2 cents. Honestly, you have a nice voice and pretty significant story questions. If you can make me breathe through her lungs, I'd have turned.

[hope101]

Er, that should say, "If you can make me breathe through her lungs, I'll turn."

[Marcel]

The writing, the voice, the flow was all very good. However, what didn't work for me is that there was nothing new in this piece that I haven't seen innumerable times in movies and shows (I don't read YA). You may have something original to this hackneyed theme later on, but it didn't show up in the samples. So I said no to both (mainly no on the second sample because I didn't sympathize with the main character). If you could bring something more original to the opening pages, I think it would work to your advantage, because like I said initially, you've got a handle on everything else.

Good luck.

[Jon]

Hi, Tami!

Both of these were a yes for me - for me, the second needed the first.

I actually don't have much to critique here. The summary voice WAS telly, but it was a very engaging telling and sucked me in. It's a trifle overwritten ("words pertaining to my beauty"), and maybe the 4 paragraphs in the beginning do each feel a little like their own beginning. But as long as it didn't keep going like that, I'm in.

The second sample, the word "harlot" struck me as hackneyed; the piece will have to sell the Voice as a real old-time biblical type to make me believe it.

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing.

[Renee Yancy]

Tami, I thought it was interesting and well written.

I think some editing could be done to make the prose flow even better.

For instance, when I read "Eighth grade ended with the onslaught of puberty, my freshman year wrought with the awkwardness of certain body parts trying to morph from bony and girlish to womanly, and by the time I entered my second year of high school I had curves in, according to the boys, all the right places."

WOW - that's a long sentence!

I mentally rewrote it as:

"Eighth grade ended wih the onslaught of puberty. Freshman year brought the awkwardness of body parts morphing from bony to womanly. And by the time I entered my sophomore year, I had curves in all the right places. According to the boys, anyway."

You catch my drift. At the very least I would break that sentence up into two. But this is all part of learning the craft, a never ending process.

Take what helps and leave the rest. And keep going!

[Christine H]

Tami, I voted yes for both, though this isn't usually my genre to read or write. I love your voice, and am assuming something good is going to happen to this character. I actually liked the first version better. It actually sounds like a woman looking back on her youth, which is what makes me think that she is telling the story from a perspective of "This is what I thought my life was going to be, but look how it turned out! All the pain was worth it in the end."

I loved that sentence about the "morphing from bony to womanly." I don't think you should chop it up.

Just my opinion, of course.