Friday Fun and Flogometer for Douglas—would you turn the page?

---

You can start the The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles podcast series or subscribe to it here or on iTunes. A sample of the novel is here. You can order a paperback or e-book copy there, too.

Chapter 15 The trial is trying

.Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles

---

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.

---

Douglas’s opening lines:

Dear Journal,

The war has not been going well. Today, we lost the last farms outside of the town walls, and the turpes and foeturs have completed surrounding the town. It seems they are waiting just out of arrow's reach. They may not be smart, but they're at least clever. The Captain said we have enough food and other provisions to hold out for another month, but that he doubts help will come in time. He called for volunteers today to go up into the mountains to discover the turpes plans. Cadmon, Hector, Julie, Red Beard, and I volunteered to be one of those teams.

I'm looking forward to getting out into the woods again. It's been hard being stuck in town for eight weeks. It's hard to focus with people all around who are upset because they've lost their farms and their families.

It's strange how people fall apart when people they know die. Life is such a fleeting thing after all – with people dying all the time. Even though people hear of death everyday, death seems to catch them by surprise when it takes someone they know. Perhaps it's my mental training as a wizard that lets me keep control of my faculties while those around me are loosing theirs.

I wasn’t engaged

While this journal entry does introduce an interesting world and a character who seems to be in jeopardy, bottom line it’s all telling, as a journal would tend to be. The possibility of trouble ahead is there, but then weakened by the character’s musing about death. For this reader, musing is not the way to hook me. The fact that I have no idea what turpes and foeturs are doesn’t help. In the chapter that follows, the protagonist and his companions fight the foeturs, and I still didn’t have an idea of what they were. Note to Douglas: there was a lot of head-hopping, point of view shifts, in your narrative. Generally, that’s not good craft. Notes:

Dear Journal,

The war has not been going well. Today, we lost the last farms outside of the town walls, and the turpes and foeturs have completed surrounding the town. It seems they are waiting just out of arrow's reach. They may not be smart, but they're at least clever. The Captain said we have enough food and other provisions to hold out for another month, but that he doubts help will come in time. He called for volunteers today to go up into the mountains to discover the turpes' plans. Cadmon, Hector, Julie, Red Beard, and I volunteered to be one of those teams.

I'm looking forward to getting out into the woods again. It's been hard being stuck in town for eight weeks. It's hard to focus with people all around who are upset because they've lost their farms and their families. (The repetition of “it’s hard” should be avoided.)

It's strange how people fall apart when people they know die. Life is such a fleeting thing after all – with people dying all the time. Even though people hear of death everyday, death seems to catch them by surprise when it takes someone they know. Perhaps it's my mental training as a wizard that lets me keep control of my faculties while those around me are loosing theirs. (While this musing may have been a device to introduce the fact that this character is a wizard, it did not create in me any story questions. The prime purpose of the opening page is to get the reader to turn it and read on, but this one did not make me wonder what will happen next to this character. All jeopardy is potential, not actual, and sort of abstract as well.)

An interesting world, Douglas, but there were tension issues with this first page and clarity issues with what followed. Keep at it, though, and make it come to life on the page. Try to stick with one point of view in the following chapter (which is what I’d begin with, not this journal entry), and slow it down a little, give us the experience of a single character.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

---

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 line edit/critique of up to 15 pages.
6. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, send me the revision.

© 2010 Ray Rhamey

Comments

[Norm]

I think you're right about the wizard question, Ray. Why doesn't it come up within the first paragraph? Perhaps, "... they are waiting just out of the soldiers' arrow and my spells' reach."

If magic is part of the character's world it will be infused into all he does.

[hope101]

Another question that arose for me is why the narrator would have trouble believing people would be upset to lose a loved one while he - is it a he? - has been thrown off course by their grief.

[Gumption Brash]

Interesting idea with having a wizard mixed in with this, but I was put off by the slow pace to this piece and chiefly the grammar and logic errors.

I would have stopped at this line: 'They may not be smart, but they're at least clever.' - This makes little sense, since both smart and clever are relatively the same.