Submissions invited: If you’d like a fresh look at your opening chapter or prologue, please email your submission to me re the directions at the bottom of this post.
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 or 17 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.
A word about the line-editing in these posts: it’s “one-pass” editing, and I don’t try to address everything, which is why I appreciate the comments from the FtQ tribe. In a paid edit, I go through each manuscript three times.
Storytelling Checklist
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this list of 6 vital storytelling ingredients from my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells. While it's not a requirement that all of these elements must be on the first page, they can be, and I think you have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are.
Evaluate the submission—and your own first page—in terms of whether or not it includes each of these ingredients, and how well it executes them. The one vital ingredient not listed is professional-caliber writing because that is a must for every page, a given.
- Story questions
- Tension (in the reader, not just the characters)
- Voice
- Clarity
- Scene-setting
- Character
Kendra has sent the first chapter of Oliver’s Ghost.
There are no ghosts in our house. Haven’t been since before I was born. Ma gets embarrassed if we mention it out in public but, I mean, it ain’t like everyone in town doesn’t know. We might be the only house in the world that doesn’t have at least one resident specter. Pa says we used to be wealthy before word got out that our last houseghost split into the aether. Then the looters came. Now the only thing we have left is this rickety old ghost-free house.
We don’t know why our houseghosts abandoned us. Oh sure, houseghosts cross over all the time. Unfinished business gets finished and all that. Sometimes they get a little fuzzy in the head too, but the worst is when their death state starts to show. That can get pretty ugly. But unless your last name is Babbage, another houseghost is always there to replace the last.
That’s why I was completely caught off-guard when I came nose-to-aether-wisps with the ghost of Elijah Banks in our outhouse. To be fair, he didn’t look any happier about it than I was, though I suppose I gave him more reason than usual to be upset about it. It was about an hour before dawn. My red hair was sticking up in every which way (in other words, same as always) and I was trying to scrub the sleep outta my eyes. I staggered once and pulled open that creaky old door and began to relieve myself -- right on old Elijah’s lap.
“Put that thing away boy! Can’t stay long.”
Yep
I like the voice a lot, right from the first sentence, which raises story questions right away. And then the narrative raises more story questions and plus the promise of fun—the idea of peeing on a ghost is, I suspect, a rare one. The opening makes good usage of what agent Donald Maass calls “microtension” and “bridging tension”—the story questions raised are just enough to keep me reading on, and I trust that a larger dilemma is on the way. Nicely done. Just a few notes:
There are no ghosts in our house. Haven’t been since before I was born. Ma gets embarrassed if we mention it out in public but, I mean, it ain’t like everyone in town doesn’t know. We might be the only house in the world that doesn’t have at least one resident specter. Pa says we used to be wealthy before word got out that our last houseghost split into the aether. Then the looters came. Now the only thing we have left is this rickety old ghost-free house.
We don’t know why our houseghosts abandoned us. Oh sure, houseghosts cross over all the time. Unfinished business gets finished and all that. Sometimes they get a little fuzzy in the head too, but the worst is when their death state starts to show. That can get pretty ugly. But unless your last name is Babbage, another one houseghost is always there to replace the last. The reference to Babbage threw me just a little as it’s not clear that it’s the narrator’s name—it could be someone else. I’m guessing this is a try at introducing the last name, but I wouldn’t bother with that here. Thoughtstarter: But unless you live in my house, another one is always there to replace the last.
That’s why I was completely caught off-guard when I came nose-to-aether-wisps with the ghost of Elijah Banks in our outhouse. To be fair, he didn’t look any happier about it than I was, though I suppose I gave him more reason than usual to be upset about it. It was about an hour before dawn. My red hair was sticking up in every which way (in other words, same as always) and I was trying to scrub the sleep outta my eyes. I staggered once and pulled open the that creaky old door and began to relieve myself -- right on old Elijah’s lap. There’s a tiny slip in point-of-view—while he might think of his hair as sticking up, he wouldn’t think of its color—it’s just “his hair.” Unless the color is important to the story at this point, I think it can wait. In fact, the descriptions of the hair and sleepiness don’t really deepen characterization or advance story all that much, do they? I’d delete it and get more story on the first page. Also, for me “creaky old door” was too close to the earlier “rickety old house” and I lost track that this was the outhouse for a moment. A small clarity issue. I suggest keep it simple.
“Put that thing away boy! Can’t stay long.”
Comments, please?
For what it’s worth.
Ray
Free sample chapters—click here for a PDF
“As an aspiring author in the Internet age, I thought there was enough information out there in the blogosphere to provide me with everything I needed for my arsenal. Boy, was I wrong. I wish that I had purchased Flogging the Quill months ago. Had I bought the book when I first learned about it, I'm confident it would have saved me a tremendous amount of time and effort in the crafting, writing, and rewriting of my first novel.” Shannon
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
- And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
© 2013 Ray Rhamey
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