Flogometer—I was interested, but not compelled

Argh! I forgot that I'd changed the flogging schedule to two per week. My excuse is that I'm a little distracted, preparing for my Flash Editing workshop this coming Saturday at the Murder in the Grove writers conference in Boise, Idaho. And I'll be traveling Friday, so no post that day. Hey, you get what you pay for, right?

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, 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).

This is for Michael. Here are the first 16 lines:

Bristol, England, July 1708

"What are you doing?"

Thomas Abbot gave Elizabeth a weak smile before kissing her gloved hand. "Nothing."

Elizabeth scowled and took her hand back. She looked across the ballroom in the direction that Thomas had been glancing mid-kiss. There, across the happy throng of dancers, Elizabeth's mother stood chatting with some of her acquaintances. "You can't really be afraid of her."

Thomas laughed. "Oh, can't I?"

Elizabeth's expression softened. "Really, Thomas. She quite likes you."

Thomas looked over at Mrs. Drummond once more. "Well, I quite like her daughter. Is your card too full to permit me a dance?"

"Silly boy," she smiled. "You know I only just arrived."

"Then I'm going to guess that you have only… five names on your card so far."

"Six. Horace Doyle asked me just before you came up."

Thomas gave her a bemused sneer.

"Keep that up and I'll give him your spot," she chided.

"Then, shall we?" He offered her his elbow.

I'm fairly sure that some of you will disagree, especially romance fans. For me, the narrative was both a little too lackadaisical in getting things started, and too lean on story elements such as scene setting, clarity, and characterization.

While the dialogue is nicely written, it's not a lot more than what one would experience listening to radio -- I can't "see" anything. I believe much more could have been done with small action beats from both characters to help invest emotion and meaning into their dialogue, and to give us the scene.

First, the clarity issue. It seems small, but I caught it and it interfered, so I might as well point it out. Elizabeth asks what Thomas is doing (something we can't see, so we have no clue), he says nothing, and then kisses her hand.

But then we learn that he had glanced across the ballroom in "mid-kiss," which seems to be what she's asking about. But wait -- he did the kiss after her question (and presumably the glance), and he doesn't do any glancing in the midst of the kiss of the hand.

Was there another kiss? We don't know. It's not clear.

A technicality: it turns out that we're in Elizabeth's close point of view, yet the narrative says her "expression softened." That kind of description is distant, from outside -- she can't see the effect of her change of expression. And it's not a terribly clear picture, to my eye. Since she had just scowled, the narrative could have shown us rather than told us with something like:

Elizabeth eased her scowl and gave him a small smile.

Later we learn that she thinks he's "fair and beautiful," which tells us a lot about her feelings. Why wait? In this same spot, the writer could add characterization with something like this:

Elizabeth eased her scowl and gave him a small smile. She just couldn't be displeased with a man so fair and beautiful.

Now, I'm not saying I've just added some wonderful writing, but you get the point. The author could have used more gestures or touches or body language to show us more of the relationship and attraction between the two other than flirtatious dialogue, in my view.

Some nits:

There was this bit of description:

Elizabeth's mother stood chatting with some of her acquaintances.

"Some" is one of those relatively meaningless waste words that show up in narratives. And the "picture" is vague. On the next page we learn that her mother is "deep in gossip with Lady Hooper." A much more interesting bit of detail, I think. So why wait? Why not. . .

Elizabeth's mother was deep in gossip with Lady Hooper.

. . .instead of "some acquaintances."

What's wrong with this bit:

"Silly boy," she smiled. "You know I only just arrived."

The problem is using "smiled" as a dialogue tag. You don't "smile" dialogue, you say it. Try it -- try smiling and saying "Silly boy" at the same time. You can't close your lips to enunciate the "b" in "boy," for one thing.

It's an easy fix. Whenever you find your character smiling words, just separate them.

"Silly boy." She smiled. "You know I only just arrived."

This way you give the reader a chance to hear her first words, then see her smile, and then the smile illuminates the rest of her dialogue.

A missed opportunity: the narrative has this from Thomas.

Thomas looked over at Mrs. Drummond once more. "Well, I quite like her daughter…"

How much does looking at the mom again serve to move the story forward? In my view, there's an opportunity for turning up the heat by replacing it with something like this thought-starter:

Thomas took her other hand -- rather brazen of him in front of all these people, but it gave her a little thrill. He said, "Well, I quite like her daughter…"

By including little action beats and bits of internal monologue like that, Michael, I think you could put some solid flesh on the bones of the dialogue.

These truly are nits, though. Michael's writing was good, and better when the story finally got going. There were still similar point-of-view hiccups and other nits, but nothing that wouldn't be easy to fix. And the next page gets into action: slapping and punching and then a duel and then. . . Well, unless you turn the first page, you'd never know that.

Michael, I think you've got good stuff here, but need to get more tension going sooner. You might consider condensing the flirty dialogue, start out with them in the garden and quickly have Horace (the evildoer) bursting in on their tête-à-tête. By both tightening (dialogue) and adding (action, body language, inner monologue) you can really crank up the characterization, the tension -- and get those pages turning.

Thanks for sending your work.

Hey, if any of you are going to be at the conference in Boise this weekend, say hi.

For what it's worth,

Ray

Public floggings available. If I can post it here, send 1st chapter or prologue as an attachment (cutting and pasting and reformatting from an email is a time-consuming pain) and I'll critique the first couple of pages.

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© 2007 Ray Rhamey