Last weekend I did my Creating a Killer First Page workshop at the Write on the Sound Writers Conference in Edmonds, WA. There were about 60 terrific writers in my workshop, and I truly enjoyed working with them. Well, most of them.
I want to first congratulate the organizers of the conference for the excellent job they do—it is a friendly and hugely informational conference with high-level presenters. I got to attend workshops when I wasn’t doing my own, and gained immensely valuable insights that I will be putting to work asap.
The Killer First Page workshop is much like what happens on FtQ, but is perhaps more of an “immersion” mode. Writers submit their prologues and first chapters, just as they do here. I strip them of names and other identifying info and then give printouts of the first pages to the workshoppers.
The class reads one, then votes by a show of hands whether or not they would turn the page. Keep in mind that the writers are also in the class. Voting varied a great deal—some pretty even splits, some weighted one way or another, some almost universally a yes or a no.
Then I ask various workshoppers why they said yes or no, and then give my notes, and then we move on to the next one. Because of the quantity of submissions, I kept it rapid-fire (and was still only able to go through 15 or 28 submissions, though I did give my notes on the ones who didn’t make it to the writers after the class).
This quick exposure to one first page after another quickly changes the way the writers look at an opening narrative. Light bulbs of enlightenment went on all over the room if I’m to believe the excited and pleased comments that a number of workshoppers gave me after the class and as I encountered them over the next day.
And the bookseller who ran the bookstore room told me later that there was a great deal of buzz about my workshop and how much people had gotten out of it.
Hugely gratifying for many reasons, the greatest of which was helping writers take a step up the learning curve.
Then came an email
I received an email from one participant who had submitted his prologue. The work he sent was well written, but it lacked tension and story questions, and consisted of a good bit of “telling.” But the writing was very good, and I said so.
In the vote, he got a “Yes” from 32% of the class. By FtQ standards, that’s not bad.
But this writer sent me a scathing indictment of everything the class was and what I did. I can tell you that it cast a shadow over what had been a joyous experience. And I am emailing the rest of the class to get their feedback, though I had already heard from many in person.
To quote:
“(Your workshop) is misguided as an exercise with any real practicle [sic] value in getting writing that is worth reading onto the shelf. It can only fail to enhance the craft and quality of writing on any level--other than a very superficial and manipulative effort to quickly snag some attention. At most it accomplishes a disrespect and a cheapening of the enterprise and craft of creating quality literature.
“If a writer wants to crank out brain candy and give a reader a few hours of escapist time, this ‘killer first page’ approach could prove helpful. Any real writing by any real writer demands attention through the voice it conveys and the questions it raises. Any writing worth reading must necessarily be judged by what a reader takes away from the world the writer has created with the story, by the identification and questions and conflict and evolution of character.
“A real writer is trying to make the world a more interesting place. That takes one hell of a lot more than one page. A real reader knows that. A publishing professional with his or her head and heart in the right place should know it as well.”
BTW, he signed his note “Respectfully.”
So.
Am I, and by extension the readers and writers who visit and contribute to this blog, full of shit? Are we not, somehow, real writers and readers if we think that the first page had to have some quality to it that compels a reader to turn the page? Are we merely purveyors of “brain candy” because we work hard to fully engage a reader with our first 16 lines?
What do you think?
As for me, I’m going to go with the writer who came up and said that she now understood that what agents had said about being able to judge a work in 8 paragraphs was true and not a falsehood as she had thought.
Or the writer who said that suddenly she saw the problem in her opening and how to solve it.
Or the one who said it was the best workshop she’d ever been to.
I think I’m going with those folks. The Conference asks for feedback from everyone who attends a workshop and sends those to the presenter. The organizers tell me that they read the comments and ratings very carefully and make their decisions about who can return based on those. This is my third time doing my workshop at Write on the Sound.
I hope you’ll be able to attend the workshop one of these days and judge for yourself.
For what it’s worth,
Ray
© 2011 Ray Rhamey