Call for submissions I’ll exhaust submissions for floggings in a week or so, so please send in your opening prologue or chapter if you’d like a good, honest critique. And if you don’t, it’ll just be me yapping about something or the other. Thanks.
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.
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 the characters)
- Voice
- Clarity
- Scene setting
- Character
Stuart has sent a revision of the opening to Guile and Spin.
They said the recession would be tough, but I didn’t know it would be like this. I was in a dead-end job managing a small town sports centre that was overdue for demolition. I wanted to go to London, study sports psychology and coach high level tennis pros. There was no way that could happen. I was lucky even to have this job.
Then my boss said he could help me. I just had to do this one thing first. I had to save the town’s Sports and Leisure Service.
It was an impossible idea. How was I supposed to do that?
Merely by resurrecting the town cricket club to get grant money. That’s how.
But, to get involved in cricket to save my own job? Cricket. Such a boring and hopeless game. At school I had never liked the hard ball.
I couldn’t do it.
Then I met Fardeep and Claire.
And that’s when things got really bad.
“Look, I’ve invited some people here to help you,” said my boss, Sir Richard Gregory, ushering me into the restaurant ahead of him. Though yet early evening, the curry smell in the narrow restaurant was strong enough to have been brewing all afternoon. Red lamps on red-flocked walls bowed over the dozen or so tables down the room. A waiter took our coats with (snip)
Didn’t move me on
Again, the writing is clean, but, for this reader, the opening lacks tension--tension in the story, and tension in me. While the possibility of losing one’s job is unwelcome, without consequences other than having to look for another one the stakes are not terribly high.
This narrative on this page is primarily exposition and set-up. We’re being told stuff, not experiencing what’s happening to the character. And what happens to the character in this chapter is that he has lunch, meets a pretty woman, sees a demonstration of spin on a cricket ball, and talks about starting a cricket club.
My advice for Stuart is to set this opening chapter aside and start the story where, as this page says, “when things got really bad.” That’s where the story is--I just don’t think we need a chapter of preparation before we get to the really bad part. Good luck with it.
Comments? As always, your comments are helpful to the writer, so please share your thoughts.
For what it’s worth.
Ray
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred):
- your title
- your 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 you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
© 2011 Ray Rhamey