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 just characters)
- Voice
- Clarity
- Scene-setting
- Character
Mike has sent the prologue and first chapter of One Dead Ranger.
Prologue:
A Texas Ranger was dead.
This was 2005, not 1823, the year the Rangers first came into existence in the Mexican Province of Texas at emprasario Stephen F. Austin’s bidding. Cattle rustlers, outlaws, and Comanche posed most of the dangers for the small band of lawmen for the next seventy-five years, as Texas became an independent nation in 1836, the twenty-eighth state in 1845, part of the confederacy in 1861, and, after readmission to the union in 1870, struggled to recover from the aftermath of the civil war through the end of the century. Oil field workers, and those rushing to serve their vices, ushered in new lawlessness when Spindletop blew through its derrick in Beaumont in 1901.
For all that time, and into the 1940s, the Rangers’ five-pointed star badge, first fashioned from Mexican silver five Peso coins, was a target.
Those early days were long past, and Frank Carter hadn’t been shot in the middle of an arrest or a drug bust or a gunfight. He died sitting at his desk.
No one was stupid enough to walk into a room and shoot a Texas Ranger. Not today.
Ranger Carter’s death was a hair-trigger’s pull from being declared a firearms disaster. A careless, accidental death.
Or suicide.
First chapter:
Sunday morning, forty-eight hours after discovery of her husband’s body, Abigail Carter entered our offices in Fort Worth, the offices of Cobb and Jones. That’s retired Texas Ranger Jackson Cobb and me, his forensics specialist sidekick, Mickey Jones.
I took a liking to Mrs. Carter right away. Maybe because she accepted a female private investigator without question. Or maybe because we both stood a hair under five feet and weighed less than a hundred pounds. Or maybe because, when Jackson introduced us, she didn’t say, “nice to meet you,” or something equally inane in English. She said, “Mucho gusto.”
Despite my auburn hair, abundant freckles, and green eyes, bequeathed me by my Irish-American daddy, she must have heard the suggestion of my mother’s lilting Spanish in the cadence of my speech and the way every S slid soft, never hard, between my tongue and palate.
For the briefest moment, I was tempted to correct Jackson, an act fraught with peril, and reintroduce myself by my full name: Christina Juanita Maria Davida Jones Sandoval. But, no, Mickey Jones would do.
Jackson pulled another chair to the desk in the outer office, where we’d been going over current cases, gestured for Abigail to sit, and said, “What’s this about Frank being murdered?”
“He was murdered,” she declared as though she were the world’s top forensic pathologist and there could be no doubt of her findings. “Frank wasn’t careless with firearms, and he had no (snip)
No and Yes
The prologue had a nice history lesson for me but, other than that part, the meat of it was also in the opening of the first chapter, which I found to be more interesting.
Tension in the first chapter wasn’t huge, but it did feel like a professional opening for a murder mystery. The writing is clean, the voice and character likeable, and there were traditional whodunit story questions raised. It’s easy reading, informative, and not really exciting. I would have much preferred to start with the protagonist, and what this case means to her or how it impacts her. The info on the first page--and there’s some exposition in the pages that follow--could be woven in after there is some hint of the protagonist’s story.
So . . . with apologies to Mike, I looked a little later and found what I was looking for. I’ve edited it enough to serve as an opening page without the prologue. See what you think.
The brand new widow of Texas Ranger Carter said, “I’m damned if it was suicide!” She looked me right in the eyes. “You’ll bring his killer to justice … one way or another?”
It was not so much that I saw the fire in her eyes as I felt its heat. I ran a hand over my face to be certain my eyebrows were not singed.
Abigail grasped my hand and squeezed, demanding a response.
“You bet,” I said. “We’ll get him.”
And there it was. Now I understood how all those cops felt all those years I stood by as an observer, as the lab tech, the forensics person, the CSI, judging them harshly for not making a full commitment. Making promises to secure justice, hard as that was, was the easy part, I now realized. That’s why cops flopped around like fish ashore when called upon to make those commitments. Commitments they might not be able to keep. The hard part was seeing it through, making good on the promises.
Promises like the one I had just made.
Comments, please?
For what it’s worth.
Ray
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 you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
© 2012 Ray Rhamey