Flogging the Quill

Flogometer for Kate--would you turn the page?

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 just the characters)
• Voice
• Clarity
• Scene-setting
• Character

Kate has sent the opening chapter for Fall Gal: A Maxie Cole Mystery.

It was Los Angeles, and it was November, which meant that it was raining. Raining so hard, in fact, that I couldn't make out what was cars, what was people, and what was just buildings by looking out my window until the lightning decided to flash. The view was boring as hell, but I couldn't muster the energy to budge from the window, clutching a cup of tea with both hands and staring into the blackness as its heat and taste evaporated into the air. Every passing shadow looked like her, wrapped as everyone was in long-skirted trenchcoats against the rain, and even though I knew there was no way she'd walk past my window I couldn't stop torturing myself, allowing my heart to skip that beat every time my eyes, damn them, thought it was her. And I wondered, incidentally, how it was that I could be so easily fooled when here I'd thought that I'd already memorized every inch of her. The lightning would die away, and my heart would fall back into its regular beat, and I'd realize that the walk hadn't been hers, the set of the shoulders, or maybe she'd never be caught dead in a hat like that. I knew that. Known it all along. What's more, I knew that she was locked away, with a guard on her 24-7, because the judge decided that she was a suicide risk. But Jesus, I'd think then, what the hell kind of person would I be if that stopped me from hoping she'd walk through my door? And then I felt even more like shit than before because what the hell was wrong with me, sitting here like a chump feeling bad (snip)

Close but . . .

I had some inclination to turn the page, but, after I put on my agent-with-a-headache-looking-at-the-200th-submission-that-week hat, I decided not to turn the page. It wasn’t the writing, that’s good, though there are a couple of little things to note. There were story questions, too, but I wasn’t certain about how they pertained to the narrator. And I had no idea who this guy was. (First mistake--it’s a woman). And then there was that solid block of paragraph--first pages are a window into what follows, and I just didn’t, especially as a weary agent, want to keep plowing on through that mass of type.

But it wouldn’t take much to get it to page-turning status. I definitely do like the voice and the writing--it just needs to deal more with storytelling and some fundamental mechanics. The first thing that would help is to break it into paragraphs. The second is to edit it enough to get these lines on the first page, the end of that massive paragraph.

for myself instead of going down to the damn police station and telling them that they had it all wrong, or at least busting my way into that jail cell and holding her hand.

The third thing is to let me know that the narrator is a woman. Notes:

It was Los Angeles, and it was November, which meant that it was raining. Raining so hard, in fact, that I couldn't make out what was cars, what was people, and what was just buildings by looking out my window until the lightning decided to flash. The view was boring as hell, but I couldn't muster the energy to budge from the window, clutching a cup of tea with both hands and staring into the blackness as its heat and taste evaporated into the air. The last sentence has the blackness having its heat and taste evaporate due to the wrong antecedent for the pronoun. I cut it for a different reason--it does little to advance the story, and cutting it will allow the addition of the more compelling lines cited above.

Every passing shadow looked like her, wrapped as everyone was in long-skirted trenchcoats against the rain, and even though I knew there was no way she'd walk past my window I couldn't stop torturing myself, allowing my heart to skip that beat every time my eyes, damn them, thought it was her. And I wondered, incidentally, how it was that I could be so easily fooled when here I'd thought that I'd already memorized every inch of her. I liked this and the way it both characterizes the narrator and reveals the intensity of her feelings.

The lightning would die away, and my heart would fall back into its regular beat, and I'd realize that the walk hadn't been hers, the set of the shoulders, or maybe she'd never be caught dead in a hat like that. I knew that. Known it all along. This paragraph offers an opportunity to reveal the narrator’s gender, I think. Thoughtstarter: eliminate the part about the hat and substitute something such as this: or maybe the figure wasn’t the one we shared, slender and kinda flat-chested. Maybe that description inserts the narrator’s gender in a subtle, not on-the-nose way (whatever her actual figure is like).

What's more, I knew that she was locked away, with a guard on her 24-7, because the judge decided that she was a suicide risk.

But Jesus, I'd think then, what the hell kind of person would I be if that stopped me from hoping she'd walk through my door? And then I felt even more like shit than before because what the hell was wrong with me, sitting here like a chump feeling bad for myself instead of going down to the damn police station and telling them that they had it all wrong, or at least busting my way into that jail cell and holding her hand.

That page I would turn. What do you think?

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

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Submitting to the Flogometer:

Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):

1. your title
2. your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
3. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
4. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
5. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
6. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
7. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

© 2012 Ray Rhamey

Flogometer for Susan--would you turn the page?

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 just the characters)
• Voice
• Clarity
• Scene-setting
• Character

Susan has sent the prologue and opening chapter for her memoir, Good Chinese Wife.

The prologue:

The 11:40 to Suzhou crept along the tracks, chugging away from the hazy Shanghai skyline. I sat sandwiched on a hard seat between two young Chinese men dressed in suits a size too big, our legs touching. As the train picked up speed, I felt desperately alone among a hundred travelers pouring into the aisles. Holding back tears, I turned to Beijingers in New York, a Chinese novel my in-laws had lent me days earlier. The clunky characters seemed more of a blur than usual. With trembling hands I flipped aimlessly through my tattered red Chinese-English dictionary.

The tall man seated opposite stared out the window, his almond eyes cold. A loud belch from a woman across the aisle distracted me from this man’s icy glare, but only for a moment. This man—my husband of three months—seemed furious with me for a reason I couldn’t fathom. In the middle of all these people I couldn’t possibly start a scene with Li. We’d never argued, never had a disagreement during the nine months since we’d met in a Hong Kong dormitory up near the China border.

As a shy girl from suburban Chicago, I often mistook friends’ bad moods as something I’d done to offend them, although like now I couldn’t pinpoint the offense. But that was my nature. Always sensitive to how people thought of me, always trying to please others. I felt more comfortable around my father’s Chinese graduate students than (snip)

The first chapter:

I met Li the first month of grad school the night I locked myself out. My roommate Na Wei usually slept in her boyfriend’s room, so in effect I had a single that year. Both Na Wei and her gaunt Fujianese boyfriend were married to spouses back in China, and it was for that reason that I couldn’t bring myself to ask the front desk guard if he could tell me the boyfriend’s room number, especially at eleven on a Saturday night.

And that’s when it hit me. The guard downstairs kept spare keys! I could borrow one from him.

But when I reached the guard’s desk, it stood empty but for a tattered white sign with eight Chinese characters. Five years of Mandarin allowed me to decipher “if,” “need,” “something,” and “return,” but not the one character describing when the guard would return. If you need something, blank blank return blank.

I sat on a vinyl bench near the front door, waiting for someone who could translate the missing character. Wiping away the beads of sweat on my forehead, I longed for a warm shower, even in my mildew-ridden bathroom. Twenty minutes passed and the guard had yet to return. Just as I’d become convinced he’d been attacked by the pack of wild dogs I’d seen patrolling the hilly campus at night, in walked two men and a woman. They spoke Mandarin, not the local Cantonese dialect.

Yes from me

Susan brought her memoir to FtQ some time ago, and has spent a year rewriting. I like the result--the voice is clear and strong, the writing as well. She manages to create tension for me in both the prologue and the chapter. In the prologue, I wanted to know what the cause of her husband’s icy glare was and if she would be able to resolve it She sounds so lost and alone. In the chapter opening, things like packs of wild dogs helped to create a unique world I was interested in, and I wanted to know the outcome of her being locked out.

I do think the chapter opening could be more storylike. For example:

Eleven o’clock Saturday night, I locked myself out of my graduate school dorm room and couldn’t think of a way to get in. My roommate, Na Wei, wasn’t there--she usually slept in her boyfriend’s room. I liked having a “single,” but not right then.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Tweet

Submitting to the Flogometer:

Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):

1. your title
2. your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
3. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
4. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
5. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
6. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
7. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

© 2012 Ray Rhamey

Ruminations on organic writing

Last week I sent two non-fiction book proposals out to 7 publishers. One of them was a how-to book for what agent Donald Maass calls organic or intuitive writers, and who are also known as “pantsers” because we write by the seats of our pants. You may have read about the project here.

So my mind is on that. Here’s my personal model:

1. an idea forms, often a “what if” scenario:

a. what if what we think of as elves were real--this led to Finding Magic, which is not about elves at all, but is about magical things

b. what if there was a way to bring people together to deal with social issues, including guns--that led to We the Enemy, a speculative political thriller

c. what if there was a vampire cat--The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles

d. my fourth novel wasn’t a whatiffer--it was a “how can?” How could I use my experiences working on a Texas ranch as a high-schooler in a story--a coming-of-age story laced with murder is how that turned out in The Summer Boy.

2. characters to experience the “what if”

For me, it turns out that the characters are the source, the wellspring of the story. My research for the book proposal quickly found that I’m not alone. Stephen King is an intuitive writer who says his books tend to be based on situation rather than story--the what if.

Tess Gerritsen says she starts off with an idea that excites her (the situation) and sees where it goes. She doesn’t plot, her characters come organically, and sometimes she doesn’t know the villain until the last couple of chapters--this from a crime thriller writer!

Elmore Leonard is a pantser who starts with a situation and a character or two that he puts into it and then writes the story to find out what happens.

3. Brew time

Having a situation or what-if question and characters, I let those things bump around in my mind and ferment. I’ll make notes of scenes, or aspects of the world, or about characters. Lots of random notes. I generally know how the story begins and how it ends, but not always. I frequently don't know all of the characters until I write the story, but I do know who the primary protagonist and antagonist are (er, generally). The notes, such as they are, concern the middle. This can take months or, in the case of the vampire kitty, years.

Why don't I outline? I fear that when I know what happens in the story as a result of outlining it that I just won't be interested enough to write it. For organic writers, it's all about discovering the story, not crafting it--initally, that is. Craft weighs in heavily on the rewrite.

4. Writing time

Then I face page one. Knowing how a story starts and turning that into a compelling narrative with scenes is exciting. I’ve learned that my personal creative fuel tank holds somewhere between 1000 and 2000 words of narrative. Once I’ve written that supply out, I stop. The next day the tank is generally full again and I’ll pick up where I left off.

I hope you’ll chime in about your process, and give me your thoughts on this:

Questions for pantser authors

One aspect of my book proposal is to ask successful published pantser authors such as Tess Gerritsen to contribute to the book (she has agreed to!). I’ll encourage them to do whatever they want, but will also send a list of questions to stimulate them. Here ‘tis:

• Where do you start? Some begin with a character, others with a situation, a “what if,” and you begin with . . .?
• Do you know how the story ends? If so, in what detail? If not, do you care?
• Characters—do you make notes at first? Do you discover characters as you write? Do you ever have to go back and change things to make later revelations work?
• What’s your process for setting the scene in places you haven’t been?
• Do you ever stall out? If so, what do you do?
• Even worse, do you ever despair of ever being able to pull it off, and how do you deal with that?
• Ever run into a true dead end where you had to back up to an earlier point and follow a different storyline?
• When and how do you revise?
• What techniques do you use to keep track of what has happened?
• How do you decide if your tension and pace are right?
• Do you ever look ahead, or is all your writing in the moment?

What do you think? Are there other questions or angles that come to your mind? If so, please mention them in the comments.

Oh, the working title of this book is The Panter’s Path to a Published Novel, a Guide for Organic Writers. The title of the other book is Blood on the Page, Lessons in Crafting a Killer First Page--but that’s another post.

Let me know what you think.

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Flogometer for Scott--would you turn the page?

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 just the characters)
• Voice
• Clarity
• Scene-setting
• Character

Scott has sent the opening chapter for Operation Juvenile.

“Fight, fight, fight, fight.”

The chants echoed in the halls, through the doors and across the street where Jace stood, with both arms flailing away at his opponent. Sitting back and playing defense didn’t rank high on Jace’s priority list and it showed, with his eye black and blood dripping from his nose.

But a lucky jab to the jaw sent the fellow eighth-grader to the ground, signaling the end of another fight, and giving Jace one more win to add to his growing resume. That reputation came with baggage, and instead of basking in the praise from the timid, back-stabbing, blood-thirsty fight revelers, Jace dashed home, in an attempt to escape punishment.

By the time he was around the block, the teachers’ yells were faint, and only Tracy, Jace’s younger sister, chased after him.

 “Stop,” Tracy said, “why do you have to overreact about everything?”

That’s not how Jace interpreted the incident. Like every fight, it started with Tracy. A few guys teased her on the way out of school and Jace happened to hear what was said. Most of the guys in the group backed off when they saw Jace lingering from behind, but one boy wouldn’t stop harassing her.

Despite pleas from Tracy to walk away, Jace couldn’t. She is Jace’s flesh and blood, a leftover remnant of their parents, making protecting Tracy, Jace’s number-one priority

Nope.

While this opens with conflict and action, the fight is over before the first page ends and the narrative slips into exposition and, it looks like, backstory. Despite a sympathetic character--a boy defending his sister--there aren’t any real story questions raised. Later, the actual story develops when two men arrive at Jace’s house and forcefully take him away to attend a boot camp. I suspect the real story begins after he gets to the camp. There are also writing craft issues that need to be looked at. Notes:

“Fight, fight, fight, fight.”

The chants echoed in the halls, through the doors and across the street where Jace stood, with both arms flailing away at his opponent. Sitting back and playing defense didn’t rank high on Jace’s priority list and it showed, with his eye black and blood dripping from his nose. Point of view glitch here: if Jace, the POV character, is across the street from school, he can’t know that the chants are echoing in the school.

But a lucky jab to the jaw sent the fellow eighth-grader to the ground, signaling the end of another fight, and giving Jace one more win to add to his growing resume. That reputation came with baggage, and instead of basking in the praise from the timid, back-stabbing, blood-thirsty fight revelers, Jace dashed home, in an attempt to escape punishment. This is pretty much “telling” rather than showing Jace’s experience. The fight is quickly summarized and we’re outta there. I think fiction should immerse us in the character’s experience, but here we have grown-up references to things like baggage and a resume. This isn’t Jace. There are a lot of things crammed into this paragraph--resume, baggage, the nasty nature of the “fight revelers”--and one wonders why he would want to bask in praise from people like that. Nor does it seem like the revelers would be handing out praise, anyway.

By the time he was around the block, the teachers’ yells were faint, and only Tracy, Jace’s younger sister, chased after him.

“Stop,” Tracy said, “why do you have to overreact about everything?”

That’s not how Jace interpreted the incident. Like every fight, it started with Tracy. A few guys teased her on the way out of school and Jace happened to hear what was said. Most of the guys in the group backed off when they saw Jace lingering from behind, but one boy wouldn’t stop harassing her. Here we edge into backstory instead of moving forward with the story.

Despite pleas from Tracy to walk away, Jace couldn’t. She is Jace’s flesh and blood, a leftover remnant of their parents, making protecting Tracy, Jace’s number-one priority. There’s a shift of tense here, from past to present, and a comma fault that needs to be fixed (and a couple more earlier). More than that, this is more exposition when it would be better to be experiencing a scene with dialogue and action.

This narrative seems to be in a rush to tell us things “we need to know” before it gets to the real story, and I suspect there is an interesting story to come. I’d look at starting the narrative later, working on the writing craft, and showing us what happens to this boy. Remember to include consequences and jeopardy--for example, the fact that he doesn’t want to go to boot camp isn’t sufficient motivation--he needs to fear it, and for a real reason (if that’s what the story is about).

I don't know if this will help, but here's a link to sample chapters of The Summer Boy, a novel of mine that is about boys just a few years older than this one. Maybe the way the opening chapter works will give you some ideas.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Tweet

Submitting to the Flogometer:

Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):

1. your title
2. your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
3. Please format with double spacing, 12-point font Times New Roman font, 1-inch margins.
4. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
5. And, optionally, permission to use it as an example in a book if that's okay.
6. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
7. If you rewrite while you wait you turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

© 2012 Ray Rhamey