Submissions Wanted. If you’d like a fresh look at your opening chapter or prologue, please email your submission to me re the directions at the bottom of this post.
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—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
A word about the line-editing in these posts: it’s “one-pass” editing, and I don’t try to address everything, which is why I appreciate the comments from the FtQ tribe. In a paid edit, I go through each manuscript three times.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. 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.
A First-page Checklist
- It begins connecting the reader with the protagonist
- Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
- What happens is dramatized in an immediate scene with action and description plus, if it works, dialogue.
- What happens moves the story forward.
- What happens has consequences for the protagonist.
- The protagonist desires something.
- The protagonist does something.
- There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
- It happens in the NOW of the story.
- Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- What happens raises a story question—what happens next? or why did that happen?
Carolyn sends a first chapter of Bellinger Beauty. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Images of my husband’s dead body flooded my mind as I drove down Placida Road that Florida morning on my way to meet Howard Bellinger,
Throat tight and tears burning in my eyes, I pulled to the side of the road. Shockwaves tore through me as if I’d just received the news.
Two campers found Brett in the woods not far from here. The police had given up looking for his killer. I hadn’t.
A few quick glances out my window showed me Flamingo Mist looked pretty much the same, For every stucco palace with a tile roof, swimming pool and two-acre plot, dozens of trailer parks and cracker box houses sprouted like yard mushrooms after the summer rains. For some reason, the scenery calmed me and I drove back onto the road.
Flamingo Boulevard loomed ahead. I parked at the Elk's Lodge next to a sign listing Square Five and Lulu's Crew, the bands that would be playing for the dinner dances that week. When I stepped inside the two-story stucco building, the smell of fried chicken and French fries reminded me I hadn’t eaten breakfast.
The leather-faced man behind the desk stared at my business card before he stuffed it into the pocket of his jeans. “How can I help you Miss Gale or should I call you Zoe?”
“Ms. Gale’s fine. Which way to Howard Bellinger's home?"
Good stuff here, I like the descriptions that give values to what we’re seeing, the voice, and a good story question. Well, it seems like the story question is who murdered her husband. It may still be, but that’s not clear in the chapter that follows, where it turns out that she’s a private investigator being hired to look for a missing college student. Suggestion to Carolyn: let the reader know on page one that she’s a PI. And, if the husband’s death is not the point of the story, then you might want to consider starting later when the current case is begun and if there are any consequences to Zoe for taking the case, etc. Nice work.
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 include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft 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 for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Flogging the Quill © 2014 Ray Rhamey, story © 2014 Carolyn
(continued)
"Just turn left, you can't miss it. Stucco house next to the golf course. I heard Mr. Bellinger just flew in from Hawaii yesterday."
"Which island?"
"The big one. He spends a couple of months a year there. Myself, I like the Bahamas but Mr. Bellinger says Hawaii has better weather even if it is pricey. You know Mr. Bellinger?"
"Not yet."
"I know him pretty well. He comes here every Sunday for dinner and dancing when he's in town." The man gave me a quick once over. I wasn't a youngster and neither was he. "If you're selling something, I wouldn't knock on his door. He'll sic his dog on you."
"Dogs usually like me."
The man grinned. "Not this one. Sorry, have to go. Time to make up the menu for Sunday."
I left the lodge and drove in the direction he'd indicated. Flamingo Mist, the two county town on Florida's West Coast, was settled by my distant relatives who opened a trail from El Jobean to Vineyard and set up a store to serve area fishermen, or so my grandmother told me. She and my grandfather bought a lot of property, some on the posh Manasota Key where a master carpenter built them a beach house. She told me Howard Bellinger swindled most of it away from her after my grandfather died, including the Majestic Casino and Lemon Bay Guest House, where rich folks from the north spent their winters.
I drove by Lemon Bay, remembering. Brett and I had grown up in Flamingo Mist and skipped stones across this water when we were little. Looking across the bay, I once again heard the sound of stones skipping cachou, cachou, cachou and saw his freckled face and the NY Giants cap on his head.
“Did you hear that?” His words echoed in my head as if he’d just spoken them.
Yes, I still hear it and wish you were here.
We’d sneaked into the Majestic Casino in middle school, and sneaked in the window of the Lemon Bay Guest House wedding suite in high school. It was there we gave each other our first kiss. The memories of those times were bittersweet in my mind and even more hurtful than seeing my husband’s dead body. Maybe because they’d never come again or maybe because it was a more innocent, trusting time.
My birthplace stretched out on the edge of this sweltering wasteland like a sleeping beauty. From a distance, this typical Florida subdivision appeared perfect, thrown down amid well-manicured lawns, garnished with golf courses and creeks born of retention ditches.
It was all a lie.
Bellinger's abode stood high above Pebble Beach Creek. My Tracer could barely negotiate the sandy road, and the trip sent the bag of clothes I'd meant to give Goodwill sliding around in the back seat.
The house's forbidding stucco face stood out gray and domineering. The windows reminded me of angry eyes. They seemed to be watching as I drove up to the entrance, or was that someone peeking out of an upstairs window? Standing on the porch I stared down over the golf course and caught a glimpse of a restless creek.
A big-boned, well-fleshed man in an expensive, but rumpled business suit opened the door. Behind him growled a large dog that reminded me of the Hound of the Baskervilles. "Don't mind Homer, he's harmless," the man said, but I held my doubts.
At the sight of Bellinger, a sick feeling crawled up my stomach, the kind I got after eating too much spicy food or when I felt like I needed to avenge a crime. I warned myself to get a grip and stay with being a PI, even though I wanted to flat-out punch the guy in the face.
Too uniformly gray, his hair had to be a toupee. That told me he wasn't entirely pleased with his own. Big creases ran down the sides of his hatchet face and his eyebrows sprang up above eyes of piercing blue, culminating in a look of disgust and suspicion.
"Howard Bellinger. You must be Miss Gale." His expression didn't change much, just loosened a bit about the mouth and eyes. Bellinger's half-smile came from a man who wanted to be liked but hadn't had much practice.
"As advertised." I handed him a card so new, the ink had barely dried. He didn't act as if he recognized me, but then why would he? We'd never met and my grandmother's last name was Winslow.
"You made good time from the beach. Didn't think you'd get here 'til later."
"I started out right after you called. You said the matter was urgent."
"Very urgent. Come in." The dog escaped onto the porch, and Mr. Bellinger led me along a musty hallway under creaky ceiling fans. He walked like a man who had once had a lot, but lost most of it. I wondered if my grandmother's property was part of what he'd lost.
We stepped into a living room while he kept up a constant chatter about his visit to Hawaii. "Can't even offer you a drink. I just got back to reopen the place and my housekeeper is sick. I wasn't even going to come back this time, but I thought Wanda might have come home." He sniffed. I suspected that meant he thought Wanda may never wander back.
The living room had a closed in feeling of old furniture and older secrets. Sheets hung over a chair and two huge objects I thought must be couches. Heavy drapes kept out the light. Bellinger clicked on a floor lamp, looked around in confusion and went to the window. The violence with which he yanked open the drapes surprised me.
Sunlight drifted in as if it didn't want to come inside, roaming across the room to a vivid painting above a stone fireplace composed of raw splotches of color and angles. Bellinger stared at the painting as if it had analyzed him and found him lacking.
"My wife's work." He mumbled to himself, "Should have taken it down years ago."
"Is your wife Wanda?"
"Wanda is my only daughter. Sit down, Miss Gale, and I'll tell you all about it." He slumped into a chair and pointed me into another. "The school called me yesterday. I've been away you know. They said she'd left the premises and they were trying to locate her. Can you imagine? She hasn't been to classes since December. No one has even seen her. I've been so worried about her."
"Is that the University of South Florida?"
"No, Bonaventure College. You've got to find her, Miss Gale. She's so young, so naïve."
"How old is Wanda?"
Protective grilling on the windows reminded me of bars. I wondered if he installed it to keep Wanda in or keep trespassers out.
"Twenty, but she has been protected from the world."
I suspected he’d been doing most of the protecting. "Is this the first time she's done this?"
"It certainly is. Wanda has always been a good girl, doing what we expected of her. She's had the problems any adolescent faces, but she came through it beautifully."
"Who did she have problems with?"
"Not with me. Her mother, mostly." He glanced at the painting and his face took on a darker, more desperate cast. "I don't want to go into that."
He had a whiny, grating quality in his voice, but I cautioned myself not to react. "Okay, maybe I can talk to her mother then."
"She's not available. She's never available. I don't even know where she is and frankly, I don't care. We separated last fall. No point in going over the gruesome details. Our divorce doesn't have anything to do with Wanda."
"Could she possibly be with her mother?"
"After the way her mother carried on, I doubt Wanda ever wants to see her again." He compressed his mouth as if he wanted to swallow the words he'd just spoken.
"When did Wanda disappear? You mentioned she left college in December. Do you recall the date?"
He sniffed the air as if it had suddenly gone bad. "Early December, the school said. They didn't really give me a date. That's your job to find out. I did speak to Wanda's roommate on the phone last night, but I couldn't get a straight story from her."
"It's been two months. Have you tried to contact your daughter during that time?"
"I was in Hawaii. They didn't notify me there, just left several messages on this phone. It's not my fault she left school."
He rose and looked as if he might pounce on me. Instead, he paced back and forth liked a caged animal that remembered the jungle, but had no idea how to get back there. "You've got to understand this. I wasn't home. I didn't even find out she'd been missing until last night. God only knows what's been going on here."
"When did you last see her?"
"The day I left for Hawaii. She came to the airport to say goodbye. If her roommate can be trusted, Wanda never went back to school."
He stopped in his tracks and looked at me with something fragile glinting in his eyes. "I'm terribly afraid that something very bad has happened to her. I blame myself. I should have paid more attention to her, but all I could think about was getting on that plane and enjoying myself in Hawaii. I wanted to put the divorce behind me and maybe Wanda, too. I deserted her just when she'd reached out for help."
Every time he said her name, it came out shrill and self-deprecating. I aimed to soften it a bit to get some useable information from the man."Young women disappear all the time. They grow up, leave home and start their own lives."
"Without telling their parents?"
"Some do. You were away. She might have tried to contact you."
"I left her my phone number in Hawaii. She could have called me."
"Maybe she didn't think it was important enough. Maybe she thought you deserved a holiday after your divorce."
He fell back down in his chair as if the effort had seeped all the energy out of his body. "I can only hope she's all right. I just don't understand it. She’s so bright and had so many opportunities."
"Maybe she took one of them." I gazed around the prison-like room and felt like leaving myself. "Was Wanda happy here?"
He looked at me with layers of defensiveness lurking in his eyes. "She hasn't been here much lately. We always went to Maine for the summer and then she was in school the rest of the time."
"How were her grades?"
"She was doing okay, not up to her ability, but okay. She had a little trouble at school last year, but she worked it out."
"What kind of trouble?"
"She had to leave Columbia. Not because of grades or anything. It was suggested that she might do better at a smaller school closer to home. That's why she transferred to Bonaventure. It didn't please her mother or me for that matter. We both graduated with honors from Columbia."
"Did it please Wanda?"
He shrugged. "It seemed to. She even found herself a young man."
"What's his name?"
"She called him Dirk, I believe. I'm not expert on these matters, but I think she really liked this boy."
"Was he a student at Bonaventure?"
"Yes. I never met him. She hadn't dated much in high school, so I was pleased that she finally got interested in the opposite sex."
"Young women can fall hard the first time." I pictured my husband and my heart started to pound. I'd been a prime example of that adage. "What does Wanda look like?"
"She's very attractive. She has the good looks her mother used to have." He produced a leather wallet and showed me her picture, holding it far enough away so I couldn't touch it.
Wanda stared up at me through a clear plastic holder, attractive with a casual carelessness about her Howard Bellinger didn't display. Her blonde hair agitated around the edge of her face and her eyes stared back at me, dewy and lavender. She had her father's mouth, except hers held the promise of sensuality. An excitable type, Wanda could become a great beauty or a cold-hearted woman when and if she grew up.
"I'll need her picture. Can I have this one?"
He gawked at me as if I'd just insulted him. "No! This one looks the most like her. I have some others. You can have those."
"Good. I may need several."
"I'll go get them before I forget."
He left the room without another word. His steps pounded up the stairs, taking them as if he was in a race. He banged around above me until something heavy and metal crashed onto the floor and made the ceiling shake.
I'd gone along on cases with my husband before he was murdered, looking for lost relatives, but Howard Bellinger bothered me more than most. He sounded the perfect gentleman, but underneath his semi-polite outer covering, rage ruled. I couldn’t tell if his reactions were part of his grief for his missing daughter or the hostility he held for his ex-wife.
A minute later he boomed down the stairs and smacked his fist against the wall of the living room with such force, I thought his hand might break through the plaster. "Damn it! Someone's taken every blasted picture."
"Who?"
He glared at me and rubbed his hand as if it were a trophy he was polishing. "Probably Monica. My ex-wife's stolen things from me before."
"If she wanted the pictures of your daughter, she must be fond of Wanda."
"I don't think so. Monica never showed any affection for our daughter. She took the pictures to irritate me."
"How long have they been gone?"
He glared at the painting. "I don't know, but she hasn't been here since we got divorced. I haven't seen or heard from her since. She couldn't wait to get out of here and get back to her beloved East Palm."
"Is she still there?"
"Probably, but I have no idea where."
"You must have her address."
"All that's handled by the lawyers."
"Can you give me their names?"
Bellinger's eyes flared into balls of fury. "Yes, but I won't. I don't want you talking to Monica, and I don't want you trying to contact her, either. She'll just lie to you. You can't get a straight answer out of her. You wouldn't want to speak with her anyway. She has the vilest tongue I've ever heard."
He licked his lips and swallowed before he lifted his mouth into a menacing, sarcastic smile. The lines that broke out on his face told me that he didn't like the taste of his words. "I don't want anyone exposed to her language. She said the most dreadful things to me."
"When?"
"She came to the airport the day I left for Hawaii, too. She forced her way through the crowd and attacked me. I had to call for security."
"She hit you?"
"She swung her bag at me and verbally attacked me in the most vicious way, accusing me of taking all the money and leaving her without a cent. I was very generous. She got the house in Aspen and the cabin in Maine."
"When was the divorce final?"
"The end of November."
"Has Wanda visited her mother since then?"
"Never. Her mother hurt us both when she left."
"Monica divorced you."
"Exactly. She's hated me for years, but we tried to keep up appearances. She hated it here, too. She considered herself a young woman, somebody with the energy to go out night clubbing every night. I'm certain the two of them hadn't seen each other for months, maybe longer, until that terrible moment at the airport."
"Wanda was there when your ex-wife was?"
"Yes. I wish I could have shielded her from that scene."
"How did Wanda react?"
"Very well. She looked shocked and horrified when she heard her mother, but she behaved exceedingly well. She even tried to calm her mother down. I was proud of the way she acted except I thought she was too nice to Monica. She deserved much worse."
Rage came up in his eyes and I wondered what his ex-wife could have done to him. "Did they leave the airport together?"
"Of course not. On second thought, I didn't see them leave. I just slipped onto the plane and took my seat when they called for passengers. It's unthinkable that Wanda would want to go with her mother. Not after the way Monica carried on."
"Did Wanda have money enough that she could have taken a plane somewhere?"
"She does have some money from her grandfather, but I believe that's still in trust. I gave her more to help her out. She told me school expenses had gone up and her new car needed repairs. I gave her a couple of thousand to tide her over."
"Check?"
"No, cash. I had been carrying around a lot of money for my trip, but I decided my credit card would do fine."
"Do you know where she was planning to go right after she left you at the airport?"
He gazed out the window and I wondered if he was trying to remember or spent the time making up a plausible answer. Finally, he said, "Back to the hotel. I had a suite at the Sandpiper. The flight was early in the morning and I didn't want to drive for two hours to get there. It was paid up for another night so she didn't have to go back down here right away."
"Was she driving her new car?"
His eyes gravitated back to the painting as if it had a mystical hold on him. "I don't think so. She said she left it with a mechanic to get it fixed. She wanted to drive to the airport, but I told her it was dangerous to drive a car that didn't work correctly. I ended up taking a limousine to the hotel and a taxi to the airport."
"Did she drive herself or take a taxi back to the hotel?"
"I'm not sure. She mentioned that she asked the driver to wait, but that could have been for her mother."
"What did the driver look like?"
"Oh, dark-skinned and tall, maybe. I didn't pay much attention. I was thinking of Hawaii and Wanda."
"Was it a yellow cab?"
Bellinger crossed and uncrossed his arms over his belly. "I'm not very good at things like that. I just don't pay attention to what people look like."
"What about Wanda's car? What does it look like?"
"I never saw it. She said she bought a sports car from some student at Bonaventure."
"I'll ask around the college. What was she wearing that day?"
He looked up at the chandelier that hung from the high ceiling as if it might hold the answer. "A blue suit with a scandalously short skirt. At least she had the decency to dress up. Usually she wears jeans, and tee-shirts. She has much better clothes, but she told me that's how college students dress these days. It seems pretty shabby, but Wanda always had a mind of her own."
I took out my spiral notebook and a pen and started to write.
"What are you doing?" He leaned toward me and stared at the page, a look of anger on his face. "I told you not to talk to Mrs. Bellinger. Why have you written down her name?"
"Just practicing my writing skills." The words slipped out. Bellinger had been getting on my nerves for some time.
"What are you talking about?"
"Just kidding."
"How dare you kid about something this serious?"
"I know it's serious, but you've been putting restrictions on me, making it hard to conduct my business. I can't take your case when you close whole lines of information to investigation. I have to be free to follow where the evidence leads me."
"You have to remember that you're working for me."
"I haven't agreed to that yet."
He opened the leather wallet again and grinned at me through clenched teeth as though it gave him great pain to discuss money. "How much to hire you?"
"It depends on how extensive you want this investigation to be. I usually work alone, but if the case crosses state lines, I can call in colleagues from all over the country."
"I want whatever you find to stay with you. No sense letting a lot of people know. There is my family reputation to think about."
"It's your daughter and you know best, but you might want to call the police and have them do the investigation."
"I spoke to Sheriff Buxton last night. He's a friend of the family and used to work for my father. The sheriff thinks that just filing a missing person's report won't bring much unless there's a crime. Without it, those cretins won't lift a finger." His voice carried a tone of depression that stayed with his words when he added, "Sheriff Buxton recommended I employ you."
"I won't exactly be an employee."
"Investigator, then. He said you and your husband were discreet. I hope he was right. I can't have any newspaper coverage of this matter. I've had a few bad experiences with private detectives in the past."
"What kind of bad experiences?"
He held his wallet between us like some kind of magical protector. "I don't want to go into it. It has nothing to do with Wanda having gone missing. How much of a retainer do you want?"
I doubled the usual amount because I believed Bellinger was going to be trouble. That, and I wanted to pay him back for whatever he'd done to my grandmother.
He opened his wallet and counted crisp one hundreds into my hand. The expression on his face told me he didn't part with the green easily.
"It's a deal, but I have to be free to follow the facts."
He grinned at me but the smile didn't reach his eyes. "As long as you stay discrete and open to the possibility that Monica may try to spread noxious lies about me or Wanda."
"Has she spread lies about you in the past?"
He held up a hand and his eyes fixed me in a venomous glare. "I don't care to talk about Monica anymore. Wanda is the one on my mind and the one who should be on yours, too."
"Fair enough. You said Wanda came to the plane to see you off, and that's the last time you saw her. What was that date?"
"My flight to Hawaii was November 24th. I flew back yesterday. I tried to telephone Wanda from the airport because I hadn't heard from her. No mail, no telephone messages, not even an e-mail. She's never been very good at communicating her whereabouts, but I was shocked when her roommate told me on the phone that Wanda hadn't been at school for two months."
"Did your daughter's roommate sound upset?"
"I think she was very upset, but she managed to convince herself, or was convinced, that Wanda was with me. She told me she thought that Wanda had flown to Hawaii with me at the last minute."
"Was that something you'd discussed with Wanda?"
"I asked her come along, but she was just getting used to her new school and she wanted to stick it out. Wanda is a serious student."
"Where does the boyfriend come in?"
"I'm not sure."
"What did Wanda tell you about him?"
"Not much. All she said was that she'd met him in September. That was about the time she started at Bonaventure."
"I'll talk to the roommate and see what information she has. Maybe she knows the boyfriend. What's the roommate's name?"
"Amelia Wilson." I talked to her on the phone, but she didn't seem to have the faintest idea of what's going on in the world."
"What's the landlord's name?"
"She never told me. No doubt you'll find him at the apartment building. The address is 601 Osprey Drive. I think it's very near campus. While you're there, please talk to Wanda's teachers and her adviser." He took out a road map and squinted at the intersections. "The best way to get to the school is to follow this road."
He gave me directions in a frantic and authoritative tempo while I waited for him to finish. I figured him for a retired business man who was better at giving instructions to his sales staff than at doing anything himself.
When he stopped talking, he gazed at me for a reaction, so I gave it to him. "I will drive over there because I think this should be done face-to-face, but you'd get more information if you talk to Wanda's college professors yourself. Sometimes people clam up when they hear the words 'private investigator'."
"I'm not driving anywhere. I just got back from a trip. You don't have to tell them you're a private detective, but I'm paying you to do the investigating and I expect you to do the work."
"All right. I'll drive, but you have to come with me." We sat in silence and stared at each other. A wall of resistance had built up on both sides. On some level I realized that our last words might sum up our attitude toward life.
There was something chilling about Mr. Bellinger. Although I didn't like the man for what he’d done to my grandmother, I hoped he hadn't had anything to do with his daughter's disappearance.