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.
Download a free PDF copy here.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of this list before submitting to the Flogometer. I use it on my own work.
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?
Caveat: a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and create page turns without doing all of the above. A recent submission worked wonderfully well and didn't deal with five of the things in the checklist.
Tara sends the first chapter of The Lonely Town of Mez, a science fiction story. The rest of the chapter is after the break.
“I can feel it moving...underneath the ground.” Vas said, looking up as Penny put pressure on the puncture wound under his rib cage.
“Shut up.” Penny urged between clenched teeth, her eyes darting back in fourth in the dark.
“They’re going to come back, we’re all going to die.” Vas continued.
“Shut up.”
“We’re all going to die here.”
“Shut up!” She said, her voice trembling as Vas’s blood seeped into the cuffs of her shirt. She looked down at him, the reflection of the moons highlighting the tears welling in his eyes. “We are going to get out of here, you just need to keep quiet.” Her tone softened.
As the others came back, she felt the ground violently shake beneath them, and became blinded by two bright white lights quickly traveling towards them.
But that was later.
Earlier that week, Penny woke up face down in a patch of dewy grass. She raised herself slowly up onto her elbows and looked around to find she was alone, and in a cemetery. Growing up, there was a cemetery that backed up to the edge of the woods in the house where she grew up. She used to take friends back there and act out stories and investigate the grounds for clues of (snip)
Starting with action and danger to one of the characters was good . . . but then we slipped into backstory (that might have been the place to start). That, along with some writing hiccups, kept me from turning the page. The chapter, however, goes on to an interesting scenario that could work with some rewriting and editing. There's a promising story there to be told. Notes;
“I can feel it moving...underneath the ground.” Vas said, looking up as Penny put pressure on the puncture wound under his rib cage. Set the scene. We don’t know where we are.
“Shut up,” Penny urged between clenched teeth, her eyes darting back and forth in fourth in the dark. Eyes don’t dart around, gazes do. And give the action to the person. More simply, for example: Penny urge as she searched the darkness for danger. Also, try saying words through clenched teeth—while it’s possible, no normal person would do that.
“They’re going to come back, we’re all going to die.” Vas continued.
“Shut up.”
“We’re all going to die here.”
“Shut up!” She said, her voice trembling as Vas’s blood seeped into the cuffs of her shirt. She looked down at him, the reflection of the moons highlighting the tears welling in his eyes. “We are going to get out of here, you just need to keep quiet.” Her tone softened. Your use of “moons” was a good way to help set the scene as otherworldly.
As the others came back, she felt the ground shook violently shake beneath them, and became blinded by two bright white lights quickly traveling towards them blinded her. Use of “felt” is a filter, just go with the action as she experiences it. and the second half was pretty passive. Keep action active. Use of the adverb (quickly traveling) is weak, look for a strong verb; for example, zoomed, or flashed, etc.
But that was later.
Earlier that week, Penny woke up face down in a patch of dewy grass. She raised herself slowly up onto her elbows and looked around to find she was alone, and in a cemetery. Growing up, there had been was a cemetery that backed up to the edge of the woods in the house where she grew up. She used to take friends back there and act out stories and investigate the grounds for clues of (snip) The first page is NEVER a good time to slip into a flashback, in my view. More than that, this awakening in the cemetery seems to be the inciting incident. I’d look for a way to start there but build more tension into the scene.
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.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2015 Ray Rhamey, story © 2015 Tara
Continued
. . . ghosts or monsters. Yet the one she was waking up in was unlike any cemetery she had seen. The grass was a mixture of green and bright yellow like it had been over watered. Instead of gravestones, there were various human sized cement boxes placed on top of the lawn, some stacked sloppily on top of each other. And instead of the treeline being pushed to the horizon, there were a few dozen leafless trees shadowing the lawn with their anemic branches.
“I have got to lay off the sauce.” Penny sighed as she pressed her hands into the wet lawn and pushed herself upright, wiping her hands on her jeans. It wasn't unheard of that Penny woke in a strange place without any recollection of how she got there. She loved Jack Daniels, she loved red wine, she loved Vodka. There was a time in her life when Penny had goals, she insisted, but figured that part of her was washed away a long time ago. In the past, Penny had woken up in a myriad of places- studio apartments, broom closets in 24 hour diners, strange cars, and on the rare occasion- warm in her own bed on 8th street. Usually, she had some clue as to where she was. There were always some clues- some blurry flashbacks to the events of the night prior, or a friendly face to let her know she was a few towns over. But this time- she was concerned. Did someone slip something in her drink this time? Why couldn't she remember anything about what had happened the night prior. The last thing that she could remember was falling asleep on her sofa watching a rerun of The Office.
And what was up with the gravestones? She had spent a weekend at a small town in Virginia and took a tour of a cemetery that had similar type of tombstones. It had something to do with the sea level, or how it was difficult to dig in the wintertime so they would just stick them in a big box. But the ones that were there had something peculiar about them- they didn't have lids. She began to wonder if they weren't just giant cement blocks until she walked over and knocked on one to find it hollow inside. And written on the side was the epitaph. It was in a language that she couldn't understand. In fact, it was a language that she couldn't even recognize.
Her heart began to beat faster as she became more aware of her situation, and she raised a loose fist to her lips- something Penny did when she became afraid. Why did this cemetery look so foreign and strange? The only thing she could understand on the markers was a set on numbers: “45 – 22”. But what could those numbers possibly mean?
There was a narrow brick path that seemed to lead out, and without hesitation, Penny left the strange cemetery. She needed to see something she recognized. Anything.
There was a road at the end of that brick path, appropriately named “Infirmary Street”. At first, Penny walked down the side of the street in case a car drove past. But the longer she walked, she realized that no one was driving on the streets. The first house that she had approached looked like an abandoned farm house- the paint was peeling and the front porch was empty. The second house looked exactly the same as the first house. As the houses became closer and closer spaced, she realized that every house that was on this street was abandoned. On an ordinary day, when faced with such a peculiar situation, Penny would have taken advantage of it. Whenever she saw an abandoned house along the side of the road, she would stop to riffle through their things. She wasn't looking for anything of value- that was never her intention. What she wanted was a peek into someone's life. The pieces that she could draw from the contents of a drawer, or the mail that was left on the floor, or the things that were taped to the refrigerator told a far better story than any book she could pick up. Once she found a box of letters a man in prison sent to his mother. She spent hours on the floor of the old colonial examining the elementary penmanship, and the promises that he would make to his elderly, and now presumably dead, mother. Penny just wanted to be an audience member when it came to society- she was never interested in being an active participant.
But her current situation demanded action. As much as she wanted to set up in one of the many abandoned houses and read through old newspapers, she couldn't. And this filled her with anxiety and despair- none of which could have been read through the scowl on her face.
At the end of Infirmary Road was a town, and Infirmary was eventually intersected by Main street. For the first time, Penny saw cars- but they were parked along the side of the road and covered in dust and moss to the point that she couldn't see inside the windows. There were lines of brick building stretching down in both directions. There were no signs differentiating the stores, and the doors were all boarded. The windows, however, were not boarded. When Penny pressed her forehead against the glass in hope of finding the poetic remains of a diner- with the chairs stacked on the tables and the menu still on the chalkboard- she was disappointed to find four walls and a turned over paint bucket. Each and every window portrayed a slightly different version of the first.
She turned the corner on to main street, and decided to follow the signs that directed to the library. It was expected that an unmarked building housed nothing but walls and buckets- but the library had to have something. A library had to have a phone. And when she got to that phone, she'd call Cole.
As her mind began to drift to Cole, and lingered on the the creases next to his eyes, she was abruptly pushed down by a manic force. Shocked by the sudden burst of movement after a long morning of uncomfortable stillness, she instinctively threw her arms up around her head as she fell to the ground. After the shock has left her, she opened her eyes to see the back end of a man running away from her. He appeared to be carrying something in his hands.
She opened her mouth to yell after him, but stopped herself. It was still unclear where she was, why the town looked the way that it did... it was not the time to gain the attention to the one person who looked as if he was fleeing a crime.
Once she had reached the library, the enormity of it made her take pause. Why was it so much larger than any other building in the town? Most of the doors and windows were boarded except for the rear door. She peered inside, prepared to find nothing more than empty walls and miscellaneous garbage, and she wasn't disappointed. There was a solid door directly across from her, a school desk and an empty bottle of water.
Another dead end. It seemed everywhere was leading her no where. She turned around, defeated, and leaned against the door. Digging her palms into her eyes, she tried desperately to push out any remaining ounce of light and escape.
“Turn around.” A muffled voice said on the other side of the glass.
Her hand shot down to her sides and she turned around.
“Do you remember what happened?” He asked, his eyes affixed firmly on hers.
“No- do you?” She immediately regretted how snotty her tone came across.
“Do you remember who you are?”
“Uh- yeah. This is a weird library, dude. Can I just come inside?”
He nodded approvingly as he opened the door. “Welcome to The End.”