Submissions Welcome. 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 engaging the reader with the character
- 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 character desires something.
- The character 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.
Also, if you think about it, the same checklist should apply to the page where you introduce an antagonist.
Susan sends a first chapter of Sophie's Sophistication. The remainder is after the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
It’s never good news when the phone rings in the wee hours of the morning - it usually wakes you to your worst nightmare. But sleep often eludes Sophie and she is still awake, sick with worry, when it suddenly rings.
“Is this Sophie Theron?” The authoritative voice sends a frisson of fear through her.
“Y-es, who’s this?”
“I am State Trooper John Donnelly, Ma’am. I am at the scene of a single vehicle crash on Ballard Road near NY211. Is your husband driving a 2006 silver Volvo station wagon?”
“No, I’m not... No, it’s Daddy’s...it’s my father’s car. What’s happened? Is my Dad okay?”
I knew something was wrong! He’s never gone this long, even when his meetings run late. He must be angry with me. I should have listened to him. I should have tried to call him. Oh why didn’t I call him?
Sophie’s ongoing conflict with her Dad sporadically erupts into hurtful words as it did this morning when she excitedly announced that she had quit the telemarketing job and found a position as an ‘associate’ in a local arts and crafts store. This time she hoped he might be happy for her because art was all she ever cared about. But he never supported her passion for it. He deemed it a dilatory hobby at best.
This opening does begin to raise a good story question—is her father hurt or dead? But then it veers off into backstory and the momentum dies. At this moment we just don’t need to know about her ongoing conflict or what happened in the past. We want the now. For me, if the father’s accident impacts the story, I suggest starting at the point where Sophie arrives at the hospital and sees her father going into the operating room. Notes:
It’s never good news when the phone rings in the wee hours of the morning - it usually wakes you to your worst nightmare. But sleep often eludes Sophie and she is still awake, sick with worry, when it suddenly rings. The second-person opening offers an opinion about early-morning calls, but does it contribute to the story? It’s not what’s happening to the protagonist. Get to the story. Another point: this tells us that Sophie is sick with worry, but worry about what? This is another one of those dratted “information questions” that leave the reader not knowing what the heck is going on in the character’s experience.
“Is this Sophie Theron?” The authoritative voice sends a frisson of fear through her.
“Y-es, who’s this?”
“I am State Trooper John Donnelly, Ma’am. I am at the scene of a single vehicle crash on Ballard Road near NY211. Is your husband driving a 2006 silver Volvo station wagon?”
“No, I’m not... No, it’s Daddy’s...it’s my father’s car. What’s happened? Is my Dad okay?”
I knew something was wrong! He’s never gone this long, even when his meetings run late. He must be angry with me. I should have listened to him. I should have tried to call him. Oh why didn’t I call him?
Sophie’s ongoing conflict with her Dad sporadically erupts into hurtful words as it did this morning when she excitedly announced that she had quit the telemarketing job and found a position as an ‘associate’ in a local arts and crafts store. This time she hoped he might be happy for her because art was all she ever cared about. But he never supported her passion for it. He deemed it a dilatory hobby at best. And here we stop everything for backstory. It doesn’t matter now. Only the story of the moment does, at least in this narrative.
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 Susan
Continued
Her father’s wish was to have her complete a bookkeeping course, which he believed would be a means for her to support herself. She tried to stick it out but finally quit after the first miserable year. The subject was anathema to her - those columns of meaningless numbers numbed her brain. She lacked the exactitude inherent in basic arithmetic and was always making mistakes thus further diminishing her fragile self confidence. Since then she has been going from one meaningless, soul- sapping job to another, adding more strain to their already tense relationship. His last words to her as he left for work were:
“This position has nothing to do with art, Sophie. It’s just another minimum wage, dead-end job for losers.”
Now her worst nightmare unfolds to a background refrain of loser, loser, loser.
The State Trooper informs her that her father’s car slid out of control on one of those sinuous county roads now slick with relentless April showers. They are taking him to Orange Regional Medical Center.
Sophie arrives at the hospital only to catch a glimpse of her Dad as they rush him through on a gurney. Gregory Theron is unconscious and covered in blood. He looks lifeless. She looks like him - pale and limp with dread. Seeing her father this way is emetic and without warning waves of nausea are rising in her gullet as she tries to focus on the important information she is receiving.
“Your father’s condition is critical.”
Nnnngah
“We are trying to reach a surgeon,”
Nnnngah
“which may take a while.”
Nnnngah
“There is some paperwork for you to fill out.”
Nnnngah
Unable to stave off the nausea, Sophie desperately dashes into a washroom and throws up!
Back at triage she is bombarded with a litany of questions she has no answers to.
“Does your father have any medical conditions or allergies that we should be aware of?”
“Um...”
Does he?
“Can you tell us what meds he’s taking?”
“No...”
Does Dad take medication?
“Has your father had any surgeries?”
“I don’t think so...”
He’s never been sick.
“Does your father have insurance?”
“I’m not sure...”
Insurance?
At the age of twenty-five, Sophie should be able to answer these routine questions. Meds, operations, insurance; these were never topics of conversation between Sophie and her Dad - he shared very little with her. Now her head is spinning and she simply isn’t able to provide any helpful information. Her old companion Guilt, never very far away, is already on the scene, making her feel as worthless as ever.
“Miss Theron,” one of the nurses approaches and Sophie’s heart leaps to her throat. “Is there a family member I could call for you? It may be a while before we know anything. Perhaps someone could come and wait with you.”
Alas, Sophie has no one to call.
~~~
The next several hours are a surreal succession of harsh facts and fuzzy memories running through Sophie’s mind. The sickly glow of fluorescent lighting and the wretched environment of the emergency ward abets Sophie’s grim state of mind. She has a physical reaction to her surroundings, alternating hot and cold, her body covered in nervous perspiration, her olfactory memory making her nauseous once more. She associates this place with sadness; with the event that changed her world forever, from happy and safe to the cold and dreary place that she still inhabits. This place was the last place she saw her mother alive, a lifetime ago. Now that hospital smell churns her gut as it did when she was just a child.
The hours drag on and dawn breaks without any progress or indication of what will be next. Poor Sophie is paralyzed by anxiety, sitting stunned and silent for what seems an eternity, watching people come and go, immersed in their own dramas. Alone with her morbid thoughts, she presents the perfect tableau of misery in the succession of ignoble vignettes that unfold in the ER.
The sordid promiscuity she witnesses makes Sophie’s heart ache. It aches for the old man shuffling along the corridor, his hospital gown revealing flaccid buttocks. It aches for the young woman lying on a gurney in the public corridor quietly weeping, mindless that she is lewdly exposed. It aches for the dozing woman hunched over her prostrate husband’s feet at the foot of his gurney - he is the patient but she is the one in pain. Even in their semi-slumber Sophie sees that they try to reassure each other with a touch, a weak smile, a tuck of the blanket, each wanting to make the other more comfortable. She notices how his masculine, muscular calf is cradled in her upturned hand in a tenderly sensual aspect.
How do people find love like that? What will she do if she loses him?
Sophie can’t bear the poignancy of the thought and she finally sheds the tears she’s bravely withheld for lo these many hours. The tears are for her Dad, for the reclined lovers opposite her, and for herself, for being unworthy of that kind of love. A small child wails persistently somewhere beyond her vision - it may as well be her.
~~~
Sophie reclines half asleep on a chair when her cell phone startles her.
“Sophie; it’s Sage. I can’t get a hold of your Dad. He’s late for a meeting. He is never late. What’s wrong?”
“Dad’s been in an accident...we’re at the hospital...Oh Sage, I - I don’t know what to do...” Sophie’s words are supplanted by sobs.
“Sophie! What hospital?”
“Orange...sob...Regional...sob...Medical Center...sob.”
“Okay, I’ll be right there.”
It takes her no time at all to get there - nothing’s very far in Middletown, New York. Sage Hume, her Dad’s assistant, arrives shortly after 9:00. She finds Sophie sitting hunched on a vinyl bench, her arms wrapped around her chest, her right toe on her left instep in a posture evocative of her struggle to hold it all together. Sage is jolted by how Sophie seems to have regressed into that sad, fair haired little girl who Gregory always had in tow for lack of any other place to leave her. What a pretty child she would have been if not for her neglected, un-brushed hair, her sallow complexion and rumpled clothing that always smelled faintly of laundry. Little Sophie was a waif; her body conveying with every gesture that she was shy, insecure, and unworthy of love. Nothing has changed - she is a creature of infinite melancholy.
The day seems to have no end. Sage stays with Sophie and accompanies her to the recovery room when Gregory finally comes out of surgery.
“Don’t worry Sophie, your Dad’s going to pull through, he is so stubborn that he won’t hand over the Vision 2020 project to anyone. Come on, let’s go to the cafeteria to get a bite. It’s okay to leave him for a bit.”
When they return around five o’clock, there has been a change of shift and the new nurse tells them that Gregory is stable for now.
“He may drift in and out of consciousness so there’s no point in your staying. Go home, get some rest. I promise I’ll call you as soon as he wakes up or if his condition changes.”
~~~
Sophie sits alone in the dingy living room of the bungalow where she lives with her Dad. She’s concentrating on her sketchbook and referencing a well-thumbed copy of ‘Audubon’s Birds of America’. Her mind is obviously preoccupied because as per habit, she is twirling a strand of her ash-blond hair, which finds its way into her mouth and becomes wet with her saliva.
When there is a knock on the door, Sophie is yanked from her refuge back to the dreadful present in which her father is lying in the ICU on the precipice of life and death. She is so distracted that she recklessly opens the door without even asking who it might be.
A tall gentleman stands at the threshold - for surely he is that, given his elegant appearance and the soft-spoken manner in which he introduces himself - a gentleman with a serious, seriously handsome face.
“Hello Sophie. I am Alexander Cavenaugh. Your father and my mother were cousins.”
What?
And then to qualify his kinship to her Dad he adds, with a little tilt of his head and a tiny one-sided smile, “Once or twice removed, I believe.”
His luminous grey eyes focus on Sophie, searching her face for some acknowledgement, or possibly recognition but it’s apparent in her big blue eyes that she is blindsided by his presence.
Sophie is dumbfounded, oblivious of any family relations In fact her very persona bespeaks the fact that she has no one, other than her Dad, to belong to Now, in her fragile emotional state, her heart flutters at those twinkling eyes; that tiny smile; that expression of familiarity that connects her to this man somehow.
Alexander gazes at her and tenderly takes her hands into both of his.
“May I come in?”
This caring gesture, the feel of his warm hands enveloping her cold ones, resonates physically through Sophie.
I feel like I may swoon. Can this gorgeous man really have anything to do with me?
But before Sophie can gather her wits to reply, her cell phone starts rattling rudely on the coffee table and then rings out loudly like an alarm. She freezes.
“Oh my God!” She whispers under her breath.
Seeing the apprehension in her large blue eyes, Alexander Cavenaugh immediately responds to her panic. He eyes the phone and then takes her by the shoulders turning her sideways so he can squeeze past her in the tiny vestibule. He strides into the living room holding one of her hands, pulling her in tow and grabs the phone. Looking at the display he says,
“It’s the hospital - would you like me to answer it?”
Sophie looks pleadingly at him until she manages to find a voice; not her own voice, but some wobbly, breathless, little girl voice.
“Please...”
“Alexander Cavenaugh speaking.”
She is only vaguely aware of the one sided conversation, fascinated as she is by his presence. His eyes are fixed on hers,
“Yes she is...No, not at the moment...Yes, I’m his cousin...Will you tell me please?”
After a moment, she sees him blanch and his expression suddenly flattens.
“I see...Yes...I understand...Yes I will...Goodbye.”
Who is this man? Mr. Cavenaugh? Alexander? Alex? A savior? A God? God’s gift to women? To me?
Alexander grabs her shoulders again and forces her gaze to meet his, which is warm with empathy and sorrow - more emotion than he’s used to showing.
At once she knows her Dad is gone!
Holding her firmly by the arms, he quietly informs her that her father has succumbed to his injuries and passed away a few minutes ago.
Sophie’s heart races, thumping visibly in her chest and she clasps her hands over it as though its pounding were intolerable. She feels dizzy, unsteady on her feet, and her whole body trembles.
What’s happening to me? I have to get out! No, this is not happening! It can’t be! I just left him in the recovery room! In the RECOVERY room! No, it can...not...be!
She develops a grayish pallor; her breathing becomes shallower and shallower; her pupils are dilated; her eyes look panicked, darting here and there as if she’s seeking a means of escape from this reality. A fine film of sweat glistens on her brow. Sophie is in the throes of a full blown anxiety attack. The symptoms are classic and Alexander reacts by coaching her to control her breathing, smoothing her brow, quieting her as best he can with his hands and his voice.
“Deep breath in through your nose...now breathe out slowly through your mouth. There, like that. Good. Again. You’ll be okay. You’re okay...” As her breathing becomes more regular and reality is settling in she croaks a single word;
“Daddy...”
“Sophie, I’m so sorry.”
At his words the floodgates open. Tears are flowing down her cheeks as every sad, lonely, frustrating, devastating emotion she’s ever felt gushes out of her in great gasping sobs onto his broad chest.
He hugs her tight and murmurs gently as he strokes her head and rubs her back;
“Calm Sophie, it’s okay, I’m here for you.”
For me?
Sophie has never been physically handled as much in all her life as she has been by this man in just the last few minutes. Certainly not by her father, who is...was (!) a taciturn, undemonstrative parent; not by any man, ever. Alexander is hugging her. He leads her to the sofa and actually pulls her onto his lap! She is at sea - at a total loss as to how she should respond to this intimacy. I should probably get up and offer him tea or something.
But she can’t seem to move away, she needs so badly to be held like this.
How pitiful am I?
Alexander tells her to go ahead and cry, for if ever there was a time for unabashed tears, it is now. But when the sobs threaten to choke her, he starts to coo;
“Shh, shh, hush now. Calm Baby, shh,” he murmurs as he caresses her face.
Baby?
Sophie is a puddle in his arms. She cries and cries as he patiently holds her. Her head resting on his shoulder, she is enveloped by his arms and by his masculine, woodsy, intoxicating scent. It’s as though he had nothing more pressing to do than this. His fine linen shirt is now crumpled and damp with her tears but he sits back comfortably, incongruous with the ugly sofa in the tiny bungalow that he now dominates with his presence. He cradles Sophie in his arms as if she were indeed a baby.
Then he starts humming quietly, a melody that tugs a cord within her evoking a sense of contentedness. As he begins to sing she has a dream-like memory - her mother’s soothing voice singing these timeless lyrics:
Summertime, and the livin’ is easy
Fish are jumpin’ and the cotton is high
Your daddy’s rich and your mama’s good-lookin’
So hush little baby, don’t cry
Sophie releases a tremulous sigh, calming down enough to appreciate the mellifluous voice serenading her.
Wow! He sings beautifully! Who is this man? Where has he been all my life? How did he know to show up just now?
Then, seeing this scene through her mind’s eye - her sitting on his lap, her head nestled into his neck, Sophie is suddenly mortified! She wants to leap from his embrace and hide from embarrassment. As she moves to extricate herself, his hold on her loosens, but he doesn’t let go. Sophie doesn’t want him to let her go. She just wants to be held like this forever and even though she should be leery of this whole bizarre situation, it feels rather safe and strangely familiar. Overwhelmed by the emotions tearing at her heart, all she feels toward him is gratitude.
“Sophie,” he says her name as if he’s known her all her life. “Don’t be embarrassed, I am here to be with you, to help you through this. I promise I will take care of you, as your father asked me to. I’m happy to do it. Please don’t be afraid.”
Dad asked him here?
~~~
Alexander took charge from the moment her phone rang and they learned of her father’s death.
“Sophie, I don’t want to leave you alone tonight. You’ll stay at the hotel with me and we’ll go to the hospital together in the morning. Go and gather a few things that you’ll need.”
Even though under normal circumstances this would be a very strange thing to do, she doesn’t protest - she really doesn’t want to be alone.
The hotel is in Chester, a twenty minute drive from Middletown. Along the way, Alexander searches in vain for an open pharmacy.
“Ideally I’d have you take a tranquilizer to help you sleep tonight but since there doesn’t seem to be anywhere to get some, we’ll make do without. It’ll be fine, I’ll stay with you. You’ll be okay.” He sounds doubtful.
Even so, when they finally get into the suite, her exhaustion from the events of the last twenty four hours and his calming presence ease her into a fitful sleep.
~~~
The next morning they navigate the depressing corridors of the hospital, with Alexander holding her hand and taking charge of the arrangements for Gregory. No one has ever held her hand like this, not since she was a little girl being guided across dangerous intersections.
All the while that Alexander is tending to her affairs, and to her, he keeps fielding and making business calls. Sophie is tuned out to most of it, but as they pull into the parking lot of a pharmacy, her ears perk up at the call he makes. His tone is smooth and assertive, his voice perhaps a little deeper, more seductive.
“Juliette, I need you to do something for me.” He pauses to listen and then smiles, “No not that...I know...I know you would, but right now I just need you to call in a script to...” he glances at the sign on the building, “...Neighbor Pharmacy. In Middletown. Can you jot the number down?” He dictates the phone number off the sign and says; “Make it out for two milligrams of sublingual Ativan for a Miss Sophie Theron...No; it’s T-h-e-r-o-n...Yes...You’re the best, thank you Cherie...Yes I promise.”
The words he speaks are unremarkable and yet somehow the way he speaks them is suggestive of something else, something elusive to Sophie; something that makes her feel even more insecure, more self-conscious of her inexperience in the face of this flirtatious dialogue with the mysterious Juliette.
Once inside, Alexander introduces himself to the pharmacist. Having glanced at her name tag he addresses her by name,
“Hello Ms. Brooks, my name is Alexander Cavenaugh. You may be familiar with my company, World Wide Pharmaceuticals.”
“Oh, Mr. Cavenaugh I recognize you from your picture in last month’s ‘Pharmacy Today’. Congratulations on the opening of your free dispensing clinic! I hope other manufacturers will follow suit.”
“We’ll work on them.” He smiles at her genially but then becomes serious again. “You will be receiving a prescription momentarily from a Dr. Badour in New York City. I hope you can fill it as soon as it’s called in.”
The pharmacist is extremely accommodating, treating Alexander as if he were a celebrity. “Yes of course, Mr. Cavenaugh, I can get started right away if you tell me what you need.”
Who is this man? Why does he make me feel so woozy? And who is Juliette?
Somehow this exchange with the pharmacist and the earlier phone-call to Juliette make Sophie want to cry. Her emotions are in shambles, a mess of contradictions: anxiety for her dire situation and calm because he’s holding her hand; panic about the future and relief because he is taking charge; anguish over the loss of her Dad and elation over Alexander’s proximity - with the inevitable guilt that attaches to this last emotion. What a cruel twist of fate to have Alexander materialize in her world just as her father vanishes from it.
~~~
Sophie remembers her first painful pang of guilt clearly. When she was just a toddler, she had accidentally broken a treasured Meissen figurine that her mother sometimes let her play with if she promised to be a good girl. She loved that little goatherd with his hand resting lovingly on the neck of his little white goat. She can still remember the crushing sorrow she felt, understanding that it was gone forever and then the sudden, horrible realization that she was not a good girl.
After that, her mother was always cranky; always needed to rest; always leaving little Sophie to fend for herself, as if she didn’t love her anymore. And then one day her mother just disappeared from her life altogether. The hospital had swallowed her up. Little Sophie interpreted this absence as her punishment for having been a bad girl. From that moment on she has been riddled with guilt. Guilt for so many things: for not being a better daughter to her Dad; for dropping out of college; for being too shy to assert herself; for being stuck in a string of ‘McJobs’; but most of all for her wicked and unbridled penchant for masturbation.
When she was about eight years old Sophie started having desires that she really didn‘t understand. But she quickly discovered that if she created friction down there, where she throbbed, by frantically humping her busy fingers, she would begin to stiffen, and then explode somehow, in a euphoric burst of sensation, like when you strike a match to create the spark that ignites it.
For reasons beyond her eight year old comprehension, she was ashamed of this behavior. She didn’t want anyone to catch her in the act, to see her flushed cheeks, her eyes roll back and her whole body yield to the convulsions that this abrasion elicited. So she got into the habit of keeping to herself.
After a year or so of this frenetic behavior, she was mindlessly perfecting her technique one night, craving some relief from the unusual sharp cramps she’d been experiencing all day. After she ‘exploded’ Sophie discovered, to her horror, that her hand was covered with a red/brown sticky substance. In her naiveté she assumed that she had made herself bleed by rubbing and grinding so vigorously. She was shocked! And scared. Sadly, there was no one to prepare her at such a young age for the onset of menstruation. She had no one to turn to for an explanation.
Poor Sophie didn’t understand what she was doing, couldn’t articulate it. But in spite of the fear and guilt it engendered, it was compelling, addictive even. She became reclusive so that she could do it as often as she wanted to. Thus started her shame for soiling her panties all the time and her guilt for not being in control enough to stop.
She was a bad girl.