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.
- 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.
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.
Adan sends the first 2 chapters of Queen. Since the first is so brief that it’s basically a first page, we’ll look at both. The remainder of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
His dealer dodged into an alley, tried to silence his breath, but couldn't.
Breathless, desperate for air, he wheezed almost choking.
He put a hand to his throat, and felt it again.
Blood.
Stilo smiled from the shadows where he'd enjoyed seeing the man struggle.
Glanced at his knife, his stiletto, no more than a line of red on its edge.
Press, not slice. So much cleaner. So much slower.
Stilo stole into the space between the man and the only exit.
No traffic on the street beyond the alley.
The night was for sleeping.
Or dying.
As the man set his hand down from his throat, finally catching his breath, Stilo slipped behind him, watched him turn his head, his eyes widening, catching the glint of the blade rising.
With a nudge on the man's back, Stilo pushed him into the blade.
When you're boss, some lessons are only by example.
Chapter 2
I repeated my new daily intention: conscious creative happiness.
It was good yoga, I told myself.
I felt my lips stretch and spread into a tiny smile. Such mindfulness, I teased myself. And so much easier sitting on my bed. Carefully, I re-crossed and settled my legs and feet closer to my hips. But my smile, soft as warm balm along my lips, slipped away. Like passing by broken marquee letters outside a dim motel at night, the memory of a morning news alert flickered across my mind – more overdoses.
I inhaled deeply, letting the news drift to a mental corner to wait its turn.
Drug overdoses.
Conscious creative happiness.
How the hell would those two fit together?
I choke-laughed to myself, nearly waking Mike beside me.
He peeked at me with one eye from his dreamland, snorted, then fell back to sleep.
He reminded me of a favorite cartoon. One huge inquisitive eye blinking in a pink periscope suddenly surfacing from silvery flat water. Looking right and left. Then disappearing, leaving only ripples.
I smiled, breathing deeply, and wondered.
If I wasn't so vested in little people's lives, would I have thought animation, not cartoon?
No issues with the writing and voice here, and I was glad to see the clear difference in voice between the first chapter and the second. The first chapter did generate a page-turn for me. There’s the promise of an interesting crime novel there.
But the first page of the second chapter? For this reader, the tension level fell to nothing much. There’s no clear connection between the grim first chapter and this pleasant little scene, and we have no idea if the protagonist in chapter 2 has anything to do with Stilo’s murderousness. Lacking that, what we have here is a person, presumably a woman, doing yoga on her bed next to her sleeping boyfriend. While this is an immediate scene, there’s nothing happening that makes me wonder what will happen next. The woman has no problems, no issues, just warm fuzzies.
I felt that the rest of the chapter was pretty much set-up as well, with nothing much happening. There are a couple of very interesting tidbits from the past—her boyfriend kills someone who kidnaps her and some children, and she helps—but that was then, and there’s not a lot to now. Chapter 2 needs to start the story, and it doesn’t for me.
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 Adan
Continued:
I glanced again at my boyfriend Mike, head pressed comfortably on his pillow, and squinted. The heavy stillness of his eyelids said he was half awake. His tightly pressed lips restrained a smile.
Cartoon. Definitely. It fit him like a drawing.
I held back poking him, pretending not to see him, like a kitty hiding openly in a corner. Though I doubt I hid my smirky smile very well. Thing is, I really didn't want to hide it. But I had a secret.
Not a secret secret. A sorta secret.
The kind I kept the details tightly to myself.
Mike, and the six children going with us, all knew I looked forward to leaving Texas and going back to visit Vermont. And it wasn't my special secret because these weren't my own or Mike's children. Or because I felt guilty, that creeping heat coil inside that's lost its thermostat, saying I owed the kids something, after we were kidnapped and almost killed that summer. Ok, maybe a little. But after all, Mike had killed the bad guy, after I'd set the guy up to be shot. With tree pose no less!
No, this was a secret secret because I was the one escaping now. Literally flying away from our summer nightmare heat in Texas. A silent chuckle rose inside me. Tickling me.
But early September in Vermont? Yes, now that was a secret worth savoring.
Summer tourist traffic would have settled down. Fall foliage was a few weeks away then, so the next round of tourists and traffic were on hold. The air was crisp. Clean. With cool hints of a winter I wouldn't have to stay and endure – the north's cracked mirror reflection of a Texas summer. Yes, I smiled, a trip worth savoring.
Attending the region's drug prevention conference was the perfect excuse. Thankfully, the children's grandmother, Rosetta, coincidentally also from Vermont, had convinced the children's parents to let me care for them once again. Especially the younger four, brothers Buzz and Zilker, and sisters Simone and Tabitha. Unlike the summer, this time the two oldest cousins, Antone and Cherise would also come along. Brother and sister, they were a potent one-two punch to help me keep the younger tweens in check.
Brimming, overflowing with anticipation, I relaxed into a more gentle sitting pose, letting my legs stretch out enough the soles of my feet practically clapped in relief. Feeling my hips soften, like the gently sloping valleys between Vermont's Green Mountains, I grinned.
Conscious creative happiness.
It must be working.
My heart rested like a calm summer day on Lake Champlain. I recalled the clarity of the dry air. The air's bracing, sometimes shocking grip around my eyes and mouth. My nose pinched with the scent of pines and firs. Heard memories of people laughing along the little wall at Battery Park where my uncle had taken me warmer days. Remembered shrieks from bathers entering the water from the thin beaches along the lake's shore. Sound traveled directly across the thin air like light from the sun.
The purr of a motor smoothly starting brought me back.
My eyes opened softly, cautiously.
Relief filled my imagination.
No gunshot or racing car. Just the AC. Effortlessly cooling my arms and face. My exposed legs dimpled as I inhaled, extending upward from my hips, an imaginary balloon tied to a ribbon in my hair helping lift my spine. I was light as happy air. Breathing evenly in the late summer heat of Austin, Texas.
My eyes opened wider, like flowers, greeting the morning light filtering my lace curtains.
Briefly, I lamented. This was about all I had done to make this new apartment in this new state mine. That, plus a few hardy floral touches I had brought with me from Vermont.
Maybe, I chuckled to myself, I could find a bright floral armadillo somewhere.
I felt my phone vibrate, tickling my leg, and saw Mike was awake.
Sleepily, he reached a thick bronze arm my direction.
Felt a finger trace a line along my thigh.
Conscious creative happiness.
The phone tickled again.
Choices, choices.
Glancing, I saw it was a new alert.
Without opening it I turned the phone over and buried it beside my pillow.
I purred with the AC. “Good morning, sleepy head.”