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.
Brent sends the prologue and first chapter of First Tuesday. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
Prologue
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 Brent
Prologue
Call it a coup, call it a revolution, call it restoring the vision.
It began in a New York nanosecond. As with most upheavals, the trigger lay buried amid the minutiae of daily life, long before anyone noticed, long before such a minor alteration could bring forth major transformation.
Coup, revolution, restoration. The woman considered none of those labels as she probed the system, lurking behind firewalls and cutouts, studying her triple monitors, watching her handiwork slip into place.
“JC,” she whispered. An observer might have thought it an oath, a hushed plea, a prayer.
But the woman no more pondered Jesus than the coup, or the revolution, or the restoration that JC would trigger. A job begun, she thought, a job well done.
Chapter 1
“Hey, buddy! You.”
John Garner turned at the tap on his shoulder, stopping amid the hustle of Amsterdam Avenue. The man who’d accosted him was tall, a good four inches longer than John’s own 5’10” frame, with dirty blond hair that rested uneasily on the collar of his olive-drab pseudo-Army-surplus jacket. Or maybe the jacket was the real thing, though John was sure – almost sure – the Army had ditched olive-drab for desert camouflage fifteen years ago.
“Weren’t you just in that coffee shop?”
The man’s words sketched a question in form only – no upturned voice at the end, no doubt, more imperious accusation than query. Two sentences, and already the man reminded him of his second-year torts professor, a frustrated courtroom-wannabe who treated his students as hostile witnesses.
The man assumed the answer – correctly, as it happened – and kept speaking. “Did you pick up a piece of paper there?” Again, it sounded like “Where were you on the night you murdered your wife?”
John felt like shouting, “Objection!” Instead, he took a deep breath, refusing to let the man, a total stranger, spoil one of those unexpectedly warm fall afternoons that made even smart people believe winter would never beset New York. He decided that if the man were going to act (snip)
Clean writing and clear voice recommend this narrative to the reader, but how does it fare in the storytelling department? For me, the prologue was too much tease with vague references to things I don’t know and that aren’t revealed to me. What upheavals? What job? These are information questions, not story questions. So the prologue doesn’t get a page-turn from me.
The chapter opening comes closer. It does seem to have conflict, and there are story questions raised. The aggressive tone of “the man” helps to bring tension and raise questions. But . . .
But there’s so much writing here for what should be a simple and interesting confrontation. All of the time spent in the opening on the nature of the jacket the man is wearing—does that impact the story in any way? And there are descriptive notions such as his hair resting “uneasily” on a collar. What does that mean, exactly? The hair wouldn’t be feeling an emotion.
This is an action scene, essentially, with one person accosting another in an aggressive way. It isn’t the time for long-way-around writing, I believe, but time for pace and movement in what happens. Here’s an example from the next page:
So he took his turn in the role of mime, face a mask of incomprehension, arms bent ten degrees at the elbow, palms upturned halfway in the universal symbol for “Huh?”
That’s a clear signal to me that overwriting is in my future. So, despite the beginnings of a story question, I decided not to move on. Of course, because of the way this works, I did read further, and there may be an interesting story ahead and there was intense action—but, for me, the narrative continued to meander more than I was in the mood for. I think Brent should focus on distilling the story down to what’s happening and then add back in touches of nuance (not gobs) to give it his unique flavor.
Chapter 1 continued
. . . like a litigator, he’d play dumb witness. “Piece of paper?” he asked, trying to sound artless, trying as well to avoid wrinkling his nose at the cigarette odor clinging to the man’s jacket.
“Yeah, paper. Like, you know….” The man gestured with open palms, first held upright in front of him, and then one above the other, with nothing but the November air and thin sunlight between them. The man had the eight-and-a-half-inch width down, but John thought he was off by at least a couple of inches on the height. “Paper,” the man repeated.
John held his gaze. Whatever the paper’s details may have meant to the other man – if it even was his paper – John needed it more, with the precious phone number it now held. So he took his turn in the role of mime, face a mask of incomprehension, arms bent ten degrees at the elbow, palms upturned halfway in the universal symbol for “Huh?” The man had discarded it, after all, a scrap abandoned on an empty table.
The man stared at him, striving for – but not quite achieving – one of those penetrating gazes so beloved of movie directors and novelists. He reminded John instead of a taller version of Jack Nicholson typing away in The Shining.
John shrugged, then turned and continued his walk uptown. He felt the blond man’s eyes on him until he reached the corner and took the left toward Broadway.
Back in his studio apartment, John unfolded the sheet of paper. He spared a quick glance for its original contents, then turned to the phone number he’d copied onto the other side. Noting that the number carried a Jersey area code, he transferred it to the calendar he kept on his computer, creating an appointment for 10:00 a.m. the next morning. For once, a recruiter had responded to his resume – not just responded, but requested a phone call at a specific time. For once, his overpriced phone with a million features, none of which apparently included crystal-clear reception, had offered a decent connection in the coffee shop. For once, he’d even had a pen at the ready. All he’d lacked was something to write on, and thus he’d claimed the abandoned sheet of simple white paper.
What could be so interesting about a left-behind piece of paper? Curious, he turned back to the printed side.
Half a dozen rows of gobbledygook ran beneath a phone number, each row containing pairs of letters and numbers, a few short rows, two groups of longer ones. This nonsense made the guy so anxious about his forgotten document? Well, legally, it was his no longer, under most states’ laws of abandoned property. John was pretty sure New York was no exception.
He let out a breath. Stop thinking like a lawyer. You’re an unemployed lawyer at best, an unsuccessful unemployed lawyer. Okay, so you passed the bar five years ago – first try, even – but New York seethes with a what-have-you-done-for-me-lately heartbeat. Check the box, thank you, but not much of a selling point on the old resume.
Legal BS aside, did he have an obligation to return the paper? John blew out his cheeks. Yeah, the guy’s arrogance pissed me off, made me pretend I didn’t have the damn thing. But if I’d given it to him, he might not have let me copy down the phone number. No, that’s just another excuse. One incidence of bad behavior shouldn’t have begotten a second. Perhaps the man hadn’t meant to abandon it but had stepped outside for a smoke.
John pulled out his thin blue phone and typed the four-number passcode to unlock it. Nope, missed it. He tried again, got it the second time. Sandy, he thought, I still don’t understand why you insist my phone needs a stupid password.
He found the camera app and took a few quick pictures of each side of the sheet. He checked to be sure they were readable, since the phone’s camera hadn’t flashed. Somewhere there had to be a setting that controlled the painfully bright LED, but John was confident he’d muck up something else about the phone if he fiddled around looking for the flash thingy.
He considered copying the photos to his computer, but he was rarely able to get the device to sync up when he connected the cord. Instead, he opened the photo app that let him email the photos to himself, one of the few smartphone tasks he’d mastered. A few touches of the screen, and the app assured him the pictures were on their way, somehow, without the need for a wand, requiring only the barely breathed incantation, “Please work.”
He looked once more at the sheet of paper. A code, maybe? Clandestine agents and spies and— No, not in the real world. More like a cipher game for some Sunday paper. Well, if so, the secret was safe. He’d never successfully decoded one of those cryptogram puzzles, and wasn’t inclined to start now.
He crossed out the phone number he’d written on the sheet, then folded it in half, with the hieroglyphics inside. He wrote, “For the blond man who lost this around 3PM.” He grabbed his coat and stuck the note in his pocket.
Waiting for a light on Broadway, he retrieved and examined the note again. Other than the now-obscured New Jersey number he’d jotted down, he didn’t understand a word. So no harm, no foul.
He slipped the page back into his jacket, confident he’d seen the last of it.
###
The Indian summer weather held as John began his morning walk around the Central Park reservoir. His knees could no more handle jogging than his temperament could handle rain, but a fast walk – fast even by New Yorker standards – and clear weather together served as an anodyne for the jobless blues.
Jobless? Not technically, just useful-jobless, meaningful-jobless, do-something-with-his-juris-doctor-degree-jobless. Filling in behind the bar in a comfortable and only slightly yuppified tavern off Bleecker brought in a small wage, tips that he reported accurately to the IRS, and once in a while a memorable story that someday he’d tell to his kids, or a lover, or someone.
The Brits described lawyers as “called to the bar.” John suspected they were onto something.
As he approached the turn north, not far from where the 85th St. Transverse met the West Drive, a jogger approaching from behind bumped into him. He stumbled, and the jogger grabbed his shoulder, spun him around, and hit him in the stomach. John struggled for breath, trying not to fold as he lurched backward off the path. The jogger stepped behind him and looped a muscular forearm around his neck, giving John no time to cry out before slamming butt-first against the ground. He pumped his legs uselessly against the gravel and brush as the assailant dragged him backward, until a small copse of trees entwined with low brush screened them from the jogging path. He tried to roll over, but a fist plunging into his side drew a muffled grunt and forced him to curl against the pain. The attacker used hands and shoulders to force John up to his knees, then once more slipped a forearm around his windpipe.
“I thought you didn’t have that paper.” The sneer was audible with every hissed word.
John visualized the long, dirty blond hair, the cold eyes, the army jacket. Shallow breath, all he could manage, provided enough air for, “I put it….” Another shallow breath let him mumble, “…on the board in….”
“I know. Who’d you show it to?”
“No one.” One more breath, breathing coming slightly easier, the effect of the punches wearing off. “I wrote a phone number—“
“You should have told me on the street,” the man said, ice in his voice. “Before I had to follow you home.”
“I— I—“
The man slapped his other hand over John’s open mouth. “Don’t care. Too late now anyway. You stupid….” He didn’t finish the epithet, letting his voice trail away. John heard a bird chirping in the bush alongside the jogging path, smelled the attacker’s stale cigarette breath, thought he might walk away after all until his head was forced back sharply by a well-muscled hand centered on his Adam’s apple. The man’s other hand slapped against his face, groped once, found his mouth and covered it.
Shit. He was going to die over a stupid mistake, a piece of paper – and it was the guy’s own fault for leaving it behind. Struggling for breath, he clawed at the hand around his neck, squirming, unable to break the overpowering grip. The attacker was trying to crush his windpipe, break his neck, and keep him from screaming all at once.
John twisted his head, and the man’s smothering left hand slipped. John didn’t think, had no time to think, but bit down hard on the finger in front of his face. The knuckle crunched in his teeth.
“Son of a bitch,” the man spat, trying to pull his finger free. John tore at it, a dog attacking a bone. The man released his hold on John’s neck, and in desperation John snapped his head back hard. Bone-to-bone contact transmitted a distinct crunch that John hoped announced a broken nose. The impact had redoubled the force of his bite, as well.
The man tried to repress a yelp, the curse converted to a strained gargle. John realized that the attacker was no longer holding him. The strongest bind between them was the bleeding, battered digit the man was trying to tear from John’s teeth.
John released his bite and stumbled forward. The man swept at John’s feet with his long arms, grabbing him, tripping him. John caught his fall with his hands on the rough ground, pushed forward in desperation with his legs, and staggered on all fours into the brush guarding the jogging trail. His attacker grunted, only a few feet away, shuffling through the leaves. John lashed out backwards with his leg, hoping to catch the man’s head, or at least his arm, but his foot found nothing but air.
More sounds of movement behind him. John crawled on, pushing hard against the ground, tensing against the coming attack. Then, an opening ahead, daylight, push through the bushes, and he sprawled out onto the trail. A passing jogger bumped his shoulder and stumbled through three more steps before regaining his balance. The runner turned and stared down at the man who’d knocked him off stride.
John wondered what he saw. Clumsy runner or potential mugger? On his knees from a loose shoelace, from a tree root across the path, or from too much to drink way too early in the day?
They both said, “Sorry,” at the same time. John offered a sheepish laugh as he looked around for his attacker, certain the man was preparing to jump out at the first opportunity. He rubbed a hand across his mouth. It came away bloody.
“Did I do that?” the man asked.
John shook his head and muttered an apology rather than disclaim the blood as his own, or attempt to explain its origin. There’s a man in the bushes trying to kill me. Even in New York, that explanation might cause a raised eyebrow or two.
The jogger held out his hand. John responded with his own – the one without blood – and worked his way to his feet. Nothing broken, as far as he could tell. He tested his legs with a couple of run-in-place steps, willing his knees to lock at the end of each step, support his body rather than turning to jelly and dumping him back on the ground. One step, another. His stomach churned, but his knees held.
However much John detested running, his temporary companion offered safety in at least small numbers. Ex-military, perhaps, squat and muscular, sporting buzz-cut iron-gray hair framing an unlined face that had missed its morning shave. The logoed pale green jogging suit and $200 sneakers didn’t necessarily fit the picture, but John was grateful for the man’s presence. Right place, right time, lime track suit be damned. He began to jog alongside, on the inside, on the reservoir side, away from the menacing trees, trying not to look over his shoulder. The man wouldn’t attack him from behind with a witness so close, right?
Unless the other jogger was in on it, somehow. Fullback’s build, inappropriate clothing. Lower a shoulder, block him into the reservoir. No, that was crazy. Wasn’t it? But then so was the attack itself, not so much an attempted murder in Central Park – the headlines and news-station crawls made such crimes seem as commonplace as rush-hour subway delays – as the fact that he himself was the intended victim. That stuff happened to other people. Always had, until now.
Or did it happen at all? The mugging, sure. The blood in his mouth bore bitter witness. But murder? Come on. The product of an overzealous imagination, fueled by a fully legitimate fear. Had to be.
When they reached the path exit at 96th Street, John’s temporary running partner didn’t stop, clearly intending to continue his circuit of the reservoir. John risked a quick look around. Various walkers and bike riders, a couple of other joggers, no blond man in an army jacket. He’d chance it. He said a quick goodbye and turned toward Central Park West. Despite feeling more winded than he had since his law-school days, days perennially on the run, inevitably late to class, he raced at top speed until the pedestrians and cars jumbled at the park entrance offered him cover, and safety.
He didn’t realize his cell phone was missing until he slapped the pockets of his worn blue sweats, feeling for his keys as he climbed the steps to his third-floor walkup.