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.
Dylan sends the first chapter of Raise The Roof . The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
“You didn’t even feed her dinner!” I accused Todd, bringing yet another fight about his lack of effort in our family to a culminating statement. “I have to be able to go out for the evening and trust that you can be here with her! You ignored her, she spent the evening in her room! She had a peanut butter and honey sandwich for dinner because you couldn’t, what...be BOTHERED? How about reaching out and talking to her? But for godsakes, at least fix her dinner!”
“You coddle her too much.” He said quietly, his eyes daring me to argue.
“Don’t make this about me. She has the right to expect --”
“She was being rude to me.”
“I don’t think that’s a legit--”
“She seemed fine and I was --”
“Please stop interrupting me.”
“--busy trying to manage a --”
“Please. Let me speak!”
“--that YOU caused, and since you can’t be bothered to do any work --”
“THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. Will you LISTEN?”
He kept talking so I raised my hand up threatening to hit him, to get his attention so he would stop talking and let me finish telling him what I expected from him with regards to my (snip)
Well, this opening page certainly starts with conflict. And, in a sense, the machine-gun dialogue does capture a nasty, yelling argument. Yet . . . what does this opening raise in story questions? Who’s right? Do I care? Somebody didn’t fix dinner for a child, but the child is apparently okay, having had a sandwich. If, instead, the maltreatment had created a problem for the child, then I'd be motivated to be more involved.
Give more thought to how you're delivering what is happening. This is an action scene, yet I felt that the opening paragraph leaned too much toward the “telling” side of things and used complicated wording. I could have also used just a tiny bit of scene-setting. Where are they? When are they? Notes:
“You didn’t even feed her dinner!” I accused Todd, bringing yet another fight about his lack of effort in our family to a culminating statement. “I have to be able to go out for the evening and trust that you can be here with her! You ignored her, she spent the evening in her room! She had a peanut butter and honey sandwich for dinner because you couldn’t, what...be BOTHERED? How about reaching out and talking to her? But for godsakes, at least fix her dinner!” The “accused” isn’t needed to explain the dialogue, it’s clear that what she says is an accusation. Better to show yelling or something such as that. The long part about a culminating statement didn’t seem like a natural thought for someone in the middle of a raging argument, it’s more of a summary and setup. Also, I got the point pretty quickly and the accusations began to feel redundant.
“You coddle her too much.” He said quietly, his eyes daring me to argue.
“Don’t make this about me. She has the right to expect --”
“She was being rude to me.”
“I don’t think that’s a legit--”
“She seemed fine and I was --”
“Please stop interrupting me.”
“--busy trying to manage a --”
“Please. Let me speak!”
“--that YOU caused, and since you can’t be bothered to do any work --” For me, there’s really no need to keep going with the point/counter-point, I get it. So why not cut it short and get going on story?
“THIS IS NOT ABOUT ME. Will you LISTEN?”
He kept talking so I raised my hand up threatening to hit him, to get his attention so he would stop talking and let me finish telling him what I expected from him with regards to my (snip) The narrative has a tendency to overexplain. This is a fight. When in action mode, you get more energy and movement when you keep the sentences short and active.
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 Dylan
Continued:
. . . eleven-year-old daughter. Quick as lightning he grabbed my wrist, and then my other one as I reached for the hand holding tightly to my wrist. He pushed me up against the orange formica countertop and had me pinned.
“Let go of me.” I felt my eyes harden and my lips seal shut in a hard line as I suppressed the urge to shout. My jaw tightened and I attempted to wrestle my wrists free from Todd’s grip, but he was bigger and stronger and my arms were immobilized. Instinctively, I fell back on the defense I used as a preschooler. Once a biter, always a biter, I guess. I pulled my arms toward myself, and he didn’t resist or let go as I quickly leaned over and like an animal freeing itself from a trap, tried to bite his hand.
He let go to avoid being bit. We stood in a face-off, me leaning up against the countertops and him inches away from me, looming with barely contained anger for a moment that seemed to last a lifetime.
I started to explain again. “PLEASE to listen to me. I need to tell —“
“No. All you are going to do is try and explain something that isn’t even —“
“STOP TALKING. She is only elev—”
“You are being completely unreas—“
“LET. ME. TALK.” He went on.
I reached up to try and pinch his lips together. I was startled by my own impulse, so desperately childish, but I couldn’t take it anymore. As he dodged my attempt, he kept on talking, calling me names, and I felt myself expand with a rush of rage, not hearing a word. I didn’t care what he said. It was not my fault, or my daughter’s fault, that he didn’t make her dinner last night while I was at choir practice. There is no way he could justify that to me, and apparently no way I could get him to see that he was destroying our relationship every time he acted like a child regarding his stepdaughter.
I tried to push him away. I was flooded with anger and being prevented from expressing myself verbally. I was resorting to physical violence for the first time in the history of our conflicted relationship. This was not me!
He grabbed my wrists again but I yanked them away from him and bolted around the corner, and up the stairs to the master bedroom that overlooked the cove. The stairway was narrow, and covered in a dark red-and-maroon patterned carpet that was probably on clearance sometime in the 1970’s. Pine needles threaded through the weave, tracked in along with mud. It was impossible to fully keep the outside from coming in, living as close to it and within it as we did. I took the narrow steps two at a time, heart pounding. Get away get away get away my heart seemed to chant. At the top of the stairs I turned left into our bedroom and swung open the panel door in the two-foot high wall that led to the storage space in the eaves. I pulled out my old duffle bag, shook it to check for mice, and tossed it on to the bed once I was satisfied it was empty. Then I paused to take a breath. I loved this room. I loved the skylight over the king-sized bed, with the giant fir trees visible, and sometimes even the stars when it was clear. The stars were bright and went deep here on the island where there were no lights to outshine them at night.
I contemplated the empty duffle bag. I was done. Seriously. All the way done. I couldn’t take another day, another couples counseling appointment, or another fight with this toxic man. Apparently all the couples therapy in the world couldn’t take care of toxic waste. I’ll get my things together and then help Rae pack hers.
My whole body, every cell, felt like it was vibrating, but I was somewhat more calm as I rifled through drawers to choose the clothes I wore most often. I didn’t know where we were going to go. I didn’t know how we would be able to stay on the island without him. There wasn’t work here, not enough to support me as a single mother, and going off-island meant that I’d be away for twelve hours a day due to the ferry commute, so my daughter would be alone far too long. Either that or we move to the mainland. But I wanted to stay in British Columbia. I knew that much. I was four months from being eligible for citizenship in Canada. I loved this chosen country, I wasn’t going to give that up.
I felt the familiar trembling of the floor with each footstep as Todd came up the stairs and stood behind me. I kept folding and stuffing clothes.
“What are you doing.” His voice was quiet, softer but still chilly and I could feel my shoulders tense up in habitual bracing for what would come next.
“I’m leaving.”
“You’ve said that before.”
“I mean it this time.”
“You’ve said that before too.”
I stopped what I was doing, turned, and looked up at him. “You can’t seem to listen to me. You won’t let me talk to you. All you do is inter—”
“You don’t get it, do you? Your daughter is a snotty, lazy little bitch! And you don’t even SEE IT. She’s the reason you and I fight. She’s the reason I’m nearly bankrupt. She’s the reason nothing goes right. She’s a whiny, entitled little bitch and she’s going to cost me. I will not support her when she’s a good-for-nothing adult that just sits around all day. I won’t do it.”
I went still. Numb. He was so off the mark I was frozen with incredulity. How could it all be her fault? She’s a child. Speechless, I just stared at him, my throat getting tighter as my eyebrows drew together in complete awe that he could say such a thing.
A movement caught my attention and my eyes shifted from his piercing blue ones to my daughter’s, standing behind him in the doorway of her room across the hall. Her face was drained of color and she was as if made of stone.
If someone had told me that stopping time was possible, I would have believed them in that moment. Everything seemed to freeze and I could see it all. Everything I had put her through, the divorce from her dad, then moving here, and back and forth as I broke up and reunited with this tortured and wounded man I thought I loved, and now this. I knew any chance of them developing a relationship had been crushed just now, beyond any doubt. And I saw her spirit break. In that moment, all the cracks I had put in her heart in the past seven years came apart in slow motion. How could I have put her through it all? I was the worst mother in the world. I was sure of it.
I had to get out, and save my daughter’s spirit, and mine too. “Rae, pack up some clothes. We’re leaving.” I wish I could kick Todd out instead, but it was his house. And I wasn’t even going to fight for it. That was the biggest fear he had - that I would take everything he worked for in a divorce, because I could. That wasn’t me, though. I had no interest in fighting him for any of it. I just wanted out.
It would be heartbreaking to leave this old house, however. It had been built haphazardly, with rooms added on over the years by previous owners so that it was a kind of maze with mismatched flooring, various styles of interior doors, and plenty of access for the island’s rodent population. The house had settled into the lot, and grew moss on the outside walls and roof, and blended with the tall fir trees that rose all around it. It might not have been much to look at, but this house, and this place, gave me peace. There was never a time when I didn’t gaze out the windows, or step out onto the deck to smell the sea air, taking it all in with all my senses, that I worried I had made the wrong decision to come here to live with this man, marry him, and make a life here. Even though I had to put my career on hold during the two year immigration period, and become financially dependent on him, and even though we had the kind of relationship that took a lot of work, I always felt it was worth it for the bliss of living on this island.
My daughter was able to make her faerie houses in secret, hidden spots all over the two-and-a-half acres, was able to walk without worry and in perfect safety to the small school, where the kids got to play in the forest adjacent to the school grounds during recess. I was giving her the opportunity to grow up with a crime-free, small town life, with wildlife and nature right outside her door.
But four years living with Todd had taken a toll. I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I had just tried to bite my husband and had been close to hitting him a moment before that. What had I become?
Just then the land-line rang and everything snapped back into motion. Rae ran down the stairs to answer it and I pushed past Todd and followed. I had nothing more to say to Todd. Something snapped in me. I felt it happen. I had nothing left for him.
Rae was on her way back to me with the handset when I got to the bottom of the stairs. “It’s Grandma. Something’s wrong.”
“What!?” I took the phone and put it up to my ear as I went out the back door at the bottom of the stairs to get some privacy. “Mom? What’s wrong?”
My mother’s voice was hard to understand. She had the strained, high voice she gets when she is trying to talk through tears. “Oh honey! It’s Christopher!”
“Chrissy? What? What happened?”
“I don’t know. You’re sister called me...something happened and he’s at Harborview!” Her sobs overtook her and all the questions I had dissipated as my brain went into crisis-mode. Harborview was the trauma hospital. I knew I had to catch the next ferry and drive to Seattle. “Okay mom. I’m on my way.” Todd was right there and I handed the phone to him. “Here. Talk to my mom. Something’s happened to my nephew. I gotta pack and get the noon ferry.” I called to Rae as I came back inside.
“What’s going on?” She was scared and didn’t move. “MOM. Tell me what happened!”
I was already halfway back up the stairs to finish throwing things in my duffle. “I don’t know, sweetie. Chrissy is hurt. He’s at the hospital. We gotta go. Go get some things together, quick. The ferry leaves in an hour.”
Todd had gotten more information from my mom and he started packing a bag too. “I’m driving. You’re in no condition to make that trip.” I didn’t protest. He was right. And in this moment, I needed him. I nodded, putting our break up on hold for at least the weekend. While he packed he told me what my mom was able to share, “I guess he went unconscious this morning, he was fine and then he wasn’t. He’s on life support but they don’t think he’ll make it. Your sister and Charles are there with Bailey and Kaitlin, and your mom is on the way. They’re deciding whether or not to donate his organs.”
Jesus. “Wait…so he’s DEAD?”
“Honey, I’m so sorry….”
I couldn’t even cry. I went frozen. Chrissy’s dead. How does this happen? My sweet, funny, caring, curly-haired nephew that was the comic relief in our fucked-up family was gone.
Bags packed, we loaded us all into the van, including the dog. I had no idea how long we would be gone for, and no idea where we were going to stay, but there was no time to find a dog-sitter so our one-hundred-and-thirty-five-pound Newfie was coming with. It occurred to me that it was a good thing she rolled in a dead sea star yesterday, because she’s freshly bathed and brushed, and ready to be a visitor in someone’s house.
The drive took six silent hours because of afternoon traffic at the border. We drove straight to Harborview, and found the room, packed with Chrissy’s pre-pubescent friends, his twin sister and older sister, and flanking his either side were my sister and her husband.
My mom was in the far corner, alone, standing as if being punished, and when she saw me she weaved through the people and held me tight, sobbing. Internally I rolled my eyes. When was there ever a time when I didn’t have to put my mom’s care first? I couldn’t fall apart here, not with my sister having her life ripped away from her right in front of us, and my mom putting on this display in front of everyone was embarrassing. Did she not understand how to put it all on the back burner until she was not in front of those in worse pain that she was? So I held my mom, apologized with a knowing look filled with pain and compassion as my sister caught my glance. “Okay mom. C’mon. Take a breath.” I pulled away from her. “Mom can you just…it’s going to be okay. Just…let’s be here for Jayne, okay?”
She took a shaky breath. “I just don’t know how I’m going to get through this…first your dad, and now Christopher…I just….” I held her some more, and whispered reassurance until her sobs quieted again.
She pulled away and wiped at her eyes, chin continuing to tremble, and spoke too loud for the quiet, still room. “Happy Birthday, Anna!” Oh, crap. It was my birthday tomorrow.
“MOM!” I couldn’t believe this. I tried to keep my voice low while still putting anger in my tone. “Not the right time or place, Mom! GOD.” I had completely forgotten. And didn’t want to remember my birthday now. “It doesn’t matter!”
The room might have gotten more silent except for the rhythmic whoosh of the ventilator. Chrissy looked like he was sleeping, but far too still for even that. I tiptoed my way over kids sitting on the floor towards my sister. “Oh Jaynie. I’m so sorry.” She said nothing, as I pulled her to me, but her tears fell and I could feel her body shake as she buried her head in my shoulder. “What the hell happened? I mean, you don’t have to tell me now, but…” I hoped she would, even though I couldn’t imagine she’d be able to. I looked back towards Rae and Todd to see them still in the doorway, awkwardly looking around. My mom had gone to Rae and was stroking her head. Rae leaned back into her grandma and took comfort from her. Good. Mom needed to be needed and that was one relationship that hadn’t been rocked to its core in the last seven years. Todd looked uncomfortable, and I just didn’t care. I turned back to my sister who was explaining that early that morning, Chrissy had gotten up early to finish his math homework, but when she had gotten up an hour later, he was on the couch, unconscious, with blood seeping from his ear. She’d called the ambulance, and they’d been here since. The doctors told her he’d had an aneurysm burst in his brain and suffered a stroke. He had a 2% chance of survival but all indications were that he was dead. They’d decided to donate his organs because they felt that’s what Chrissy would have wanted. He was always rooting for the underdog, and wanting to help people. They were waiting for me and Rae to get there to say good bye before sending him off to harvest his organs.
It was a lot to take in. She moved away so I could move closer. I touched Chrissy’s arm, and felt it’s solid, heaviness and it felt so…dead…I was surprised his skin was still warm.
“Chrissy, sweet boy. I love you. I wish….I wish you could stay. I will miss watching you grow, I will miss you making me laugh, and I wish you could stay to be Rae’s best cousin. I love you….peaceful journey, kiddo.” I kissed him, and then the tears came. The quiet, racking sobs that wouldn’t be stopped. I turned and Rae was right there. I clung to her, for a moment and then guided her to her cousin. Birthday’s within two months of each other, they had grown up together until we moved to Canada, so the last four years they had not been as close, but I knew this would be the second great loss - after my dad - of my young daughter’s life. My heart was breaking with it all. Too much loss. Just too much.
I left Rae in the arms of her Aunt Jayne, and ran out of the room, and down the emergency stairway three flights to the exit to the parking garage. Out of breath, comforted by my heart pounding adrenaline rush, I found the car and opened the van door and threw myself into the comfort of my big, lovable dog. “Oh Morgan. Chrissy’s dead!” And the sobs renewed. Her sweet dog smell comforted my senses as I let it all go.
My mind was swirling with what was happening. It was all surreal. I felt like there was a curtain between me and reality and I was floating through this experience like it was a dream.
But I didn’t wake up. The week continued. We stayed at my sister’s best friends’ house and helped with logistical things, planning the service, and being a buffer between my sister and my mom. They never did get along well. I understood them both, and fit right back into my role as peacemaker. Todd stepped in and was supportive and loving and kind and practical. It was all back to normal, but with everything changed.