No flogging today, it's the deadline for getting a writing course proposal in to Southern Oregon University for their OLLI adult education program.
Besides, there's just ONE submission in the queue for flogging next week, so, after you've recovered from tonight, submissions are welcome.
What are your writing plans for the new year? I hope to finally engage with writing the sequel to The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles. Being a pantser, it's taken a while to get a handle on the story, but new insights have been bubbling up and now I'm looking forward to it as opposed to putting it off.
Submissions Needed, nobody in the queue for next week.While I’ll probably take Friday off, I would do a flogging on Wednesday if I get one. I’ll do the Flog a BookBubber on Monday—got one that I bought. 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.
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.
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.
Most importantly, 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.
LeighLa sends a short short story titled Miracle Red. The rest of the story follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
Five o’clock the hour, to the minute, in fact, Ava cracked an eyelid. Reddish hair fell across her cheek in church spires: straight, unwavering. She rolled over in bed and blinked fair lashes until her eyes remained open, reluctant, heavy-lidded but eager for a glimpse of sun: the red day to come.
In the darkness of her room, she fussed in a basket of unfolded clothes Mama had left from the previous day’s laundering. She found her favorite dungaree overalls, the ones with faded knees but certain shoulder straps; not an inch of movement even under duress. Restrained arms were useless arms: Ava knew. She turned to her closet and grabbed Daddy Bo’s red plaid shirt, shrunk long ago in the wash, and shoved her arms into the sleeves. Her father’s aftershave engraved like a hot iron into the collar brushed her cheeks, tickled her nose. Today is the day, Daddy; she muttered into the buttoned folds and pulled on her dungarees, securing metal clasps onto waiting buttons.
Ava glanced at an empty bed stripped bare. She pictured Stella, now nineteen, sitting in university classes with fellow students. English, Math, Science. Her sister would learn everything about the world and still know nothing. School was for ninnies. An assured half smirk, half smile pressed her red lips thin as she slipped on a clean pair of black, low-heeled, calf-length boots – well, as clean as you can manage on a working farm.
There’s good, clean writing here but, for this reader, not much in the way of tension. It seems to me that a short short story needs to be as effective in hooking a reader as a novel, but there are no real story questions raised for me—basically, a young woman wakes up and gets dressed. Not much reason to wonder what will come next.
It turns out that she’s sneaking out of her room—that would have helped raise a story question if it had been on the first page. As I said, good writing, but some clarity issues here. Notes:
At five o’clock the hour, to the minute, in fact, Ava cracked an eyelid. Reddish hair fell across her cheek in church spires: straight, unwavering. She rolled over in bed and blinked fair lashes until her eyes remained open, reluctant, heavy-lidded but eager for a glimpse of sun: the red day to come. Perhaps this doesn’t apply to short short fiction, but we’re in her point of view and she would not think of the color of her hair or lashes. Also, “church spires” evokes an image of upright vertical structures, so I don’t see that as portraying hair that lies across her cheek.
In the darkness of her room, she fussed in a basket of unfolded clothes Mama had left from the previous day’s laundering. She found her favorite dungaree overalls, the ones with faded knees but certain shoulder straps; not an inch of movement even under duress. Restrained arms were useless arms: Ava knew. She turned to her closet and grabbed Daddy Bo’s red plaid shirt, shrunk long ago in the wash, and shoved her arms into the sleeves. Her father’s aftershave engraved like a hot iron into the collar brushed her cheeks, tickled her nose. Today is the day, Daddy; she muttered into the buttoned folds and pulled on her dungarees, securing metal clasps onto waiting buttons. For me there were clarity issues in the description of the dungarees. I had to reread it several times to figure out what was meant by “certain” shoulder straps and “not an inch of movement even under duress. Restrained arms were useless arms.” I guess it means that the shoulder straps won’t fall off her shoulders and then possibly restrict the movement of her arms. It just wasn’t easy to understand for me. I also wondered how her father’s aftershave could linger on a shirt shrunk long ago in the wash—wouldn’t the aftershave have been washed away?
Ava glanced at an empty bed stripped bare. She pictured Stella, now nineteen, sitting in university classes with fellow students. English, Math, Science. Her sister would learn everything about the world and still know nothing. School was for ninnies. An assured half smirk, half smile pressed her red lips thin as she slipped on a clean pair of black, low-heeled, calf-length boots – well, as clean as you can manage on a working farm. Doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for backstory about her sister—and it doesn’t affect the story later. On the pov side, she wouldn’t think of the color of her lips, nor can she see that her smirk is “assured.”
Submissions Needed. 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.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, It seemed to me that it could be educational to take a hard look at their first pages. If you don’t know about BookBub, it’s a pretty nifty way to try to build interest in your work. The website is here.
I’m mostly sampling books that are offered for free. Following are the first page(s) and a poll. Then my comments are after the fold along with the book cover, the author’s name, and a link so you can take a look for yourself if you wish. At Amazon you can click on the Read More feature to get more of the chapter if you’re interested. There’s a second poll concerning the need for an editor.
Should this author have hired an editor? Here’s the prologue and first chapter from a book titled Someone Else’s Daughter.
Prologue:
Some women sit around in bars after they get dumped, complaining about the jerks who treated them like yesterday’s dog squeeze. Miranda Steele didn’t go to bars. She didn’t have friends to complain to. But she did have the dog squeeze beat out of her regularly by the jerk she was married to.
That was until one cold wintry day when the jerk decided to dump her and throw her out in the snow.
From the floor where Leon had left her, Miranda lifted a shaky hand to her mouth to stop the blood oozing from her cut lip. “What are you doing?”
“What I should have done the night your bastard was conceived. What I’ve wanted to do for months.” His voice shook with quiet rage.
He jammed the suitcase shut, grabbed her by the wrist again and dragged her back downstairs. “What are you doing?” Miranda screamed as he wrestled the front door open.
“Purging my house.” He hurled the suitcase into the snow on the front yard. It broke open and her clothes tumbled onto the snowy grass. Then he gave her a hard shove.
She stumbled outside onto the cold concrete porch. Her feet were bare. She was still in her bathrobe. “Leon,” she begged. “Let me back in. What will the neighbors think?”
Chapter 1 Thirteen Years Later
“Go. Go. Go. Go.”
Nothing like a chorus of burly fellow construction workers cheering you on to boost your ego. Miranda looked around at the half-demolished building, with its backdrop of modern skyscrapers and older structures against the gray, Pittsburgh sky, then she picked the bright green jalapeno off the paper plate that sat alongside the ham sandwiches and soda cans on the wooden slab that served as the crew’s lunch table.
She waggled it under Dombroski’s nose. “Number five, Dumbo.”
“That’s right, bitch,” he sneered. “Number five. I say you can’t do it.”
Dumbo. That was her affectionate name for this baldheaded bruiser with the big ears who’d made her life on the wrecking crew hell for the three months she’d been in Steel Town.
Miranda pulled at her leather jacket, took a whiff of the cool March air, and curled a lip at Dombroski. “Oh, do you?”
“That’s right.”
She leaned over the table. “I should have taken you down at Luigi’s last night.”
Little Jake stepped between them. “Hey now, we made a deal.” It had been the skinny twenty-year-old who’d talked her out of belting that bastard in the bar when he’d called Jake a whore-loving fag—which didn’t even make sense. At the moment, Miranda couldn’t think what had made her agree to this pepper-eating contest instead. Some things were worth fighting over. Oh, (snip)
I'm enjoying the day with family and hope you're able to do the same. And, if not, that you will find something to enjoy--and, perhaps, write about--today.
Submissions Needed, nobody in the queue for next week.While I’ll probably take Friday off, I would do a flogging on Wednesday if I get one. I’ll do the Flog a BookBubber on Monday—got one that I bought. 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.
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.
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.
Alice sends the prologue and first chapter for When the Tree Is Dry. The rest of the prologue and chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
Prologue:
The photograph, a little out of focus and badly centred, had that elusive something that professionals strive for and seldom achieve. A moment of awareness, where a story without words is written on a face. or in this case, three faces.
"Mind if I look?" Ryan stretched out his hand, hesitated, and glanced at Keera.
She looked up from the folder lying open on the desk. Her taut face relaxed a fraction as she met Ryan's eyes. "Sure." Her eyebrows drew together. “Why did you follow me here?”
He shrugged. “Anything’s better than listening to the office bore competing with tinny Christmas carols.”
He could have added more. You’re gorgeous. And intriguing – why did you storm out of the party like that? Instead, he picked up the photograph and studied it. On the left, two African girls exchanged glances. Each pair of eyes held the same message: You know the things I know. The things I wish I didn't know.
Ryan studied them for a moment, then concentrated on the fair woman on the right. Her head was turned towards the other two, her hands were clenched into fists. As he tried to read her expression, a line from an almost-forgotten history book floated into his mind.
Yet must I go and must I do this thing.
Chapter 1
“You have to come home. In fact, I’m ordering you to come home.” I'd intended to be calm and controlled, but my voice came out as a screech, ugly even to my own ears.
"I'll stay where I like, and there's nothing you can do. I'm fifteen, and I can choose to live with my father. The law says so." Keera's voice would have done justice to a sergeant major on parade. I held the phone six inches away to avoid permanent injury to my eardrums.
I took three deep breaths and tried again. "Ok, calm down, let's discuss this reasonably—"
The line went dead. She'd hung up on me.
I stood for several minutes, staring at the phone. Started to dial her number, then changed my mind. Brain in neutral, I walked up the stairs, across the landing, and into her room. Her soft perfume filled the air, her jacket draped carelessly across a chair. Tubes of oil paint and acrylics littered the desk, and a ball of crumpled paper lay on the floor. But no Keera. No loud music, no chat room open on the laptop. No "Not now, Mum, please! Can't you see I'm in the middle of something?"
Gone.
I wandered about, opening doors, pacing around empty rooms. My son Josh's, unnaturally tidy now he was away at university. Our bedroom. Craig's books on the shelf (snip)
I like the writing in these pieces quite a lot, and a the voice is strong and confident. Yet they didn't create the tension in this reader needed to get past an "Almost, but no" vote. Basically, it's the lack of story questions. The prologue and the first chapter are introductory exposition for the various characters. Yet I ended up with no idea of what the story was about. I urge Alice to look at a later place in the story to start. I'm assuming it will be where all three women are together in Africa. Does all this backstory/setup really matter when you get into the action of the story? Do a "save as" for the current manuscript file and see if you can find a point where the actual story launches and take it from there, filling in necessary background when and if it is needed. Nice writing.
Submissions Needed--no chapters to flog this week. 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.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, It seemed to me that it could be educational to take a hard look at their first pages. If you don’t know about BookBub, it’s a pretty nifty way to try to build interest in your work. The website is here.
Following are the first page and a poll. Then my comments and a second poll concerning the need for an editor are after the fold along with the book cover, the author’s name, and a link so you can take a look for yourself if you wish. At Amazon you can click on the Read More feature to get more of the chapter if you’re interested.
Should this author have hired an editor? Here’s a book titled Bound by Prophesy.
They called it a thinning of the blood. Though most of our ancestors’ magic had slowly weakened, it still left us the ability to hold sway over humans. I glanced around the room where I hung chained by the ankles. Damn sight of good it’s doing me now, I thought.
“Aern,” my brother asked coolly, “where did you hide the girl?”
I glanced at the abandoned warehouse’s walls. The concrete floor. There really was no way out.
Morgan stepped closer, plainly irritated he had neither my answer nor attention. “Aern.” I recognized the fury in his tone, though he tried to mask it. He was a lean man, only an inch or so shorter than I, but he was strong. Not only his body, but his mind, the power to control any human he touched. He was stronger than the rest of us, and that was why he needed her.
I finally looked at my brother.
“The girl,” he demanded.
He looked odd from this perspective. His custom-tailored suit, his Italian loafers, all of it wrong now. I tilted my head to see him better. Maybe it was just the blood rushing to my brain.
“Have you lost weight, brother?” I asked. “You seem thin.”
Morgan’s jaw went tight, his nostrils flared the tiniest bit. I smiled, though my cheeks throbbed with the effort. I could feel the blood vessels expanding at my neck and temples. “Must (snip)
Have a vote, and please try to keep genre preferences out of it and just judge the storytelling. Then go to my editorial notes and vote again after the break.
Submissions Needed, nobody in the queue for next week.While I’ll probably take Friday off, I would do a flogging on Wednesday if I get one. I’ll do the Flog a BookBubber on Monday—got one that I bought. 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.
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.
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.
Jon sends the prologue and first chapter for The Ghost of Victory . The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
Prologue;
I met Juarez in the Hindu Kush hills of southeastern Afghanistan. People say there was a border with Pakistan somewhere nearby but you couldn’t normally see it. Juarez was a new guy, a cherry, and I addressed him as such. He sheepishly assumed that role. I once admired another NCO, an Army sergeant like myself, who said, “New guys ought to just shut up and do what they’re told.” But I cannot admire what that man said anymore. Juarez shut up and put up though. He was a dutiful soldier…
Chapter 1
In the living room of their apartment, Emmanuel Juarez unfolded his bed out of the couch. He tucked in its sheets and fluffed a throw pillow.
“Manny, why you in such a hurry?” Mom called from within the kitchen. “Stay at home a while yet. Finish yer last year of highschool. Go to college. Get ch’your feet on the ground, before going off and becoming army. Iz not going anywhere.”
Crossing into their yellow kitchen, Juarez watched Mom scramble counter to sink to stove to counter again. “I don’t wanna wait,” he replied.
“But why? Aye-ee, mi bebé. See?” She held open the oven door, curling her black hair behind her ear, “You will miss my e-special enchiladas when you are army! I make eet for you!”
He rolled his eyes.
Miguel and Selina, his siblings of six and seven, sat at a table coloring, throwing crayons at each other. They were both black-haired and tan-skinned like their mother, but Juarez, different, had dirty-blond hair, white skin and pale eyes.
“Stop that!” Mom said, scrubbing plates in the sink. “Manny, don’ rush theengsz –” she coughed and crossed her squat, busy body over to the counter. “You have your whole life ‘head of you. Hold this.”
Juarez’ arms received her mixing bowl.
I have a sense that there’s an interesting character here and, perhaps, an interesting story—if I were to get to the story. The prologue, for me, served to introduce a character, sort of, but offered no dramatic reason I should care about him or be intrigued with his story--or let me know what the story is about.
The opening page of the chapter, while continuing with the character we learned about—a good thing—it didn’t raise any story questions. There’s little reason to want to read more about Mom cooking dinner. I did skim through the chapter, of course, and my advice to Jon is that it is just about all backstory. Unless, for some reason, that impacts his story later on, it’s not a good use of the reader’s time. A very interesting thing that suggested something paranormal going on came at the very end of the chapter. It should be at the very beginning—if, of course, it starts the actual story.
Another word of advice--limit how much dialogue you cast in a dialect. A very few words usually serve to give the flavor--I think you could do with less in Mom's speech. Good luck, Jon, but look for where the story really starts to start your novel. Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
Dave sends a revision of The Last Good Word. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
Mr. Pinky Pollard, the operator of Sun to Moon Lake, was a rowdy white man with jug ears and a lazy left eye who wore his trousers hiked up over his belly, cinched with rope. He lived in the best one of a dozen shacks built with hewn logs and tin roofs at the Negro-only resort camp in Madison County, Mississippi, with his wife Miss Ivy and their three daughters. The summer of 1928 was long, hot, and humid. The camp was filled almost every sunny day with hard-working cotton sharecroppers and their families who picnicked atop the soft, copper pine straw that rolled over five acres of red soil hardpan like a rich sisal carpet. Guests from miles around loved to relax by the lake beneath the magnolia blossoms, while their children played on the monkey bars and the rope swings that carried them far out over the water. It was safe and fun. Until the day the youngest Pollard girl went missing.
Everyone searched for little eleven year-old Sammianne when, late in the afternoon two boys lolling on inner tubes stumbled across a body floating in a lonely crook of the lake bristling with cattails. They scurried back to shore and raised the alarm. Sergeant Connelly, the police chief of High Tune, the nearest crossroads to the camp, soon barreled up the bumpy lane in his flivver, stoking a rooster tail of boiling crimson dust fifty yards long. He skidded to a stop and hopped out with a fierce scowl, and elbowed his way through the crowd of fidgety looky loos who stood in shock at the water’s edge. Mr. Pinky showed the sergeant to the telephone in his (snip)
My, what a rich and colorful world we’re introduced here, the deep South of the 1920s. The voice is good and the writing strong. And, with the body of a little girl found on the first page, there’s a story question that gets the page turned.
A couple of notes for Dave: when the KKK guys arrive to help search for the killer, they put on their robes and hoods. It doesn’t seem logical to me that they would do that to go tromping through the woods. Yeah, the chief knows they’re Klansmen, but the hoods etc. don’t seem quite logical to me.
Secondly, the chapter devolves from an interesting story about an innocent black boy in the old South on the run to a colorful history of his father and parents, a chapter full of backstory. I skipped though it, hoping for the story of Slim to take up. I was disappointed, and would not have continued after the chapter was over, fearing more detours from the story. Something to think about.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, It seemed to me that it could be educational to take a hard look at their first pages. If you don’t know about BookBub, it’s a pretty nifty way to try to build interest in your work.
I’m sampling just the books that are offered for free. Following are the first page and a poll. Then my comments are after the fold along with the book cover, the author’s name, and a link so you can take a look for yourself if you wish. At Amazon you can click on the Read More feature to get more of the chapter if you’re interested. There’s a second poll concerning the need for an editor.
Let me know how this works for you. Here’s a book titled Ashes. Should this author have hired an editor?
Downtown Los Angeles glittered in the sun, seemed to preen. The city knew its best light — a spring morning, the sky cleansed of smog by the past weekend's rain — and its best angle — from a distance.
Driving south out of the scrubby Glendale foothills, Jennifer Thomson took a moment to appreciate the city. In the clear March air, the skyline had a glamour it lost the closer she came. She took the moment but did not cherish it, for she did not know that before noon the sky would be sullied by a column of smoke and dust, that the skyline would be forever altered, that the sound of police and news helicopters would be audible for miles.
Jennifer drove as quickly as she dared without catching the attention of the California Highway Patrol. She was not anxious to get to work. Rather, she was trying not to be late. She had no one to blame but herself, having hit the snooze button once — or was it twice? — more often than usual.
But judging from the lighter-than-usual traffic, Jennifer thought she wasn’t the only one who would be tardy today. She wouldn’t have cared about being five (or fifteen) minutes late, but her boss did care, and Jennifer had no desire to hear Maggie Stone remark on her tardiness again.
Luck was with her. In the underground garage she found a parking spot close to the (snip)
Have a vote, then go to my editorial notes and vote again after the break.
And don’t forget to let me know if you like this new feature. Thanks.
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.
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.
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.
Kelsey sends the first chapter of Lady Waiting, a YA fantasy. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
Please vote and comment. It helps the writer.
I pulled on the fur lined boots hand made to look well-worn and grubby. They completed the scratchy brown wool leggings and muted blue tunic that split at the sides from my wait to my knees. I pulled up my hood and check my reflection in my small hand mirror. My face was rubbed with dirt to hide my porcelain complexion. I added some dirt to the backs of my hands.
I closed the door softly and crept down the hallway. The castle’s torches were not lit at this hour. I quickened my pace. Just as I checked the hallway behind me I walked straight into another man.
No, a boy. My age. He was not wearing the uniform of the castle guard or servant’s livery. All of his clothing was a muted shade of black or deep blue, I couldn’t tell with only faint moonlight coming through the slits in the walls. He stared at me only for a moment before he continued running down the hallway.
I continued in the same direction, running now, and skidded to a stop in front of the kitchens. The room was inviting both in the soft warmth from the bread ovens and the rich floury smell wafting from them. The cook was not to be in the kitchen right now and he had promised to keep the maids from it as well. I left through the scullery entrance into the cool night.
I grabbed my small bag of provisions stashed in a nearby barrel and slung it over my shoulder. I made my way to the river that bisected the city and followed it to Madge’s Inn.
The voice is good and we start with something mysterious happening, which is to the good. On the other hand, we also start with errors and clarity issues--for example, the character is not male as is implied. And a compelling story question has yet to be raised. It’s clear that the character is sneaking out, but no indication of consequences if she is caught. The time that could be introduced is when she runs into the other person. Fear of discovery for certain consequences could come up at that time. There could be implied jeopardy that would help.
A sense of the mission would also help. Why is she sneaking out? What is the goal? Is there danger or jeopardy involved? Is she going to meet some rebels, as is implied later? Now would be a good time to introduce something like that. Overall, while the writing is good it needs to get better before this is ready for prime time, and tension needs to be developed on the first page. A good start, keep at it. Notes:
I pulled on the fur-lined boots hand made to look well-worn and grubby. They completed the scratchy brown wool leggings and muted blue tunic that split at the sides from my wait waist to my knees. I pulled up my hood and check checked my reflection in my small hand mirror. My face wasI had rubbed my face with dirt to hide my porcelain complexion. I added some dirt to the backs of my hands. A spelling error and an incorrect verb tense is not a great start. It pays to check everything before sending work out. Changed the sentence from passive to active.
I closed the door softly and crept down the hallway. The castle’s torches were not lit at this hour. I quickened my pace. Just as I checked the hallway behind me I walked straight into another man.Clarity issues. First, in the opening the character was adding dirt to his/her skin, which suggests outdoors, but now he/she is in a hallway. The first paragraph needs to include something that makes the use of dirt logical. Second problem: the character runs into “another” man. This makes it clear that the character is a man—but she isn’t a man, as we learn later. Needs to be clarified.
No, a boy. My age. He was not wearing the uniform of the castle guard or servant’s livery. All of hisHis clothing was a muted shade of black or deep blue, I couldn’t tell with only faint moonlight coming through the slits in the walls. He stared at me only for a moment before he continued running down the hallway. Couldn’t tell what? What the actual color is? Does it matter?
I continued in the same direction, running now, and skidded to a stop in front of the kitchens. The room was inviting, both in the soft warmth from the bread ovens and the rich floury smell wafting from them. The cook was not to be in the kitchen right now and he had promised to keep the maids from it as well. I left through the scullery entrance into the cool night. In my experience the aroma of baking bread is from the yeast, not the flour.
I grabbed my small bag of provisions stashed in a nearby barrel and slung it over my shoulder. I made my way to the river that bisected the city and followed it to Madge’s Inn.