Apologies for the belated post, had a business trip to Portland yesterday.
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.
Catherine sends the first chapter of The Belles of Nolichucky. The rest follows the break.
Friday, June 2, 1967
MacBeth woke up. Something didn't smell right. The half-wolf half-pitbull rose, alert, ready, the thick fur of his neck fluffing out. He slunk in predator crouch out of the kitchen pantry into the dining room.
The man packed the pieces of silverware one at a time into his duffel bag. He was careful not to make a sound. Not a clink, not a tinkle. He'd spotted this mansion on his trip through Nolichucky last week and knew it had to hold treasures untold. Silver and gold. For the taking.
MacBeth issued one short, sharp growl. The burglar turned around. MacBeth launched straight for his balls. The man didn't move as quick as the dog. MacBeth's fangs pierced the burglar's jeans at the tip of the zipper and latched onto his dick. The man screamed. MacBeth, jaws locked began a slow backstep. The man screamed, his fists pounding the dog's head. MacBeth had the thick skull of his pitbull mama and the long well-muscled neck of his wolf daddy.
***
Deputy Beau Marsh climbed out of his Chevy cruiser. The thin red-head pulled his belt out of his pants, held his cap over his precious area and belted it down tight. He been advised of the nature of MacBeth's action. The burglar had to be an outsider. No one in Nolichucky - no one in his right mind - would venture uninvited into the Gregg mansion in the dead of night for any reason whatsoever. If MacBeth didn't get you, sixty-eight year old Aunt NayNay, legally Naomi (snip)
Well, this certainly opens in media res—there is definitely something going on. But the opening section with the dog doesn’t, it seems to me, relate to whatever the story is about. What happens here? A burglary is foiled by a dog, a cop arrives afterward. The page—and, I think, the chapter—boils down to setup. I suspect, thought I don’t know, that this story is not about the burglar with the troubled penis. He doesn’t even have a name.
It could be about the officer, but there doesn’t seem to be anything current or looming that could trouble him. So what’s this story about? I dunno. While the writing is good, there are still some things to look at in the narrative. Notes:
Friday, June 2, 1967
MacBeth woke up. Something didn't smell right. The half-wolf half-pitbullpit bull rose, alert, ready, the thick fur of his neck fluffing out. He slunk in predator crouch out of the kitchen pantry into the dining room. I think “slunk” pictures the dog’s movements just fine.
The man packed the pieces of silverware one at a time into his duffel bag. He was careful not to make a sound. Not a clink, not a tinkle. He'd spotted this mansion on his trip through Nolichucky last week and knew it had to hold treasures untold. Silver and gold. For the taking.
MacBeth issued one short, sharp growl. The burglar turned around. MacBeth launched straight for his balls. The man didn't move as quickquickly as the dog. MacBeth's fangs pierced the burglar's jeans at the tip of the zipper and latched onto his dick. The man screamed. MacBeth, jaws locked began a slow backstep. The man screamed, his fists poundingpounded the dog's head. MacBeth had the thick skull of his pitbull pit bull mama and the long, well-muscled neck of his wolf daddy. This is a little nitpicky, but accuracy affects credibility. The narrative says the dog’s fangs latch onto the man’s penis at the “tip” of the zipper. Doesn’t that mean the top? If not, where is the tip of a zipper? The bottom doesn’t seem logical. Both a man’s penis and testicles are at the bottom of the crotch in a pair of pants, not at the top of the zipper. Think through either the nature of this staging or the description. Also, no need for the repetition of "the man screamed"
***
Deputy Beau Marsh climbed out of his Chevy cruiser. The thin red-head pulled his belt out of his pants, held his cap over his precious area and belted it down tight. He been advised of the nature of MacBeth's action. The burglar had to be an outsider. No one in Nolichucky - no one in his right mind - would venture uninvited into the Gregg mansion in the dead of night for any reason whatsoever. If MacBeth didn't get you, sixty-eight year old Aunt NayNay, legally Naomi (snip)I found the detailed description of the action with the cap confusing, especially holding his cap over his parts as he belted it down tight. First, that seems difficult to do—putting a belt around your hips requires two hands, so how is he holding the cap in place? I do think it’s a funny thought. I also think this could be solved with a simple summary that doesn’t go into detail—I think the reader could buy it. For example: He used his belt to strap his cap in place over his precious area. All the detail is a bit of overwriting and lent itself to confusion rather than clarity, IMO.
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—BookBub says that readers are 10x more likely to click on a book that’s offered for free than a discounted book. Following is the first page and a poll. Then my comments follow, 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 first chapter page from a free novel by Carolyn Arnold, the first in a series of five.
NOTHING IN THE TWENTY WEEKS at Quantico prepared me for this.
A Crime Scene Investigator, who had identified himself as Earl Royster when we first arrived, came out of a room and addressed FBI Supervisory Special Agent Jack Harper. “All of the victims were buried—” He held up a finger, his eyes squeezed shut, and he sneezed. “Sorry ’bout that. My allergies don’t like it down here. They were all buried the same way.”
This was my first case with the FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit, and it took us to Salt Lick, Kentucky. The discovery was made this morning, and we were briefed and flown out from Quantico to the Louisville field office where we picked up a couple of SUVs. We drove from there and got here about four in the afternoon.
We were in a bunker illuminated by portable lights brought in by the local investigative team. A series of four tunnels spread out as a root system beneath a house the size of a mobile trailer and extended under an abandoned cornfield.
A doorway in the cellar of the house led down eleven feet to a main hub from which the tunnels fed off. The walls were packed dirt and an electrical cord ran along the ceiling with pigtail fixtures attached every few feet.
We were standing in the hub which was fifteen and a quarter feet wide and arched out to a depth of seven and half feet. The tunnels were only about three feet wide, and (snip)
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
I’m happy to see good, clean writing that doesn’t need a lot of line editing for grammar and punctuation, and the voice is good as well. This is a mystery, so a certain amount of setup is expected and the story questions can relate to the mystery instead of the protagonist at this point, but how well does this opening do at that?
For my money, not all that well. The first paragraph does a good job of establishing an aspect of the crime—there are multiple victims, and they are buried. But that paragraph wastes time and pace on the investigator’s allergies. He doesn’t appear in what immediately follows and his allergies have no impact on the story. A sign of overwriting, and that’s not a good predictor for a good read.
And then we get info dump and setup with how they travelled there and extreme detail about the tunnels—tell me there’s a tunnel and that men can walk in it and I can image it. No need to tell me that they are about three feet wide, etc. More overwriting, IMO. So no page turn from this reader.
Here’s a paragraph from page 2 that would have helped ramp up my interest if it had been on page 1 instead of all that description:
“It’s believed each victim had the same cuts inflicted,” Royster said. “Although most of the remains are skeletal so it’s not as easy to know for sure, but based on burial method this guy obviously had a ritual. The most recent victim is only a few years old and was preserved by the soil. The oldest remains are estimated to date back twenty-five to thirty years. Bingham moved in twenty-six years ago.”
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.
Ashleigh sends the first chapter of a science fiction novel, When We Was A Child . The rest follows the break.
Flesh.
My leg slices through the air and slams into flesh. His flesh. Right in his umbilical hole, right where the shade sneaks through generation after generation. My foot goes numb from the force and he gasps and begs me to stop. But I can't.
Don’t! I scream at her.
But she does. My leg, an identical leg to my right and three more to my left pull back and shoot forward, in his thigh, in his arm, in his face. His third Vice President, a clone like I am, collapses on the ground in front of me. Each blow makes me dread her more.
"No more. Please!" he says.
He doesn’t fight back; it doesn’t seem to occur to him to even try. The corners of my mouth sag, and a tear slides down my cheek. Cold anger, and hot sadness swirl and bang inside me, they team together against the emotion that is truly mine. Fear. My arm tenses.
Calm down, President Prodida.
She can’t hear me, I’m trapped in my own mind. My sinuses burn and tears push at the sides of my eyeballs, but she won't let another tear fall. Soggy grass mixed with dark red gore lounges on the cliff of meat that used to be his brow and slides down when he looks up at me. One of his eyes squint, and the other is swollen shut. His lip trembles.
This opening page starts out with a bang, good writing, and strong voice. There’s conflict, and a character that seems troubled. But troubled by what? For this reader, there were clarity issues. I had to read it more than once to figure out what was going on. Same went for the rest of the chapter. I understand the motive to not reveal too much, to keep mystery going, but if the narrative is too terse and lacking in clues and concrete images, there are readers you will leave behind. For me, there were too many clarity and staging issues to want to continue. That does not mean that there isn’t a compelling story here—in fact, the world interests me quite a lot. But being unable to see or understand it adequately stopped me here. Notes:
Flesh. I would delete this for a single reason—it takes up a line of next without contributing much, and it keeps what I think is a very valuable line off the first page. I’ll show that at the end.
My leg slices through the air and slams into flesh. His flesh. Right in his umbilical hole, right where the shade sneaks through generation after generation. My foot goes numb from the force and he gasps and begs me to stop. But I can't.No need for repetition that slows the narrative, the next sentence identifies the male nature of the victim. The “shade” line refers to something I don’t know and raises an information question (as opposed to a story question), but I’m willing, as a reader, to let that go for moment if it’s clarified soon—but it isn’t, not in the rest of the chapter.
Don’t! I scream at her. I assume that this is thought. Problem: I don’t know who “here” is. A later paragraph seems to identify “her” as President Prodida. I would use the name here. More than that, this is an opportunity, especially with the previous line telling us that the kicker can’t stop. If I would you, I would expand this line to include the fact that the kicker is being controlled. Thoughstarter: Don’t! I scream at President Prodida. Stop! I scream at her to stop controlling me.
But she does. My leg, an identical leg to my right and three more to my left pull back and shoot forward, in his thigh, in his arm, in his face. His third Vice President, a clone like I am, collapses on the ground in front of me. Each blow makes me dread her more.I found this confusing and difficult to parse. Expanding it would help. If there are four clones of her also kicking, please show us enough to see it. I wonder about the kicks landing “in” his thigh, arm, etc. Wouldn’t they hit, instead? How to they go into his body parts? The reference to “His” was also confusing because the reference to the controller so far has been to a female, and the later narrative also seems to say that the President is female. So who is this “his” referred to here?
"No more. Please!" he says.
He doesn’t fight back; it doesn’t seem to occur to him to even try. The corners of my mouth sag, and a tear slides down my cheek. Cold anger, and hot sadness swirl and bang inside me, they team together against the emotion that is truly mine. Fear. My arm tenses.
Calm down, President Prodida.
She can’t hear me, I’m trapped in my own mind. My sinuses burn and tears push at the sides of my eyeballs, but she won't let another tear fall. Soggy grass mixed with dark red gore lounges on the cliff of meat that used to be his brow and slides down when he looks up at me. One of his eyes squints, and the other is swollen shut. His lip trembles. How did grass get on his brow? He falls, and it seems that it must be on his back. He speaks to her, and she sees the grass on his brow, which must face up. The grass also has to be cut, otherwise it can’t slide down when he lifts his head. The staging here is not clear at all to me.
Here’s the line from the next page that I would include because it helped me understand that the character is being controlled. It was a separate paragraph of thought: Don't look at me like that. I'm not doing this, it's not me. It’s not me.
. . . Don't look at me like that. I'm not doing this, it's not me. It’s not me.
Those three words repeat in my head, but I don’t feel any less responsible. I wanted him to hurt. So much. Maybe I’m just like her. My fist, aching and red with his blood – or my blood – rams into his ear, and his head snaps to the side. The grass splats on the sidewalk, crimson pooling from under it and nausea roils in my stomach.
"You deserve this. Abomination." my voice says.
He deserves something, but not this. He looks at me again, his face distorted in patterns of shadow, light, and abuse. My eyes glare at his that plead for mercy, and I’m relieved when his neck muscles give out and his head clunks to the ground. I stare at him, ashamed that I’m glad to be rid of his accusing gaze.
That’s enough, leave him alone!
Blood trickles out of his mouth, and he doesn't move. My heart pounds so loud it wobbles my eyeballs, but I move forward in the fuzzy morning, because whether I see or not doesn't matter. President Prodida controls me; she controls all four of us. My foot nudges him. Nothing. My foot nudges him harder, and his flesh moves willingly, like it fell off the bone. But still, he doesn't move.
"Gods." My voice says. "Oh, Gods."
Try again. Try. Again.
My fingers clench in and out of fists, trying to slow the adrenaline that races up and down my body.
My foot pushes him so hard he rolls on his side. Moments pass, then he coughs and groans, and tugs his over-wear up. His beneath-wear is blue with a transparent circle of fabric in the middle of his stomach. My senses freeze as I gape at the skin that has no hole.
Oh, no.
My feet trip over one another and my back crashes into a Reuse bin behind me.
"I won't tell anyone." he gasps out, crying and drooling like a liveborn. His sobbing pierces into my brain, and clouds the world until only my arm, feeling for the edge of the bin, exists.
My body moves to the left, and the world comes crashing back when I see the girl peeking out from a window.
Hurry, President Prodida!
Though it’s no use, the girl’s probably been there the entire time.
My fingers find the smooth seam of the massive bin, and as my body turns away, my eyes glance back. Into the darkness, not at him. But I see him anyway, he’s still. I feel hollow, as my hip sockets churn, and run me far away.
Sorry I wasn't here yesterday, I got wrapped up in doing my taxes and it slipped my mind. This is an interesting one, but could be stronger, I think.
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.
Rebecca sends the first chapter of a paranormal fantasy, Snake Safety 101. The rest follows the break.
The dreaded polygraph test. My last obstacle to becoming a police officer. I sat in the waiting room, plain tile on the floor, posters meant to educate participants displayed on the plain walls. The air conditioning blasted at me but couldn’t cool my nerves. I’d barely passed the background check. A drug dealer’s kid had a hard time joining the police force, but that’s all I’d wanted since I was sixteen and freshly rescued from my own stupidity.
I’d disclosed my drug use on the pretest. If only I hadn’t been an idiot as a teenager. I’d tried to fit in with my friends. It didn’t work. They got high. I didn’t, but not for lack of trying. I’d stagger, or laugh at the stupidest things along with my friends, but it was all an act on my part. A great big lie. Yup, and here I was lined up for a polygraph test.
“Sarah?” A middle aged man with laugh lines at the corners of his eyes called my name.
I jumped up. “Here, sir.”
He tugged at his collar as if his tie was too tight and waved me through a door, down a hall, and into a small room. The officer who monitored the proceedings sat behind a window in an adjacent room.
“Sit there.” He pointed to a chair that looked similar to one used by clinics to draw blood.
“Okay,” I said. “This is my first polygraph…”
“Then you’ll be happy to know it only bites first timers.” He winked. “Next time you’ll (snip)
There’s a lot to like about this opening page. Good writing, clear and likable voice, and a definitely interesting character. There is a story question—will she pass—and consequences—if she doesn’t, she won’t be a cop. But is that enough to make it compelling. I’ll confess to being ambivalent about it. Interested? Yes. Compelled?
What follows in the chapter uses the questions in the interview to give us some good backstory . . . but still, I wonder if the first page couldn’t be stronger. I’m going to cobble together narrative from later in the story to see if you think it’s stronger, but first a brief note—I wouldn’t include the man tugging at his collar. It seems to be a touch of overwriting, detail that just doesn’t matter to the story.
So here’s an alternative opening. As you’ll see, I think it should start with the polygraph test already in progress. A second poll follows.
The dreaded polygraph test. My last obstacle to becoming a police officer. A drug dealer’s kid had a hard time joining the police force, but that’s all I’d wanted since I was sixteen.
Just tell the truth. That’s what the officers I’d talked to said. Lots of them had done drugs as teenagers and passed. And I’d disclosed my drug use on the pretest. Now here I was, wired to a machine, an officer watching through a window to a room next door.
The technician finally popped the big question. “Have you ever used drugs?”
My pulse shot up. “Yes.”
“When was the last time you used anything?”
“I quit when I was sixteen. But a year ago, I was at a party and someone spiked the punch with synthetic THC. If I’d known, I would have dumped the stuff out.”
He looked at me. “The party where a dozen people were hospitalized and several died?”
“Yes.” I prayed they wouldn’t count that time against me.
He frowned at his screen. “Did you become ill?”
“No.”
His eyebrows rose. “How much punch did you drink?”
“A Solo cup.”
He shook his head. “No way. Three others drank that much and they’re dead.” He fiddled (snip)
For me, this opening raises stronger questions and clearly puts her in jeopardy of failing the test. I had to wonder why she didn’t die. Instead of telling the reader about not being affected by drugs up front as the original opening does, let us discover it through the grilling she’s going through.
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—BookBub says that readers are 10x more likely to click on a book that’s offered for free than a discounted book. Following is the first page and a poll. Then my comments follow, 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 from a novel by Liliana Hart.
My life was a disaster.
I sat in my car with a white-knuckled grip on the steering wheel and watched the rain pound against the windshield. I was soaked to the skin, my skirt was ripped, and blood seeped from both knees. There were scratches on my arms and neck, and my face was blotchy and red from crying. Along with the external wounds, I’d lost a good deal of my sensibilities, most of my faith in mankind, and all of my underwear somewhere between a graveyard and a church parking lot.
I’ll explain later. It’s been a hell of a day.
My name is Addison Holmes, no relation to Sherlock or Katie, and if God has any mercy, he’ll strike me with lightning and end it all. I’ve had a job at the McClean Detective Agency for exactly six days. It’s been the longest six days of my life, and I’ll be lucky if I live to see another six. Unspeakable things, things you’d never imagine have happened to me in six days.
Now I faced the onerous task of telling Kate McClean, my best friend and owner of the McClean Detective Agency, how I’d botched a simple surveillance job and found a dead body. Another dead body.
I should have kept my job as a stripper.
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
I’m delighted to see another prologue that works. In fact, I downloaded this book to read. The voice is clear and likeable, the writing crisp and clean. All of which promise a pro at the wheel, but then there’s the clincher—these 16 lines of narrative are packed with story questions. This opening gets a happy Yes! from me.
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.
David sends the prologue and first chapter of a story for grade-schoolers, The Red Path. The rest follows the break.
Prologue:
The boy-with-no-name wandered alone in the wilderness for three days, waiting for the vision the elders had said would come. He was weak from fasting and his skin burned beneath the summer sun.
“I can walk no further,” said the boy-with-no-name. “I will sit and wait for my vision to come.”
He was about to sit down on a large flat rock when he heard a rattle. He looked down to see a snake, coiled on the ground in the shade of the rock.
“Watch where you’re sitting!” hissed Rattlesnake.
“I’m sorry,” said the boy-with-no-name. “I am very tired. I’m just going to sit on this rock for a while.”
“This is my rock. Go sit someplace else and don’t bother me.”
“Oh, I won’t bother you. I will just sit and wait for my vision to come.”
“Have it your way,” said Rattlesnake, and bit him on the leg.
The boy-with-no-name fell to the ground and Rattlesnake disappeared under his rock.
Once the poison reaches my heart, thought the boy-with-no-name, my body will become a corpse, then a meal for the birds and the four-leggeds.
The boy-with-no-name closed his eyes and lay completely still.
Chapter 1:
Every house looked pretty much the same on the street where Joel Zemeckis lived. There were, after all, only four models to choose from. Despite fancy names like Casa del Sol and El Palacio, they were all one-story ranch-style houses, either three bedrooms or four, with a sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. Acres of orange groves had been bulldozed over during the nineteen-sixties to build housing tracts identical to this one, with two spindly trees planted in every front yard. Now the sixties were over, the orange groves were gone, and the seventies were just beginning.
Bonita Vista Drive was one of those streets in one of those housing tracts where everything was new but nothing new ever seemed to happen. Even the Indian attack that summer at 392 Bonita Vista did not come as a complete surprise. In fact, the Zemeckis front lawn had been the battleground for repeated skirmishes all year.
“There they are, the white devils,” Joel whispered to his war party, hiding behind the hedge that separated the Warren’s front yard from his own. His brother Bruce and his friends were divided into two teams, facing off against each other on the Zemeckis front lawn, battling for the Super Bowl Championship of the neighborhood.
They think their helmets and shoulder pads are so great, thought Joel, but they look like bobble-head dolls. They’re a joke and they don’t even know it.
While I’m generally not inclined to go for prologues, I thought this one worked well. The “legend” style of the storytelling was done well, and there is the story question of what will happen to boy-with-no-name. From our acquaintance with this kind of folk legend, we know it will be momentous.
The first chapter was well written, has a good voice, and opens with a lively scene to introduce a likable character. So far so good. There’s impending conflict, too, in the game that’s being played. Perhaps this is intended as bridging conflict to get us to the rest of the story. But it’s just play. There are no serious stakes at hand in this game as far as we can see. There is a relationship to the prologue with the Indian theme of the boys’ costumes, but that’s about it.
Also, the introductory paragraphs strongly resemble an “info dump” and are clearly not in the voice or from the point of view of the child in the story. It’s the grown-up author delivering a bit of a message along with some scene-setting. It does not, in my view, contribute to creating tension in the reader. It fails to immerse me in the experience of the character right away, and I think that would be especially necessary in a story for younger grades.
While the rest of the chapter is fun, it boils down to all setup. We end the chapter not knowing what the story is really about or how the legendary character in the prologue figures in.
Even though grade-schoolers might enjoy the way the chapter opens with play conflict, I think it would be much stronger if it was the real story. David, I suggest you take a look at starting later, much closer to the inciting event. The family moving because of the dad’s job is not the inciting incident for Joel’s story.
If I never return home, the elders will know I have failed in my quest.
A shadow fell over his face and he opened his eyes.
Straight down swooped Eagle!
He grabbed the boy-with-no-name in his talons and lifted him up. He had enormous black wings with white tips and white tail feathers. Each thrust of Eagle’s powerful wings carried them higher and higher above the earth.
The boy-with-no-name shouted to Eagle, “What are you doing? I am not dead yet!”
“You were not moving,” Eagle said. “You looked dead to me.”
“Well I’m not! I’m alive, so I wish you would put me down.”
“It’s a long way down from here,” said Eagle, as he carried the boy-with-no-name far above the ground.
“What can I do up here in the sky? I am two-legged and live on the ground.”
“On the ground you cannot even see where you are going. Up here you can see clearly in every direction,” Eagle pointed out.
“I am on my vision quest, that is how we two-leggeds on the ground find our way. So please put me back down.”
“Have it your way,” said Eagle, and let go.
The boy-with-no-name fell from the sky. Spiraling towards the earth he could see his village below, the home of his family, the home of his tribe and the home his ancestors. But the river was red—teepees on fire—and the bodies of his mother and father, the bodies of his tribe lay motionless on the ground.
Suddenly the earth rose up to meet him and everything went black.
###
When the boy-with-no-name awoke the sun was low and the shadows were growing long.
I have died and come back to earth. I must return home.
The boy-with-no-name ran back across the desert, through ravines filled with greasewood trees and up along the high bluffs that led to home. When he came to the river, the river was not red; he saw the poles of teepees in the distance, beyond the manzanita, and when he finally reached camp and saw the faces of his mother and his sister and his father and his little brother, tears of happiness ran down his cheeks.
It was late when the tribal council met that night. The boy-with-no-name did not speak of what had happened or what he had seen.
“It is sacred and cannot be shared,” a voice inside him said.
The boy-with-no-name said to the elders that night, “I will be your messenger—to the world below and to the world above.”
“Ho-ka-hey!” the men in the circle shouted.
From that day on, the boy-with-no-name could travel high above the earth to see into the future, and use the medicine of the earth to heal his two-legged brothers and sisters. He was no longer the boy-with-no-name. From that day on, he was known as Snake Feather.
Ho-ka-hey!
CHAPTER ONE
A New Path
Every house looked pretty much the same on the street where Joel Zemeckis lived. There were, after all, only four models to choose from. Despite fancy names like Casa del Sol and El Palacio, they were all one-story ranch-style houses, either three bedrooms or four, with a sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. Acres of orange groves had been bulldozed over during the nineteen-sixties to build housing tracts identical to this one, with two spindly trees planted in every front yard. Now the sixties were over, the orange groves were gone, and the seventies were just beginning.
Bonita Vista Drive was one of those streets in one of those housing tracts where everything was new but nothing new ever seemed to happen. Even the Indian attack that summer at 392 Bonita Vista did not come as a complete surprise. In fact, the Zemeckis front lawn had been the battleground for repeated skirmishes all year.
“There they are, the white devils,” Joel whispered to his war party, hiding behind the hedge that separated the Warren’s front yard from his own. His brother Bruce and his friends were divided into two teams, facing off against each other on the Zemeckis front lawn, battling for the Super Bowl Championship of the neighborhood.
They think their helmets and shoulder pads are so great, thought Joel, but they look like bobble-head dolls. They’re a joke and they don’t even know it.
But their helmets made them faceless, and without faces they were soulless, and because they were soulless they could not be trusted, and because they could not be trusted it was no joke.
“They are the enemy of our people,” Joel whispered to the brave on his left.
Mikey was the oldest of the kids Joel had enlisted into his tribe, and he was only six and a half. Joel was turning nine in the fall, and many summers had passed since he first played make-believe with kids his own age. After they lost interest, a younger group joined in, but they eventually moved on to sports and other stuff, too. Now he had a new war party.
Joel was the only one with a complete Indian outfit. It was made of deerskin and had a beaded chest. His headband was also beaded, and it held in place a single feather in the back. He loved wearing moccasins, and it bugged him that Mikey and the little kids wore tennis shoes. He ordered them to go barefoot, but their moms wouldn’t let them.
Bruce didn’t care if he was the enemy of the red man; all he cared about as he stood behind center was hitting Glen on a down-and-out route to the end zone at the driveway.
“Hutt one, hutt two...” Bruce began counting. He had heard the pros do it like that. He looked at his receivers on each side and continued his count. “Hutt three… ”
Behind the hedge, Joel adjusted his black-framed glasses and then placed a rubber-tipped arrow across his bow. He fit the notched end of the arrow into the bowstring and slowly drew it back, his right hand next to the red and white stripes on his cheek. It pained Joel to wear his glasses along with war paint, but he couldn’t see a thing without them. He looked to his left and then to his right; four braves on one side and three on the other, each with a rubber-tipped arrow ready to fly. Joel looked down the shaft of his arrow and focused his sights on Bruce’s big red helmet.
“Hutt four, hutt—”
An arrow struck Bruce’s helmet and stuck. Two more bounced off his shoulder pads, others hit the ground around the players on the field.
Joel led the charge through the hedge with a whooping war cry. The pint-sized Indians rushed the field and jumped on the football players, stabbing them with rubber knives, climbing on their backs and generally messing up the final seconds of the Super Bowl Championship. The battle raged on the Zemeckis’ front lawn until Mom came out the front door and onto the porch.
“Okay, kids, break it up!” She held up a white plastic device, “Joel, you forgot your inhaler.”
Two arrows sticking up from Bruce’s helmet were waving around like feelers on an insect. He pointed at Joel and laughed.
“Hey, Pocahontas, your mom’s calling!”
Joel launched himself at Bruce, but he was no match for his big brother and quickly found himself on the ground with his glasses hanging from one ear.
“Come in and get cleaned up,” Mom said. “Dinner is ready.”
Football players and Indians scattered as Joel stood up and put back on his glasses.
Another defeat at the hands of the Whites.
###
Shoulder pads and war paint were normally not acceptable at the dinner table, but Mom had other things on her mind tonight. When Joel sat down at the table he was thinking how cool his deerskin outfit was. He loved the creamy color of the hide and the fresh sweet scent it gave off; it felt natural and alive, unlike the wrinkle-free pants and shirts that Mom bought him to wear to school; and it was soft, and felt so good against his skin that he wished he could wear it all the time.
Dad, as usual, was thinking about a math problem when he sat down at the head of the table, punching numbers into a pocket calculator he held in front of his face. Dad always wore a long-sleeved white shirt and a skinny black tie. The only variation was sometimes he wore a gray tie, and in the summer he wore a short-sleeve shirt; what never varied was the pocket protector in the front left pocket of his shirt.
Bruce sat down wishing he could replay the last thirty seconds of the Super Bowl game—or kill Joel—when Mom came in from the kitchen carrying a platter piled high with drumsticks and chicken breasts. Mom always said she was average, but a better description would be that she was medium: medium height, medium weight, medium brown hair.
Joel’s hair was black and he liked to wear it long, touching his collar in the back, which was the complete opposite of his brother whose hair was blond and always cut short in a crew cut. In fact, Joel was the only one in the family that had black hair. Sometimes, when Mom got really frustrated with him she would throw her hands up and exclaim, “I don’t know where you came from!”
Mom placed the platter in the center of the dinning room table and took her seat. As Joel and Bruce grabbed for the first drumstick she made an announcement:
“Kids, your father and I have something to tell you.”
The boys stopped mid-reach. Dad put down his calculator.
The grave tone in Mom’s voice made Joel’s stomach clench in knot.
“Your father has a new job. He’s going to be working for the Department of Energy,” Mom said proudly.
“Top secret stuff!” chirped Dad.
The knot in Joel’s stomach started to relax.
“But here’s the thing—”
Mom hesitated, and Joel’s stomach knotted up again.
“His new job is in Albuquerque—New Mexico. We’re going to be moving there.”
The boys sat with their jaws hanging slack, and then Bruce wailed, “We can’t move! I’m starting quarterback this year!”
“They have Pop Warner there too,” Mom said. “I’ve already checked into it.”
“But I won’t know anybody.”
“You always make friends. It’s a big change for all of us, but your father’s work is very important.”
Joel didn’t hear much of what Mom had just said, because all he could think about was having to go to a new school and make new friends. Fear flooded his body and he thought he was going to throw up on the platter of fried chicken.
Mom turned to Joel with a cheery look on her face.
“And I know you’ll make new friends too!”
Joel hated it when she put on a fake smile, as if he couldn’t tell what she really thought.
“There’s Serendipitous Fallout,” Dad said gleefully.
Bruce made a face. “Awww… I don’t believe in that stuff.”
There was really nothing to believe in. Serendipitous Fallout was Dad’s expression for an unexpected discovery made during an experiment—a happy accident.
“We’re taking a vacation on the way!”
Bruce lit up—but it did nothing to relieve the dread Joel was feeling.
“Hawaii?” Bruce asked.
“That’s not on the way,” said Mom.
“Disneyland?”
“No, not Disneyland.”
“We’re going to the Four Corners,” Dad broke in.
There was dumbfounded silence at the Zemeckis dinner table—so Dad continued:
“It’s the only place in the United States where four states—Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico—meet at a single point!”
Bruce groaned.
“Tell them what we’re going to do,” urged Mom.
“We’re going to visit some ancient Indian ruins—a place where Indians lived over a thousand years ago.”
Joel perked up. “Indians?”
“Give me a break,” Bruce said to no one in particular.
“Will we get to see some real Indians?” Joel asked.
“There aren’t any Indians living there anymore,” said Mom, “it’s a national park, called Mesa Verde.”
“We will be driving through Indian country,” Dad said. “It’s logical to assume we could see some in their modern habitat.”
“Which tribes?” Joel was out of his seat, fears about making new friends temporarily forgotten.
Dad had a distant look on his face while he retrieved the information…
“Navajo, Hopi, Ute —”
“Apache?”
Dad smiled at Joel. “Apache, too.”
“Don’t get too excited,” said Mom. “They live the same as we do now. They don’t live in teepees anymore.”
“I just want to see some real Indians. “Joel was jumping up and down. “Can we camp out?”
“We’ll see. We only have two days there; your dad starts work that Monday.”
Dad picked up his calculator.
“I've done some calculations: If we drive through the desert at night to beat the heat, and maintain an average speed of sixty-five miles-per-hour, allowing two hours for rest stops and refueling, we can make it to the Four Corners in fourteen hours and forty-seven minutes.”
“This is so great!” Joel shouted, bouncing around the room.
Bruce shook his head. “Serendipitous Fallout, my butt.”
It was only a matter of weeks before the movers had packed up the Zemeckis’ furniture and departed for their new home in Albuquerque. That same night, Joel and Bruce and Mom and Dad piled into the family station wagon and drove down Bonita Vista Drive for the last time. With Dad behind the wheel, Mom seated next to him in the front and the boys in the back, they all set off for the Four Corners at the exact rate of sixty-five miles-per-hour. If Dad’s calculations were right, they would arrive at Mesa Verde at 1447 hours the next day, which, for non-atomic scientists, is 2:47 p.m.
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.
Deborah sends the prologue of Vision. The rest follows the break.
Jackhammer heavy rain was pounding the concrete moat surrounding our normally safe Brooklyn brownstone when Lara shook me out of a deep sleep.
”Jack, did you hear that? Is Shelby sleepwalking again?” As I stumbled out of bed and hurried down the hall in her wake, I tried to remember if I’d locked the gate we’d put at the top of the stairs when we first found Shelby sleepwalking.
We tiptoed into our daughter’s room and saw her in her bed, her long lashes dusting the cheeks of her cherubic face.
“Must’ve been the storm,” I said through a yawn.
I took my wife’s hand and started back to our room when a floorboard creaked downstairs. Panic tore through me as I realized an intruder was in the house.
We scrambled back into Shelby’s room to hide. As I scooped my daughter up her eyes opened wide with fear. I covered her mouth and Lara held a finger to her lips. When Shelby nodded understanding I pulled my hand back and placed her on the floor behind her canopy bed where we were huddled.
“Stay here, I’m getting my gun,” I whispered. My Glock 17 sidearm was locked in the biometric safe in the master bedroom-like always when I was off the clock.
“Jack, don’t,” Lara said grabbing my sleeve. “What if they hear you? Let them take what (snip)
This must be my lucky week—here’s another prologue that worked for me. Good action, strong story question, likable characters, all work. However, there are things that could make it stronger. In particular, it would have been much stronger if a paragraph or two from the next page could have been included—and it could have. I’ll show you an alternate created with judicious editing below, after my notes.
Jackhammer heavy rain was pounding the concrete moat surrounding our normally safe Brooklyn brownstone when Lara shook me out of a deep sleep.“Jackhammer” does a fine job of describing heavy, intense, loud rain, no need for “heavy.”
”Jack, did you hear that? Is Shelby sleepwalking again?” As I stumbled out of bed and hurried down the hall in her wake, I tried to remember if I’d locked the gate we’d put at the top of the stairs when we first found Shelby sleepwalking.
We tiptoed into our daughter’s room and saw her in her bed, her long lashes dusting the cheeks of her cherubic face.“Saw her” is a filter that distances the reader. Give the direct experience. Eg. We tiptoed into our daughter’s room. She slept in her bed, her long lashes etc.
“Must’ve been the storm,” I said through a yawn.
I took my wife’s hand and started back to our room when a floorboard creaked downstairs. Panic tore through me as I realized an intruder was in the house. Credibility issue here. I don’t believe you could hear a creak through “jackhammer” rain. In addition, why have the heavy rain at all? As it turns out, the rain doesn’t impact the story in any way, so it’s a waste of words, IMO. And it’s not credible. Also, I don’t know that panic tearing through him is needed, especially when it turns out that he’s a cop. Just having the reader learn that there’s an intruder will give them the fright emotion needed.
We scrambled back into Shelby’s room to hide. As I scooped my daughter up her eyes opened wide with fear. I covered her mouth and Lara held a finger to her lips. When Shelby nodded,understanding I pulled my hand back and placed her on the floor behind her canopy bed where we were huddled. Why would they go there with the intention of hiding in that particular room. It turns out there are better options. Have them go back to get the child, yes, but hide there? Why? The attic, it turns out, is very close. The highlighted "her" could be read as Shelby's lips, not the mother's--a clarity issue that should be fixed. And there’s a staging problem. You need to show them going behind the bed, not tell us after the fact. For example. When Shelby nodded understanding, we huddled behind her canopy bed and I placed her on the floor.
“Stay here, I’m getting my gun,” I whispered. My Glock 17 sidearm was locked in the biometric safe in the master bedroom-like always when I was off the clock.A bit of an info dump not needed here. Getting the gun is important, the rest is not.
“Jack, don’t,” Lara said grabbing my sleeve. “What if they hear you? Let them take what (snip)I’m against participle (“ing”) construction when simple past tense is stronger, eg. Lara whispered, “Jack, don’t.” She grabbed my sleeve. “What if they hear you . . .etc.
Here’s a reconstructed first page that includes the paragraphs from the next page that I’d like to see here. A poll follows:
Lara shook me out of a deep sleep. ”Jack, did you hear that? Is Shelby sleepwalking again?” As I stumbled out of bed and hurried down the hall in her wake, I tried to remember if I’d locked the gate we’d put at the top of the stairs when we first found Shelby sleepwalking.
We tiptoed into our daughter’s room. She slept in her bed, her long lashes dusting the cheeks of her cherubic face.
I took my wife’s hand and started back to our room when a floorboard creaked downstairs. An intruder was in the house.
We scrambled back into Shelby’s room. As I scooped my daughter up, her eyes opened wide with fear. I covered her mouth and Lara signaled silence with a finger to her lips. When Shelby nodded, I placed her on the floor behind her canopy bed.
I told Lara, “Stay here, I’m getting my gun,”
Lara whispered, “Jack, don’t.” She grabbed my sleeve. “What if they hear you? Let them take what they want and leave.”
Shelby said, “Daddy please stay here. Don’t you remember what happened when I was your mommy and you were my little boy?”
“When do you mean?” Her timing sucked, but when my gifted daughter remembered something from a past life I needed to hear it before she forgot.
Your thoughts? See where this story goes after the fold.
Apologies for not posting last Friday--my daughter and my two grandchildren came for a visit and I was happily wrapped up in family. I'm not sorry, just apologetic. Now, on to the flog!
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—BookBub says that readers are 10x more likely to click on a book that’s offered for free than a discounted book. Following is the first page and a poll. Then my comments follow, 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 for a novel by Tod Borg.
The big rotary snowblower was parked in the dark at the side of the road where the shoulder had been cleared of snow. The unusual snow removal machine was one of the huge ones, built on a double-engine chassis, designed for clearing highways.
The drive engine was idling quietly despite its size. The much larger blower engine was off. Because that engine made so much noise, the operator would fire it up at the last moment.
Three kills. Maybe four or five.
That’s all it would take to get rich.
Three people who were in the way. People who deserved to die.
The money involved was the kind no one could ignore.
Not even a priest.
Not even a saint.
There was some footwork involved, some financial maneuvering, a disguise, a little bit of persuasion. If the killings weren’t all done in the same way, there would be no consistent M.O. to track. If a victim or two couldn’t even be found, better still.
The rotary driver knew from research that most murderers aren’t that careful, yet many are never caught. Which made a careful killer almost impossible to find.
It had taken a week to prepare for the first kill.
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
I’m delighted to see a prologue that works. It works because it immerses me into the midst of something happening, a real scene, and it also takes me into the mind of a character. And this character plans to do murder. Coupled with clean, strong writing and voice, how can you resist wanting to know what happens next? I’m downloading this for my Kindle—and it’s free. One little thing—unless using the character’s name would spoil the mystery ahead, I would go ahead and name him. Even killers need to have some aspect of humanity, and names help give that. You can turn the page for more here.
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.
Shifu sends the first chapter of Cupid Proof. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
“You’re snoring.”
I ignored the words, rolled on my stomach and continued to listen to ‘Girl on Fire’.
“Eve, you can sleep until ten o’clock, but you have to move today.”
“I domnt wamma muv…” I reached out and searched the bed for my blanket. As soon as I could grab it, Mom pulled it away.
I shot a sleepy glare at her and rolled my eyes. I pulled myself off the bed and slumped backwards.
“This comfy bed… Can’t leave…” I pushed a hand under the pile of pillows I abandoned while I was asleep and moaned.
“Eve, this isn’t easy for us either.”
My eyes opened involuntarily and with such suddenness that I felt dizzy. I looked at Mom who had a solemn look on her face.
“I’ll get ready and then we’ll talk okay?” I pulled myself off the bed for a second time. Rubbing my eyes, I walked to the dresser and stared at myself in the mirror.
“Okay.” Mom walked out, closing the door behind her. I continued to stare at myself through the mirror.
“Well, Eve… This is gonna be fun…” I yawned and dragged my groggy feet towards the (snip)
This opening introduces a teenage girl doing what they do when a parent tries to waken them in a realistic way—though I’m not a girl, I recognize her behavior. My mother used to use a cold wash cloth to shock me out of slumber.
But that’s about it. What’s happening here? A girl gets out of bed. No notion of why, no notion of any problems ahead . . . no hint of a story question. Basically, this chapter is setup and didn’t get around to story questions until the end of the chapter. And, even then, Eve didn’t have any problems to deal with. I think the story starts later.
There were craft issues, too—clarity and overwriting, and those things showed up later in the chapter, too. Notes:
“You’re snoring.” Why not “Wake up?” Telling her she’s snoring isn’t exactly a move to get her out of bed.
I ignored the words, rolled on my stomach and continued to listen to ‘Girl on Fire’.
“Eve, you can sleep until ten o’clock, but you have to move today.” If she can sleep until ten, why is the mother insisting she get out of bed now?
“I domnt wamma muv…” I reached out and searched the bed for my blanket. As soon as I could grab it, Mom pulled it away.
I shot a sleepy glare at her and rolled my eyes. I pulled myself off the bed and slumped backwards. I didn’t understand this action. Is she off the bed or not? To make it clear, something such as . . . and then slumped backwards, back onto the bed.
“This comfy bed… Can’t leave…” I pushed a hand under the pile of pillows I had abandoned while I was asleep and moaned.
“Eve, this isn’t easy for us either.”
My eyes opened involuntarily and with such suddenness that I felt dizzy. I looked at Mom’swho had a solemn expressionlook on her face.All that about opening her eyes is a bit of overwriting for me—excess detail that doesn’t move story or characterization forward. Just have her open her eyes. Actually, you don't have to have her open her eyes, just saying that she looked at her mom takes care of that.
“I’ll get ready and then we’ll talk okay?” I pulled myself off the bed for a second time. Rubbing my eyes, I walked to the dresser and stared at myself in the mirror. The first time I read this I thought to myself that she hadn’t gotten out of bed—that was due to the lack of clarity in the earlier paragraph.
“Okay.” Mom walked out, closing the door behind her. I continued to stare at myself throughin the mirror. No need to repeat the reference to the mirror, we already know she's staring at it.
“Well, Eve… This is gonna be fun…” I yawned and dragged my groggy feet towards the (snip)
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—BookBub says that readers are 10x more likely to click on a book that’s offered for free than a discounted book. Following is the first page and a poll. Then my comments follow, 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.
But wait, there’s more.
And then I’ll give you an alternative opening page edited from narrative later in the chapter to see if it serves better as a page-turner. A poll follows to share what you think. Enjoy.
Should this author have hired an editor? Here’s the first chapter a novel by Russell Blake.
An arid wind blew a beige dust devil down the desolate road that ran from Ramallah to Jenin. Ribbons of orange and crimson streaked the edge of the predawn sky as another long night drew to an end. The young Israeli Defense Force soldiers manning the checkpoint fidgeted near a baffle of sandbags, the final minutes of the graveyard shift fast approaching on a rural thoroughfare that saw little nocturnal traffic.
Maya rubbed a fatigued hand across her face and exchanged a glance with Sarah, her friend and confidante on the lonely duty, and the only other woman on the all-night vigil. Four soldiers, relaxing with their rifles hanging from shoulder slings, stood by the two-story tower that had been erected the prior month to afford a better view of approaching vehicles. A scraggly rooster marched along the sandy shoulder, a solitary visitor on the deserted strip of pavement, its crimson-crowned head bobbing in determination as it strutted to a destination unknown.
“Only ten more minutes,” Maya said, stifling a yawn.
“Not that you’re counting every second or anything, right?” Sarah smiled, her cherubic features and bobbed whiskey-colored hair peeking from under her helmet a stark contrast to Maya, all angles and emerald eyes and black hair.
“Am I that transparent?”
“Why don’t you hit it a little early, and I’ll cover for you? If anyone asks, I’ll say you had (snip)
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
Pretty good writing and good description to set the scene (though I wouldn’t have “a fatigued hand” in there). This opening does a good job with setup, but what else is there to draw the reader forward? In a sense, this opening relies on reader experience that creates an expectation of trouble ahead if all seems well. But is that strong enough? I suspect it might be for some readers, but it wasn’t for me.
I still want a story question of some kind, not a vague and only possible prospect of trouble ahead. So I’ll offer an alternative. Please answer the editing poll and then see what you think.
Alternative opening:
Dim headlights approached the checkpoint from the north. The lamps flickered as an ancient red and white ambulance bounced along the rutted asphalt. The Israeli soldiers stiffened as the vehicle coasted to a stop, and Eli joined Sarah at the wooden barricade. The driver rolled the dusty window down and handed his identification papers to Eli.
Eli studied the license and registration in his flashlight’s beam, holding up the identity card and comparing the driver’s leathery countenance to that of the man in the photograph. The driver winced as the beam played across his face, and Eli lowered his flashlight.
“Where are you going?” Eli asked.
“The hospital. We have an injured boy in the back who’s in bad shape.”
“What happened?”
“He fell off a ladder. We think his back might be broken.”
Sarah stared at the passenger. Their eyes locked through the grimy glass, and after a long moment his gaze darted to a blanket on his lap. A butterfly of disquiet fluttered in her stomach, and she gripped her weapon. “I want to search the vehicle,” she said, steel in her voice.
The driver shook his head. “With all due respect, this is a critical case. Minutes count.”
A bead of sweat traced its way from the man’s hairline down his face in spite of the predawn cool. Sarah stepped back and swung the ugly snout of her rifle at the ambulance.