Submissions Welcome. If you’d like a fresh look at your opening chapter or prologue, please email your submission to me re the directions at the bottom of this post.
The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page (first pages of chapters/prologues start about 1/3 of the way down the page). Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
A word about the line-editing in these posts: it’s “one-pass” editing, and I don’t try to address everything, which is why I appreciate the comments from the FtQ tribe. In a paid edit, I go through each manuscript three times.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. While it's not a requirement that all of these elements must be on the first page, they can be, and I think you have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are.
Download a free PDF copy here.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of this list before submitting to the Flogometer. I use it on my own work.
A First-page Checklist
- It begins engaging the reader with the character
- Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
- The character desires something.
- The character does something.
- There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
- It happens in the NOW of the story.
- Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
- What happens raises a story question.
Caveat: a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and create page turns without doing all of the above. A recent submission worked wonderfully well and didn't deal with five of the things in the checklist.
Also, if you think about it, the same checklist should apply to the page where you introduce an antagonist.
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.
Your thoughts?
For what it’s worth.
Ray
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2016 Ray Rhamey, prologue and chapter © 2016 by David
Continued from prologue:
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.