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 of crime fiction by Ms. Green, Skeleton’s Key.
Cage Foster wasn’t afraid of the dark. He didn’t believe in creepers going bump in the night, and he could deal with the occasional nasty critter. But something about Ironwood Plantation’s cellar made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. And he’d already been down there once today.
The cellar stunk. It reeked of mold-covered earth, stale air juiced up with God knows what dead animal carcasses, rotting wood, and several decades’ worth of dust. Like so many antebellum homes, Ironwood’s cellar was made of earth and bricks with some decaying Mississippi cypress thrown on top. Late afternoon sun shined in the kitchen windows and cast a shadow down the basement steps. An old light bulb and an equally ancient string hung somewhere past the bottom step, but since the entire fuse box had crapped out, Cage had to fumble down the rickety steps and hope he didn’t end up landing ass over backwards on the dirty cellar floor.
“Wiring up to code my ass.” His nose curled at the odor. “If it were, that cheap sander wouldn’t have blown the fuse.”
“You gon’ go down with me?” Harvey Lett, a square– shaped man with tobacco-stained teeth and a graying beard that desperately needed a trim, stood behind Cage. The only electrician willing to hurry out to an abandoned plantation house with old wiring and a fuse box from the (snip)
Green is clearly a skilled writer, the narrative is just fine. But a literary agent once said, “Good writing is not enough.” We have good writing, but story questions? The character has a bad feeling about a cellar. Then we wander off into description. Nothing actually happens. And there’s no hint of stakes if the vague creepy feeling pays off. There’s a fine hook at the end of the chapter, and all the setup wasn’t, in my view, needed. This is a mystery; get to the body.
Submissions Needed. None in queue for next 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.
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.
Betty sends the first chapter of a medical thriller, Washington Pyre. The rest of the submission follows the break.
Flashing lights of the approaching ambulance pulsed into a nocturnal fog dimming the Seattle skyline below Harbor Medical Center. The piercing siren echoed off buildings near the University of Washington training hospital. My heart rate increased as I waited with a nurse outside the emergency room door to meet the medics carrying a stabbing victim in cardiac arrest.
Exhaust fumes engulfed us as we pulled a stretcher from the Medic 1 unit. Nate continued chest compressions and his partner secured an oxygen mask to the lifeless body. The hyperventilating medics spewed reports as the four of us dragged the stretcher inside to the waiting trauma team. “Dr. McKay, she has a single left chest wound.” Nate’s face sweaty, expression grim. “Must have hit the heart or a large vessel. Little external bleeding.”
“She’s a young druggie with gnarly veins.” Julie, Nate’s partner, guided the stretcher into a trauma room. “Couldn’t get an I-V started. Found her on James just around the corner from the hospital.”
Beneath bright lights, team members protected by gowns, masks and gloved hands listened to my orders. “She’s in hemorrhagic shock from a single stab wound in the left chest.” They lifted her to the ER bed. “Airway and intravenous access, labs, high volume fluid, O-negative blood. We have to open her chest right away to stop the bleeding.”
Nurses scrambled, attaching monitors and setting up I-V fluids. A medical student took over (snip)
Good, solid writing in an immediate scene with plenty of action. There is a good story question—will the girl survive? Will the doctor succeed? There is a little clarity issue, but there’s another concern with this chapter. It’s pretty much all setup that establishes the doc. It does later get her into conflict with another doctor and there’s some good, nasty conflict there. If that conflict was what the story is about, I’d look for a way to start there. But I suspect it isn’t the actual story starting point, and I’m guessing the real story kicks in later, perhaps in the following chapter. Notes:
Flashing lights of the approaching ambulance pulsed into a nocturnal fog dimming the Seattle skyline below Harbor Medical Center. The piercing siren echoed off buildings near the University of Washington training hospital. My heart rate increased as I waited with a nurse outside the emergency room door to meet the medics carrying a stabbing victim in cardiac arrest.
Exhaust fumes engulfed us as we pulled a stretcher from the Medic 1 unit. Nate continued chest compressions and his partner secured an oxygen mask to the lifeless body. The hyperventilating medics spewed reports as the four of us dragged the stretcher inside to the waiting trauma team. “Dr. McKay, she has a single left chest wound.” Nate’s face sweaty, expression grim. “Must have hit the heart or a large vessel. Little external bleeding.” Clarity issue: To me, “lifeless” means no life. Dead. So why are they working on a dead person? I found the detail of “hyperventilating” distracting. I suspect it’s normal for a doctor to describe heavy breathing this way, but it interfered with the flow. And it doesn’t impact the story.
“She’s a young druggie with gnarly veins.” Julie, Nate’s partner, guided the stretcher into a trauma room. “Couldn’t get an I-V started. Found her on James just around the corner from the hospital.”
Beneath bright lights, team members protected by gowns, masks and gloved hands listened to my orders. “She’s in hemorrhagic shock from a single stab wound in the left chest.” They lifted her to the ER bed. “Airway and intravenous access, labs, high volume fluid, O-negative blood. We have to open her chest right away to stop the bleeding.”
Nurses scrambled, attaching monitors and setting up I-V fluids. A medical student took over (snip)
Sorry I missed yesterday, it was swallowed by house-painting.
Submissions Invited. 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.
Margie wrote that her critique group preferred one chapter as the opening in The Sybil’s Books, and she another. The openings follow. Which, if any, works best for you? The rest of the submission follows the break.
First there will be the usual page-turn vote for each, then an additional poll for which you prefer.
Opening 1: February 219 BC - Helen
Dying worlds don’t slowly crumble into the earth or slide into the ocean. They writhe and scream, flames devouring buildings. My city, Issa, was dying. Fire gnawed at wood, until creaking and weak, the rafters groaned and crashed, belching up dust as they hit the ground. Like any living thing, my home cried out as the Roman legions killed it.
I stood safely onboard a Roman trireme. At my side was Kronos, the monster who had saved me.
Adding to the crashing buildings and the crackling inferno were screams of men being butchered, women raped, children led to slave enclosures. Smoke drifted across the sea, its black tendrils burning my eyes. Destruction enveloped my soul and I began to shake like the buildings opposite the ship.
A hand grasped my elbow to steady me.
“Stand erect, woman,” Kronos growled. “Tamp down your feelings. Oracles do not possess human emotions.”
As if he would know any oracles personally so as to attest to their character - whether they would be so stoic as to witness the death of family and home without a word or gesture. But I couldn’t argue the point of what oracles should or shouldn’t be.
My eyes darted back to Kronos. Even in the chaos he looked the part of a renowned (snip)
Opening 2: March 218 BC – Plautus
Plautus never ignored the advice of a dead man. But tonight, the dead were silent.
A cold dawn was emerging over the streets of Rome. Night’s mist coated the surfaces of the Forum – buildings and street. The terra-cotta statue of Jupiter Maximus driving his chariot looked down from the roof of his temple onto the slick road running past its entry. At the rear of the building, Plautus gripped the rough stone wall dripping with his own urine.
Bent over, legs shaking even in his thickest woolen tunic and leggings, he panted as though he’d run a great distance. A red sticky substance dripped down between his fingers, fingers splayed against the wall to support his weight. He reached out with his other hand, smearing the scarlet trail pooling in his palm. His finger traced the viscous blob. It was too thin to be blood – just paint, red paint defiling Jupiter’s holy ground.
No longer a soldier - yet those years had conditioned his body, toughened his muscles into Adonis’ body. An unintentional mocking of the gods who had given him the face of their ugliest member - Vulcan. His pock-marked face with its sad hound-like eyes turned toward the approaching sound of a soldier’s hobnailed boots.
He was not surprised at this turn of events. His bad luck began hours earlier. All night long he had been herded by an unseen shepherd from bad dice to bad wine and finally into this inescapable trap. Then the Master Manipulator positioned a soldier at the door. There would be (snip)
The writing and voice in both are strong, and we’re introduced to interesting characters in the midst of trouble. I liked both openings from a storytelling point of view, and I think I preferred opening 1, though I’d be fine with whichever serves the story best. Nice work.