For most of us it takes a considerable amount of time to write our novels, but Anthony Burgess took just 3 weeks to write A Clockwork Orange. Sure, NaNoWriMo writers may generate a “novel” in the 4 weeks of November, but I’m thinking they aren’t of that caliber.
At the other end of the scale, Margaret Mitchell took 10 years to write Gone with the Wind.
I've removed the post about the opening chapter submitted to FtQ by "Lyn." I heard from the writer who said this:
"I DO mind another writer messing with my work and writing it his own way, out of the character’s voice. ESPECIALLY in public."
This was after I did a tiny bit of editing of a passage from later in the chapter to illustrate what I thought made a stronger opening using the writer's own (very well written) narrative.
In the polls, the original opening scored 80% No votes.
There are treasures to be found on BookBub. Today is a bit of a shout-out for a series I found there. The price then was 99 cents, but it’s back to $14.72 for the whole series. I don’t know if the first page will be strong enough for you to make you turn it, but I am finding these stories great fun. It’s an example of the super bargains that sometimes come up on BookBub. On with the post:
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, It seemed to me that it could be educational to take a hard look at their first pages. If you don’t know about BookBub, it’s a pretty nifty way to try to build interest in your work. The website is here.
I’m mostly sampling books that are offered for free—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 are the first 17 manuscript lines from the first chapter of The Black Stiletto The Complete Saga. A flogging follows my opinion of this work.
My mother was the masked vigilante known as the Black Stiletto.
I just found this out today, and I’ve been her son for forty-eight years. All my life I knew she had some secrets, but needless to say, this is a bit of a shock.
At first I thought it was joke. I mean, come on. My mother? A costumed crusader? Yeah, tell me another one. And the Black Stiletto, of all people? No one in a million years would believe it. I’m not sure I do, and here I am being presented with hard evidence.
The Black Stiletto. One of the most famous persons on the planet.
And she’s slowly dying. In a nursing home.
Oh. My. God.
I really don’t know how I’m supposed to react to this.
It was sure something I didn’t expect when I was called to Uncle Thomas’s office this fine May afternoon. He’s not really my uncle; just a friend of the family. I suspect he was my mom’s lover at some point when I was a kid, but they remained friendly and then later he acted as her estate attorney. You see, my mom— Judy Talbot— is seventy-two years old and she’s got Alzheimer’s. It’s a terrible disease and it hit her hard and fast. It didn’t creep up on her like it does with most victims. It was almost as if she was okay one day, and then a couple of years later she couldn’t remember my name. Within five years of the onset of her illness, I had to put her (snip)
I’ve already given my opinion of the series. I did think the first page raised enough strong story questions for me to turn the page. If there’s anything missing, it might be a signal to jeopardy for the narrator. But the notion that a son wouldn’t know his mom had a secret life that made her famous, well, I wanted to know what that life was. The main character, the Black Stiletto, is a young woman with a lively personality. The series opens in the late 50s and reads like good historical fiction, though this is all focused on crime fighting and her evolution from an abused teenager to a mother protecting her son. I’m not finished with the books yet, and am having trouble putting it down. Raymond Benson is a best-selling novelist, and he shows his chops in this story. Highly recommended.
This summer I had an enlightening time doing my Compelling First Page workshop privately for a group of writers in Portland, Oregon. Instead of a classroom with a time limit, we assembled in a home around the dining table and could work as long as we wanted to. The participants had earlier emailed to me their first chapter or prologues, and we had twelve to work with.
Unlike conducting the workshop at writers’ conferences where the submissions range from beginner to accomplished, all of these writers were already at the accomplished level. Several were published, several had literary agents, and all were strong writers. You would think that all of their first pages would be compelling.
I took the standard FtQ first pages—the first 16 or 17 doubles-spaced lines of a narrative—and stripped them of names, etc., just as I do here. I made a handout of the first pages and the group read them one at a time.
We voted, just as we do here, but then it got really interesting with this group of strong writers. I asked the yes, no, and maybe voters why they voted the way they did. With no time limits, I was able to ask just about everyone, and there was good discussion and back-and-forth about the page in question and the reasons why it did or why it didn’t provoke a page turn. As I do here, I also sometimes provided alternative first pages taken from later in a narrative and we voted on those, as well. And they all did much better, some reaching 100% yes votes. The alternatives instantly showed the writers examples of compelling openings that were already in their writing.
How did these strong writers do? A few pages did get a majority of yes votes, but most didn’t. We worked for two hours, broke for lunch, and then worked for almost three more, a delicious amount of time. As we critiqued page after page in this “immersion” process of experiencing first pages, the bar for a page-turn was raised higher and higher as the writers got tougher on the pages they read. And, more and more, they came to talk about strong story questions as the key to making a page compelling or not.
Rejected were long but well done description passages. Rejected were musings. Rejected were openings with no hint of trouble ahead for the protagonist. Rejected were those that lacked a story question. And yet the rejected writers were quite happy about it.
As it also happens in the conference version of the workshop, the writers developed a quick feel for whether or not a first-page narrative created tension in them, and the reasons why or why not. Because, perhaps, they were all strong writers, they were quick to identify shortcomings and strengths. They were especially delighted to learn from the discussion why their own first pages flew or fell.
The long time we had for discussion in this unlimited private workshop made possible a depth of understanding and discussion impossible in a 90-minute conference workshop. At the end, all of the participants were pleased and eager to return to their writing with new abilities to analyze and appreciate what a narrative did or didn’t do. And they invited me back to do a second workshop, that one on creating tension, experiential description, and dynamic dialogue.
I hope there are more private workshops in my future. I truly enjoyed helping these very good writers become even better writers. It’s what I do, and it turns out that I love it.
For more information on the workshops I teach, please go here.
There have been 53 downloads of the free Kindle, epub, and PDF editions of Gundown, the novel I wrote in hopes of stimulating the conversation about guns to get outside the box. Not a lot, but a start, and I'm here to keep giving it away. Just click here for download links, or the image to the right. Interestingly, at least to me, Kindle downloads are 5 times the epub downloads, but PDF downloads are close to half of the Kindle choice.
Below is the first page, fyi, and the rest of the first chapter follows after the break.
The sky a sunny blue over Chicago, Hank sliced through the noontime trudge of pedestrians on Michigan Avenue. He couldn’t afford to be late for his meeting with the NRA guy, a VP no less. He had an important mission for Hank.
Oh, man, if only this meant a chance to have a life again. Maybe not as a cop anymore, but Hank would give anything to once more have a sense of duty, of purpose. He sure as hell didn’t miss his former life in the army, but he hated not being a cop, sworn to protect and serve.
He smacked down a spike of fear that his PTSD would get in his way today—so far, lifted by a rare feeling of well-being, he felt sharp, at his best. This could be his road back.
No, a road forward.
Damned if he was going to be another digit in veteran suicide stats.
A tiresome clump of a half dozen gang jerks swaggered toward him with cocky menace, three of them with pistols in their hands. Sure, they had the right to carry them, but these guys were pushing it. The gangbangers blocked most of the sidewalk, forcing people to step off the curb or sidle along a building front.
Hank didn’t step aside for fools. He slid his hand inside his Windbreaker to the familiar feel of the butt of his .45 in its shoulder holster. He locked his gaze onto the eyes of the center guy, who carried a Glock semi-automatic, and walked straight at him.
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 are the first 17 manuscript lines from the first chapter of 48 Hours to Die: An Anthony Stone Novel. A flogging follows my opinion of this work.
Mary sat in the living room on her couch enjoying a glass of wine. She had been laying around the house all day since Tuesdays were her only day off. On nights like this, Mary wished that she had a boyfriend, but right now, she was focused on her career instead, so a boyfriend would have to wait. Mary laid across the couch when she heard what sounded like someone tapping on the window near the kitchen. Mary quickly sat up and muted the TV to make sure the wine wasn't playing tricks on her. She listened carefully for a few seconds, once she was sure that no one was tapping on the window she turned the TV back up. Mary sipped on her wine when she heard the tapping sound again. She slowly stood to her feet, walked over towards the kitchen window, and peeked outside.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
The loud banging on the front door startled Mary, causing her to drop her glass of wine on the kitchen floor. She slowly inched her way towards the front door when the loud banging continued.
This book averaged 3.2 stars on Amazon. This opening does raise story questions—what is going on, what is the banging—but does it rise to the level of compelling? For me, not really. We open with sipping and musing, then noise. But Mary doesn’t seem to feel any concern—even though, as we learn later, there have already been two gruesome murders of single women in her town. More than that, though, are craft issues. As usual, a first page foreshadows what is to come, and what is to come isn’t professional-grade writing. The story might be there, but the writing to immerse us in it isn’t. Notes follow.
What do you think?
Editorial notes:
Mary sat in the living room on her living room couch, enjoying a glass of wine and her favorite sitcom whenShe had been laying lying around the house all day since Tuesdays were her only day off. On nights like this, Mary wished that she had a boyfriend, but right now, she was focused on her career instead, so a boyfriend would have to wait. Mary laid lay across the couch when she heard what sounded like someone tapping on the window near the kitchen crept into the laugh track. MaryShequickly sat upand muted the TV,to make sure the wine wasn't playing tricks on her. She listened carefully for a few seconds, once she was sure that no one was tapping on the window she turned the TV back up. Mary sipped on her wine when she heard the tapping sound again. She slowly stood to her feet, walked over towardswent to the kitchenwindow, and peeked outside.
BANG!
BANG!
BANG!
The loud banging Banging on the front door startled Mary, and she dropped causing her to drop her glass of wine on the kitchen floor. She slowlyinched her way towards the front door when the loud banging continued.
A proofreading service sent me the infographic below, and it's an excellent look at avoiding weak "very" phrases in your narrative. You'll see how one strong adjective does so much more than a "very" phrase. Thanks for sharing, Proofreading Services.com. Note: I have not used their services and have no idea of the quality or cost, but the infographic is, ahem, very good.
Submissions welcome, none in the hopper for Friday. 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 to engage the reader with the character
Something is wrong/goes wrong or challenges the character
The character desires something.
The character takes action. Can be internal or external action: thoughts, deeds, emotions. This does NOT include musing about whatever.
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.
The one thing it must do: raise a story question.
Caveat: a first page can succeed without including all of these possibilities. They are simply tools you can use. In particular, a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and a create page turn without doing all of the above. On the other hand, testing pages with the checklist no matter where they are in a story can help identify where a narrative lags and why it does.
Cary sends the first chapter ofy Ghost of the Eleventh Hour.. The rest of the submission follows the break.
Ted approached the closed blinds of the panoramic window and pulled the curtain drawstrings. The rays of the morning sun greeted Ted’s post-tequila soaked, Visine-begging eyes like a bug greets an automobile windshield that’s traveling sixty-five miles per hour. Splat! When his brain recovered sufficiently from the luminary shock, he peered at the driveway and noticed a conspicuous absence.
“Honey, where’s the car?” Ted asked.
“It’s at work,” Charlotte replied from inside the kitchen. She appeared from the doorway and entered the living room wielding two mugs of freshly brewed coffee.
“Ok, I’ll bite. Why is our car already at work without me having taken it there?”
“Seriously? You don’t remember telling Kevin to take your car keys away from you after your fifth margarita, then telling him to take the car to work the next morning, and that you’d pick it up there?
Ted groaned and shook his head. “So, who’s picking me up and taking me to work if our car is already there?” he asked.
“Seriously, you don’t remember?” Charlotte teased. Wishing to avoid further involvement with the conversation, she flashed Ted an ear-to-ear smile, then darted into the bathroom with her cup of coffee. She closed the door and started some bath water. After a few moments, the bathroom (snip)
I enjoyed the voice and the writing in Cary’s submission. It promises fun to come, and there is. Ted, who is very hung over, has to walk to work and Cary writes that:
he was in no condition to attempt a walking pace faster than continental drift.
Funny, for sure. But, looking at this first page, what is the story about? A hungover guy dealing with that particular brand of misery. Not, for me, a compelling issue. Later in the chapter, as he makes his way to work, he comes across a suicide, a young woman has apparently hanged herself from a bridge. Now that’s the beginning of compelling narrative, raising story questions right away.
But feeling hung over? No story questions there. No compelling desire. Nothing really going wrong. As charming as the writing and voice are, there needs to be story driving the exposition, description, action, etc. And, in my view, that needs to begin on page one. Cary, I think you need to start this story later. If Ted being hung over impacts the story and what happens, then it belongs. If not, well, you’re having the reader go through material that doesn’t matter, and that matters to readers. Look for a place in the story where things go wrong for Ted and start there. It could be the discovery of the dead girl, which is clearly something that goes wrong in his walk to work. Even in humorous writing you need to create the tension in the reader that demands knowing what happens next.
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 are the first 17 manuscript lines from the first chapter of Shakedown (Jack Davis Thrillers Book 1).
MARCELLUS PEARSON Pearson counted out three thousand dollars, wrapped the short stack of cash with a rubber band, and handed the money to Oleta Phillips, a narrow-shouldered woman with razor lips. He covered her hand with his, her hard knuckles like pitted marbles against his palm, and rolled her arm over, studying the needle tracks running from the crook of her elbow like drunken sutures stitched into her coffee-colored skin.
“You stayin’ clean, Oleta?” he asked.
“Tryin’ to,” she said, pulling her hand away.
“That’s good, real good. Sorry ‘bout your boy. He was family.”
Oleta looked at him, opening her mouth, then thinking better of it, not asking him what kind of family put a fifteen-year-old boy on a corner, his pockets full of crack, so he could get killed over just whose corner was it anyway. She was afraid to ask Marcellus, the way he watched her with his own dead eyes. And she was flush with shame, knowing that she might have saved her boy if she had cared more about him than her next fix. It was too late by the time she realized how important her son was to her.
“Funeral costs and a little somethin’ extra, this being a hard time and all.”
Oleta nodded, knowing Marcellus was paying for her son’s funeral and her silence, damning herself for taking the money, taking it anyway.
This book averaged 4.2 stars on Amazon. When I read a first page (and beyond), I try to ignore writing craft issues at first in order to give the story a chance to emerge, but couldn’t do that here. The first paragraph was a turn-off for me, starting with the repetition of the character’s name: MARCELLUS PEARSON Pearson. That’s exactly how it was in the Kindle book I downloaded.
The other thing about the first paragraph was the writing. It may be acceptable in literary fiction for the writing—word choices, phrases—to stand out, but it’s not good practice in a thriller story where the goal is story, not the nature of the writing. The writing should, in a sense, be invisible in order to immerse a reader in what’s going on in the story, not looking at how it’s being told. For me, the razor lips, knuckles like pitted marbles, and drunken sutures were over the top.
Other than that, the writing is pretty clean, but does it raise compelling story questions? For me, about the only story question was what she should be silent about. Not enough. If you should chose to read more online, you’ll find a fine example of head-hopping that took me out of the story once again, and then detours into other heads, exposition, and backstory that, for this reader, turned into a slog. No page turn for 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 needs submissions, none in the queue for next week, so you can get a quick response: 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 to engage the reader with the character
Something is wrong/goes wrong or challenges the character
The character desires something.
The character takes action. Can be internal or external action: thoughts, deeds, emotions. This does NOT include musing about whatever.
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.
The one thing it must do: raise a story question.
Caveat: a first page can succeed without including all of these possibilities. They are simply tools you can use. In particular, a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and a create page turn without doing all of the above. On the other hand, testing pages with the checklist no matter where they are in a story can help identify where a narrative lags and why it does.
Anna sends the first chapter of a mystery, Standing Water. The rest of the submission follows the break.
Digging that mud was impossible. Each turn of the spade slopped more onto the heap beside him. Then, as he dug in again, the wet mud flattened and slid back into the hole. The fine drizzle needled into his sweater.
He pulled a sleeve across his brow and repositioned his cap before turning back to the earth. The day was getting on and Sue would want him back to fetch potatoes from the shed. He glanced at his watch, then straightened up and looked across the field to where his garden fence and the house roof was just visible on the top of the hill.
If she was looking out of the bedroom window she’d be able to see him. Perhaps she was there as he came along the field past the grubbed-up hedge line. She could have watched him turn for home then stop, bend and start to dig down there in the piled up earth and the tangle of old roots.
It was a good chance to take the metal detector out, before they dug drainage channels and buried pipes, turning small fields into one large space. The weeks of rain had made the ground sodden. He’d not seen the brook coming up this high out of its banks. It had come up as far as the bridge before but not all the way up here, reaching up towards the Hall and the village. It had risen and spread along the land and over the main road, making a great, silent lake to reflect the dark trees and spare winter hedges. Even this next field was waterlogged, leaving him splashing and sinking on normally solid ground.
The writing is fine, and we are in a scene with something happening. But what’s happening? A man is digging a hole in muddy ground, but we don’t know why. We get exposition about Sue, but to what effect? And there’s the problem—no strong story question is raised. We might ask, why is he digging the hole, but do we care? The narrative takes such a leisurely time with the digging and ruminating and all it seems there’s no urgency to what’s going on, and no consequences are in view. Oh, but there is good stuff later on. So, for your critique, here is an alternative opening page. See if it would evoke a page turn. A poll follows.
Digging that mud was impossible. Each turn of the spade slopped more onto the heap beside him. Then, as Jim dug in again, the wet mud flattened and slid back into the hole. The fine drizzle needled into his sweater.
The metal detector had whistled just as he was turning the last corner of the far field. The little screen flashed a hollow circle. A ring, that meant. He’d never dug up a valuable ring for all the times the machine had chirped and whistled with the bright little sign. He’d found plenty of coins, mostly just modern stuff but some old ones too. Once he’d got a silver shilling from the time of the Georges, maybe dropped by some farmer walking home centuries ago.
So he dug for the ring, because you never knew. People found treasure this way, that’s why he’d got the metal detector even though Sue and the kids laughed at him for it.
The clink of the blade on metal sent a small shock up his arm. He bent down and scooped at the mud with his hands.
It was a ring.
On a chain, both of them trashy things made of pot metal like the jewellery the kids bought from the market. The chain was thin and the ring was a crude lump with a dull silver coloured skull on it. He curled his fingers around it, pulled it from the sucking ground.
The other skull wasn’t silver, it was bone. Heavy, human, discoloured and abandoned (snip)