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.
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow. You can turn the page here.
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.
What do you think?
© 2016 Ray Rhamey