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.
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 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)
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, chapter © 2016 by Anna
Continued:
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. It had been washers, mostly. Bits of copper pipe. Old tractor parts and metal buttons, things the machine showed up as ‘coin’. He’d found plenty of actual 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 from a pocket by some farmer walking home centuries ago.
So Jim had put the metal detector and his coat down and 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.
They’d laughed, but they’d bought it for him because it kept him outside where he’d been all his life, walking the fields instead of sitting in front of the telly now he’d retired at last. He’d told Sue he wanted the metal detector after he’d seen a man in the paper, just some old boy with like him, walking about when he found a Roman coin, then another, then a whole hoard. Right there, just under the surface. They'd bought in archaeologists and museums and taken the coins away, but it said in the paper that he’d got some money from it.
It had been on telly, on that countryside programme Sue liked. The man who found it had kept on about how interesting it was, how he'd liked seeing the professionals come in and dig it all up. But Jim had seen it in the paper about the money as well. So he dug, with the mud sliding and oozing around the little spade.
The clink of the blade on metal sent a small shock up his arm. He looked towards his house again, to where Sue might be watching, then 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 there in the earth. The thin chain with its cheap ring still fastened around a skeletal neck.
###
Her neck was cold.
Kit ran her hand over the shaved skin and up into her cropped dark hair. Her whole head felt too light, as if it could float away into the London sky. It was stranger than she had anticipated after a lifetime of feeling the swing of hair or the weight of it pinned up every time she moved. Unease settled between her shoulder blades, sitting like a light touch of a finger as she walked down the road towards the anonymous black hire car she had parked in the middle of the car park.
The nylon rucksack hit her leg as she walked. She carried it slung from the straps in one hand. It wasn’t heavy.
She hadn’t packed much.
Just the stuff she couldn’t replace or function without.
Her passport and driving licence to hire the car and prove her identity. The paper certificate which proved she had no criminal convictions which would prevent her volunteering with children on a project. All the medication she had in reserve. Her running clothes.
She had nearly left those too but in the end she couldn’t. Nearly everything could be lost except for that part of her. The bug-out plan relied on everything being different - hair, clothes, shoes - but running had nearly pulled her back. She’d seen her trainers on the rack by the front door as she put the rucksack and laptop bag down and the sense of what she was leaving had knocked the breath out of her for a moment. She’d picked up a shoe and weighed it in her hand.
They had run a long way together, her and those shoes.
And they’d cost a fortune.
Good running shoes were hard to find. She’d not be able to pick up replacements at a supermarket.
She’d closed her eyes and breathed out hard then opened the rucksack and pushed the shoes in. Then she’d taken a last detour to the laundry room and scooped the clothes out of the tumble dryer. They were boiling hot and still felt damp. A zip burned her forearm as she screwed the bundle down into the rucksack. Then she left, closing the door behind her and posting her keys through the polished letter box slot before walking down the steps onto the pavement. She had walked straight past her own car - too bright, too distinctive - and set off on foot towards the tube station and the outer suburbs.
Taking all the cash out of her bank account in a strange part of town made her uneasy. Walking around with the notes rolled into the shoes and under the papers felt risky but it was unavoidable. With the rucksack in one hand and her laptop bag over the other shoulder she had walked along the high street until she’d found a cheap hairdresser who could see her without an appointment.
In the split vinyl chair she had pulled her hair free of its clip and shaken it out, then said to the hairdresser ‘cut it all off.’
‘You what?’ The hairdresser was a woman in her twenties, plump and bored looking, the pockets of her shiny black trousers bulging over her hips and her t-shirt stretched tight over her breasts. She looked over Kit’s head into the mirror, frowning. ‘What do you mean, all of it.’
‘All of it.’ Kit shrugged a shoulder. ‘I want it as short as you can make it. Shave it if you like. The full Sinead O’Connor.’
The hairdresser ran her hand through the length of Kit’s dark hair, watching it shine and fall in the mirror. She pulled it back off Kit’s face.
‘You’ve got the cheekbones for it,’ she said. ‘You could get away with a really short crop. But you need to be careful not to look boyish with your build.’
‘It doesn’t matter, it just needs to be short,’ said Kit. ‘Cut the length off in one if you can, I’m sending it to charity.’
‘Oh!’ The hairdresser looked relieved. ‘So you’ve been sponsored to cut it all off? What are you raising money for?’
‘No,’ said Kit. ‘I’m just sending the hair to charity. No one knows I’m doing it. I just need a change.’
‘Are you sure?’ The hairdresser gathered Kit’s hair back into a ponytail with a band and picked up a pair of silver scissors.
‘Sure,’ said Kit, and closed her eyes.
###
Jim came stumbling back across the field in the nearest thing to a run he could do these days. He didn’t say anything until he was in the kitchen with Sue, doors closed and windows fogged from the oven and the steam from the iron.
‘I found something,’ he said.
Sue slid the hot iron along the crease of a shirt sleeve.
‘What was it? Another old nail?’ Her voice was kind despite the words.
‘No. It was a ring. A real one,’ he paused.
‘Bet it didn't have a diamond in it.” She smiled up at him.
‘No.’ There was quiet between them. He couldn’t carry on their usual joke about finding treasure. Normally he’d tease her about finding the crown jewels and she’d say something like ‘crown jewels of crap, more like,’ but now his mouth had gone dry.
The iron hissed and thumped over the board.
‘Thing is,’ he tried again. ‘Thing is love, it's not just the ring, and I don't know what I should do.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘A person. The ring's on a person. Just bones, like, but...’
Ann looked up, iron poised over the board, staring at him through the rising steam. ‘What do you mean, don't know? You call the police.’