On Tuesday’s episode of “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” Ellen showed satirical titles for children's picture books that are twists inspired by the Trump administration, including The Cat In the Make America Great Again Hat. It's a brief video, but perhaps there's a smile in it for you. Click here.
Couldn't you use a good flogging? I'd much rather be posting critiques of opening pages, so how about some flogging submissions?
Speaking of writing, a new 5-star review of The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles popped up on Amazon and I want to share it. One reason for doing this is that I'm working on a "sequel," and reviews like this are encouraging.
Buy this book! "A really fun read! So many aspects of society are held up to ridicule! How they deserve it! I love poor Patch so much I named my talking cat after him. I shouldn't say "poor" Patch. He seems perfectly capable of caring for himself. Such a good story I gave copies as gifts. Buy his book!"
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
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 later poll concerning the need for an editor.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of the first chapter of The Innocent. Should this author have hired an editor?
As a United States Marine, Ty Johnson had one advantage. He already knew what it was like to face down someone who wanted to kill you. Growing up in Long Beach in the nineties had taken care of that.
To Ty as a child, and then a teenager, violence had been commonplace. He’d seen people shot, stabbed and beaten to death. Sometimes they just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Others, someone had come looking for them. Not that it mattered much to the family gathered around the casket.
This time had been one of those wrong-time-wrong-place deals – a basketball court in early summer, playing a little one-on-one with his friend Malik Shaw. Ty had been standing with his back to the hoop: ‘Let me see what you got, Mr All Star.’
In front of him, Malik gave that easy smile of his. Ty spread his arms wide and bounced on the heels of box-fresh white sneakers that were already acquiring a dirty tideline from the hot asphalt of the playground.
‘What I got? Got you in my pocket for a start,’ said Malik.
‘That so?’ said Ty, flipping his left hand out to try to steal the ball.
With a flick of his right wrist, Malik spun it away from him. He took a step back. He feinted hard left, and then he was on the move, zipping past Ty, like he was a mirage, and (snip)
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This book received an average of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Opening with backstory is never a good sign for me. Oh, the lead paragraphs refer to violence and danger, but then, other than “one of those wrong-time-wrong-place deals,” this opening goes right to two teens playing basketball. All setup. This is supposed to be a thriller, right?
Allow me to illustrate. Later in the scene come these two paragraphs. My view is that, with just a little scene-setting, the narrative could have gone straight to the following and guaranteed a page-turn:
Ty was looking across the playground to a low-slung Pontiac that had just pulled up with four young black men sitting inside, all wearing red. Members of the bloods gang. Or, to be more precise, 18th Street Bloods.
Malik had seen them now. Ty saw the easy smile fall away from his friend’s face. Instinctively, Ty stepped to the right so that he was standing directly in front of Malik, shielding him from the barrel of the pump-action shotgun that the front nearside passenger was pointing at them.
What do you think? Could this writer have used an editor to help strengthen this opening page? The backstory and setup stuff could have been easily delivered while this conflict took place, IMO.
Since you guys aren't submitting chapters to FtQ, I have to look around for stuff to read, and I came across this. You can listen to the 2016 National Book Award fiction winner, The Underground Railroad, for free. Meanwhile, get your work in for free fresh eyes here at Flogging the Quill. You can learn more about the free audio book here.
You’re familiar with the quiz show Jeopardy!, right? What American hasn’t come across it? As writers, maybe looking at how the show opens reveals clues on how to create our first pages.
The show starts with scene-setting—the host and the three contestants behind their desks, the big board of categories. The camera shows us this quickly and efficiently, and you could probably do the same with one quick paragraph.
What happens then? Do we learn about the contestants? Their backgrounds? Their occupations? Their fears and concerns? The latter we can imagine, but what about the backstory?
The only backstory we get is that one of the contestants is the champion from the previous round. The other two? We get their names.
And then the game begins, the categories are revealed, and the contestants compete to claim a clue and then to answer correctly. They sometimes wager all of their money on a clue, risking to lose it all. Jeopardy! Stakes!
And we’re involved with the game, both as audience and participants. We try to come up with the answers, too. As the players compete and we get to see them in action, their personalities start to emerge, and we may come to root for one more than the others.
And then, only after competition, after struggles to meet their goals, are we given backstory on the contestants. It rounds them out somewhat, our rooting factors may be solidified or changed, and they go back into the game.
Did we need their backstories at the opening to become involved with the story of the competition? Not a bit. Because we understand the nature of competition and striving to achieve goals, they are sympathetic characters right from the start. Their goals are clear, the challenges are clear, and there are risks ahead with their wagers. All the elements of a good story are quickly in play without exposition, without backstory.
So next time you work to engage a reader with the opening to your story, think of how Jeopardy! does it—a quick setting of the scene and then plunging into action that includes conflict and jeopardy. We get to know the characters as they deal with their challenges, and we come to support them, and we want to know what will happen next.
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
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 later poll concerning the need for an editor.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of the first chapter of Dark Water. Should this author have hired an editor?
Vyalchek Ivanov, nickname Val, wondered if he should start torturing his captive now. The man was a whimpering mess already. He looked sick, eyes sunken, his forehead covered in sweat. A pallid crimson colored his cheeks, but otherwise the man’s face was white as a sheet. He wore a suit two sizes too big on him. It had been a nice suit once, but now the elbows were threadbare, the cuffs frayed. His prominent Adam’s apple bobbed over the loose collar.
Val controlled himself with an effort. The man didn’t know who he was. It was better that way. He was a businessman, looking to complete a deal. Val tried to smile and spread his hands.
“Mr. Longworth, I thought we had a deal.”
The man swallowed and opened his mouth, then closed it, like a fish out of water. He looked at the three men at the table next to them. Val’s men. His Bratok. They all wore suits and had their eyes fixed on the door. Apart from the five of them, the restaurant was empty. It belonged to one of the Bratok’s cousins. A safe place to conduct business. A waiter appeared, discreetly clearing up dishes at a table before going into the kitchen, avoiding everyone’s eyes.
“Are… are these men with you?” Philip Longworth finally spoke, his voice weak. He sniffed and wiped his nose with the back of his hand.
“They are my colleagues, yes.” Val regarded the man with distaste. What was he putting up his nose?
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This book received a high average of 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. For me, the narrative starts out raising a good, strong story question or two. Will he torture the man? Why does he want to torture him? What’s going to happen next. Stylistically, I thought the insertion of the name/nickname was a little clunky, but we’re soon past that. So, a good scene that starts with things already happening and story questions. I turned the page on this one, and will read further. It’s nice that, for a short time, it’s free. Your thoughts?
Poll: what are your thoughts about this author needing an editor? Remember that the goal of the first page is to get you to turn it. If the narrative didn’t do that, then it didn’t work the way it needed to.
Today is my birthday, so I figured I could make this post all about me. Yesterday I received notice of a new review of my novel, The Summer Boy, by Publishers Weekly editors on BookLife. These are not paid reviews, your book has to earn it on its own. Another of my novels has also earned a positive review from Publishers Weekly, and I'm including that below. I hope you'll visit Amazon for looks inside.
Oh, and it's interesting to me that the reviewer for The Summer Boy starts with a mention of my The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles, which I haven't put up on the BookLife site yet. The editor must somehow be familiar with more of my work.
Rhamey (The Vampire Kitty-Cat Chronicles) does a nice job of capturing the uncertainties and challenges of adolescence in this whodunit set in 1958 Texas. High school student Jesse Carver is working as a hand on the Box 8, a cattle ranch for the summer, along with his best friend, Dudley Miller, whose mother landed them the positions. The work, which includes a lot of digging holes, is less exciting than he imagined, and Buddy, the foreman, is a hard and sadistic taskmaster, but there’s one compensation: the rancher’s daughter, Lola Braun, who’s about 16, is “already the kind of girl a boy undressed with his eyes.” Lola’s physical attributes have also attracted the attention of the two Mexicans working at the Box 8, and violence ensues, eventually culminating in a murder by pitchfork. Jesse, who’s scarred by the circumstances of his father’s untimely death, makes a sympathetic lead, and Rhamey keeps the surprises coming. Fans of romantic thrillers will find a lot to like. (BookLife)
Rhamey draws a realistic and sympathetic portrait of the uses and consequences of magic in this contemporary urban fantasy. On a wintry night in Chicago, Gabe River rescues a suicidal Latina teenager who’s freezing to death in the snow. Then her face flickers and she’s revealed to be a white woman. She also displays a shocking ability to communicate with his autistic son and can even heal his injured horse. She is Annie, a centuries-old member of a clan of beings who manipulate life energy to heal or harm. Annie is running from K.B. Volmer, a sadistic Homeland Security agent who believes her to be a terrorist, and from Clanmaster Drago, her grief-stricken father-in-law, who blames her for the death of his son. Drago vows to wipe out humankind by manipulating DNA to create a fast-acting infectious disease, and Annie must alert the other clans to Drago’s plans. Rhamey focuses as much on his racially diverse characters’ emotions and goals as on the intricacies of magical properties, crafting a solid paranormal story with an epic feel. (BookLife)
Submissions sought.Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
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.
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.
Chris sends the first chapter of Straight River. The rest of the chapter follows the break. Note: there's an alternative opening following my discussion.
For the third time that morning, Matt Lanier walked to his answering machine and replayed the lone message. The caller's voice sounded terse and unemotional, a gravelly baritone, simultaneously familiar and strange. "Somethin' I need to tell you. Gimme a call." For the third time that morning, his insides tightened from a mixture of anger and dread. He walked to the living room window of his downtown Minneapolis condo and looked out across several city blocks at the Mississippi River, barely visible through the gray March clouds and mist.
Two days had passed since he'd first listened to the message. His initial reaction was a powerful urge to delete it as a show of contempt. His second reaction was to wait a few days and see if a follow-up call would come. It had not.
He returned to his phone and dialed the number. His call was answered after three rings with a clipped "Hullo." Not a question. Not a greeting. Merely the initiation of a conversation.
Matt hesitated while he repressed a mild feeling of panic. "Hi, Dad."
A long pause suggested Ray Lanier had either changed his mind about wanting to talk or hadn't expected his son to return his call.
"Yeah, hi. We need to talk. About the farm."
"Dad, I don't—"
"I know you don't want nothing to do with the farm, but something's goin' on around (snip)
Good, clear writing and voice in this opening page. The protagonist is already in turmoil because of history (that we don’t know) with his father. There’s tension in the character, but the narrative needs to create tension in the reader, too.
There are story questions here: what does his dad want, how will Matt deal with whatever it is. But, with what we have here, how compelling is that? For me, “almost.”
However, on the next page was a line from the father that would have gotten the page turned.
"It's important," Ray said. "I need your help."
I suggest Chris find a way to whittle down the opening page and get that line on the first page. With apologies to Chris for butchering his text, here’s one possible way to do that. I felt that there needed to be a raising of the stakes here. See if this generates a little more tension in you—a poll follows.
For the third time that morning, Matt Lanier replayed the message. His dad’s voice sounded tense, tight. "Somethin' I need to tell you. Gimme a call."
He looked out his living room window and across downtown Minneapolis at the Mississippi River, barely visible through the gray March clouds and mist.
Two days had passed since he'd first listened to the message. His initial reaction was a powerful urge to delete it as a show of contempt. His second was to wait and see if a follow-up call would come. It had not. He dialed.
His call was answered with a clipped "Hullo."
Matt repressed a mild feeling of panic. "Hi, Dad."
A pause made Matt wonder if his father hadn't expected his son to return his call. "Yeah, hi. We need to talk. About the farm."
"Dad, you know I don't—"
"Want nothing to do with it, yeah, but something's goin' on you should know about."
That seemed harmless enough. "So tell me."
"Don't want to talk on the phone."
"Why—"
"It's important," Ray said. "I need your help."
One more little note: it seems to me that in today’s world a young man would be listening to voicemail messages on a cell phone, not a landline with an answering machine. Something to think about.
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
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 later poll concerning the need for an editor.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of the first chapter of Unwanted: Dead or Alive. Should this author have hired an editor?
Buck Hawkins had never known a bottle of whiskey to freeze.
This one had.
And he’d finished it just a few hours ago.
He tilted his head and ducked his chin, an attempt to escape the wind-driven sleet pellets that threatened to shave the stubble off his left cheek and take his ear with it—if the ear didn’t fall off first, along with various other Hawkins appendages.
He had lost touch with his toes three hours earlier, about a mile after his fingers went stone-cold numb. At least they didn’t hurt all that much now. He couldn’t feel much of anything anywhere on his six-foot-one frame, except in his head.
And that was the one place he didn’t want any feeling. The heavy throb in the back of his skull threatened to pop his eyeballs right out of his face every time his heart beat. The fur on his tongue tasted like it had come from the north end of a southbound jackrabbit.
But then, Hawkins had to admit, he was out of practice. It had been a whole three months since his last town weekend. Three months of eighteen-hour days, seven days a week, when he had ridden down two or three horses between sunup and sundown or worn out two mule hitches hauling hay and chopping ice to save as many cattle as he could. A man couldn’t expect to neglect his habits that long and not be hurting some after he tried to catch up all at once.
Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
I used to read a lot of Westerns as a youth, so I found it hard to resist sampling this book. It received a strong average of 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. The writing is crisp and clean, and the voice strong, individual, and likable. There is clearly jeopardy for Buck that raises an immediate story question—will he survive? This is using what Donald Maass calls “bridging tension”—not the main story issue, but one that will take us there. The narrative is colorful and fun, with phrases such as “the north end of a southbound jackrabbit.” This writers knows his cowboy. I felt like I was in good hands and, with such an inviting voice, turned the page. I’ll be reading more of this one. Unless there are story issues later, this author doesn’t look to me like he needs an editor very much. Your thoughts?
Poll: what are your thoughts about this author needing an editor? Remember that the goal of the first page is to get you to turn it. If the narrative didn’t do that, then it didn’t work the way it needed to.
Submissions sought.Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
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.
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.
Tressa sends the first chapter of Sky Edge. Tessa didn’t want the rest of the chapter posted.
Please God, let me find him! Clair Silvera thought. From cottonwood tree branches, dagger-like icicles glinted in the moonlight. Ahead, a death-still Spirit Lake mocked her. Clair’s calves burned, but still, she ran. Her scabbarded rifle punished her back with each step. Ethius was bedridden, so how, where, could he disappear?
A man’s silhouette interrupted the shoreline. His dark hair flew free of its leather bind. Clair slowed. She took her rifle in-hand. “Saul!”
Saul looked back before shaking his head. “There’s supposed to be something here, something great, but nothing.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Nothing worth generations of secrecy.”
“Just tell me where my husband is!” Clair searched Saul’s eyes - his gravestone gray eyes. He nodded at the sapphire water. A soaked coat hung off his shoulders. Clair grabbed the part of jacket over her heart.
“He was from the lake, you said. I hoped he would show his real nature.” Saul neared, stopping within feet of Clair. “Why has our family sacrificed so much for a dead lake? The legends are lies. I just proved it.”
His face blurred. Clair swiped at her eyes and planted her rifle muzzle into Saul’s gut. “Tell me, tell me now this is just a wicked joke!”
The writing is good here, and so is the voice. There’s implied jeopardy (for her husband) and then for Saul. We’re in media res, also a good thing, plenty of action. But, despite these good things, somehow I wasn’t compelled, and this may be just the subjective nature of reading a story.
For me, though, there were some clarity issues. Saul makes statements that are so mysterious, so related to things I don’t know, that I was unclear. It drew me out of the story to try to parse what he was saying. The narrative works at showing us, yet the approach left me not taking in what was happening easily, without effort. Maybe my notes will help:
Please God, let me find him! Clair Silvera thought. From cottonwood tree branches, dagger-like icicles glinted in the moonlight. Ahead, a death-still Spirit Lake mocked her. Clair’s calves burned, but still, she ran. Her scabbarded rifle punished her back with each step. Ethius was bedridden, so how, where, could her husbandhe disappear? The syntax in the icicle sentence didn’t parse easily. With action, a more direct, descriptive narrative works better for me. For example: Daggers of icicles hung from cottonwood tree branches, glinting in the moonlight. There’s an echo of “still” from the third sentence that should be avoided. The last sentence could easily give us more information (as shown). “Bedridden,” in this case, is too vague. We learn later that he was feverish. If, instead of “bedridden,” there were specifics such as: Ethius had no strength and was shaking with fever, so how . . . If we know it’s her husband that’s missing, it helps create empathy.
A man’s silhouette interrupted the shoreline. His dark hair flew free of its leather bind. Clair slowed. She took her rifle in-hand. “Saul!” This use of “interruption” is artful, in a way, but it also slowed me down to figure out just what I was supposed to see. It reads as if the silhouette somehow moves/takes action that interrupts the shoreline. Not quickly clear to me.
Saul looked back before shaking his head. “There’s supposed to be something here, something great, but nothing.” He slipped his hands into his pockets. “Nothing worth generations of secrecy.” Mysterious, but so much so it doesn’t have much meaning. This would be okay if it were immediately clarified, but it isn’t.
“Just tell me where my husband is!” Clair searched Saul’s eyes - his gravestone gray eyes. He nodded at the sapphire water. A soaked coat hung off his shoulders. Clair grabbed the part of jacket over her heart. The “gravestone gray” description too me out of the story—surely, in a moment of panic and fear for her husband’s safety, she would not be thinking “gravestone gray.” The description is distant, outside the character's experience. I wasn’t sure how to understand the soaked coat hanging off his shoulders—is he not wearing it? It’s draped over his shoulders like a cape? Why? Why not just show us that he wore a soaking wet coat, eg.His coat sagged and dripped water. I failed to understand the gesture of grabbing her jacket over her heart, especially if she is holding a rifle, which I pictured as using both hands as one would if one were to plan on shooting it.
“He was from the lake, you said. I hoped he would show his real nature.” Saul neared, stopping within feet of Clair. “Why has our family sacrificed so much for a dead lake? The legends are lies. I just proved it.” The last description of Clair has her slowing from running, but not stopping, yet this implies she has. A clarity of action issue.
His face blurred. Clair swiped at her eyes and planted her rifle muzzle into Saul’s gut. “Tell me, tell me now this is just a wicked joke!” I took this blurring of his face literally, then had to rethink it when she wiped her eyes. This is “effect and cause.” In this case, I think cause then effect would work better. For example: Tears filled Clair’s eyes and Saul’s face blurred. She wiped them away and … etc.
Submissions sought.The queue is empty. Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
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.
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.
Erin sends the first chapter of a literary romance, The Pas de Deux. The rest of the chapter follows the break.
It felt as if the world was consuming itself. Yesterday, an earthquake had struck Mexico City, swallowing thousands into its rubbly mouth, and AIDS had become such a scourge that the movie star turned president had mentioned it three days earlier.
Peridot Jones slammed her car door, swung her dance bag over her shoulder, and looked up at the Hollywood sign wavering through the film of smog. Its silvery promise of dreams coming true seemed a mirage that only the most desperate could believe.
A wave of fatigue crashed across her, like curtains closing at a performance’s end, as she walked toward the studio. Her stomach was wobbling. This wobble was recent, but omnipresent, as her life—once predictable, mostly pleasant—threatened to crumble into a heap of useless shards that she, no matter her desire or effort, would be helpless to reconstruct.
She inhaled, a pitiable attempt to prevent the truth from splattering against her guts. Bob, her dance partner for and her best friend of fourteen years, was dying, his wasted body fighting to take him somewhere far away. Hell, if you believed a man loving another man was a sin. Heaven, if you knew Bob and his kindness.
Peri herself was dying, but it was a different death—the death of a dancer. What once was easy was now hard, and what once was hard was now impossible. Maintaining the illusion of brilliance was chewing away at her. She willed herself to survive the next hour, so she could (snip)
There is fine writing in this chapter, and an engaging voice. We’re immersed into a world that I know nothing about, which added to the interest to me. There are clearly things going wrong in Peri’s life, and she struggles. Quickly we know that she expects more trouble this morning and doesn’t know if she can handle it. Erin also did a nice job of placing the story in time through events rather than dates. There are story questions raised, a strong character, trouble ahead—I wanted to know how she would handle the double woes she faces, losing her partner and her ability as a professional dancer. Nice work. What did you think?