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’s educational to take a hard look at their first pages. A poll follows concerning the need for an editor.
When you evaluate today’s opening page, consider how well it uses elements from the checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling.
Donald Maass, literary agent and author of many books on writing, says, “Independent editor Ray Rhamey’s first-page checklist is an excellent yardstick for measuring what makes openings interesting.”
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.
Next are the first 17 lines of the first chapter of Blind Run. Would you read on? Should this author have hired an editor?
ETHAN DECKER WELCOMED THE PAIN.
It rolled through him like waves of heat rippling across the desert floor. With eyes closed and head propped against the door behind him, he sat on the trailer’s flimsy aluminum steps and waited for the desolate landscape to stop spinning. Given time, the desert would succeed where his enemies had failed. It would kill him.
But not, unfortunately, today.
Last night had been a mistake, an attempt to blot out the date and its memories with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s. It hadn’t worked. The throbbing within his skull had become a dark angel crouched upon his shoulder, prodding and laughing, reminding him he was still alive.
The heat pressed in, and he longed for the feel of a crisp ocean breeze against his face, or the pungent scent of pines in the mountain air. Instead, beneath the tattered green-and-white awning that stretched from the tin can he called home, he felt the dry, hot hand of the New Mexico desert. If the pain had become his angel, then the desert heat had become his unwelcome lover, wrapping herself around him with tight, searing arms.
And he deserved no better. Three years ago yesterday, his five-year-old son had died. Murdered. And nothing, not the Jack Daniel’s, nor the desert could change Ethan’s role in that senseless death.
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This book averaged 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Okay, so we have a clear scene setting and good writing. But this is pretty much woe-is-me backstory. All we have here is musing. The effort must be to create a sympathetic character, but wouldn’t it be nice if something were happening to him while we get to know him? This story involves two children who were kidnapped from a mysterious place—unfortunately, no hint of that here.
It’s not that the author can’t create a riveting introduction to a character. Here’s one that comes just a couple of pages later where a new character enters the story:
THEY WOULDN’T kill him right away.
The thought struck him with icy certainty as he watched the approaching helicopter through sheets of rain. Not while they still needed him. But it was just a matter of time. Then they’d make it look like an accident. He’d be on the mainland conducting Haven business, and his car would miss a turn and hurtle over a cliff. Or his heart would give out due to some rare and untraceable drug delivered via a hypodermic in the middle of the night. Possibly he’d be working in the lab and discover a tear in his bio-containment suit.
For me, what is happening to that character and his fears of what could happen were far more interesting that the narrative about the poor drunk that the first page delivers. What did you think?
My books. You can read sample chapters and learn more about the books here.
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Fantasy</strong >(satire) The Vampire Kitty-cat Chronicles
Mystery</strong >(coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Hiding Magic
Science Fiction GundownFree ebooks.