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 prologue of Too Clever by Half. Would you read on? How does it perform? Should this author have hired an editor?
Prologue
IF THE SURFACE of the English Channel off Cornwall’s Lizard Peninsula had not been as smooth and glossy as wet enamel that soft Thursday, seventeenth May, the snub-nosed beam trawler, Catherine P, would never have spotted it.
They’d pulled nets late into the night, and now the skipper, Mike Perran, was running his vessel southwest, roughly five miles east of the peninsula’s cliffs, bound for the port at Newlyn with a hold full to bursting with cuttlefish, monkfish, and gurnard from the inshore fishery off Lyme Bay. Tide was slack and his boat made good progress. Perran was young for a ship’s owner. With a sun-bleached head of curls and a face already weathered beyond his years, he’d been working the fishing grounds off Dorset, Devon, and Cornwall since he was fourteen as a hand on his father’s boat. And when, six years later, Jack Perran suddenly died of a pulmonary embolism after minor knee surgery, Mike stepped into the wheelhouse. He had just turned twenty, but his father’s crew, twice his age and more, stayed with him. It was a matter of respect for the old man. And it was a job.
The sky over the Channel was a bell of milky blue. The sun-sequined swells were so gentle it was as if the bejeweled sea were in deep sleep. Far off, toward France, a scud of clouds white as batts of sheep’s wool hung low on the horizon. It was Perran’s newest crewman, stocky and eager Ronnie James, just turned nineteen, who spied it first, alabaster white against the royal (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This crime novel earned 4.5 stars on Amazon. If strong, clear writing and voice are enough to motivate a page-turn, this page might have gotten there. However . . .
Do we need Jack Perran’s history as a fisherman? I think not. Do we think that the description of the newest crew member, stocky and eager Ronnie James, will impact the story in any way? I think not.
But what, say I, of story questions? None on the page. Should you turn the page, you will find them discovering a body floating in their nets. The sole purpose of the 573 words in this prologue was to let us know that we’re in England and that a body was discovered. IMO, it’s a waste of paper, ink, and my time. No turn here. What do 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.