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.
Here’s the first chapter of Driven: A Northern Waste Novel. Would you read on? How does it perform? Should this author have hired an editor?
The air was stale, rank with the stink of smoke, sweat, and old beer. Bob’s Truck Stop. Nice place for a meal.
Raina Bowen sat at a small table, back to the wall, posture deceptively relaxed. Inside, she was coiled tighter than the Merckle shocks that were installed in her rig, but it was better to appear unruffled. Never let ‘em see you sweat. That had been one of Sam’s many mottos.
She glanced around the crowded room, mentally cataloguing the Siberian gun truckers at the counter, the cadaverous pimp in the corner and his ferret-faced companion, the harried waitress who deftly dodged the questing hand that reached out to snag her as she passed. In the center of the room was a small raised platform with a metal pole extending to the grime-darkened ceiling. A scantily clad girl—barely out of puberty—wiggled and twirled around the pole. Raina looked away. But for a single desperate act, one that had earned her freedom, she might have been that girl.
Idly spinning the same half-empty glass of warm beer that she’d been nursing for the past hour, she looked through the grimy windows at the front of the truck stop. Frozen, colorless, the bleak expanse stretched with endless monotony until the high-powered floodlights tapered off and the landscape was swallowed by the black night sky.
A balmy minus-thirty outside. And it would only get colder the farther north they went.
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This science fiction novel earned 4.3 stars on Amazon. I ended up with mixed feelings about this opening. The writing is strong, as is the voice. The world-building is also good, quickly portraying an interesting and unique environment.
But it lacks tension in these first 17 lines. There was tension waiting just a few lines away, on the next page:
. . . if she were the first to reach Gladow Station with her load of genetically engineered grain, there’d be a fat bonus of fifty-million interdollars. That’d be more than enough to warm her to the cockles of her frozen heart. More than enough to buy Beth’s safety.
With those lines, we have a goal and a story question raised. Beth is in danger of some kind, and the protagonist can save her. Will she deliver the grain, get the money, and save Beth? That, along with the world and the writing, would definitely get me to turn the page. If this author had been aware of the FtQ First-Page Checklist, she might have trimmed a little of the description and setup to get this on the first page. 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.