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 manuscript lines of Chapter 1 of The Tetradome Run. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?
Turning on the TV was the mistake that killed him.
He was twenty-one years old. His name was Kyle, and he hadn’t planned on watching TV that afternoon. Or looking at his phone. Or his laptop.
But it’s just so easy to turn on the screens, isn’t it? So easy to let an afternoon’s ambitions disappear in a wash of pixels.
“What am I doing?” he muttered.
Tuning in, like the rest of the world
Watching The Tetradome Run.
Waiting for the race to start.
Preparing to watch his sister run for her life.
Months had passed since he said goodbye to Jenna in a stale, dusty room at the New Mexico State Pen. Months had passed since he sat in the execution theater, one of six official witnesses who was supposed to watch Jenna get strapped to a lethal injection table.
Since the warden came into the theater and announced there would be no execution today, that Jenna had chosen to run in the Tetradome instead.
Months of hiding from the media, moving from one short-term apartment rental to another, waiting all the while for his sister’s death, and dealing with that memoir she left behind for him.
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes and a poll follow.
This received a strong 4.8 stars on Amazon. I’m not ordinarily a fan of blatant foreshadowing, but the opening line in this page does present a strong hook. Not only does it raise a strong story question, the rest of the page continues to raise them. Why was his sister sentenced to death? How is this “Run” connected to that? Will she survive? The scene could be set a little more, but there’s enough tension here to keep going, plus the fact that he’s turning on his TV suggests that he’s in an ordinary room. Finally, the fact that he has a sister he seems to care about in some way establishes a tenuous emotional link to the character. So I’d read on. Your thoughts?
My books. You can read sample chapters and learn more about the books here.
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.