Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment. In your email, include your name, permission to use the first page, and, if it’s okay, permission to post the rest of the prologue/chapter.
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 for Lake Ephemeral: A YA sci fi thriller. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
Seven manors on overgrown estates stood watch around Lake Ephemeral. A leaning iron fence kept them in and away from any adventurous onlookers. Foliage grew monstrously tall and fantastical. Reeds and bulrushes rose like battalions around the lake’s edge, cloaked with purple capes of morning glory.
Half of the year, the lake was a bowl-shaped parkland, with stone statues of two children in its centre. But from April to September, rainfall drowned the park and turned it into a lake—and then the statues would disappear from view beneath the water. The lake was ephemeral, fed by yearly rains and a small underground river.
I came to this valley as an eleven-year-old orphan—returned to the place from which I’d been born. A place of which I had no memory. To meet a mother I’d never known I had.
At first, the valley seemed a wild place of wonder and liberty. The five children who lived here were free to do as they pleased. Children with intense eyes and wild hearts, including the boy with the wildest heart of all—Kite.
I no longer felt quite so alone, because I was like them. Because here, I could be free.
But Lake Ephemeral was not a paradise.
Carnivorous flowers grew here that were larger than a man—the people called them the coffin flower. It puzzled me that anyone would want to live in a place where such a plant had taken hold. Worse, I was soon to find that these people cultivated the coffin flowers. (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes:
This novel received 4.7 stars on Amazon. A clear and inviting voice and high-caliber writing add appeal to this opening page. While there is no direct “something wrong” here, the introduction of the carnivorous flowers leads me to think that there are hazards in this world for this sympathetic character, an orphan who yearns for freedom.
The page devotes itself to introducing an unusual world to us, but in the process raises mysteries and some story questions. Why was she an orphan? Can you be an orphan if there’s a mother? Why does she have no memory of this ephemeral place? What will happen to her now that she’s there? The combination of voice, world, and those questions earned a turn from me. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
I’m drawn by the title and the image—there’s a sense of jeopardy in the young woman up to her neck in what appears to be cold water. I also liked the use of an uncommon word, ephemeral. The only thing that could be stronger is, once again, the author’s name.
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.