Flogging the Quill

Flog a BookBubber 240: Lindsay Buroker—introducing a favorite I discovered in 2015

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.

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In checking the BookBub site, I came across this offer of three free novels in the Emperor’s Edge series. I discovered them before I started writing critiques of BookBub authors. You be the judge, but I wanted to let you know that I absolutely enjoyed this steampunk science fiction series. Highly recommended.

Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of chapter 1 for The Emperor’s Edge. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?

Corporal Amaranthe Lokdon paced. Her short sword, night stick, and handcuffs bumped and clanked at her thighs with each impatient step. Enforcer Headquarters frowned down at her, an ominous gray cliff of a building that glowered at the neighborhood like a turkey vulture, except with less charisma.

Amaranthe drew her pocket watch and checked the time. Where was her partner?

At the soft squeak of boots on snow, she looked up. A narrow side street expelled a squat, burly man in enforcer grays. Morning light glinted against the large brass rank pins crowding his collar: four bars under two crossed swords, the mark of a district chief.

Amaranthe fought back a grimace and straightened, heels clicking together. The chief’s dark gaze latched onto her from beneath shaggy gray eyebrows that crashed in the middle when he scowled. He was scowling now.

She swallowed. “Good morning, Chief Gunarth.”

“Lokdon,” he growled. “Does the city pay you to loiter in front of headquarters? Because if the capital city of the Turgonian Empire, the most powerful nation in the world, pays its enforcers to loiter uselessly in front of my headquarters building, I’d think somebody would have mentioned it to me.”

Amaranthe opened her mouth to give him an obedient “yes, sir.” Or was it a “no, sir”? (snip)

You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes:

This collection received 4.6 stars on Amazon. The writing is strong, the voice promises fun. As for tension here, there is some . . . the arrival of the boss and his scowl suggests trouble is on its way for Amaranthe. By the way, I thought what a dumb name for a female protagonist, but by the series end she had become one of my favorite characters. The other is her antagonistic fellow protagonist, the silent and deadly assassin, Sicarius.

Donald Maass, literary agent and writing coach, might call the tension on this first page “bridging tension.” A problem for a character that engages you and connects to the main story question later. And the implied sexism in this huge man glowering at a female officer is a factor in the story. While this first page may not have clear and serious consequences for this character, I can tell you that I greatly enjoyed all three novels, and went on to buy more in the series. Give it a look. Your thoughts?

Cover critique

Since this is a compilation of three novels, the “cover” isn’t a cover. I’d have the author name larger, though—this author has other excellent series that I’ve read.

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.

Flog a BookBubber 239: Mikhaeyla Kopievsky—we get information but not story

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.

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Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of chapter 1 for Resistance. a dystopian story. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?

Usually, Anaiya feels nothing. Not the impact of her feet on the fractured bitumen surface; not the tingling of sweat at her nape; not the heavy thudding of her heart. Usually it all disappears into a kind of weightlessness – a nothingness that comes only with pure focus. With flow.

But tonight it’s different.

Her concentration fractures, thoughts of the Peacekeeper time trials pricking along the edges of her consciousness. Her times had been good, but her ranking had not shifted. Instead, the gap between second and first had seemed to lengthen. Solidify.

And with that had come an unfamiliar emotion: a hard, spiky insistence she could not shake. Even now, she feels it – an itch she cannot scratch, a cut that threatens to fester.

Distracted, she stumbles against the uneven road. Pain, sharp and insistent, blooms in her ankle and races up her calf. She winces, but does not cry out – Fire Elementals are bred to be hard.

Correcting her stride, she accelerates to make up for the error, frowning as tonight’s patrol partner pulls ahead. Niamh moves effortlessly, his speed a natural extension of the power within him. He is faster than her.

The pain in her ankle ratchets higher, growing in synchronicity with the spiky feeling at (snip)

You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes:

This novel received 4.2 stars on Amazon. Good, clean writing and a clear voice get this page off to a good start. But then . . .

A paragraph tells us that an unfamiliar emotion comes, but doesn’t include the emotion that is being felt. It’s insistent, but what is it? She’s distracted by the emotion, but if we don’t know what it is, we can’t understand why it’s distracting. The distraction does cause something to go wrong, her ankle is hurt, but there are no consequences to the injury, either now or later. One more thing: she muses about the time trials, but we don’t know what they are or what success in them means. For me, too much is NOT included in this narrative for me to be involved in the character. No go. Your thoughts?

Cover critique

The cover image is interesting, though it didn’t have much meaning for me. But, for science fiction, why not? But the author’s name needs to be stronger, and there was plenty of room to have made it so. A “C” on the cover.

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.

Flog a BookBubber 238: Benjamin Blackmore—nothing happening, pets his dog

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 Once a Soldier. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?

Saved a lot of money on therapy bills the past couple of years by consulting my German shepherd mix—instead of driving to some bland office with a still life on the wall, telling an overeducated, under-experienced, credential-burdened wannabe doctor that my life was fucked, and paying his ludicrous fifty-minute fee, so that he could afford his yoga dues and his Vespa payment and his organic, local, blah blah blah cuisine, and perhaps even a cute little Argyle sweater for his seven-pound dog.

Not that my overexperienced, pissed-off, and jaded monkey mind had gotten me much of anywhere, but at least I wasn’t diving in the dirt anymore. The vineyard I’d planted and was currently meandering through had certainly been part of the healing, too.

I still had a lot to get done before the sun fell much farther. The temperature had already dropped fifteen degrees, though that was nothing out of the ordinary for the desert in the Columbia Valley of Eastern Washington. And that’s what it was: full-on desert. A lot of people don’t know that about Washington State. They think, Seattle and rain. Well, once you drive east over the Cascades about two hours from Seattle and get close to Yakima, you’re lucky if it rains. You’re in the desert. And I’m talking the coyotes, rattlesnakes, tumbleweeds, and dust devils-kind of desert.

It had been an especially hot May, and I welcomed the cool evening breeze and a dip into the low sixties. I could hear Roman coming up from behind, weaving his way through the rows of grapevines, as he loved to do. He caught up with me and nudged my leg with a dried-up cane left on the ground from (snip)

You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes:

This novel received 4.8 stars on Amazon. The writing and voice are fine. But nothing is happening. Do I want to continue reading about nothing happening? Nope. This is info-dump setup, not a sound way to open a novel labeled “thriller,” IMO. Your thoughts?

Cover critique

The cover is okay—the image has mystery to it, and many will recognize the Space Needle in Seattle for the setting. The title treatment is unusual and eyecatching, and the author name is strong enough.

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.