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 the prologue for Spy GIrl. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
A man is being hung by his feet from the top of a sixteen-story building.
He tried to evade his pursuer but could not. The pursuer was like a ghost who would magically appear no matter where the man tried to hide.
And it is in moments like these that men experience clarity in their lives.
The dangling man knows he will die soon. And, still, he refuses to admit to the ghost that he had anything to do with the crime. After all, he was ordered to do so by a man no one dares to cross, for fear you will end up in a situation like the one he is now.
Fearing for his life.
He did not cross his employer, though. He simply made a mistake. Last night when he was three sheets to the wind, he may have been bragging about a job he did recently in Britain.
It was an easy job, kill a man who was hunting and make it look like a suicide. No one in the pub was surprised. The types that gathered at this establishment were all criminals of one form or another, but he’d gotten a big payday and it made him feel a few notches above the rest.
“Tell me who hired you,” the ghost yells at him, threatening to let go. The man shakes his head. If he tells, he will die— either by this man’s hand or his employer’s, and he’d much rather get dropped off this building than face what his employer would do to him. He should know. He’s fulfilled numerous contracts with explicit instructions for a slow, painful death. Or worse, (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here. Did this writer need an editor? My notes:
This 3-book novel series earned 3.8 stars on Amazon. In terms of story questions, this opening does a pretty good job. It may be because I’m an editor and have read so many novels, but the writing here falls short of top-notch, beginning with the cliché about being drunk. It’s okay to use clichés in a first draft to capture your intention, but they should be replaced with fresh ways to say it, IMO. There was unnecessary “telling” such as “threatening to let go”—we know that, it’s been shown. Still, I would have given a second page a chance based on the story questions. Your thougths?
Cover critique
I’m guessing that the target audience for this series is YA girls. If that’s the case, the cover should work just fine with its pinkness and illustration of a young woman. 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
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.