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 is the first chapter of The Home, a thriller. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
Note: I usually only critique free BookBub novels, and mistakenly thought this one was free. After I read the opening and decided to use it, I found that it was 99 cents. I paid.
This isn’t how we’d planned it. They’ve just found her on the ground outside the church, wailing beside my body.
She’s going to make lots of mistakes over the next few days, but hanging around my corpse is her first. She should have run. She should have run far away from here, back to the arms of strangers, or the arms of anyone who’d have her…
No one knows what to do with her. The police are murmuring about her age, putting her at around fifteen. They’re right. But on the inside, she’s ancient as the world. We both are.
They can’t stop her crying. They can’t get her to move. She’s shouting and protesting and holding on to me, but I am already cold.
I’m furious with her for doing this. She used to say she’d come with me. ‘If you go, I’m going too,’ she’d say, taking my hand in hers and looking me straight in the eye. It was a promise as sacred as a wedding vow, but like everything else between us, it ended up broken long ago.
I’m going to haunt her. I’m going to make her think she’s losing her mind and tip her slowly over the edge until she can bear it no longer and joins me here.
Would that be murder? Maybe; but no more murderous than what she’s just done to me.
You can turn the page and read more here. This book received 4.8 stars on Amazon. I can’t even begin to count the story questions that come tumbling out of this narrative. Besides what happens next?, there are how? and why? questions. Why is she dead? How did it happen? Will she murder the girl grieving for her? The writing and voice are strong as well. I do wish it weren’t in italics, but there is a necessity to separate this character’s narration from that of the living girl, who we meet in chapter 2. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
A strong cover in many ways. The photo art is striking and suggests death. There’s an image of an angel about where the face’s eye would be, but that’s not discernable in thumbnail sizes. As usual, the author name isn’t strong enough though, with the lack of clutter on the cover, it comes across pretty well. 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.