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 Chapter 1 in The Aroostine Higgins Series, legal thrillers. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
Sidney Slater was ordinarily not a yeller. At worst, he treated the assistant US attorneys who worked beneath him in the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division with mild disdain and poorly hidden contempt, as if he were so much smarter than his underlings that he couldn’t really fault them for any perceived failings. But today he seemed to be making an exception especially for Aroostine.
His face was a mottled purple, and spittle actually sprayed from his lips as he shouted at her.
She wondered idly if he might have a stroke.
“Are you listening to me, Higgins?”
Unless he had a soundproof door, everyone in the office was listening to him. She decided to keep that point to herself.
“Yes, sir.”
“This was supposed to be a slam dunk. The company already settled; all you had to do was prosecute the individuals. You begged me for a shot. Said you were ready to first chair a federal case. Didn’t you assure me you wouldn’t screw up this trial? Didn’t you?”
Slater half-rose from his desk chair and slammed his palm down on a stack of papers, sending them fluttering across the carpet.
She bent to retrieve them, taking her time and letting her long hair fall across her face like a black curtain. Only when she was certain she had rearranged her expression to mask her own rising anger did (snip)
You can read more here. I like legal thrillers, so I’m hoping this will be a good read. This opening page checks off many of the things in the checklist. We get the setting, an office in a law firm. We’re introduced to a sympathetic character, someone who is dealing with verbal abuse. And there’s certainly conflict and a problem. While we don’t know the stakes here, dealing with a superior’s rage suggests that, at the least, she could lose a job that she has worked hard for. So there’s a how-will-she-deal-with-this story question. And we can be curious about what the case is that’s so important, and there are consequences implied if it is lost. All in all, along with pretty good writing and a likable voice, enough to take me one more page. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
Hard to critique a series cover like this. The author name is what counts, and that isdone well. The cover art didn’t mean anything to me, but overall it’s okay. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.