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 opening from Realm of Dragons. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
King Godwin III of the Northern Kingdom had seen many things in his time. He’d seen the march of armies and the working of magic, but right now he could only stare at the body of the creature that lay before him, prostrate and unmoving on the grass, its bones and its scales lending a sense of impossibility to the moment in the evening light.
The king dismounted his horse, which was refusing to get any closer, whether because of what the creature was, or simply where they were. They’d ridden more than a day south of Royalsport, so that the roar of the Slate River was just a few dozen yards away, the land of his kingdom dropping away into those roaring, steely, violent waters. Beyond it, there might be watchers staring out from the south, even across its vast width. Godwin hoped not, and not just because he and the others were so far from home, open to any who could get over the bridges between the kingdoms. He didn’t want them seeing this.
King Godwin stepped forward, while around him the small crowd that had come with him tried to work out whether they should do the same. There weren’t many of them, because this… this wasn’t something he was sure he wanted people to see. His eldest son, Rodry, was there, twenty-three and looking like the man Godwin had once been, tall and powerfully built, with light hair shaved at the temples so it wouldn’t obscure his swordsmanship, in the one reminder of his mother. Rodry’s brothers, Vars and Greave, were still at home, neither the kind
You can read more here. This book earned 4.2 stars on Amazon. This started well for me. The first two paragraphs delivered information but also a hint of jeopardy near at hand. Dead dragons are always interesting. But then the author abandoned story for info-dumping. This is not the time for the character, or the reader, to be musing on his oldest son’s haircut or the nature of other children. It’s the time for something to HAPPEN. Doesn’t happen here. A editor might be able to save this, but it would take some work. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
There’s one good thing about this cover, a second passable thing, and one that sucks. The image of the dragon is cool. The title is at least legible, but it has no character. And the author’s name is virtually invisible—what were they thinking? Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.