Hey, if you’re isolating like I am, get that trunk novel out and get to writing . . . and/or submitting the first chapter to the Flogometer to get free insights into how it’s working.
Submissions sought. Get fresh eyes on your opening page. Submission directions below.
The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page. Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this 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.
A reminder of what you’re after here. This blog is about crafting compelling openings. Not interesting, compelling. Why does it have to meet that hurdle? First, if your work is going to an agent, you’re competing with hundreds of submissions. You have to cut through that clutter and competition with powerful storytelling and strong writing. If it’s a reader browsing in a bookstore or online, the same goes—there are scores of published books competing with yours. Yeah, you need compelling.
M.C. sends the prologue for Chrysalis. As usual, the rest of the narrative is after the break.
In the aftermath of Watergate, and at the direction of then-Director of the CIA Richard Helms, the majority of the records pertaining to MKUltra were destroyed in 1973. In spite of that action, four years later Freedom of Information Act requests were able to “follow the money” to approximately fifteen thousand declassified financial documents which had accidentally escaped destruction. These records documented that at least eighty institutions—including pharmaceutical companies, research foundations, institutions of higher education, hospitals, and clinics—along with approximately one hundred eighty-five researchers in both the United States and Canada, many of whom did not know where the funding for their research originated, were inadvertently providing their results to the CIA.
Funded projects included, but were not limited to, research into torture; drugs; physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; sleep deprivation; electronic stimulation; isolation; and hypnotism. Many of the projects involved experimenting on military personnel and civilians, both children and adults, without their knowledge or consent. Current U.S. policies regarding the necessity of informed consent from research subjects were developed as a direct result of the discovery of these post-Nuremberg human rights violations, which occurred on North American soil.
One of MKUltra’s projects—the one called “Monarch,” along with its many subprojects—focused its research on ways the United States could more successfully interrogate other nationals, (snip)
Ah, there’s nothing like a good, solid, meaty info dump to suck me into a story. Even better, the second paragraph offers a long list! Who needs story? I looked further, though, and found this at the start of the first chapter . . .
All of my perpetrators are dead.
I didn’t kill them, in case you’re wondering. I’m just telling you that on the front end because I’d be wondering about it, myself, if someone said that to me. I didn’t get to enjoy any type of closure or revenge—like personally choking the life out of them, or centering them in the crosshairs and experiencing the pull of the trigger, or plunging a knife in them as far as I could get it to go—maybe even more than once, if I could—or anything equally satisfying, even though many times I would’ve liked to. Some days, I still would. Their being dead is important to the story because it makes the telling of it possible. If they’d lived, I’m sure I’d be the one in the grave by now instead.
I grew up within spitting distance of a tiny speck-in-the-road known as Bumblebee. It always seemed to me that a more accurate name would’ve been Honeybee, since the name referred to the millions of inhabitants of a nearby three-acre stand of woods that burned down long before the town sprang up. The forest had grown back, eventually, so that by the time I came along there was new growth scattered in among the ancient tree trunks still standing where they had once reigned majestically over what became the town. Everyone from miles around went to those woods to gather their honey from the hives hidden in the charred and hollowed-out tree carcasses, or else they bought their honey from someone else, who did. Anyway, the name of the town had been decided on a lifetime before I was born and I never did find out why. Maybe it was because whoever (snip)
That first paragraph is enough to provoke a page-turn for me. Good voice, interesting hints at story. Unfortunately, the narrative descends into more info dump, long background stuff on the town and the family. Give me more of what the opening paragraph promises, weave the rest in as needed. This writer needs to put story first.
Ray
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2019 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2015 by M.C. Nelson.
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.
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