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 prologue opening from Exodus. A poll follows the opening page below. Should this author have hired an editor?
Years ago, far too many to remember, the planet had been teeming with life. Its inhabitants had called it Lifebringer, and thousands of species had carved out their existence there. It was a finely tuned system, where every little being had its part to play. Lifebringer was part of a large family, a system of planets, moons, and asteroids dancing around their twin stars. Every rock had its place, and nothing had disturbed it for so long, it was taken for granted that this dance would go on eternally.
Nothing lasts forever though. The twin stars aged and slowly converged upon each other until one day they merged in a cataclysm that ended the dance, ruined entire worlds, and scattered the planets and their moons in every direction. Lifebringer, once the third planet from the larger of the twin stars, survived the cataclysm, but an enormous force pushed it out from its home and into the vast reaches of space. It was alone, and although it didn’t know it, such planets would later become known as rogue planets, orphans in the eternity of space. Light dimmed and, over the years, disappeared completely. The surface got colder, and in time no life remained there. But the planet itself found no rest.
Space is vast and empty, and the stars few and far between, so the planet continued on, aimlessly and without purpose. Years became decades, decades became centuries, and centuries became millennia. Lifebringer had forgotten its past, its family not even a faint memory, doomed (snip)
You can read more here. This book earned 4.1 stars on Amazon. There's good writing in this solid science-fiction-style info dump that sets up the world—in this case, the universe—of the story. To a SF fan, I think this would work just fine. It did with me. I wanted to know what would happen next to this planet, so for me a good, solid story question was raised. If you read on, you’ll find an action-filled opening for the first chapter as it introduces one of the cast. I think the novel could have left out the prologue and just started with that but, on the other hand, the context it provides informs what is happening on the action level. I wanted to read further. How about you?
Cover critique
A solid SF cover. It has all the elements—space, our planet, a comet, a space ship blasting off into an adventure. The title is strong and the author clear. A good-enough cover for the genre. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.