Change in flogging focus:It occurs to me that free books have a very low bar to clear for making a “sale,” and their first pages don’t have to do much to clear that hurdle. But ask me to pay for a book? There’s a challenge. So I’m switching to flogging books that cost, starting with the 99¢ variety. The challenge is not that you would pay 99¢ on the basis of a single page, but if you would go to Amazon in order to turn the page a read more with the idea in mind that you might buy it.
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.
This not a prologue or chapter opening, but it is the first 17 lines of of Temple, a thriller. A poll follows the opening page below. If you don’t want to turn the page, then I’m thinking that this author should have hired an editor.
The question isn’t who is Temple—no one knows that—but rather what is Temple. Is he a hero? Is he a vigilante? What Temple most certainly is not is a communist, as the junior senator from Wisconsin has recently suggested in a press conference. The mere idea is preposterous, and the senator has no valid evidence to support such a claim. Earlier, the senator asked, “Upon what meat does this, our Caesar, feed?” Had he looked three lines earlier in Shakespeare’s Caesar, he would have found this line, which is not altogether inappropriate: “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”
from Edward R. Murrow’s broadcast of See It Now, May, 9, 1954
Today a bill has been passed in the Senate to require Temple to turn himself in to the federal authorities. I am coming before you tonight to tell you that I will veto any legislation of this kind that passes my desk. It is not the opinion of this office that Temple poses any risk to our national security. The complete opposite is true, in fact, as this office maintains that Temple is a hero and a patriotic American. As long as I am President, I will make sure he is protected just as he protects our country.
President John F. Kennedy, October 21, 1963
76 DEAD IN CENTRAL PARK BOMBING. HAS TEMPLE FORSAKEN US?
New York Post headline, July 17, 1997
You can read more here. This novel earned 4.4 stars on Amazon. A nifty way to let a reader know about a character is to show what other people think or know about that character. This opening uses that technique for one of the most innovative novel openings I’ve see in a while.
When you see who those “quotes” are from, you not only have other people telling you about the character, you have hugely important people from our past doing so. How could I not read on to find out about the mysterious Temple. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
Cover works pretty well. The title and author name are just fine, and the image lets us know good detail about a muscular black man as the main character. New York City shows us more of the setting for this book. Works for me. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.
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Ray