It isn’t easy.
It isn’t easy, getting back to work after such a long layoff. But I just finished watching the inauguration of our next president. For me, it was inspiring and uplifting, and I was swept away by the poetry of a young black woman, Amanda Gorman. So, to her and to all writers, here’s to moving forward, word by word. Here’s to a productive 2021 for us all, and my thanks to you for being here at Flogging the Quill.
And now back to the work.
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.”
- 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.
Vaughn sends first chapter for Dragon Corps: Here Is Love. As usual, the rest of the narrative is after the break.
Thursday Jun 11 1914 Standing in line
British Army Recruitment Center, London
June 11,1914
I stood in line flapping my arms against my chest. The sun was shining weakly, its warmth disappearing in the light but frigid breeze. It was June 11th already, but no one seemed to have informed the weather that that meant it was supposed to be warm by now.
It was an unseasonably cold day and I wasn’t dressed for it, and I had been in line for two hours now. All I had on was a pair of knee length black trousers that were mostly holes, and a shirt that had once been white… no one would wish to try to describe its color now… and had once been intact. But a week ago I had caught it on a doorway and it had ripped halfway across my left chest, so the breeze was finding easy entry. I hadn’t owned shoes for several months but my feet were used to pretty much anything, but the lack of a coat, which I had sold my coat at the beginning of what I had thought was spring, was costing me dearly in warmth. Perhaps a bad decision, selling my coat, but at the time I had needed to eat more than I had needed a coat.
Just then I caught a glimpse of something out of the corner of my eye and I looked up to see a small yellow dragon coming in low overhead…
“Quate a look, that,” I heard, and turned to a small boy standing just behind me. “Dahy dragon, that.”
“Probably on its way to the dragon field near parliament with some message from the colonies,” I responded.
I was about ready to say no to this opening until a yellow dragon was introduced. Being a fan of fantasy and alternative history, that was enough to move me to read on—and that was despite the long, long, long description of the character’s state of being. The fact that he’s raggedy could be done much more quickly—it doesn’t matter to the story what color his shirt was or is now, or why he had sold his coat. You can depict his needs more succinctly than that.
The rest of the chapter is below for you if you wish. You’ll find a lot of setup, but it’s woven in with action and some conflict, and so, for me, a need for a strong story question could wait. I advise Vaughn get a good copy editor to go through the manuscript before submitting it, there are a number of errors in that department. And a pass by a developmental editor (such as me) wouldn’t hurt to tighten up the narrative and see that the pace is kept strong. Nonetheless, an interesting character and world are introduced. Your thoughts?
For what it’s worth.
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 © 2020 by Bonnie.
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.
Continued:
He gave me a funny look, “What you doing here?” He asked. “You not a street boy.”
Continued:
“Yahs, I am,” I said, moving my dialect. “Dad died, left me alone. I do running and guiding, like.”
He grinned and nodded. “I do some running, some paper. Now just want to eat and get dressed. Gonna be drummer boy, I figure.”
“I don’t know what I will be,” I said, using my dialect again. “I just want to be warm!”
He laughed and I turned back forward.
He and I were two of several hundred boys standing in this long line. We stood, at the edge of a muddy field which, itself, stood in front of several large buildings. They looked to me like they had been warehouses in their better days. They were four of them, by my count from where I stood, and they were each at least four stories tall but without the rows of windows that would indicate actual stories. The field itself was just a mile or so outside of town, along the river. No doubt some shipping company had had their operation here in better times. Right now the warehouses had British flags flying from it, as well as various military flags many of which I didn’t recognise, flying from them.
I certainly wasn’t the only boy from the streets standing in this line, altho most of the other boys looked a little better turned out than me. They had made the announcement, all the paper boys had been yelling it out for days, a special recruitment centre for boys, down to nine and up to sixteen. Guaranteed meal today, then off with the army, where at least we would be fed and clothed; I doubted I was the only boy for whom today’s meal was about all the inducement we needed.
There were five boys in front of me. One by one we were being called over to one of the dozen or so clerks, who asked a few questions, marked a sheet, and sent the boys off to a large building where, I hoped, there was the promised food and clothing. Perhaps even a fire or two to huddle around until we were shipped off.
Since my father had died and left me alone on the streets of London I had thought of joining the army several times. However I had never before been desperate enough to actually join up. I had made just enough running errands and guiding tourists to keep myself in a small boarding house, sharing floor space with four other boys, and had always heard horror stories about the life for boys in the army. But rumours of the upcoming war had left me with little choice. Few would be the tourists with war coming, and I had a greater horror of being dragged off to the Navy. I had grown up swimming but I had also grown up around sailors and I had heard too many of their stories about ship’s boys to want to go to sea.
“Next!” I heard and looked up to see I was now first in line and the clerk on the far end was waving irritably at me. I hurried over. He was a fat man with a red face and a simply enormous moustache, which was waving in the wind. Unlike me he was decently dressed, with a large black coat over his well worn army uniform. A coat which I envied as, just as I got up to him, the breeze kicked up and went right through my clothes.
“Name?” he barked at me, his pencil poised over a line on some form.
“Christopher Plumber,” I said, and he laboriously scratched that in, not needing to ask me for its spelling.
“Age?”
“Fourteen,” I replied, hugging myself, and he paused with his pencil still in the air and looked at me, “You look too small to be fourteen,” he said. “No need to lie about your age, we’re taking you lot down to nine, and we don’t even check for that! Army needs boys, it does.”
“I didn’t lie, Sir,” I said. “I am merely very short and light for my age. I was born in year naught. I have always been small. My father was short, and light, like me. I believe my mother light was when she was young, as well.”
“Well, no skin off my back,” he said, and wrote ’14’ on the line. “Address?” Then he added, with a glance at my clothes, “Gutter of some street perhaps?”
“No, Sir. 412b Grossgovenor Lane…” I said, giving the number of my boarding house.
“As if that isn’t the same thing,” he scoffed, writing it down.
“Height?” He asked, me.
“Five foot four,” I said, blushing a bit. I had always been short.
“Weight?” He asked next.
“Eight stone six,” I said.
“Hmmm,” he said, and got out another paper and looked at it.
“Literate?” He asked his finger on the top of the paper, “Can you read and…”
“Yes, Sir.” I said, and he noted that.
“How about French?” He asked, moving his finger down the page.
“French, Sir? Yes.”
He looked up at me with a very annoyed look, “You ain’t telling me you can read and write French? A gutter like you?”
“Yes, Sir. My father…”
“I’m not interested in your father,” he said, reaching underneath his table rummaging around underneath some papers that he had in a case on the ground. “I don’t speak a word of the Frog myself, but I am supposed to… here it is, read this.”
I picked up the paper, scanned it quickly, and grinned. I recognised it. A passage from the book ‘Les Miserables’. One of my father’s favourite French novels, and one he had read me at least twice, and I had read myself once.
“Quoique ce détail ne touche en aucune manière au fond même de ce que nous avons à raconter, il n'est peut-être pas inutile, …” I started but he interrupted me,
“That’ll do. Sound just like a Frog, you do. German?” He asked, going down his list.
“My German is not as good as my French, Sir.” I said.
The clerk looked flabbergasted, “You’re not saying you can read that too?!”
“Not as well as I can read French, Sir,” I said.
The head ranker looked me over, shook his head, reached down and pulled out another paper with a dramatic flourish, handing it to me,
“Auf dem letzten Hause eines kleinen Dörfchens befand sich ein Storchnest. Die Storchmutter saß im Neste bei ihren vier Jungen,” I read, and he took the paper from me, still shaking his head.
“Why me?” he asked, not looking at his sheet. “Italian? Dutch? Belgian. I supposed you speak all of those, too?”
“They speak three languages in Beligium,” I said. “French, Flemish, and German. Flemish is the same as Dutch. As for Dutch and Italian I couldn’t really say I speak either one. Reading them would be easier, their orthographies are…”
“Never mind! That’s enough of that blather.” He looked back down at his sheet, “I suppose you know your math too?”
“What level, Sir?” I asked.
“As if I know. Here,” he said, handing me a third piece of paper. “I was told to ask this one if I got one like you.”
“If Tamden on the the Thames is three miles north of London, and Clapdon Mill is four miles East of Tamden on the Thames, how far, approximately, is Clapdon Mills from London?”
I smiled, “Five miles, Sir.”
He looked down at his sheet. “Well, I’ll be hornswoggled. Are you afraid of heights?”
“Heights, Sir? Not particularly.”
“…and, can you swim?”
“Swim, Sir? Yes. My father and I…”
He held up his hand. “As I said, I am not interested in your father.” He made a few notes and then handed me a paper. “Take this paper and run over to the building over there, to your left, first building. Give this paper to the clerk there.”
I took the paper, confused. All the other boys I had seen had been sent off to the field behind the clerks where they were being sorted and…
“I said, ‘Run!’”, the clerk barked, and I set off at a run.