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, although interesting free books will still get a look. 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.
Here are the first 17 lines of the first chapter of The Salish Sea, a crime 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.
When she woke up, the room was still dark.
She slept on the floor beside the bed, her body tucked against the outside wall with the window on it. Before she fell asleep, her mother and Dennis had been yelling and her mother was crying, and she was afraid.
She always hid beside the bed when her mother’s boyfriends came and played on the bed with her mother. She’d take her stuffed toys and a drinking box of juice, and she’d wait until they left. Then, Dennis would return, and she’d climb up onto the sofa to go to sleep under the worn wool blanket. By then, her mother and Dennis would be asleep and there’d be no more crying or yelling or hitting.
The hitting was the worst.
It scared her more than the yelling, because her mom got really quiet afterward.
That morning, after everyone woke up, Dennis went out for smokes. When he returned, they got dressed and went to the brown car parked in the space outside their motel room. It was still dark, and she was cold and sleepy, and her stomach grumbled.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” she whispered, careful not to talk too loudly.
“Quiet, sweetheart,” her mother said. “We’re going to get some money and then we’ll eat, okay?”
You can read more here. This novel earned 4.3 stars on Amazon. This opens with a hugely sympathetic character, an abused child, who is clearly in a dangerous place with dangerous people. She is absolutely vulnerable, helpless. I can’t help but want to know what happens next. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
The cover supports the headline in delivering some aspect of "sea." The dark mood of the photo helps add a sense of dark things to come. I like the treatment of the title and author. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.