In addition to flogging submissions by writer readers, I’m flogging books that cost 99¢, although interesting free books may 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 Shadow Enclave. 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.
Mitch Herron’s eyes flickered open for only a second before he squeezed them shut again. The fluorescent lighting was too harsh. It hurt.
His mind sifted multiple sensory inputs – the lighting, the gentle hum of machinery, the smell of disinfectant, the scratch of poor-quality bed sheets and the coppery taste of sleep – but none of it made sense.
It made no sense that he was still alive.
He lay on his back, drifting in and out of sleep, his body too weak to move. Time passed, but without a reference point he could’ve been there for minutes or hours or days or months. Any attempt to move exhausted him and when he tried to speak he produced an indecipherable mumble.
Nobody came to help him. He was adrift in an endless purgatory.
“Mitch! Wake up!”
It took Herron a second to process the voice whispering near his ear. He cracked his eyes open again, but it was like anvils were weighing down the lids and he drifted gently back to sleep.
“Mitch!” The female voice had been tentative before. Now it was urgent. “You need to wake up!”
You can read more here. This earned 4.6 stars on Amazon. If the task of a first page is to raise story questions, then this one succeeds. It’s clear that the protagonist is in a medical or hospital situation and in deep physical trouble. We wonder what’s wrong, and what will happen to him. That he thinks he should be dead adds to the level of story questions. And it sounds urgent that he wake up. Your thoughts?
Cover critique
The cover handles the title well, the photo adds a sense of mystery or action—the guy has a gun. But the treatment of the author’s name is wrong, wrong, wrong. I was not moved by the cover. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.