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 prologue of Crown of Bones. 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 Sanctuary bursts with children this time of year, untrained pups bounding through the halls, chasing their tails. They arrive full of hope, and why wouldn’t they? ’Tis no small feat to be marked by the Bone Throwers as having potential. The question is, how many among them will actually succeed?
I look over the training ground and sigh, knowing it will be far too few.
My group, for example, not a savant among them. “Enough!” I clap. “Break for lunch.”
They jump and cheer like a festival riot, and all I can do to remain calm is pinch the bridge of my nose. “Quiet. Midday silence will be observed.”
I’m about to wave them to the dining hall when shouting rings out from the other end of the field. A flash of light shoots as high as the watchtower. Dirt pummels down like rain. The ground cleaves apart, fracturing in tremors that echo up through my feet. A brilliant, cresting form, ever shifting, pushes free, its mouth open in an earsplitting screech. I stumble and cover my ears as the sheer power of it hits me.
“Stay here!”
I drop one knee to the ground and raise my phantom before taking off toward the chaos. From the earth bursts my phantom, C’sen, red sparks trailing from blue wings as it soars overhead. “Go!”
You can read more here. This earned 4.4 stars on Amazon. Writing and voice are good, and this narrative doesn’t have obvious editing needs as far as the text is concerned. The narrator is sympathetic in the sense that he thinks of the children in affectionate terms, so that’s good. The eruption of a powerful something is clearly something going wrong, and the character is reacting.
I don’t know about this one—for some reason, it didn’t connect with me emotionally. Perhaps if there had been more of a clear sense of danger for the children I would be more eager. I did download it to see more, but not all on the basis of the prologue’s first page—Amazon blurbs do help. And it’s free. I would not have paid 99 cents based on this page alone. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.