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 chapter 1 of The Beauty in Bucharest, 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.
“I’ll just pull up front and drop you off,” Dan told his wife. “It’s raining and you’re too sweet to get wet. You’ll melt.”
It was early December in Denver and by all rights it should have been snowing. But a freak warm front had kept the temperature in the forties for the past several days and when the precipitation came, it did so in the form of a drenching rain.
Nicole smiled at his cheesy sentiment. “You weren’t worrying about me being wet when you joined me in the shower this morning,” she said, her voice husky and teasing. Dan looked at his drop-dead gorgeous wife and wondered, probably for the ten-millionth time, what he’d done right to win her. The best explanation he’d ever heard was from a Buddhist friend who’d said he’d probably stored up a bunch of karma points in previous lifetimes.
He pulled Nicole’s Lexus into the fire zone in front of The Home Depot and stopped as close to the overhang as he could get.
“Thanks, honey,” Nicole said. She blew him a kiss, then jumped out and ran into the store.
Dan watched her all the way through the door, grinning as he marveled at her perfect butt, as well-formed at 41 as it had been when he’d first met her at 21, then looked for a parking space. Must be a big sale on nuts and bolts, he thought, seeing that the closest vacant space was (snip)
You can read more here. This earned 4.2 stars on Amazon. Unartful writing right away was off-putting for me. It’s in the second sentence when he tells his wife, who is in a car with him and can’t help but aware of the fact that it’s raining, that it’s raining. I say unartful because this is the author telling the reader that it’s raining. It’s an attempt at scene-setting, but it is not well done. How could it have been better?
”The rain will melt someone as sweet as you.”
See? That wasn’t so hard, and the line shows his care for her.
Beyond that, where are the story questions? Where is the tension? The page ends with him admiring his wife’s body. Not a bad thing, that, but hardly capable of making the reader want to wonder what will happen next.
The headline on the blurb on the book’s Amazon page is this:
What would you do if you found a body in the trunk of your wife’s car?
Were it me, I’d sure have him finding that body on the first page. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.