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.
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.
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.”
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.
Laura sends the first chapter of Fear Not the Dragon. There’s a second poll, and the rest of the chapter is after the break.
Thaddaeus leaned forward in his rocking chair, listening to the welcome silence. Was it safe to go outside? He hadn't left his cabin while the dust storm raged, and only two thin logs remained in his woodpile, not enough to last through the night. Pushing himself off the chair, he stiffly walked to the window, stroking his hand over the backs of his wife and son's empty chairs as he passed.
He sneezed, pain squeezing his chest as he pulled back the dusty curtains. Through the narrow slats covering the windows, flakes of once-rich topsoil floated past against the gray afternoon sky. Piles of dust drifted against the doors of the empty barn.
Broken bare limbs, ready to add to his woodpile, hung from trees as if it were winter instead of summer. He'd vowed not to add to the death of the land by cutting down a tree. The unneeded picket fence around the remains of his garden had already been burned. The seeds never sprouted when the spring rains failed to arrive, and the persistent weeds struggled, then withered. He wouldn't turn over the soil and try again. He'd left his shovel next to his wife and son's grave.
Two vague forms moved through the swirling dust. Wolves? Last night howls had disturbed his sleep. He grabbed his ax and returned to the window.
No, it wasn't wolves. The shapes were too tall. Two men struggled through the haze of (snip)
The setting is clear and the character sympathetic. Character-relevant backstory is at times woven in, so that part’s fine. But what about tension? There’s a suggestion of jeopardy approaching with the two men coming, but it’s not clear. We don’t see him feeling that this is a threat (indeed, in the following narrative he welcomes them into his house). So was the story question sufficient for you? As it turns out, almost all of the remaining chapter is setup for an interesting world (but it’s still setup, not story), and the jeopardy of wolves attacking doesn’t show up until the last paragraph.
This could use some editing to tighten the narrative, so here’s a quick pass:
Thaddaeus leaned forward in his rocking chair, listening to the welcome silence. Was it safe to go outside? He hadn't left his cabin while the dust storm raged, and only two thin logs remained in his woodpile, not enough to last through the night. Pushing himself off the chair, he stiffly walked to the window, stroking his hand over the backs of his wife and son's empty chairs as he passed. "last through the night" suggests that it is now nighttime, but it's not. A clarity issue."Stiffly walked" is adverbial description, a weak approach. I'd just change this to "went" or find a stronger verb to show his action, something like "shuffled" or "limped."
He sneezed, pain squeezing his chest as he pulled back the dusty curtains. Through thenarrow slats covering the windows, flakes of once-rich topsoil floated past against the gray afternoon sky. Piles of dust drifted against the doors of the empty barn. I'm familiar with topsoil and never saw it in flake form. If the storm is over, as indicated by the silence, so why is dirt floating outside? This didn't work for me. I don't think a pile of dust can drift, but dust can drift into piles.
Broken bare limbs, ready to add to his woodpile, hung from trees as if it were winter instead of summer. He'd vowed not to add to the death of the land by cutting down a trees. The unneededpicket fence around the remains of his garden had already been burned. The sSeeds never sprouted when the spring rains failed to arrive, and thepersistent weeds struggled, then withered. He wouldn't turn over the soil and try again. He'd left his shovel next to his wife and son's grave. I think the "as if it were winter" refers to the bare limbs, but technically it means that the broken limbs are a result of winter, which doesn't seem likely. A clarity issue.
Two vague forms moved through the swirling dust. Wolves? Last night howls had disturbed his sleep. He grabbed his ax and returned to the window. The dust is swirling? I thought dirt was floating. A swirling wind/breeze would be quite different from something gentle enough to evoke floating, IMO.
No, it wasn't wolves. The shapes were too tall. Two men struggled through the haze of (snip)
Thanks for sharing your work, Laurel, it sounds like an interesting world and story.
In addition to flogging submissions by writer readers, I’m flogging books from BookBub. The challenge is 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.
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 is the opening page of The Crime Beat, Episode 1. 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 old man’s life flashed through his mind as he methodically unpacked the rifle. His calloused hands had aged, but the muscle memory created by hundreds of repetitions still lived in his fingers. Laying the base of the weapon on his lap, he attached the barrel, locked the takedown pins into place, and affixed the scope. Finally, he rested the spiked feet on the soft tar at the edge of the townhouse roof.
His back ached. Sharp pulses of pain coursed through his right knee. But the pain was worth it. His shot would change the world.
Gritting his teeth, he dropped to his stomach and took in the crowd. Six stories down and across Fifth Avenue, a couple hundred people had gathered on the wide marble steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art to greet the arrivals of celebrities and billionaires with ooohs, aaahs, and countless photos. This is what America has become, he thought. A handful of elites hoard the wealth and the sheeple snap pictures and praise them for it.
He scanned the crowd and whispered the twenty-nine words in a hoarse monotone. “An international brotherhood, united by General Ki for a singular mission: to end the great replacement, to restore the sovereignty of nations, to birth a new era of freedom.” He’d repeated the words dozens of times each day for a year. Today he would do his part to put them into action.
You can read more here. This earned 4.2 stars on Amazon. Other than the reference to the old man’s life flashing before his eyes, both unnecessary and a cliché, the voice and writing are good here. The scene is set and tension-producing action is about to begin. Story questions rise—who is he going to assassinate? Is it truly justified? Will he succeed? What is there about the guy he’s gunning for that calls for his death? Your thoughts?
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.
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.
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.”
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.
Jeannie sends the first chapter of an untitled novel. There’s a second poll, and the rest of the chapter is after the break.
Darien Greco was in trouble, again. This time, an “I” on his history paper. Two “I”s in fact. “Intriguing but incomplete,” Ms. Wright had written in green pen on the bottom of the page. “See me about rewrite.” It was a weird assignment, like a lot of hers were. “Discuss how the world might be different, if [historical figure] had never existed.” He thought his point was kind of genius. “If [historical figure] had never existed, then someone else would probably have done it, and the world would be about the same.”
So it was only one sentence, but he had raised his hand in class – something he rarely did – and asked about length, and all she said was “as long as necessary.” And then, “be creative. There are no wrong answers.” Yeah, right. Except in his case, apparently.
Her classroom was the last stop at the end of a long hall. Most rooms were dark – classes were out for the day – but a few cheerleaders had pushed back the desks in one room and were practicing with massive red and gold pom-poms. He watched until one of them saw him and yelled, “Perv.” He thought about yelling back, “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that good-looking.”
At the end of the hall, the “E” in the red EXIT sign over the door flickered off and on. Everyone called it the “zit” door. He crouched and walked quickly past Ms. Wright’s classroom door, taking a quick peek in the window. She was standing by her desk, doing something with (snip)
Buried lede. As they say in journalism, this opening buries the lede. Yes, there is “jeopardy,” but how much trouble could the note/grade on his paper be? This does not raise a story question significant enough—with high-enough stakes—to rouse a page-turn in this reader.
There are two much stronger openings in the following narrative. Here’s the first (slight modifications made so it makes sense as an opening):
Behind the janitor’s shed, Darien Greco kicked cigarette butts to the side, put his ear buds in, and got out his vape pen. The meeting with Ms. Wright would go a lot better if he was a little high.
He checked the time on his phone. Crap, now he was late. He buried back into school and pushed open the door to Ms. Wright’s classroom and called out, “Sorry I’m . . . .”
The word “late” didn’t make it out of his mouth. Ms. Wright was standing by her desk, and Darien could swear she had a gun in her hands. A rough-looking man stood in the back of the room. Not a kid. The man’s arm came out of nowhere, it seemed. Darien felt his whole body jerk. There was a gun, sticking out from the baggy sleeve of the man’s jacket, pointing right at him.
He heard a pop, like a shot, but nothing like the echoing blast of his dad’s duck hunting rifle. The man slid, surprisingly slowly, down the wall, until he was crumpled on the floor. He could have been resting, his head slumped to one side. The gun was still in his hand. Down the wall was a narrow red streak. Darien kept staring, wondering why there wasn’t more blood.
Or there’s this, which I like even better (needs a little editing):
Sadie Wright was standing at her desk when she heard the distinct ear-piercing shrieks of high school girls. Screams of terror, not the usual giddiness, and then the word “gun.” Adrenaline jolted her into action. She took the keys from her wrist band and unlocked the filing cabinet next to her desk. It took less than 15 seconds to open the biometric lockbox and push a magazine, 10 rounds, California’s limit, into the well of her handgun. With her left hand, she hit 911 on the phone, hanging from a lanyard around her neck.
In the lowest voice possible, she recited the necessary information to the 911 dispatcher: her exact location in the school, an intruder possibly armed with a gun. And, she was armed, wearing a rust-colored jacket and should not be mistaken for the bad guy. Had there been a panic button in the hall – which was one of her recommendations to the principal -- the student who first saw a gun would have hit it and alerted the police instantly, shaving minutes off their response time.
Footsteps in the hall stopped abruptly. Keep moving, she thought, take your gun and leave. “The person is by the outside door,” she told the 911 dispatcher. She took a long slow breath and waited, listening for the metallic clatter of the outside door. But it was her classroom door that opened and shut, then raspy, ragged breathing. She slowly rose from behind the desk, holding her gun in both hands. She did not shake. The man, 30 something, was wearing dirty (snip)
Either of these two openings raised strong story questions for me. Which do you think would be the best?
. . . her phone. She dressed like a P.E. teacher, khaki pants, fleece top, gym shoes hher hair always tied back. The school’s website made a big deal about her being an “Olympic hopeful in biathlon.” He’d had to Google biathlon. Skiing and shooting. He could picture it -- her long legs churning across snow, that determined look she could get, a big-ass rifle strapped to her back.
He eased out the zit door and wedged it open with the rubber floor mat. Behind the janitor’s shed, he kicked cigarette butts to the side, put his ear buds in, and got out his vape pen. The meeting with Ms. Wright would go a lot better if he was a little high.
He checked the time on his phone. Crap, now he was late. He put the mat back in place and let the door close. He pushed open the door to Ms. Wright’s room and called out, “Sorry I’m . . . .” The word “late” didn’t make it out of his mouth. Ms. Wright was still standing by her desk, but now, instead of her phone, Darien could swear she had a gun in her hands. A rough-looking man was standing in the back of the room. Not a kid. The man’s arm came out of nowhere, it seemed. Darien felt his whole body jerk. There was a gun, sticking out from the baggy sleeve of the man’s jacket, pointing right at him.
He heard a pop, like a shot, but nothing like the echoing blast of his dad’s duck hunting rifle. The man slid, surprisingly slowly, down the wall, until he was crumpled on the floor. He could have been resting, his head slumped to one side. The gun was still in his hand. Down the wall was a narrow red streak. He kept staring, wondering why there wasn’t more blood.
***
Sadie Wright was standing at her desk when she heard the distinct ear-piercing shrieks of high school girls. Screams of terror, not the usual giddiness, and then the word “gun.” Adrenaline jolted her into action. She took the keys from her wrist band and unlocked the filing cabinet next to her desk. It took less than 15 seconds to open the biometric lockbox and push a magazine, 10 rounds, California’s limit, into the well of her [handgun, need type]. With her left hand, she hit 911 on the phone, hanging from a lanyard around her neck.
In the lowest voice possible, she recited the necessary information to the 911 dispatcher: her exact location in the school, an intruder possibly armed with a gun. And, she was armed, wearing a rust-colored jacket and should not be mistaken for the bad guy. Had there been a panic button in the hall – which was one of her recommendations to the principal -- the student who first saw a gun would have hit it and alerted the police instantly, shaving minutes off their response time.
Footsteps in the hall stopped abruptly. Keep moving, she thought, take your gun and leave. “The person is by the outside door,” she told the 911 dispatcher. She took a long slow breath and waited, listening for the metallic clatter of the outside door. But it was her classroom door that opened and shut, then raspy, ragged breathing. She slowly rose from behind the desk, holding her gun in both hands. She did not shake. The man, 30 something, was wearing dirty jeans and workboots, and an ill-fitting navy blazer, an odd combination. The gun in his right hand was matte black, big, semi-automatic. He was holding it loosely. She couldn’t see if the safety was on. He made a whimpering sound when he saw her but kept moving along the wall toward the corner of the room.
“Sir, put the gun on the ground.” The gun stayed at his side, but his other hand gripped the eraser tray of the white board, as if he needed support to stay upright.
“Please,” she said again. “Put the gun down.” His knees started to give way, and she thought he might be lowering his hand. He didn’t take hit eyes off her.
The classroom door opened and slammed against the back wall. “Sorry I’m . . .” and there was Darien. He skidded to a halt, his tennis shoes squeaking. He looked startled, almost excited, then terrified when the man turned toward Darien and swung his arm so the gun pointing straight at Darien.
Sadie imagined a round black target on his chest, just one, not five in a row like a biathlon course, and fired. He had left her no choice.
****
It was the throbbing wail of the sirens, coming both over the phone and from outside the building, that made her look away from the man.
“I’m hanging up the phone now,” she said to the 911 dispatcher. “The man with the gun is down. I’m leaving my gun, unloaded, on the desk.”
Darien’s eyes seemed stuck on the man. He started to shake. She pulled off her jacket and wrapped it around his shoulders. “Look out there,” she said, jostling him, pointing out the window. The kids on the soccer field were staring at the back of the school, the police cars or ambulances, she realized, that were screaming across the crabgrass.
They stayed facing the window until the paramedics had left, one of them straddling the man, trying to resuscitate him. Two police officers came in. One took Sadie’s gun off the desk, and then picked up the man’s gun from the floor and carried them out. A paramedic wrapped Darien in a tin foil blanket, and he and Sadie helped him outside. The paramedic tried to pull Darien away, but he wouldn’t let go. He was crying now, snot and tears smearing his face. He choked out the words, “You saved me.”
The principal, Dr. Jensen, pushed through the crowd. He told the paramedics that Darien’s parents would meet them at the hospital, and then Darien was gone, the ambulance bumping and swaying across the crabgrass.
Her arms felt cold and empty. Oh, right, she thought, she had given Darien her jacket. She looked down at her hands, not sure what to do with them. She asked the cop beside her and said, “Don’t you want to bag my hands?” The cop seemed confused. Her head was starting to hurt. The colors -- spiraling red and blue lights, orange cones, and yellow crime scene tape the police were using to close off the area – and the sirens were making her head split apart.
One of the officers started to lead her to the back of a patrol car. Dr. Jensen was there again, yelling, “Don’t you dare handcuff her, do you hear me? Don’t you dare.”
That was nice, she thought. He was looking out for her, even after all the times they’d butted heads. He got right up in the officer’s face, shaking his finger, and another officer was trying to pull him back. “I will not have one of my teachers leaving this building in handcuffs, do you hear me?” Oh, that was it, she thought. It wouldn’t look good for his teacher to be carted away in handcuffs.
The chill she had felt became a hot sweaty flush. She couldn’t catch her breath. Her head hit something solid and then a mask came down over her nose and mouth. She felt a strange elation, a weightlessness, and her head stopped hurting so badly. Car doors slammed and she felt like she was being gently rocked. A kind voice said, “Breathe, just breathe.”
Sadie woke and a man in a navy blue shirt was hovering over her. She could see his biceps and dark armpit hair through the short sleeves of his shirt. “BP still high,” he yelled. She wished he’d keep his voice down so she doze off again. She felt a jolt, her whole body jerked up and then down with a bounce, and she thought she might be sick to her stomach. Served navy biceps right if she puked on him.
The sun was at a bad angle but she could make out Andrew, his usual dark suit but with his tie loosened. Of course he would be called. He was her brother, her next of kin. His husband Matteo was there too. It was Matt who pushed his way up to the gurney and grabbed her hand.
“Sissy, are you hurt?” he asked, holding on as they passed through automatic glass doors. Calling her Sissy, it was so funny and dear, she thought she might cry. He still had traces of Mexico in his voice and it made him seem motherly.
Another voice, bossy. “If you don’t mind, it’s my job to ask her whether she’s hurt.” She saw just enough of the embroidery on the man’s jacket to see the letters M.D.
“So is she?” Matteo spat back. He let go of her hand and took the doctor’s arm. She heard him say, “Her brother is a lawyer and no one talks to her without us, do you understand?”
“Whatever,” the doctor muttered, then, more loudly than necessary, said, “If she’s the shooter, why isn’t she handcuffed?” Sadie shook her head no. She wanted to say, the principal said no handcuffs, but she couldn’t get the words out through the mask. He thought she was the shooter?
“No, down here, last bay, doctor. We’re cracking his chest. Cardiac tamponade.” Now people were running and the rude doctor was gone. She tried to hoist herself get up on one elbow to look down the hall. There were too many people, too many voices, too much movement.
Another face hovering over her, pushing her back down. “Do you have a headache? Feeling shortness of breath? Do you know why you’re here?” One at a time, she wanted to yell.
She couldn’t breathe with people so close to her. Her heart was pounding so hard it hurt her chest. She felt a cold rush in her arm and then nothing.
Sometime later, she had lost all sense of time, she was alone in a hospital room and wearing a cotton gown that was too tight around her neck. She pulled the ties loose and felt like she could breathe again.
There was talking outside her door. Andrew had one of those voices that carried. “She can’t be left alone.” Then she heard Matt’s calm, low voice. “I should stay with her.”
Then Andrew again. “Do we need security outside her door? What if that crazy brother or whoever he was tries to get to her again?”
A woman’s voice that Sadie couldn’t immediately place. “He’s in custody. Probably charged with assault. He got one of the residents pretty good. And a security guard.”
What the hell were they talking about. It was true what she had heard about hospitals. Too loud, too much commotion, hardly the best place to rest and heal. But the bed was so comfortable. She nestled her head back into the pillows.
The door opened and fluorescent light poured in. It took er a minute to recognize Matt. He pulled a chair up next to the bed. “I’m going to stay with you, at least till you’re asleep.”
She wanted to tell him it wasn’t necessary, she was fine, but the thought of someone near her till she fell asleep was so comforting.
“Is Darien okay?” Her words were thick and slurred. She barely understood herself and wondered if Matt possibly could.
“I’m sure he is. His parents took him home.”
“Oh good,” she said. She swallowed. “The man?” she asked.
“He died,” Matt said. “Probably dead instantly but they worked on him, I guess.”
“What was all the yelling for?” she asked. She wasn’t sure she was making sense.
Matt reached over and turned off the lamp by the bed. He pulled the covers up over her arms and shoulders. “Just sleep. I’ll be right here.” She tried to say thank you but didn’t know if the words actually came out.
She woke during the night, startled, not sure where she was. Her throat was dry and her lips cracked. She reached for the water she always kept beside her at night and her hand hit the railing on the bed. Oh, the hospital. She remembered, like a kick in the gut, knocking all the wind out of her. The man was dead.
Her heart was thudding, pulsing in her ears. Breathe, breathe, just breathe. She hadn’t had a spell in so long. She couldn’t remember the last one, but still, she knew what to do. Long slow breaths. She imagined herself on the biathlon course nearest her house, where they had lived before her father died. It was perfectly silent, the air was cold, clean, and the sky was a dense white gray. It was freezing cold, and she was breathing so hard she could taste blood in her throat but she was skiing so fast she couldn’t see the condensation. She leaned left with her whole body and rounded the corner by a stand of fir trees, and there just ahead was the shooting range. She reached back and in an instant the rifle was in her arms, pressed against her check, digging into her armpit. The movement was seamless, flawless, amazingly fast. She willed her heart rate down, then filled her lungs, aimed, let her breath go, and at the bottom of the exhale, she fired. Once, and the round black target, 50 meters away, the size of an egg, turned white. Then four more times, five black targets now white. In a flash, the rifle was back in the sling and she pushed off, hard, looking for her father. There he was, in the red ski vest he wore so she could find him in the crowd. His arms were folded across his chest, and his smile seemed as broad as his shoulders.
She was being shaken and she yelped. “Hey, hey, it’s just me.” It was Matt, his hair sticking up on one side. He held a plastic cup in front of her and lifted her head. Oh, a bendy straw. She sucked in the cold water till she heard the straw rattle against the ice.
The door opened. At least the lights had been turned down a bit. “Do you need something?” the nurse asked. She didn’t sound unfriendly just busy.
“Maybe some help going back to sleep?” Matt asked. The nurse came in and adjusted the IV bag hanging on the pole next to the bed.
In the morning, she woke to find Matt sitting in the armchair in the corner of the hospital room. She was so grateful it was him and not Andrew. Andrew had seemed so angry yesterday. Cold. “Fury-ice” was her word for it.
“How did you sleep, Sissy?” Matteo said. Sissy. He was such a nice man. His face was slightly scarred from acne but that only made him seem all the more loveable and genuine.
“What time is it,” she asked. Wasn’t today a school day?
“Almost 9 a.m.,” he said. She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept so late. “Andrew dropped off clothes for you, shampoo, and thank god, a thermos of café lattes from home. Sit up, and I’ll pour you some. And here. I got the papers from the gift shop.” He positioned the pulled the bed tray in front of her. She sipped the coffee. Not quite hot enough but rich ang strong
The headline was, “Armed Teacher Saves Student’s Life.” Dateline, Tehama Bay, CA. followed by Sadie Wright, teacher at Tehama Bay High School, shot and killed an armed intruder who was holding a student at gunpoint in her classroom. The 15-year-old student, Darien Greco, and his parents, were not available for comment. The gunman has been identified as . . .” She pushed the paper aside. The photo of her was at least two years old, taken after some competition. Her teammates were mostly cropped out, leaving her, a huge smile on her face, arms raised, holding an American flag. Thank God they didn’t print a photo showing her biathlon rifle strapped to her back. She barely recognized herself in the photo.
“What happens now?” she asked.
The question seemed to startle Matteo. “Now?”
“I mean like this morning,” she clarified. She wasn’t ready to think further ahead than the next couple house.
He looked relieved. “You have to be cleared by the doctor, then we can get out of here. Go meet Andrew and Laurel at the office.”
There was a rapping on the door, and Sadie and Matteo both said “Come in” at the same time. A uniformed cop stuck his head the room. He had a metal clipboard in one hand.
“Oh no,” Matteo said. “Not now. She’s been drugged to the gills, so you can’t take her statement now, if that’s what you’ve come to do.”
Sadie expected the cop to insist, but he just nodded, a concerned look on his face.
“That’s fine. No rush.” He took a couple steps into the room. “We have the whole thing on the 911 call. That was good thinking on your part, Miss Wright, to call and leave the line open.”
It was something she had recalled from all the school safety information she had reviewed. She almost smiled. And she had remembered to tell the 911 dispatcher that she was wearing a rust-colored jacket, and the cops should not mistake her for the shooter. Except of course, she had been a shooter. The paper called the man “the gunman.” Did that make her a gun woman? She drank more of the coffee and looked straight ahead at the wall. Her brain was moving slowly.
Matteo stood up and blocked the officer’s path to the hospital bed. said, “Why don’t we call you later today, let you know when Sadie is feeling better.”
“That should be okay,” the cop said. He stood there for a minute, just looking at her. She must look frightful.
“I just want to say, miss, that I’ve been on the force for 12 years, and I’ve never once had to use my service weapon. Never even had to draw it, if I’m being totally honest.”
He was looking at her with respect, or awe, even. She didn’t know what to think.
“You’ve taken out one more bad guy than I -- or most cops in this town -- ever have.” She turned to look at him, not sure he was serious. Apparently he was. “Taken out,” she thought. It sounded so much more palatable than killed. Lots of things needed to be “taken out.” Garbage, fast food. But killed?
So obviously the man had died. She had killed him. “I’ve never ever pointed a gun at a living thing before in my life,” she said, her voice breaking. “So lucky you,” she said to the police officer.
“Well, sorry it had to happen, but you’re a hero. You saved that boy’s life. I don’t need to tell you that. So lucky him. And you. You’re alive.”
She was fighting tears. She never cried. Both Matteo and the cop started to look uncomfortable.
The officer took a few steps back and put his hand on the doorknob. “Not something for you to think on too much. That man, the gunman, let’s face it, he gave up his rights when he decided to take a gun into a school full of kids. Some parents are extremely grateful to you right now. So we’ll talk later.” He nodded to Matteo and slipped out the door.
She finished reading through the papers Matt had bought, but there wasn’t much about the man. The principal was quoted as saying, “We are very grateful there were not more fatalities. Sadie Wright is a valued member of our school community.”
Typical. What a dick. Jerk, she corrected herself. Now that she was around high school students and not her teammates she had to watch her language. She wasn’t surprised her was noncommittal but she didn’t have the energy or focus to be annoyed. Maybe now he would take her recommendations seriously. He was the one who had assigned her the project, saying that the school was required to have a safety plan in writing. But then, then he was the one who put her off for months, saying they’d get to it. But then again, she was the one who had decided to keep a gun in her filing cabinet, knowing it was against the law.
By the time the hospitalist came though on rounds, Sadie was showered and dressed and felt closer to normal. But she needed to get moving, shake off the groggy feeling from whatever they’d given her last night. The hospitalist said she had been in shock and probably had a panic attack. The doctor reeled off the usual characteristics of panic attacks, and Sadie nodded, hoping she would hurry it up. She knew most of them from her online research. It wouldn’t be unusual to have more, the doctor said, given the traumatic event, and she should be on the lookout for signs of PTSD. She recommended she have a complete physical exam, find herself a qualified therapist for her situation, and in the meantime, she would prescribe anti-anxiety medication.
She nodded, although she wasn’t entirely sure she would take his advice. She’d consider getting a physical, she was overdue, but she’d take a pass on the shrink and the drugs. The anxiety was temporary. Anyone who’d gone through what she had would be anxious with all the noise and light.
“Do you have any history of migraines, panic attacks, breathing issues?” The doctor looked up from her laptop and directly at Sadie. Sadie wondered if she should tell the doctor about the breathing issues she’d had after her dad died and then from time to time. Spells, as she thought of them. There was nothing in her medical records. Because she had taught herself how to cope. Visualize the race, the five round black circles, willing her heart to slow down, then the deep, deep breathe. It hit her, she had woken during the night with a spell. But she had coped. It wasn’t a problem she needed help fixing.
The doctor was still looking at her, her hands poised over the laptop. Had the doctor asked a question she hadn’t answered?
Matteo broke in. “We’re concerned about her sleeping. Can you give her something for sleep, too?” The doctor nodded and began typing. Sadie was about to tell the doctor that sleeping had never been a problem, but then she saw Matteo standing behind the doctor, pointing to himself and mouthing the words “For me!”
In addition to flogging submissions by writer readers, I’m flogging books from BookBub. The challenge is 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.
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.
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.
A double poll this week: We’ll look at the opening page of the prologue and the opening page of chapter one to see if either evokes a page turn.
Here is the opening page of the prologue of Journey to Where, science fiction. 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.
“In the first place please bear in mind that I do not expect you to believe this story.”
That is how Edgar Rice Burroughs, that master of pulp fiction, the creator of Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, began his 1914 novel At the Earth’s Core. It was an account of an inadvertent trip to the true land down under, a land filled with dinosaurs, strange intelligent creatures, and the oppressed. I can think of no better way to start this account.
But Burroughs’ account was fiction in the guise of non-fiction. Whereas this account is non-fiction in the guise of fiction.
I had no other choice. True as this story may be, it is not my story. It is the story of my brother, Sam Reynolds. You may have heard of him. His fame in scientific circles leaked out into the general population early on. He was once dubbed the Rock & Roll Physicist when he was very young, charismatic, and wild in his theories. You haven’t heard of him lately, for obvious reasons. But once upon…as they say. It is also the story of Sam’s mentor at MIT, John Keegan, who was there and wasn’t there. And the story of Lara Penrose, Sam’s brightest grad student at Caltech; of Danielle Dorlac, a French national, a physicist and leading theorist on the Existentialism of Time, and of Bertram Brill, also mentored by John Keegan and who also was there and not there and may still be there.
How do I know this story? How can I tell it in such detail? Sam came to me. He brought (snip)
The opening page of chapter one:
The solar-powered commuter dirigible moved slow and low over the Mojave Desert, heading towards the Engagement Ring. It was a nickname, of course; coined by a journalist from the United Kingdom, during the first press junket to the VLPA (Very Large Particle Accelerator), arranged by the International Organization for Deep Particle Science (IODPS). She came up with the name partly because the scientists there would be engaging with the universe to unlock its darkest secrets, but mostly because, from a satellite or jet flyover, the damn thing looked like an engagement ring.
Its sixty-mile circumference was marked on the barren landscape, rather prominently, by a circular two-story mound rising out of the desert floor. And at the east end, one could see a small sun glint, as if a precious little diamond rested there. There was actually nothing precious or little, relatively speaking, about the cause of the glint. Rather, it was a utilitarian and massive, domed dirigible hangar, with a sun-deflecting reflective surface.
There were competing nicknames, of course—everyone has a need to be clever. The engineers who built it called it the Gigantron, a name that never really stuck. Opponents had called it the Great Money Sinkhole. And the scientists who worked there, living in the covered, climate-controlled community thirty miles away, called it The Dark Lady, because it was the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy they were trying to unlock.
You can read more here. This earned 3.6 stars on Amazon (there were not many reviews). I found the prologue to be very inviting. The voice is good, the writing professional. And the first-person narrator manages to raise a number of story questions, among them being how a person can be “there and not there and may still be there.“ There seems to be time travel involved, and I was intrigued.
On the other hand, about the only thing interesting about the first chapter’s first page was a solar-powered dirigible. The rest is all setup that, I’m fairly sure, doesn’t matter to the story. So the question arises—will the rest of the book be engaging as was the prologue, or boring as was the first-chapter page? Is it worth 99 cents to find out? If you’re a Kindle user, you can have a sample sent to it for further evaluation for free. Your thoughts?
I hate it when my favorite writing blogs go silent, especially if no reason is given. I've been absent for the last week and a half thanks to a heckuva cold gifted to me by grandson Silas. No Covid, though--I'm totally vaxxed and boosted, and a test proved negative.
My energy should be back soon, and perhaps my brain will work as well--it's hard to focus in the midst of misery.