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.
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 is the prologue of Anchored, an urban fantasy. A poll follows the opening page below. If you don’t want to turn the page, then I’m thinking that these authors should have hired an editor.
The human brain interprets an image in thirteen milliseconds. At any given time, more than a hundred billion neurons are firing in the gray matter of an average kid. I learned that on my very last day of school.
The day before I escaped.
In spite of all those speedy, hard-working neurons, humans frequently make very poor split-second decisions. I’m kind of the expert on the consequences of bad calls.
If the semi-truck driver had serviced his brakes properly, my parents might still be alive. If I’d just lied about my bizarre dreams of Terra, Aunt Trina might not have surrendered us to the state. If I’d dealt with things better at the group home, well. There probably isn’t any reality where that would have happened. But if I hadn’t freaked out and screamed at my caseworker when he suggested separating me from my big brother Jesse, he might never have fixated on me.
If so many tiny details in my life had played out just a smidge better, someone else could be stuck making this decision instead of me. Someone else could be responsible for saving the world, and that would probably be way better for, well, for everyone.
Because if I'm being honest, I'm not sure the world deserves to be saved.
You can read more here. This earned 4.3 stars on Amazon. This is another good prologue, brief yet filled with story questions. The voice is inviting and the writing good. It raises good “what happens next” questions for me, and I want to know more about this character and if, how, and why she/he makes a decision to save the world. It would have been nice to know the gender, but I can wait to find out. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.