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 opening page of Shadow Kill. 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 man John Kovac was hunting swerved to avoid a puddle, muttering to himself in his native Japanese. He crashed into a row of pushbikes, then trudged forward again.
The clatter in the otherwise quiet alley was explosive, but no lights came on.
They were alone. Just Kovac and his target.
The man’s name was Yoshinori Yamada. He was five nine, 170 pounds, with a gait that left both feet sticking out a little.
Like a penguin, Kovac thought.
Yamada was in the yakuza, but there were no tattoos. There was no little finger chopped off at the first joint, either. The guy was a suit, a salaryman practically, with a gift for finding young women and putting them to work in alleys just like this one. He wouldn’t be mourned.
The quiet returned, broken now only by Yamada’s drunken mumbling and a faint buzzing overhead.
Kovac glanced up. No one in the topmost windows and no one behind him… The buzzing sound wasn’t a drone. It was coming from a thick nest of electrical wiring clumped to a street pole. Wires fanning up to roofs and down to red, purple and yellow snack bar signs, and all of it reflected in the fluorescent puddles underfoot.
Yamada lurched towards the next alley. He was still handsome, albeit in a baby-faced, (snip)
You can read more here. This earned 4.5 stars on Amazon. A pretty good thriller opening. Good voice, clean writing, and story questions: will the protagonist kill his target, and why is he doing this. I’d give it another pate. Your thoughts?
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown More than 600 free ebooks given away.