I've been too long away from doing my job here at FtQ. Travel, medical issues, life stuff have sucked my energy away. But I persevere. Here's today's flogging.
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 opening of Lamb to the Slaughter 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.
Hugging myself, I tried to stop shaking. I’d burned my last bridge. Forward was the only way to go.
The dim light was nearly gone when I finally forced my muscles into action and headed in the direction of the road again. The darkness caused my heart to race as I sped up. Usually, I loved when night arrived. It gave me the opportunity to hide from the others—but not tonight. The unexpected encounter had pumped adrenaline through my veins, making me ever more fearful.
I urged my legs faster until my breaths came out in short, quick gasps. I alternated between jogging, walking and stumbling, all the while listening for sounds of another ambush. The countryside was quiet now. The wind that had been beating the cornstalks together only minutes before had died down to a soft breeze.
I reckoned that I wasn’t too far from the road, but I wasn’t sure. The last time I came this way was about four years ago when I was fourteen and turkey hunting with Dat and my brother, Samuel. It was springtime and the corn was only seeds in the ground back then. The stalks were well past the top of my head now, turning the cornfield into an impossible maze.
The plants were the same as everybody else in my life. They were toying with me, purposely making my escape from Blood Rock even more difficult. I was glad to leave them (snip)
You can read more here. This earned 4.4 stars on Amazon. I have mixed feelings about this. On the story question side, it does a good job. The character is clearly in some sort of danger and trying to escape. That should be enough to get a page-turn.
But the writer/editor in me noticed narrative issues that took me out of the story. First was the cliched “burned my last bridge.” Since we have no idea of what she did, it doesn’t have much meaning. She “urges” her legs. Would anybody do that? Or just force them to move. I didn’t understand why the darkness made her heart race since she has been in it for a time. On the other hand, there’s some experiential description of the corn in the last paragraph that’s good. So the question is whether or not the story questions are enough to risk more writing that could use some editing. 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.