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.
Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.
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.
Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this 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 (PDF here)
- 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 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.
Today it’s prologue versus chapter as Cyndi sends the first pages of her prologue and first chapter. Which, if either, has a compelling first page? This is from Fatal Errors. The rest of the submission is after the break. Remember to focus on writing craft regardless of genre. This might not be a genre for you, but you can surely judge the strengths of the opening page.
Prologue
My name is Fatál, emphasis on the second syllable, please. And skip the jokes, I’ve heard them all. Grandma Zigana, bless her heart, thought she was doing me a favor, warding off whatever evil spirits that killed my mother when I was born. Try telling that to a seven-year-old, taunted every day with “Fay-tahl, Fay-tahl, touch her and you’re dead.”
I found out years later that Zigana had cornered the ring-leader of my tormenters one evening after I came home in tears, knees skinned and jacket torn from being worked over on the playground. She’d spun a yarn about wizards like in the Harry Potter books everyone was reading, threw in a dash of her garbled Catholicism and karma, and left him quaking in his high-priced Nikes. Zigana’s always been very good at leaving things unsaid, letting the imagination take over. She knows a person’s own fears are much worse than anything she could suggest. That’s the basis for a good curse—fear.
See we’re Romani, what most people would call Gypsy. At least I’m one-quarter Romani. Zigana had the bad luck to fall in love with a gajo, a non-Rom. So did Harmony, my mother, but I didn’t learn that until I was older. Zigana raised me. It was just the two of us. She’s proud of being Roma, but there’s a little shame, too, after growing up on the receiving end of the all-too-human tendency to mistreat what we don’t understand. It’s not so bad now, but from little things Zigana says, it wasn’t always good to be labeled “Gypsy” here in southwest Ohio, or anywhere, (snip)
Chapter
So I’m a hacker—get over it. My boss Patrice sure did, as long as she could use me. But I didn’t realize that until I got fired. That Gypsy sixth-sense Grandma Zigana insists I have failed me miserably.
Patrice had appeared at my cubicle in the Gem City Business College computer center the week after Thanksgiving and offered to buy coffee. Of course I accepted, figuring she wanted another hack. Only after we were seated at Beaner’s did she blindside me.
“You’re firing me?” I echoed.
I clutched my mug of chai, hoping to ward off the chill her announcement caused. My strident question silenced the chatty barista at the counter behind me, and I wanted him and the trio at the next table to stop staring. They did when I glared at them.
Patrice looked everywhere but at me as she fidgeted, adding more sugar to her already syrupy coffee, checking her watch.
“You’re firing me,” I repeated, only a tad calmer.
“It’s been brought to my attention that you’ve been bypassing security protocols to gain access to confidential files.” Patrice could have been reading from the employee handbook. Silence stretched while a scathing response eluded me. My mood dropped to match the gloomy weather. Twice in my twenty-four years, my hacking had backfired, leaving me betrayed (snip)
In my view, prologues seldom grab me unless they are a scene with story tension. This prologue gives us an appealing voice and good writing and lots of backstory and setup. Tension? Not for this reader. If your prologue is the first thing a reader sees, shouldn’t it work as hard to grip a reader and provide tension as the story? My advice is to work on folding necessary information from here into the actual story as things happen. Cyndi can do it, I’m sure.
The first page of chapter 1 does manage to create some tension with something going wrong for the protagonist, and anyone who has ever been fired (I have, twice, for being too good at my job) knows what a blow this is. But it’s not an unmanageable blow if that’s all there is and the consequences are not dire. In this case, that’s the case—the stakes are not shown as being particularly high.
But later in the chapter we learn that if this firing is reported to the character’s parole board, they could be sent back to prison. Now, those are strong stakes. I’d work to get that on the first page. It shouldn’t be hard to do. Your thoughts?
Submitting to the Flogometer:
Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):
- your title
- your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
- Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ. Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
- Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
- And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
- If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
- If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.
Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.
Flogging the Quill © 2022 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2022 by Cyndi.
My books. You can read sample chapters and learn more about the books here.
Writing Craft Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling
Mystery (coming of age) The Summer Boy
Science Fiction Gundown Free ebooks.
Continued:
. . . really. Europe is much worse, even today. But Zigana doesn’t believe in dwelling on the past, says it encourages the spirits of those times to intrude on us with prikaza, bad luck.
I took her word for it, mostly, until I found a photo taken in one of those arcade booths. The guy was thin, maybe early twenties. Ray-Ban sunglasses peeked out of blond tinted spikes on top of his head. His eyes were fixed on the young woman on his lap and the camera caught him mid-laugh. Harmony’s image was like looking in the mirror, except she was smiling. I don’t do that much. Scrawled on the back, in what I guessed was Harmony’s loopy cursive, was “Mr. & Mrs. Matthew O’Connell,” with the ampersand replaced by a heart. I stared at the picture for a long time, hoping for an emotional response.
Maybe someday.
A Google search didn’t find anyone named Matthew O’Connell in the area who was even close to the right age, so I’d tried a few other less legal sources that led to a legal name change linked to a bookstore in Dayton’s bohemian Oregon District, now owned by an M. Taylor Schmidt. I paid them a visit on the off-chance someone would recognize the picture. Turned out not to be a problem. An older guy carrying a stack of books met me at the door. He took one look at my face and dropped every single volume. Now I know where I get my green eyes.
After we picked up the books and found a spot to stack them on an overflowing table near the door, we faced each other for a long minute, not speaking. It’s a good thing business was slow. Once we got past the initial shock we talked for hours, overcoming any lingering resentment at abandonment with a shared realization of the implacability that is Zigana. He kept apologizing for letting her chase him away.
“Harmony was seventeen when she came in looking for a job,” he said. “God she was beautiful, and smart. Our first date was dinner for her eighteenth birthday.” His eyes misted over. “When we found out she was pregnant, I wanted to get married, but Zigana...I ignored the curse she threatened me with, but then she said she’d have me arrested if I came around. I scraped together some cash, sent a check to help with the hospital and stuff. She sent it back, shredded.”
I searched for something to defuse the emotion. A framed certificate near the cash register showed he owned the place. “Why the name change?” I asked.
“After Harmony—” Matthew cleared his throat. “After she died, I kind of went off the deep end for a while. Sold everything, shaved my head, lived in my grandpop’s cabin in Hocking Hills for almost six months. I knew I was a different person without her, so when I came back, I took Mom’s name. Dad was gone by then, died in a motorcycle crash a few years before, so it didn’t seem to matter what I called myself.”
“M. Taylor?”
“Hey, first initials like that were all the rage. Made me sound more important, right?” His grin lightened the sadness etched on his face and revealed a glimpse of his younger charm.
I could see why Harmony had been smitten. I grinned back.
* * *
Even though Zigana still keeps Matthew at arm’s length and then some, finding him filled a hole in my life I didn’t know I had. Life was pretty good, all things considered. My probation was on its last few months (long story). One more semester of college, and with a small scholarship and my job in the school computer lab, I’d graduate debt free—not an easy thing these days. While I have only a nodding acquaintance with being “happy,” I was content.
Until my boss’s boss got antsy over my special skills and had me fired. In 15 minutes, my life was turned upside down in ways I could never have imagined.
Chapter 1
So I’m a hacker—get over it. My boss Patrice sure did, as long as she could use me. But I didn’t realize that until I got fired. That Gypsy sixth-sense Grandma Zigana insists I have failed me miserably.
Patrice had appeared at my cubicle in the Gem City Business College computer center the week after Thanksgiving and offered to buy coffee. Of course I accepted, figuring she wanted another hack. Only after we were seated at Beaner’s did she blindside me.
“You’re firing me?” I echoed.
I clutched my mug of chai, hoping to ward off the chill her announcement caused. My strident question silenced the chatty barista at the counter behind me, and I wanted him and the trio at the next table to stop staring. They did when I glared at them.
Patrice looked everywhere but at me as she fidgeted, adding more sugar to her already syrupy coffee, checking her watch.
“You’re firing me,” I repeated, only a tad calmer.
“It’s been brought to my attention that you’ve been bypassing security protocols to gain access to confidential files.” Patrice could have been reading from the employee handbook.
Silence stretched while a scathing response eluded me. My mood dropped to match the gloomy weather. Twice in my twenty-four years, my hacking had backfired, leaving me betrayed by someone I trusted.
Bypassing security protocols my ass. “At your request,” was all I could squeeze through a clenched jaw.
She flushed. “Anyone violating security policies can be summarily dismissed without the standard–”
“I wrote that policy, and now you’re using it against me? What about Tatum?” I asked, referencing the school president and her boss.
“I would prefer to keep Dr. Tatum out of internal office problems. Your fascination with him is common knowledge.”
“Revulsion is more like it.” I shoved my mug of chai away, sloshing a bit on the table. Hands-on Tatum liked his women young. He’d hit on me a week after he was hired almost two years earlier. I shut him down, and he’d moved on to the next co-ed. Until Patrice snared him. I leaned into her range of vision, forcing her to look at me. “You’re the one who’s obsessed, after your little fling.”
Patrice pulled back. “There was no…it wasn’t a fling. Dr. Tatum and I have an understanding.”
“And would he understand your tapping a student to spy on him?”
“It wasn’t spying.” She swallowed hard and coughed her way back to a professional tone. “Dr. Tatum’s activity on the date in question was of concern to the status of a special project. My request was designed to protect that project. It in no way authorized you to view those restricted files. He learned of your intrusion and directed me to…handle the situation.”
I stared at Patrice while she squirmed, understanding now why she’d gone out of her way to be friendly. “I have your emails.”
She checked her watch again. “Your Admin account and all network access were deleted as of nine-thirty this morning.”
Ten minutes ago. That explained the invitation for coffee off-site. Here I thought she just wanted another hack.
“You came to me after you read that Stieg Larsson book,” I said, as if she needed reminding, “wanting to know if I could pull off the same kind of stunt. And now I take the hit?”
Patrice ignored my question. “I trust you won’t make a fuss that might harm the reputation of the school while we’re in the middle of accreditation. We’ll note your termination as workforce reduction and you can claim unemployment if you want. Your probation officer doesn’t have to know about the breach. If you go quietly.”
“Big of you.” I counted to ten using the passing cars as markers, brooding over the veiled threat.
Patrice knew how to play the system, and the media, with her flagrant social activism skillfully wrapped in administrative brown-nosing. I should be grateful, my PO reminded me every month. Patrice had hired me, gave me access to computers again when the court loosened its grip. She liked playing the good-hearted rehabilitator.
Even though she’s a manipulative bitch.
Guess she figures that’s how to get ahead in the IT world if you aren’t male. Me, I prefer to depend on my skills, which are considerable. Patrice has yet to understand the difference between a router and a switch, although the higher-ups don’t know that. Probably don’t know the difference themselves.
Even though I only had a few months left in my supervised release, if she went to my PO, I could end up serving the rest of my suspended sentence for federal computer fraud—legalese for hacking. The Feds don’t take kindly to community college students browsing unsecure databases, especially with links to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. I’d been expelled, convicted, banned from any online activity for two years, and put on five years’ supervised release. Three months, one week, and four days before my PO and I could part ways, and not a minute too soon. Only good thing he’d done was connect me with Patrice and the private college after my Internet restrictions were lifted.
Now this.
“I have personal stuff in my desk,” I told Patrice, looking for a back door. “And the new database isn't finished.”
“Carmen’s packing your things. You can pick them up at the front counter.” Patrice’s shoulders dropped a notch, her tension releasing at my apparent capitulation. “I’ll need your badge and keys.”
“So everyone else knew about this before me.”
She stiffened again but said nothing.
I unwound two heavy Master Lock keys from my penguin key ring and laid them on the table with a sharp click. The ID badge and computer room keycard were in my backpack. When I tossed them next to the keys, the cards smeared through the splatters of chai. Patrice grimaced and looked to me to clean them off. I didn’t. She eventually picked them up with two fingers, wrapped them in a napkin, and slipped them into her purse with the keys.
“I’ll need a receipt for those,” I said.
She opened her mouth to argue, then closed it again. I waited.
“I don’t have any paper,” Patrice said to the ficus in the corner.
“Email it to me. Now.”
Her lips formed a hard line but she pulled her Blackberry out of a voluminous Coach handbag. After the message appeared on my Droid, I stood up. “Anything else?”
“You’ll let this go, right?” she asked, a slight tremor in her voice the only obvious crack in her composure. “It’s over. I only wish—” She stopped.
You wish what? That I hadn’t trusted you? That I didn’t let you talk me into snooping on that leech? I’d bit back the angry words and fingered the flash drive in my pocket. “Sure, it’s over.”
* * *
Now, after Patrice’s ambush, I felt more like a victim than ever. Not a position I care to be in. Tuition doesn’t pay itself, and I have to graduate—from college and from the Feds—or no prospective employer will look past my criminal record. Patrice left me sitting in Beaner’s, and after an hour of moping and scheming, I retreated to the school library. I tried to set aside my anger and focus on logic.
First I checked to see how much of the computer network I could still access. I’d left a few strategically placed hidden access points in the bits and pieces of code I’d contributed to projects in my years in the lab. RATs we call them, and they worked as intended. I was in. I kept my access light so as not to set off alarms. Someone was sure to be monitoring the system closely for a few days until they decided I was no longer a threat. That’s fine. I can be patient when I have to be. I found enough open portals to ease my fears at being locked out. Now to decide what to do with them.
I still had a few hours to kill before I could safely pick up my things from the lab without running into Patrice, so I headed for my part-time job at my dad’s bookstore.
* * *
Matthew and I had come a long way in our relationship in the short time since we’d found each other, but today he took one look at my scowl and left me to tend the front counter alone. He’s still not too good at interpersonal relations, something I inherited from him along with the green eyes. It almost drove us apart only a few weeks ago, and we were still finding our way back to whatever it was we’d had.
See Matthew has a buddy, Sammy, who hangs out with him most days. Sammy stops at the coffee shop down the street and brings them each a tall special blend, delivering it with all the dignity of a tuxedoed maître d’. It shocked me the first time I saw Matthew let Sammy take money from the register for the coffee. When I asked him about it, Matthew looked hurt.
“Me and Sammy go way back,” he said. “He’s like my big brother, only I take care of him now instead of the other way around. He doesn’t have anybody else.”
Something about it didn’t feel right. Zigana taught me the value of hard work and personal responsibility. Her example kept my hacking in check, more gray-hat than black, but I also have more than my share of curiosity. She says I’ve got a sixth-sense, some special Romani insight. I don’t go for that stuff. Tarot, divination. Let’s just say I trust myself more than her spirits, as much as I appreciate their occasional nudge. I doubt any of them really want to share answers to the silly questions people ask. I watch. I listen. Eavesdrop here and there if someone’s foolish enough to talk loudly in a public place. Snoop a little, maybe. You’d be surprised the information people give away with very little prodding. Social engineering, my professor calls it. I call it being observant. It’s a hobby. I don’t use it to rip people off.
Two weeks before my scene with Patrice, I’d convinced Matthew to let me open the register for him and made it a point to be at the counter when Sammy was due to arrive. He stumbled a bit when he saw me there, but he handed over a receipt and I paid him for the coffee. I was loitering near the register again during my next shift, waiting for him, when I caught a glimpse of his reflection in the glass door as the mailman left. Sammy was standing just around the corner out of sight, watching me. By then I knew how much was in the register, knew how much the coffee run cost. I wandered into the bay window and picked up a stack of books from the display.
“Matthew, I’m going to switch these out for that new batch of Elmore Leonard you took in yesterday. They’re in the storeroom, right?” I made sure my voice was loud enough to carry through the open transom window before slipping down an aisle away from the door.
Not more than a five-count later, the bell jingled as Sammy entered the store. I poked a hole between the books on the shelf so I could see. He went through his usual routine of greeting Matthew, delivering the coffee to the worktable where we sorted incoming books before returning to the cash register up front to get his money. When I stepped behind him and tapped Sammy on the shoulder, he jerked away.
“Didn’t see you there, Missy,” he said. His laughter sounded forced. It irked, that “Missy,” but he refused to call me by my name. Said “Fatál” gave him the creeps.
He had no idea.
After Matthew and Sammy disappeared into the office, I counted the cash in the register. Seems that two-buck special blend had gone up quite a bit. The drawer was down ten.
I’d puzzled over Sammy’s petty thievery all week. Tell Matthew and ruin his old friendship? Say nothing and let him keep getting ripped off? Ten dollars a day—okay, five and change after the coffee—adds up. I’d always believed if a victim was dumb enough to get taken, he deserved what he lost. But this was different. There was a face on the victim now—my father.
Today when Sammy strolled in with the coffee, my anger at Patrice spilled over onto an injustice I could do something about.
“Pretty good scam on the coffee, huh, Sammy?” I sidled up next to him like I had a secret. “My Gypsy grandma would say if someone hurts a friend of mine, they hurt me. And I don’t like being hurt, do you?”
Sammy’s face blanched. He slopped coffee on the counter trying to set the carrier down and escape.
“No, don’t go,” I said, blocking the door with my foot. “Matthew likes you. You’re his friend.” I leaned in close and whispered, “Act like one.”
He disappeared into the back office with Matthew. I didn’t see him again all afternoon. I tried to focus on hacking into the school network again, but that closed door irked, too.
* * *
When the church tower down the street chimed five, I left the bookstore, still not having told Matthew I’d been fired, and went to the lab to pick up my things. No sense showing up while Patrice might still be around. Carmen met me at the front desk. She started around the counter to give me a hug, but I warned her off with a look when the security guard walked in. He must have followed me from the parking lot.
“I packed the personal items from your desk, nothing business-related, per Ms. Gerrard’s orders,” Carmen said as she slid the copier paper box onto the counter. Even though the guard was practically hanging on my shoulder, she raised her voice to make sure he heard. “Your class notes are there, too.” She tapped the edge of an orange folder to get my attention before shoving it out of sight under a dog-eared paperback of Nicomachean Ethics. “You’ll need to sign this inventory.”
I scanned the paper she laid in front of me. Mug, tea strainer, agave sweetener, Kleenex, a spare sweatshirt I’d used to fight the squirrely air conditioning in the lab, my autographed copy of Cuckoo’s Egg, and the philosophy text. A stuffed Y2K Bug desk mascot wasn’t mine. It was one of a pair that guarded Carmen’s desk like ancient griffins. I smiled my thanks. “Looks like everything.” I scrawled my name at the bottom of the page and handed it back to her. “Take care of yourself.” I ignored the guard and left. He followed me all the way to my car.
* * *
I resisted the urge to open Carmen’s folder until I made the half-hour drive home from Dayton to Yellow Springs. When I was ten, Zigana had sold the crumbling north Dayton farmhouse where I’d been born and moved us to this quirky town just east of the air force base. She bought a shop on the main drag and set up her jewelry-making studio in one corner of the sales floor. In the back room, she offers the occasional Tarot reading to friends, never strangers. We live upstairs.
I curled up in the window seat under the peaked roof of my attic room and leafed through Carmen’s notes. The dozen or so pages contained a print-out of the network’s activity log for the past week.
Bless you, girl!
I scanned the lines, highlighting a few instances for closer scrutiny. Carmen isn’t a hacker so much as a wanna-be, but she knows her way around a network. I had shown her a few tricks. She was thrilled when I explained a basic MD5 hash and had immediately changed all her screen names to C@rm3n. Kind of defeated the point of the coding, but it made her happy. She knew what Patrice was up to with Tatum, at least as much as I did, and we groused about their “special project” together.
It was after hours now, but Zigana was in the shop getting ready for the merchants’ holiday open house weekend and I’d promised to help. I gave myself an hour to scan the file, then stashed the folder in my desk and went downstairs. Zigana finished stringing handmade beads onto thin silver wire for earrings and bracelets while I tacked twinkle lights around the front windows. Asfalt Tango by the Romani band Fanfare Ciocarlia filled the air. Usually the energetic brass tune moved me to dance. Tonight it jarred my nerves.
The staple gun ran out while I was balanced on the edge of the front display ledge, stretching for the top corner of the window. Of course.
“I think there’s more in back,” Zigana said when I tossed the empty staple box onto the counter next to her work lamp. She squinted at me over her reading glasses. “You okay?”
I grunted a non-response and pushed through the bead curtain separating the rooms. After searching for a good five minutes, I found another box of staples in a basket of silk flowers stuffed under the card table holding wine making supplies. I tripped on the table leg and caught one of the decorated bottles just before it hit the floor, spilling a carton of corks in the process.
“Don’t break anything,” Zigana called from out front.
An impolite response died in my throat while I shoveled the corks back into the box. She’d be angry enough when I told her I got fired, but hopefully not at me. No sense front-loading her.
After I got all the lights up and found replacement bulbs for a half-dozen that were burned out, I dusted the shelves and refilled the trinket jars Zigana kept on hand for the kids. The music ran out, but she waved me off when I tried to change CDs.
“Enough for tonight, I need food. My treat.” She slid the last pair of earrings into the display case and stored her toolbox under the counter. “The Tavern okay?”
We bundled up and headed out into the night. A dusting of snow slicked the sidewalk and added sparkle to the barren tree branches. Zigana looped her arm through mine as we crossed Xenia Avenue.
“You’re awfully quiet,” she said. “Problem at school?”
I pointed out a passing neighbor to distract her and stood by while they chatted about slow business, the latest class of freshmen at Antioch College, and who knows what. I stopped listening, fretting instead about my final tuition bill.
We made it to Ye Olde Trail Tavern just before the kitchen closed. Zigana ordered her usual portabella sandwich. I skipped my favorite bacon cheddar burger and settled for the house special, a multi-layered pesto grilled cheese on marbled bread. I didn’t need her lecture about eating red meat tonight. She raised one eyebrow when I downed half of my beer as soon as the server set it on the table.
I focused on the smokers huddled around the flickering fire pit on the patio and avoided Zigana’s questioning look. She’s not much more patient than I am, so it didn’t take long.
“So what’s up?” she asked.
I took another gulp of Guinness. “I got fired.”
Her eyes grew hard and her color rose as I detailed Patrice’s manipulation. Zigana didn’t like computers, but she bragged to her friends about my expertise. She had stood by me when the Feds showed up with their warrant five years ago and only later, after she made sure I hadn’t hurt anyone, berated me for getting caught. But like she handled my bullies in grade school, she wasn’t about to let anyone mistreat family.
“Look at me.” She lifted my chin, nearly impaling me with her red talons. “You’re not going to let her get away with it, are you?”
I half-smiled and drained my beer. “You taught me better than that.”
She leaned back in the booth and laughed, nearly drowning out the jukebox. “That’s my girl.”