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.
Max sent the first pages of The Vulture, a young adult novel. The rest of the chapter 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.
Coming home at the end of summer sucked. The time away revealed the true picture of Theo’s home: Dead orange pine needles hid the rusty roof while lively weeds grew tall in the uncut lawn. Empty beer cans and liquor bottles decorated the property. People in the trailer park were poor, but functional. His dad’s place was the single exception to that rule.
Great, just great. With fall approaching, he didn’t want to stay in the Junkyard tollbooth much longer. That and the dreams, he had to try and escape the nightmare. One night back home couldn’t be that bad.
The underwhelming result of opening the door—the inside of the dilapidated trailer was worse than the outside. The messy kitchen was a cliché he grew up with, but the closed fridge door didn’t block the smell from inside of it. The less said about the stains in the bathroom, the better.
In spite of himself, Theo cleaned the brackish mirror till he made out his sky blue eyes and black hair. After shoving the resistant metal clips, the small bathroom window opened. He found the bleach and a former towel that passed as a rag. The bathroom needed two hours of solid scrubbing, too bad the bleach didn’t remove dreams. How long would it stay clean for?
The thought of inviting any of his friends over was nonexistent. Especially Sarah, who would be so mournful at seeing the trailer. Yeah, girls don’t fall in love with boys who live in a (snip)
The writing is solid, and so is the voice. But I found this opening page lacking in a couple of ways. The first is that old bugaboo, the lack of a story question. Nothing much happens here to spark action from the character to deal with a problem that affects his life. He comes home to a mess and cleans a bathroom. I didn’t have a “what happens next?” reaction to those circumstances.
The other factor was, I guess, confusion. The narrative bounces around, first there’s the crummy trailer , then a mention of not wanting to stay in the Junkyard tollbooth. That took me out of the story. What is that? He was living in a tollbooth? That doesn’t seem right, at least with only that to go on. Was this tollbooth equipped with a bed and a bathroom? Didn’t make sense to me. Then apparently troubling dreams come into the picture . . . and quickly leave it. No indication of what the dreams are or how they actually impact his life. Not that I want to read a story about dreams.
I didn’t find what I would see as an inciting incident in the chapter, something happening that compels the character to take action. I’m thinking that this story starts somewhere in the second chapter. Seeing good writing in this first chapter, I'd like to know what that is. 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 © 2023 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2023 by Max.
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:
. . . dump. They couldn’t know how bad his father spiralled the drain. Theo didn’t drink booze for this very reason, that and it made the nightmare worse.
Luckily, his minimalist room accumulated only dust. With only space for a bed, built-in mini-dresser, and an opening pretending to be a window, it didn’t hold much interest for his dad to ruin. Though, given the overall smell of the trailer, he struggled with the obstinate rusting window frame until it opened.
Theo flopped onto his bed, surprised the sheets were still discernably a faded green, wondering how he’d kill time before nightfall. Instead, the familiar lumps lulled Theo into a false sense of security.
The crashing smash of breaking dishes in the kitchen woke him from his nap. Wonderful, his dad’s habit of drinking in the early afternoon struck again.
“Men are awful, Theo.” His mom’s parting acidic words reverberated in his head. “Don’t become one of them.”
If body oil could drip off a person’s neglected black and grey hair from not showering, it would for Theo’s dad, ‘Ted’ Theodore Wilson II. Next to the busted off-white oven, his dad bent over to pick up shards of a busted plate… While trying to put it back together. The individual pieces wouldn’t stick without glue, that didn’t stop his dad’s bloody fingers from trying again.
“Dad,” Theo attempted compassion while parenting his own father, “let’s clean you up.”
The simple nod was enough to unbalance his dad, who thudded to the dirty floor and bashed the formerly white, now mostly brown and black stained oven door. Barely audible, his dad whispered, “She’s not coming back.”
And the sun rises every morning, but Theo stopped a snarl. Sighing first, he stewed for a moment then said, “No, she isn’t.”
A blubber and a hiccup before his dad could say, “The photos…”
Yeah. The recently posted photos online with his bright and happy brunette mother holding her new baby girl wrapped in the embrace of a young blonde woman. A baby sister and a wife? Theo never had a chance of getting his mother’s interest again.
At least the red first aid kit actually stayed clean and whole. His father’s nighttime ‘profession’ had certain dangers. His best friend, Luke, had a dad with an honest job who only drank every other day.
On his prized black laptop, Theo hacked a neighbor’s Wi-Fi then spent the day streaming pirated movies with his dad on the comfy sofa. Why? Things were so bad they didn’t have an internet connection. By a certain point his dad sobered up a bit and went to ‘work.’
Staying up until Theo’s eyelids shut for him, the clutches of his mortal enemy caught him, sleep.
~*~
The dream began, again. The visceral effect of the words hit Theo the same way each time.
“Buddy.” Luke always implored him, desperate. “You gotta help me. He’s eating me. Why won’t you listen to me? I’m being eaten alive.”
The “He” in question remained unknown all summer to Theo. A faint tickle across a phantom limb he’d never had.
They stood in the faded blue tree fort in the backyard of Theo’s old red house before the foreclosure. The dream made the room bigger so that teenagers would fit in it. A luminescent night sky always shone with a waning crescent moon. Luke stood there, wearing clothes from the last day of grade eleven: Black and white sneakers, a pair of light blue jeans, and a rough blood red hoodie that said “Zombicide” in big black letters. The hood, that absurd and heavy hood. It covered Luke’s face so much, Theo barely made out any features except a tuft of Luke’s bright red hair.
The point of a dream was to tell a story, maybe a lesson. Then why did this recurring dream have such hard-to-remember, inane topics? He watched another version of himself interacting with Luke, speaking pure babble. The one consistent unnerving change: new human-sized bites from Luke’s flesh, they never bled. Now at the end of the summer, little remained except rags flapping in the wind over emaciated flesh or open bone. Why was his face left alone?
“Theo.” Luke’s words were the problem, the begging. “Dude, you gotta help me.” The never-ending begging. Madness ever since the end of grade eleven. Then, the new accusation. “Dude, you owe me, you made that deal with The Vulture.”
~*~
Fate does not give warnings. Dreams from the netherworlds of his subconscious were wisps in the wind, ice melting from the heat of the sun. A vulture? Whatever.
With a shake of Theo’s head, the gentle morning sunlight brightened Sarah’s unframed picture, taped on a wooden laminate wall last fashionable in the 1976. The sight of her sure woke him up. If only Sarah loved him the way she did Luke. Yet, there was no way to tell her his feelings without destroying their friendship.
If only Luke had admitted his crush for Victoria, Sarah’s brilliant younger sister. Instead, teenage insecurity won the day, and Luke lost his nerve last valentine’s day, tossing his modest bouquet of flowers in the garbage.
Theo focused on another photo of himself with a medium tan that only showed up at the end of summer, arm in arm with Sarah, Victoria, and Luke at the sandy beach park of Hylton Lake. Together they were worth more than his stupid crush.
Changes defined this summer: Victoria up and disappeared the same day Sarah left to Calgary for an internship. After that, Luke used that as an excuse to transform his whole personality. That’s what the dreams had to be, a metaphor for the changes in Theo’s life.
Except that Theo stayed the same. Dad drank like a fish. Mum left to Fort MacMurray for a job in the oilsands. He still manned the tollbooth at the Ashgrove Junkyard to afford food.
Sarah’s text buzzed at him. I’m sorry your car got totalled at the beginning of summer. Ha, if only she knew the truth. If she asked for more details, Theo didn’t know how to begin. In fact, he couldn’t. I’ll arrive home around 4pm. Meet at my place?
Yes Theo texted Sarah. This was it, his chance to tell her how he really felt. There’s something I need to tell you. A strand of his black hair hung across his line of vision. He’d have to scrounge around for a comb, scissors, and go shower at the community rec centre. Time to seize the day!