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.
Harry has sent the first page of Facing the Darkness,, a medical thriller. 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.
6:00 a.m., January 2, Wuhan, China
One cannot destroy a major research project at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, steal all the research results, and expect to live a long life. But twenty-nine-year-old Dr. Meiling Chen, MD, Ph.D., was a woman who had always exceeded expectations.
Under cover of darkness, Meiling left her apartment near East Lake, a little north of the Wuhan lab. As she traversed a section of the walkway that compassed the lake, footsteps in the distance behind her sent tingling chills up the back of her neck.
Her fear did not come from anything she had done but from what she was about to do.
After the footsteps faded, Meiling stopped beside the lake. She removed the battery from her cell phone and threw both the cell and the battery into the dark water. That would hinder the twenty-four-hour surveillance conducted by the Chinese Communist Party, the CCP, but they had other less pervasive means of tracking her.
At some point, CCP agents or the People’s Liberation Army, via the PLA military police, would come after Meiling to do much more than disappear her because treachery was the greatest sin against the party, a sin punished by torture and death.
But what would grate the most on the pride of the CCP is that they had, for the first time, offered a post-doctoral fellowship to a virologist, an outsider from the Hong Kong School of (snip)
I have mixed feelings about this. On the off-putting side, the voice is distant, omniscient in feel. Not that that’s wrong, but I want to be immersed in a character’s experience so that I, too, can experience what’s happening.
There’s a hint of peril here, but it is not immediate. We sort of know what will happen next in that the risks raised here will come into play. But I think the fuel that creates a strong narrative comes from a character having to deal with imminent trouble. We don’t have that here. There is a certain amount of info-dumping going on as well. That would fare better with me if the character was in the midst of dealing with a serious problem.
Later we learn that she takes a flight to Hong Kong and nothing happens. So why did I spend all this time on the opening? I’d look later in the narrative for a better place to start. Your thoughts, readers?
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 © 2025 Ray Rhamey, excerpt © 2025 by Harry.