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.
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.
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.
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.
Deborah sends the first chapter of The Ballad of Nick and Brenda. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
It was because of that jet that crashed right into his neighborhood in Brooklyn. December 15, 1960. That’s when Nick decided, even though he was just a kid.
He was the first one to see that DC-8 coming down that morning. Always in dreamland, always looking out those tall, grimy windows. Brother Michael had his back turned, the chalk tapping and squeaking as he finished putting a poem on the board. The knot of Nick’s school tie pushed hard against his throat as he stared at the thing outside, a steel whale on fire while the snow fell. It looked like it was headed straight for his school, but then it banked a little to the left, clipped a church steeple, then the fireball and a terrific bang.
In the two seconds before it hit, Brother Michael was turning and saying, “Scholars, when Mr. Blake says, ‘To see the world in a grain of sand—'” then he saw Nick’s face and looked out the window, just as the jet slammed into the ground and the whole building trembled.
All of them, twenty boys, rushed to those big windows. They saw Brother Joseph run out with his holy oils in case someone—anyone—needed last rites. When he came back ten minutes later, they crowded into the hall and watched as he pulled the heavy door open, snow crusting his black shoes, then shook his head at the question on Brother Michael’s face. He made a beeline for his office and shut the door in a way that said, Don’t ask.
And then a few minutes after that, a glassy-eyed Brother Michael came back from . . . (snip)
The writing and voice are good, but this opening utilizes what I call an “information question” as a tease to try to create tension. It doesn’t work for me.
An information question—as opposed to a story question—happens when an author deliberately withholds information that helps the reader understand what’s going on. In this case, it is what did Nick decide? Why isn’t it there? Why is it important?
It seems to be a key to what happens to him later, so why isn’t it here? It could raise a good story question to keep us reading. But it’s not there, and I can’t think of a single reason why not. Otherwise, it’s clear that there’s no harm to Nick in this opening, nor does it seem like there’s jeopardy ahead. He’s safe, unthreatened. So why would a reader wonder what might happen next to this character?
The answer to the information question does come at the end of the chapter, but the chapter has another issue, IMO—at the end, I still had no idea what this story is about. No story question has been raised, which is a clue that the narrative needs to start later, at a time when Nick faces something that forces him to act. I think there’s potential here, but we need a story to begin taking shape.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Frank sends the prologue and first chapter of Porro. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Prologue
By the light of the moon you can catch fireflies, or sit by a campfire watching the embers drift up toward the stars. You can stroll down a dirt road, or sit on your back porch with a glass of iced tea. By the light of the moon you can propose marriage, or leave your lover.
And by the light of the moon, if you have a shovel, you can try to bury your past.
That's exactly what Jack Cicero had in mind, on this night in early June. If life was going to screw with him, then there was only one thing that he could do.
The sun had already dipped below the horizon, and the full moon was threatening an early appearance. As he ducked under a canopy of pine trees, darkness shrouded him. He had to use his flashlight. The bright light stretched along a bed of pine needles. All of his senses went into high alert. He pushed his thick eye glasses tighter on his nose, and strained to listen for the sounds of approaching cars. He was far enough away from the road, and there were plenty of young trees, but still one couldn't be too careful. He was alone with only the sounds of the Snake River choking itself on the rocks in its path; and the sound of his pulse pounding in his head.
He pushed on not willing to test his luck. He spied a large rock under the trees, and set the flashlight down in such a way as to shield its beam from the distant road. If he heard anything, he could grab the light in an instant and kill it. Setting his shovel against the rock, he lowered his burlap bundle to the ground. He shook his head. There was no turning back now. He sighed, and straightened his shoulders.
Chapter 1
Cassie Klein parked her car in front of her mother’s house and turned off the engine. Despite the fact that it was just five o’clock in the evening, the sky was quickly darkening as black as night with the threat of a whopper of a thunder storm. Maplewood was going to get slammed. She absentmindedly ran her fingers through her strawberry blonde hair.
“C’mon Cass, we've gotta get inside before this rain hits!” said Maggs from the shotgun seat.
“In a sec,” Cassie answered. “I need to check my phone. Thought I got a message from the office.” She tapped her smart phone, not bothering to take off her seatbelt.
“Now? Cassie, it’s like going to pour on us at any second.”
“Hold on a sec.”
A recorded voice filled the car. “Hi Cassie, it's Grace Steiner. Since Dr. Fuller counseled us on the love languages, well, Jim and I are like newlyweds again. He's a bona fide miracle worker,” regaled the voice in the message. “But I guess you already know that. Anyway, we both decided that we need some time alone together, so Jim is taking me to Hawaii. Can you believe it? Sun and sand and... well you never know what else. So needless to say, we won’t be needing our appointment next week. Anyway, could you be a real doll and cancel it? I'll call you back to schedule our next session when we get back. Oh, and give Dr. Fuller a big hug for me. Ciao.”
Cassie sighed. Some couples have all the luck.
The prologue works pretty well, primarily because a mysterious mood is done well and there’s a good story question or two: what’s in that bag, and why does he want to bury it. So yes, I would turn the page—though it could use an eye for punctuation, and the mention that his glasses were thick is a break in point of view—he would not normally be thinking of the thickness of his glasses.
The chapter one opening has issues, though. There’s another pov break with her thinking of her hair color, but that can be fixed. There’s jut no tension here, no story questions raised, no hint of what the story is about. I urge Diane to look over the checklist and think about how to incorporate a problem and a story question here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Frank sends the prologue and first chapter of Porro. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Prologue
Sparkling sounds and mellow sights of a perfect noon-time summer day at any lakefront park anywhere in the world. Blue sky containing a tender breeze that nudges a few light-colored clouds. A young woman is walking a white Peek-A-Poo. “Mellie, baby… Could you please just do it for Mommy? She has to get back to work.” Mom and Dad, or maybe Gramma and Grampa, are feeding little ones a picnic lunch. Friends running down a wayward frisbee and laughing. Splat of collapsing cornhole bag and the pulse of bass from open windows and sunroofs…And a scream…Ripping, from deep within the heart …trailing off to a moan tinged with sorrow and sad, frightened recognition.
####
Fuzzy little Melanie had made a discovery. She was tugging a piece of soiled white cloth from one of the large squared-off openings in a dark green heavy mesh-plastic trash container. At first it seemed quite ordinary. But puppy’s mistress walked over to her good girl and quickly spotted the blood. And the smiley face. And she realized it was the tee shirt that all Northeast Ohio, as well as parts of eastern Indiana, Northern Kentucky and Southern Michigan had been seeing in their newspapers, on their TV screens and in Face Book newsfeeds for three days. It was shown next to the photo of a six-year-old-girl who had vanished from a supermarket parking lot in the nearby Ohio town of Ellinville.
Chapter 1
Twelve minutes later two Major Crimes detectives were on-scene. Michael Friedman had been on the unit all of a week and a half. His lead, Stan Porro, had twelve years on the job, nearly five in Major Crimes. On the short drive from Headquarters building they had only the briefest time to discuss the call.
“So whaddaya think, Stan? From what dispatch told you, I’m feeling edgy.”
“Good. I’d be worried if you weren’t.”
“Is it that missing kid?”
“Gotta be. Just the blood, maybe not. But that goddam smiley thing…
“Wow…Shit…”
“Ditto. Looks like you’re playin’ in the majors your first time up to bat.”
Porro pulled their unmarked Dodge Charger off Lake Road into the park entrance. He drove to the rear of the area and into a slot opposite the trash can, hood facing Lake Erie. They were three slots away from the black and white.
“Mike, go tell the uni to widen that perimeter by about ten yards. Then take her squad down to the entrance flip the lights on and block it. I’m calling CS. Stay there till they arrive. Hopefully, they’re not already out at another site. If we’re lucky we may be able to reopen the park before too long. The uniform will relieve you when she’s finished taping. And get her (snip)
The writing is okay, though there is a fair amount of “telling” in the narrative (eg. Fuzzy little Melanie had made a discovery.). But why did the scene-setting place us in a park anywhere in the world when, it turns out, it’s at Lake Erie? Ground us on real ground, not imaginary ground.
And I wonder why this is a prologue instead of the first part of chapter 1? Chapter one starts 16 minutes later. In my view, the prologue should be a scene that starts chapter one. A line break and a transition can easily bring the cops in.
As for turning the page . . . the discovery of a child’s body is certainly enough for me, though I’m not eager to read about the crime. But the chatter between the cops, including joking about hitting on a woman while responding to the murder of a child didn’t work to make me want more. This might be a fair representation of gallows humor among cops, but for me they should have been upset and concerned, not playful. So no on the first chapter—I didn’t really want to spend any more time with those guys.
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.
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.
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.
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.
David sends the first chapter of Breaking Now. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Ben Spencer was troubled as he made his usual safety assessment. Strategic survival options noted. Four exits within a hundred feet of section-F, row-W. Good, but not great. Another exit farther away, but closer to the stage. Much better choice. If anything happens, most of the crowd will flee toward the lobby doors. It’s where the bodies pile up. Ben knew this from experience. He would lead Debra to the exit near the stage.
They had argued. Mozart won. Ben would rather have been at the Foo Fighters gig, but Debra had insisted on the orchestra fundraiser. He didn’t have the stomach for a tussle. At least he was able to convince their friends Rick and Carol to come along. Why suffer alone?
Everything was catching up with him, and classical music was depressing, the soundtrack of cinema noir. He assumed life couldn’t get any worse. But, he was wrong. Not that he would blame Debra for the way things eventually turned out. It was entirely his fault. He alone risked everything he cared about, including his family’s safety. The mobster would probably have found a way to gain control whether Ben had been to the concert or not.
Pressure had been piling up. The crushing pressure from the bean counters. The self-imposed pressure to save his staff without compromising principle. His competitors were taking shortcuts, but Ben had been in the trenches. He wasn’t about to sacrifice his hard-earned reputation now that he had joined the ranks of management. The easy way out was tempting. He (snip)
The opening paragraph promises trouble ahead (although it is through "telling," rather than showing) . . . and then the next paragraph slips into backstory. And then the third paragraph seems to be letting us know that whatever is happening here has already happened and there were consequences. Then we continue with backstory in the form of musing.
While the opening suggests the beginning of a scene, it devolves into exposition. As it turns out, nothing happens at the concert. It ends, they leave safe and sound. So why are we at the concert?
Then we go to have drinks afterwards, and the protagonist has a conversation with a mobster—but nothing happens, not even a threat. It’s all friendly (except in the narrator’s mind). Seems clear to me that the story begins later, after this chapter ends. I suggest you look for the moment when trouble actually comes to Ben and start there. Oh, and it would be good to know what Ben is, what he does. On the second page there’s a hint that he’s a reporter with the reference to the crime beat, but that’s not really definitive.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Thomas sends the first chapter of a historical novel. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
IN THE EAST it happened, in ancient town, by ageless river—in the East, where the past was so old, so outrageous, so remembered, that nothing new and strange could seem entirely a surprise, unless heaven above should itself crack open.
One dark unbroken morning there in the East, a child always restless was seized by sudden stillness. The mother at once was aware of this change. The child lived in her womb and in recent weeks always wakened her by this hour with jerks and kicks.
Not today.
The mother’s mind stirred to alertness in the clinging early dawn. Why was this child so still?
From those movements in mornings past, she’d discerned how this child was one with her, yet separate, self-minded. The child—their first—was hers, yet not. Today this wonder deepened; the child chose not to budge.
Lying wide-eyed on her sleeping mat of river-reeds, for a moment the woman didn’t breathe. All the stillness—the child’s, her own, plus motionless shadows in the room around her—throbbed together in what seemed almost a thunder-roar. She closed her eyes.
In an instant, a moment breathless as death, her mind seemed stolen from her, swept forward across future years. Her inward eyes detected someone standing near, tall, wide-shouldered, (snip)
The writing is at a high level, the voice and tone one of epic stories. But it’s the author’s voice, not that of the nameless woman. Lack of a name is one small issue with me. In my view, names give character’s life, they signal that there is a person here. An anonymous “woman” falls short of that. More than that, it distances us from the character, which in turn distances us from caring about this non-person. This is not a narrative that immerses us into a character’s experience. If that’s okay with you, that’s okay, but I suspect some readers will turn away.
As for story questions, the only one that occurs to me is to wonder if the fetus has died. But that possibility does not occur to the woman, nor does she seem distressed about the lack of movement. So maybe there’s no need for us to do so.
On the next page is narrative that would have helped with tension had it been on the first. Unless all the exposition about “the East” figures into the story, I would delete that so that this could be included:
Her inward eyes detected someone standing near, tall, wide-shouldered, tensely alert; someone fearsome in beauty, though she couldn’t fully discern the face. This was, she sensed, her womb’s offspring—yet also a stranger, strong and alive and lovely.
The vision faded. Its mystery stayed. The woman inhaled deeply, opened her eyes, and laid a hand on her abdomen. This child did not move.
It's clear that this is an accomplished author when the chapter that follows sets up an interesting time during a Roman war (the time frame could have been better established in the opening, IMO). Your thoughts?
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kelly sends the first chapter of Bookworm. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Lyn hurled the book from her lap.
It scudded over the coffee table and landed on the hardwood floor in a page-crimping straddle. Though no one was around, she jammed a fist in her mouth to stifle her scream, then scrambled to the opposite end of the couch. With a wary eye she regarded the book, her body crouched and coiled for endless minutes, until an ache settled into her bones.
The furnace woke; its lusty clanks almost blasted her off the couch. The old heater’s belching usually didn’t spook her, but neither did books, not usually.
“John?” Lyn called her husband’s name, knowing it was foolish. She didn’t believe in ghosts.
A mug of coffee on its hotplate radiated tongues of steam and sugar-browned aroma. The black forest cuckoo clock ticked…ticked…ticked…like always, like everything was as it should be, which was not true. Eyes glued to the book, Lyn risked a sip. The grand burn down her throat was bitter and smooth and real. She slopped some as she set it down, then lunged for the book before she could change her mind.
She mouthed a sentence, the one that caused her to throw the book. If she heard the words from her own lips, that meant they were really there. But she spoke only a few words before her throat clenched and her iron resolve melted. This frail tongue was not the one that (snip)
I have two issues with this submission. But first, let me say that its good writing and good voice are all to the good. Lyn’s clear fright—terror?—at the words she read begin to raise story questions, and the reference to a ghost regarding her husband creates a good tease for a hook.
Issue the first: Yet I think that, with editing, this page could move from interesting to compelling in terms of story questions. All the detail about the coffee and the clock, etc. do set the scene . . . but, to my mind, at the expense of tension. Those details don’t impact the story, so why not get on with it? Here’s how I’d edit to make more of a grabber of this page:
Lyn hurled the book from her lap.
It scudded over the coffee table and landed on the hardwood floor. She jammed a fist in her mouth to stifle her scream, then scrambled to the opposite end of the couch. Crouched and coiled, she regarded the book until an ache settled into her bones.
The furnace woke; its lusty clanks almost blasted her off the couch. The old heater’s belching usually didn’t spook her, but neither did books, not usually.
“John?” Lyn called her husband’s name, knowing it was foolish. She didn’t believe in ghosts.
She mouthed a sentence, the one that had caused her to throw the book. If she heard the words from her own lips, that meant they were really there. But she spoke only a few before her throat clenched. This frail tongue was not the one that lashed a disorderly classroom into silence. A woman of books, a high school English teacher, and the words were too sharp. She touched her lips, half-expecting to feel blood.
She snapped the book closed. The cover had the library barcode sticker and an ISBN number. The cover was wrapped in clear plastic, as all library books were. Nothing about it suggested anything out of the ordinary.
Except the words inside.
For me, this page makes the story question of “what are those words? much more compelling. But making the page even more compelling leads to the other concern.
Issue the second: If you read ahead, you’ll find good writing, a good character, and mysterious goings-on that suggest a good story ahead. That’s fine. But the words in the book that terrified her are never revealed in this chapter.
While I appreciate that the writer is aiming for a cliff-hangerish teaser, for me, this is a cheat. You want to deliver the character's experience and, without those words, we are deprived of that. And I think that, had we learned what those words were at the start, right after we turned that edited page, her reactions would have a LOT more meaning, and the story tension would have been stronger. But maybe that’s just me. Read on and let me know what you think with a comment.
. . . lashed a disorderly classroom into silence. A woman of books, a high school English teacher, and the words were too sharp. She touched her lips, half-expecting to feel blood.
She snapped the book closed and examined the cover. It had the library barcode sticker and an ISBN number. The cover was wrapped in clear plastic, as all library books were. Nothing about it suggested anything out of the ordinary.
Except the words inside.
No way should these words be here. Yet, here they were. Lyn again thrust the book from her as if it were on fire.
***
With shaking hands Lyn poured another cup of coffee. To this she added a generous dollop of Bailey’s. On second thought, she added more. Lyn rubbed her eyes with her palms of her hands then massaged her scalp, then made her way to the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face. From his crate, Caesar raised his furry head in anticipation and watched with mismatched Husky eyes—one blue, one brown.
“I’ve lost my mind, Caesar. Any idea where it is?” Lyn ruffled his ears and let him out to do his dog business. His duty, as she called it. Her property was a mostly forested lot with the exception of a patch of tended lawn that butted up to the concrete patio next to the sliding doors. As the only residential property in the Park Hill Conservatory, acquiring it was a nature-lover’s dream. The conservatory was a 776-acre chain of parks and wild lands linked by waterways, gravel roads, and paved roads. The nearest farm was two miles north on Route 83. The bait store was just south on the same road. For the first time, Lyn wished for neighbors.
Caesar darted off to romp and sniff and take care of business. As he hunkered down, something behind the woodpile caught his eye. The hair on the nape of his neck went up and his tail stiffened. One paw raised in indecision.
“Caesar!” Lyn opened the slider. “Come.”
He glanced at her, then took off toward the rotting pile of partially-cut firewood. It was one of many shrines to Lyn’s late husband, John. The wood lay where John left it three years ago, the axe head still stuck in the splitting block, the half-stacked pile, and the just-hewn pieces in a jumble. When Lyn needed firewood for herself, she cut it fresh with her own axe on a new chopping block. To disturb John’s wood, to stack it, or (God forbid) use it was like taking away what she had left of him.
Caesar stopped just short of John’s memorial pile, though it was clear he wanted to break through the invisible fence. He barked and ran back and forth, stayed by the electric current that would zap him if he stepped beyond the boundary. Still, it looked like he might do it. He’d take a few steps forward, hear the warning beep from his collar, then hustle in an awkward backstep, all the while snarling and snapping.
Lyn dashed to her bedroom, peering out every window to make sure Caesar was still in the yard. Her rubber boots would have to do. She slammed them on and ran back to the door; her boots shrieked with each footfall as she raced. She didn’t have to look to know Caesar still barked his head off.
A thought brought Lyn up short before she opened the slider. Normally she wouldn’t do it, but the book spooked her. She clambered back down the hall to her bedroom and threw open the drawer where two guns were nestled. She grabbed the larger and banged her fingers on the drawer slot hard enough to make them bleed. She squeezed and flexed her trembling hands, willed them calm, then snapped off the safety. Caesar barked and barked, intent on whatever was behind the wood pile.
With the cumbersome gun she couldn’t pull the heavy slider, so she dropped the gun in her robe pocket. It weighed the pocket down and undid the knot so that the icy wind bit against her bare legs. Caesar didn’t even look her way as she waded through the mud and snow toward him, fingering the trigger and attempting to cinch her robe as she went.
“What is it, boy?” Lyn stopped short of the woodpile. Something smelled out of place. There was the pungent wood and leaves in various stages of decay. There was the freshly scraped earth where Caesar had scratched after his business. There was the rank stink of his business. That filled most of her nose. Lyn shook it off.
Under all that was another smell. It didn’t belong.
Lyn pulled out her gun and trained it on the woodpile.
“Caesar, quiet.”
He never listened.
Lyn picked her way around the pile, not looking down, feeling with her boots so as not to trip on the cut logs. She didn’t know what she expected to see, but what she saw rooted her to the spot, gun aloft. Caesar droned on, but his calls were drowned by the ringing in Lyn’s ears, the rush of her blood.
At first she thought it was a scarecrow. The body was dressed in a red and black flannel coat, black gloves, faded jeans, and hiking boots. But the head. The thing for a head was grey and scalloped. Little medallions flaked off or fluttered silently, weakened and broken by time. The work of a thousand hornets, now dead or dying on the snow. As dead as the headless body that lay with arms and legs spread wide. The open shirt collar revealed a neck awash in thick blood. The snow had been marred by scrapings and shoe prints. A chunk of hornets’ nest was ripped from the whole, and splintered medallions were strewn about the snow like coins. It gave the appearance of a head, blown away by a kill shot. Here was a hornet’s nest in the same pattern, someone’s macabre idea of art.
A hornet’s nest. That was no coincidence. First the book, now the hornets.
Lyn fled back to the house. This time, Caesar followed.
***
The police arrived in the time it took Lyn to throw up in the sink, wash her face, brush her teeth, and pace the kitchen a few dozen times.
Upon hearing the doorbell, it was Caesar’s abominable habit to become silent, to pad over to the door and wait for Lyn to open it. She joked that the only way Caesar would stop a burglary was if the thief would be so kind as to have a pet squirrel on his shoulder. Lyn spread the curtains and peeked out the bay window. Her dogwood tree had been garlanded with toilet paper, no doubt a gift from her students. The white loops danced and swayed in the winter wind. The pieces that tore loose blended in with the snow. Lyn’s yard was hit by students once a month during the school year, about average for a high school teacher who had the audacity to live in Park Hill and teach there too. The mostly-melted snow from a few days ago dappled the lawn, accented by gloppy ribbons of toilet paper. The sun shone, pale and anemic in a cloudless midwestern sky.
“Lyn Darrow?” One officer had Irish all over him, freckles and ginger wavy hair that rebelled against everything. He looked bored.
She nodded.
“The 911 operator reported a body on your property?”
“That’s right.”
Irish thumbed behind him. “Dispatch says you’ve got twelve-plus acres of woodland. Could you point us in the right direction?”
“It’s behind the woodpile.”
The second officer was tall and robustly built. His gaze swept the room, taking in everything and also somehow giving Lyn his full attention. “Do you know the deceased? A neighbor? Recognize him—or her—from anywhere?”
“It looks like a him, but no one’s going to recognize that.”
Both officers’ brows furrowed. “Could be an animal,” Irish said.
“It’s wearing clothes.” Lyn pulled her robe tighter against the biting air.
A second squad car showed up. The tall officer, L. Andrews, according to his badge, spoke into his radio that he copied their arrival. The two officers exchanged a look that meant something to them but nothing to Lyn. It lasted a few seconds.
“Fine,” said Irish. And he went outside to greet the arriving officers.
“What was that?” Lyn asked.
“We were discussing who would check out the body and who would question the caller.” L. Andrews wiped his shoes on the mat. “I won.”
“It was a glance.”
“We’ve worked together so long we have telepathy.” L. Andrews extended an arm. “Do you think we can continue our conversation inside, at the table? It might be more comfortable. I have to ask some questions.”
“A table’s not going to make me comfortable. Especially if you’re asking questions.” Lyn found she could only lock gazes for a second before she had to look away.
“Suit yourself.” He pulled out a tiny spiral notebook. Caesar wound around his legs, turning his polyester pants into fur pants.
“Caesar, go inside.”
“He’s no trouble.” The officer scratched Caesar behind his ears. “He probably smells the stray we just took to the pound.”
“He’ll never leave you alone now.”
“That’s alright.” His name was Leif, he said, pointing to the L. Andrews above his badge. Lyn tried to wrangle Caesar away from the officer. As she did so, her clunky Smith & Wesson banged into the door handle. The officer’s gaze fixed on her gaping pocket, and his kind eyes flashed with strain.
Lyn realized her mistake and made sure her hands were splayed and visible. “I took an LCH class and should know better.”
“It didn’t come up on your name.”
“I never got the actual license. Is it okay if I take it of my pocket? It’s heavy.”
“If it’s all the same, I’ll do the honors.” He gently, without so much as brushing her body, slipped the gun from Lyn’s robe pocket. She folded her robe tighter and re-tied the knot.
“Dumb of me.” Lyn blushed.
Andrews ’s cheek showed some heat as well. “You’re not the first. You’re in your home, so you’re not technically carrying a concealed weapon, but that wouldn’t protect you from a jumpy officer—”
“—who fancied himself in danger?”
“Exactly. Look, can we get in, out of the cold?”
“Sure.” Lyn opened the door and Caesar ambled inside.
Andrews set her gun on the end table and pulled a tiny spiral notebook from his breast pocket. Caesar kept putting his furry body in his way, so the officer had to dodge him. “Did you hear anything unusual, either last night or this morning? How’d you find the body?”
Lyn explained how Caesar’s barking alerted her. She left out the book, most unusual of things. Why she didn’t bring it up, she couldn’t say, except that she didn’t want this officer to think she was crazy. A surprising heat settled into Lyn’s cheeks as she answered Leif’s questions. It was unnerving, such focused attention.
The door opened, and would’ve slammed into the officer if he hadn’t thrown up a hand to block it. In blew an icy gust and the Irish officer, a frown creasing his face and forehead.
“Ma’am. There’s no body behind the woodpile.”
Lyn shook her head, at a loss.
“We checked the back yard. Nothing. Just tracks.”
“But. I saw—”
Irish put up his finger, indicating she wait. He spoke into his radio. “We’re a code 4 here…Right. No body. Copy?” To Lyn, he resumed, “Somebody, or probably somebodies, was screwing around behind your woodpile. There’s tracks everywhere.” Irish nodded at the dogwood tree garlanded in Charmin. “And we noticed you got fans.”
“I teach at the high school.”
“You must give some pretty harsh grades.”
Lyn started to protest, but realized Irish had his mind made up.
“There’s footprints everywhere and they lead off the property and come out at Sandy Ridge Road—it’s kids being stupid.” He ran his sleeve along his red nose. “They left you a present. A hornet’s nest.”
“Yes! I didn’t tell the 911 operator, but the body…it was headless. The hornet’s nest was the head. There must be blood. There was blood.”
Irish frowned, as if her credibility had gone the way of the body.
Lyn sat straighter and forced calm into her voice. “There was a body. I saw it. Are you telling me it got up and walked away?”
“I’m telling you it walked to Sandy Ridge Road. I can show you the tracks. The ‘blood’ is ketchup. Somebody’s having fun twisting your noodle. Juveniles, like as not.”
That was the out-of-place sweet smell she got right before she walked around the woodpile. Why hadn’t it registered? Because I was scared. First the book and then…
Andrews righted the chair and guided Lyn back into it.
Irish continued, “We can take a statement, but it’s a waste of time.”
“Mine, or yours?”
Leif studied her throughout the exchange. His eyes on her made her uncomfortably warm. Without her permission, he pulled up a chair and poised his pen. With an air of intimacy fit for a candlelight dinner, he leaned over the table, though she hadn’t joined him. “Ms. Darrow. Tell me exactly what you saw behind the woodpile.”
Irish sighed.
Patrolman Leif Andrews ignored him.
***
Irish made his consternation known by shifting his weight from foot to foot, not stepping off the welcome mat, sighing, and tweezing his mustache with his thick, freckled fingers. Eventually he pulled out his phone and got lost in the glow.
Leif asked more pointed questions about the body. Was it prone or face up? What color were the fingers? Had she noticed any footprints? Anything strange? Lyn confessed she smelled the ketchup, but it hadn’t registered. Somebody lay in her back yard playing dead, someone who knew about the hornets’ nest, after all this time. That part, Lyn left out.
Irish got a phone call and took it out on the front porch. They were alone. Lyn was in mid-sentence when Leif quietly interrupted.
“This isn’t the first time I’ve been here.” His careful tone said it all.
“You mean the day…John…?”
“First on the scene.” Leif nodded. “I’m sorry.”
The memory cut through the fog of three years. It would cut her through thirty years, three hundred years. That day would be a knife in any lifetime. This patrolman was here that day.
“I don’t remember you.”
“That’s okay.”
“I don’t remember very much.”
“That’s your brain trying to protect itself.”
“I wish it would protect me more.”
***
Irish blustered back in, breathing hard, hiking up his belt and stomping snow all over the rug. Another meaningful look passed between the officers. This time Patrolman Andrews shook his head and stood. “I’ll put a watch on your home for the next few weeks. You’ll see a lot more of ours driving by. We’ll run some license plate checks and talk to the park rangers about any unusual activity. We’ll be in touch.”
Lyn thanked him.
“And maybe you should get this licensed, just as a precaution. You went to the trouble to learn how to use it, may as well be legal.” He placed the gun on the table and gave his notebook a last look. “Oh…the hornets’ nest. Kind of an unusual prank. Any idea what’s up with that?”
Lyn nodded almost imperceptibly. “No.”
“No?” Leif leaned forward and tilted his head. So much focus.
Suddenly the wood grain on the table top was extraordinarily interesting. Lyn traced it with her finger.
“Ms. Darrow?”
“I hate hornets.”
Irish cleared his throat. It was time to go.
Lyn glanced over at the book. It was on the floor where she’d flung it.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Robert sends the first chapter of ’Embodied. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Vasco Calderon woke suddenly from a long phase of REM sleep.
“Time?” he asked me.
“4:18am,” I whispered into the microphones hovering in his ear canals. His brain patterns were in a chaotic state between sleep and wake. “Today is Monday, June 21st, 2478. Your first day at the SETI Institute,” I added.
“Lights.”
I turned the lights in his bedroom to the usual wakeup intensity: 20% of maximum.
“Brighter, 80%,”
Vasco squinted after I complied. Then he groaned and sat up in bed.
“Your limbic system was quite active during that last phase of REM sleep,” I said. “Cortisol levels are high. Would you like to document your nightmare?”
Vasco groaned. “The last thing I want to do is relive it.” Can you make some coffee?
I turned the coffee maker on in the kitchen. “Brewing,” I replied. “While you wait, I suggest taking a few minutes to record your dream before the memories fade. To preserve the option to interpret it later.”
Vasco sighed, but then began to list some details from his dream. “Science Olympiad. Delhi. 9th grade. Coach Auliffe…” Although the process was often unpleasant, Vasco was almost(snip)
There are nice things going on in this introduction narrated by an artificial intelligence—AI. I like that the narrative eases you into understanding that aspect of the narrator character. The writing and voice are just fine (except for a misplaced quote mark that you no doubt noticed).
But what happens here? It’s another waking-up-from-a-dream opening. The voice and the AI element make it different and fresher than the cliché. But that’s all that’s happening. There’s no real issue that Vasco or the AI have to deal with. No trouble, no problem. This is all setup. The dream is revealed and analyzed later, but actually has no impact on the story—it’s a device for delivering backstory about the nature of Vasco, but doesn’t affect the story.
The voice of the AI (Isadora, we learn later) is fascinating for me, and the technical details of the way this all works is too. I encourage Robert to find a way to start the story with something more in terms of a problem for either Isadora or Vasco and weave in as much backstory as is needed while things happen. Your thoughts?
. . . as committed to observing and documenting himself as I was. Even after nightmares and panics, he would complement my observations of his brain patterns and physiology with the relevant subjective data. Two and a half decades of continuous monitoring with millions of internal nanosensors allowed me to clearly identify Vasco’s basic emotional states. But I was blind to his complex thoughts and subjective experiences – unless he chose to express them.
Vasco finished documenting his dream while he showered and dressed. I set up the analysis and let the dream interpretation software crunch the data. Meanwhile, Vasco went into the kitchen, where nutty molecules from freshly brewed coffee met his smell receptors. He sat down at a small table by the window that looked out onto Inman Square, which was about to wake up for the workweek.
“Presentation,” Vasco said.
The first sip of black coffee activated a familiar neurocascade, starting in his sensory system and ending in his neocortex: smell coffee + feel heat + taste bitterness à dopamine reward à motivate cognitive focus. He began to review the materials that he would present to his new boss, SETI’s Chief Astrobiologist Olivia Orival. During interviews earlier that spring, Vasco had pitched Olivia on ways that his academic work could be adapted to help the Institute find extraterrestrial intelligence. Olivia seemed most interested in our astrobiology model: a complex and innovative simulation of possible paths of biological evolution on other planets. (Olivia called it an ‘Ecology Generator.’) For his doctoral project, Vasco compared and contrasted the handful of virtual planets that had generated eusocial species, including several similar to ants and bees. Olivia wanted Vasco to take the concept further by feeding the model SETI’s vast datasets and training it to imagine novel possibilities for alien intelligence and technology. Our progress in the months before graduation had already led to some promising ideas and puzzling questions. Vasco was ready to report in and discuss the work with Olivia.
Vasco worked hard to be independent of everyone but me. But depending on me kept getting more expensive by the second. My needs for electricity, memory, processing power, upgrades, and expansions were ever increasing. Vasco’s organic brain was capped by the size of his cranium and his limited metabolic capacity. But his inorganic nervous system – which evolved into the ‘I’ who writes these words – extended outwards from Vasco’s body and sprawled boundlessly into the Cloud.
As a student, Vasco relied on his university’s computing resources to keep me up and running. But he still had to work part time as a coder for a tech conglomerate to support my medical and personal functions. When the SETI Institute made him a job offer, Vasco made his acceptance contingent on two requests: access to a dedicated, massive quantity of SETI’s computing resources; and a start date that coincided closely with his graduation. Olivia had initially balked at Vasco’s vast need for computing power, which she said amounted to over 5% of SETI’s budget. (“Most new hires’ work runs on just a handful of servers,” she said.). But a few days later she told Vasco that his unusual request had been approved by SETI’s director, Victor Khosla. Vasco was elated. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence had been his drive since his early teens. And the SETI Institute was Earth’s most prestigious and monied patron for this quest.
But rather than celebrating or resting on his laurels, Vasco got right to work modifying our astrobiology model. And I prepared to transfer most of myself – the professional parts, at least – to SETI’s computer system before Vasco lost his student status.
Vasco finished his second cup of coffee shortly after dawn. With a flick of his eyes, he cleared the astrobiology work from his retinas. Then he got up from his small kitchen table and left his apartment. The sun was still beneath the eastern horizon, but after only a dozen steps, the humid air precipitated moisture from Vasco’s skin. By noon, it would be unhealthy for a human to be in the direct sunlight for more than twenty minutes.
Vasco still had over two hours before his 8am meeting with Olivia. He walked in silence towards the river and climbed stairs up to the walkway on top of the twenty-meter embankment that protected East Cambridge from the sea. Vasco strolled for a while as Sol rose above the Boston skyline on the other side of the river. When the direct sun became too hot and bright, he sat down on a bench shaded by large weeping willow tree.
“Have you finished analyzing my dream?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I replied. “Would you like to see the interpretation now, or wait until after the meeting with Olivia?”
“Now,” Vasco nodded.
Vasco was pensive for several minutes after he read the report. “Isadora, can you bring up some records from my 9th grade Science Olympiad team?” he finally asked. “Starting with the regional finals – no, actually, start at the beginning, at tryouts the previous fall.”
It took me half a second to curate pictures and videos from the visual and audio records. Then I displayed the collection in a chronologically ordered image stack on Vasco’s retinas. With slight twitches of his eyes, he scrolled through pictures from the fall and winter months of the tryouts and practice sessions that had led up to competition season in the spring.
As Vasco looked through the images, long-dormant memory sequences fired in his hippocampus. Facial recognition circuits in his fusiform gyrus pinged linguistic nodes in his neocortex. Vasco recalled the names of classmates he had not seen in over a decade.
He lingered on a picture of Auliffe, a biochemistry teacher who had been his personal Science Olympiad coach. Moments before the image was captured, Vasco had correctly answered a complex organic chemistry question – demonstrating to Auliffe that he was finally able to visualize the three-dimensional structure of organic bonds between atoms. Auliffe’s face brightened with delight at Vasco’s hard-won progress. If a teacher’s greatest joy was to see her students grow and learn, in this picture I aimed to capture an archetypal image of that experience. Vasco’s face loosened into a smile as his brain offered him a cascade of positive memories associated with Auliffe.
Flipping forward through the image stack, Vasco arrived at records of the regional competition in Springfield. He smiled again as he viewed pictures of his teammates and coaches hoisting the 1st place trophy, which had earned them a place at the system-wide championship in Delhi. Then he came upon a video that I had compiled of the team dinner celebrating the regional championship. Vasco, his six teammates, and the team’s three coaches sat at a round table in the back room of a Somerville restaurant. Vasco’s mouth watered as he watched his younger self eat citrus-flavored salmon and vegetables stir-fried in garlic and soy sauce. Although the team had spent many hours studying and training together over the past months, this was the first time they had gathered together to celebrate, without any kind of academic agenda. For dessert they ate chocolate cake so moist that it sagged under the weight of its dripping frosting. A rare delicacy was served to wash down the cake: 10 centiliters each of natural, farmed bovine milk.
Auliffe punctuated the meal with short speeches praising each individual member of the team. Vasco smiled again as he rewatched Auliffe talk about his teammate Ryebo, “who not only won Top Chemist prize at the regionals, but also devised the ‘Brain Food” meal plan to optimize our team’s cognitive development and performance as we prepared for competition over these past months.” Auliffe, noticing that Ryebo had not touched the piece of oozing chocolate cake that had been placed in front of him, continued, “And even now, after winning the regional finals for the first time in our school’s history, Ryebo won’t allow himself a piece of cake to celebrate! My doctor would appreciate it if I had that kind of discipline,” she said dryly, patting the pouch on her middle-aged belly.
Everyone at the table laughed. “The simple carbs in the cake will sap the energy that I need to study,” Ryebo replied, his face serious. “I ate plenty of fish and berries though!” The left corner of Ryebo´s mouth curled slightly upwards. Everyone laughed again. A goofy chant broke out at the table, echoing one of Ryebo´s favorite sayings: “Fish is brain food, fish is brain food.”
Ryebo´s smile widened. “I have another idea,” he said after the chant died down. “I propose that we make fish our official team food.”
His teammates and coaches cheered with approval. Ryebo sat back in his chair and took a small, satisfied sip of his milk.
Vasco paused the video. “I’m hungry,” he said to me, “can you bring up some places that are open for breakfast?”
Vasco rose from the shaded bench and began walking towards the nearest source of food, a small restaurant in Kendall Square called Biome that served modern gastronomy in a vintage 20th century diner setting. Although he had lived in this neighborhood all his life, Vasco had never eaten there before. Usually he ate on strict schedule, wasting as little time as possible on nourishment by consuming individualized nutrient bars that I custom printed each morning to optimize his cognitive performance.
The restaurant was empty at such an early hour on a Monday morning. Vasco sat at a stool and used the display at the counter to order a vegetable omelet and fruit drink. Then he pulled up his presentation to review it again before his meeting with Olivia.
Once the robotic arm served his breakfast, Vasco closed his presentation, resumed the video, and widened his eyes until it occupied most of his field of vision. Back in the Somerville restaurant, Auliffe turned towards Vasco and met his younger eyes (and my inorganic eyes: the nanocams floating in his aqueous humor). Each of Vasco’s teammates had already been the subject of Auliffe’s personalized speeches. Now it was his turn. He watched his adolescent self look down shyly at the shmears of chocolate frosting that remained on his plate. After a few expectant moments, he raised his gaze back towards Auliffe, tenderly awaiting his praise.
“Vasco,” Auliffe began, “when you tried out back in September, I had no way of knowing that you would end up being a top contributor on a Science Olympiad regional champion. In fact, now seems like the right time to be more honest with all of you about something.”
Auliffe looked around at the other two coaches, gaining their silent approval to continue. Then she sat down in her chair and took another sip of milk. When she continued speaking, it was at 60% of the previous volume. After looking around the table, her eyes settled back on Vasco. “We kind of had to break our own rules for you to be here. At the end of tryouts, your performance did not justify a place on the team. Several older students had the numbers to beat you out. In a competition held last September, that is. But your rate of improvement during the month of tryouts was off the charts. You were starting very low on the learning curve, of course, where steep improvement is expected. But then your curve had a different trajectory. It remained just as steep the higher up it you climbed. We knew it could be a fluke, that your curve would eventually flatten too. But we took a risk and decided to ride the growth as far as it would take us.”
Auliffe lowered her voice by another five decibels. “And now, six months later, here we are on our way to Delhi, still waiting for your curve to flatten out. After tryouts, we had a lot of parents of seniors come to us angry, complaining that we gave you their kids’ spot. Thank you for making us look smart, for rewarding our risk.”
Past-Vasco, the experiencer, and present-Vasco, the watcher, both smiled.
“And as we’ve gotten to know you better these last six months,” Auliffe continued, “I think we have all come to admire your completely extreme, 24/7 approach to learning. Never before had I heard of someone using an AI to neurostimulate additional REM sleep for its learning benefits.”
“Well, that was Isadora’s work,” Vasco replied, again looking down at the crumbs on his plate. I continued to compare Vasco’s emotional reaction watching the video to the record of his reaction in the moment. Parallel patterns, as to be expected. Mixed emotions, all at high valence.
Auliffe continued, “But it was your idea – the REM sleep thing – right? And you had to bear the emotional stress of the excess dreaming. Sure, your AI – Isadora – did all the grunt work, the monitoring, the analysis, the electrostimulation. But your creativity at putting powerful AI to use is unparalleled. And you seem to get compounding results over time. The educational system that you two have devised over the years is leaps ahead. By parceling some of it out to each of your classmates, we’ve more than doubled the usual teamwide improvement rate. You’ve – correction, you and Isadora have made us better learners, better teachers. We are all so glad to have you on the team.” Auliffe looked around the table, her body language inviting Vasco to do the same. The ten pairs of eyes looking back at us were filled with warmth and appreciation.
“And just as much as we admire your single-minded dedication to learning,” Auliffe continued, “and respect your need for focus and privacy, we hope you will find ways to come out of your shell a bit and let us get to know you better in the future.”
Past-Vasco’s brain enjoyed a warm bath of oxytocin. But present-Vasco experienced sharp, unmistakable pangs of shame and grief. He paused the video, put down his fork, and took a drink of water. After a few moments, the physical intensity of his painful feelings precipitated a panic. In defense, activity in his frontal cortex spiked, down-regulating his emotional response.
“Let’s have one last look at that presentation,” he said, bringing laser-focus back to more comfortable terrain while he finished his breakfast.
***
Vasco arrived in the lobby of SETI’s building a few minutes before 8am. Olivia greeted him warmly and took him to security for microchipping.
The head of security was a burly man with a close crew cut and reddened face. The white, too-tight collar of his shirt expelled a ring of skin and adipose tissue, which then folded itself back over the collar. He greeted Olivia with deference before brusquely introducing himself to Vasco.
“Phage, Security. You are Vasco Calderon, correct?”
“Yes.” Vasco cowered in Phage’s shadow, as if he had already done something wrong.
“Do you submit to facial and retinal recognition to verify your identity?”
“I do.”
“I suspect you’ve been chipped before?”
“Ummm, yes,” Vasco replied, nervously looking at Olivia, who maintained a calm, neutral smile. “I have a lot of, ummm, chip implants. I’ve had them my whole life, actually. A system of nanodevices,” Vasco stammered. “Medical devices.”
“SETI’s security chip is pretty standard; it shouldn’t interfere with your medtech,” Phage said, looking bored. “The chip will give you physical access the building and connect you to SETI’s private intranet. Do you want to check with your doctor to make sure that the chip is compatible?”
Vasco nodded.
“Scan this barcode, please,” Phage said, holding a small, vacuum-wrapped package up to Vasco’s eye level.
The barcode pointed me to documentation of the chip’s specs on the Cloud. If it did only what it claimed to do, it would be harmless medically – although it would be impossible to know exactly what it was capable of until we saw it in operation.
“The chip seems fine.” I whispered to Vasco. “Standard.”
After Vasco relayed my approval, Phage said, “Where do you want the chip? Usually we bury it in some fat near the triceps.”
Most of my brain lived in the Cloud, but over the years we had implanted some processing and memory chips into Vasco’s body as an auxiliary backup. I told Vasco to ask them to put the new chip in an area of his left calf that was free of implants.
Phage shrugged and unwrapped the chip from its protective packaging. Vasco rolled up his pant leg. After a short pop, Phage tossed the disposable remains of the implantation syringe into a med debris bin. Then he bowed to Olivia and turned to walk away.
As Olivia walked Vasco towards the elevators, I used the chip to connect to SETI’s network and start indexing its content. Vasco had been fantasizing about accessing SETI’s databases for years; he would want me to show him around as soon as he had the chance. I was already on lookout for new data sets that we could feed into our astrobiology model.
Olivia told the elevator to go down to the bottommost level, six floors beneath the street. The elevator doors opened into a rounded, tunnel-like hallway with black walls, dimly backlit by blue and green fluorescents. After pointing out the bathrooms, kitchen, and a large, bright rec room off the hallway, they emerged from the hallway’s mouth into a cavernous space with the same muted lighting.
“The architect really achieved a cave-like feel, no?” Olivia said. “Everyone calls it the Colony. Like an ant colony.”
Vasco looked around to take in the room’s striking design. Dozens of nodes of workstations reached their highest concentration near the center. A huge display screen was built into a wall at the front of the room.
Goose bumps rose on Vasco’s skin. He shivered and rubbed his arms. I did not have access to an external thermometer to measure the exact room temperature, but Vasco’s physical reactions implied that it was less than 60 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I see you have the first day shivers,” Olivia said. “Sorry that I couldn’t tell you ahead of time to bring a sweater. But now you’re officially an employee, and your non-disclosure agreement is in effect. So I can let you in on one of our closely guarded secrets. The SETI Institute has a powerful quantum computer. Dirac. It sits just below our feet. Underground housing provided the initial layer of shielding against the heat and electromagnetic activity above. Then it was further wrapped in layers of metallic, composite, and magnetic shielding, and supercooled in order to prevent the wave function from collapsing.”
“How long has it maintained quantum coherence?” Vasco asked. Despite shielding and cooling efforts, quantum CPUs of this era remained vulnerable to outside leaks that could render them inoperable without any warning. Most of the longest running systems were on the Luna, where it was easier to keep them cold and isolated beneath kilometers of moonrock.
“I’ve said pretty much all I know about Dirac,” Olivia replied. “Our director Victor probably knows more, but good luck getting him to talk about it. I think he signed a strict non-disclosure agreement with the manufacturer. Quantum computing trade secrets are worth trillions. Anyway, most of our researchers work on this level. And you’ll see that most of them dress warmly. We could heat the room more to offset the chill from the cooling equipment below, but we find that 60 degrees – and well-bundled – is also a good temperature for productivity.”
“That’s OK,” Vasco said. “I like to work in the cold.”
Olivia nodded. “Most of our group meetings also happen here,” Olivia said, looking up at the large display screen.
Vasco followed her eyes, and then startled. “You mean, you want me to present here? Today? I thought I would just be presenting to you.”
“Oh no,” Olivia replied. “You can present upstairs in my office. But I wanted to show you the Colony first, so you could see where most of the real work happens. This will be your workstation,” she continued, pointing him to a row near the back of the room. “You may customize it however you like. Most of our junior scientists and engineers sit in this area.”
A few of Vasco’s new colleagues looked over and nodded or waved silent greetings to Vasco and Olivia. Some appeared to be early risers. Others – based on their body odor and bleary eyes – seemed like they had been working throughout the night.
“You’ll have time to introduce yourself to the other ants later,” Olivia said, with a small grin. “I’m eager to see your work; let’s go upstairs.”
Olivia was still and quiet as the elevator ascended to the 45th floor. But for Vasco, the silence in the confined space quickly became awkward. When it reached the 10th floor, the elevator stopped to admit another passenger. While waiting for the doors to close, Vasco took a deep breath, slouched, and began to shift back and forth on his feet. This drew an uncomfortable glance from the inbound passenger, but Vasco was already too lost inside his anxiety to register the social cue.
“While you wait,” I whispered to Vasco, “take a quick first look at SETI’s databases.”
Vasco closed his eyes to focus on the file trees that I had projected onto his retinas. His body became quiet, and the activity in his brain shifted from his limbic system to his cognitive circuits. When the elevator reached the 45th floor, Olivia gently tapped Vasco’s shoulder to bring him back into the physical world.
Olivia’s office was framed by a floor-to-ceiling window offering a wide view of Cambridge. The 42.36 latitude of North America stretched westwards. A few small pictures of Olivia with her two children and partner were projected around the edges of her desk. [TK Describe Olivia physically.] Olivia led Vasco to a small sitting area and took a seat across from him. I interfaced with the newly installed security chip to display Vasco’s presentation onto a viewscreen.
Vasco cleared his throat. His brain was alert and focused. I detected some patterns characteristic of performance and social anxiety, but nothing severe enough to cause an outright freeze or panic. He was enthusiastic about his work, overprepared, and excited to have Olivia as an audience. But before he could begin, there was a knock on the door.
Olivia’s face soured. She sighed once deeply, but when she spoke a moment later it was in a welcoming voice. “Come in.”
Vasco and I recognized Victor Khosla as soon as he walked in the door. As executive director of the SETI Institute, Victor often gave public talks about SETI in order to educate and raise money. He was a charismatic speaker, but the recordings that we had seen on the web did not prepare Vasco for his intimidating personal presence. Victor stood over two meters tall, and his broad shoulders and muscular arms were wrapped in a custom-tailored white shirt made of fine linen. His salt-and-pepper hair showed some signs of ageing, but his olive skin was remarkably clear and smooth for a person of seventy.
Olivia rose from her seat. “Good morning Victor. I’m in the middle of a meeting. Can we talk later?”
“I was actually hoping to join your meeting,” Victor replied. He spoke and carried himself with the confidence and entitlement of a man who was not used to being told no. One of his biographies on the web described Victor as ‘of dual brahmin ancestry: his mother traced her roots back to gilded age Boston industrialists; his father was a wealthy and influential Indian-American venture capitalist.’ His upbringing conferred the connections and ease around wealthy donors that Victor relied upon to bankroll SETI’s mission.
Olivia regarded Victor with a playful, suspicious look.
“Aren’t you going to introduce me?” he said, with a sly smile.
Olivia shook her head and took another deep breath of resignation. “This is Vasco Calderon,” she said, motioning with her hand for Vasco to stand. “Our newest employee. Vasco, this is Victor Khosla, executive director of the SETI Institute.”
Vasco rose and turned to face Victor. “Nice to meet you,” he stammered, and then quickly looked down at the floor.
Victor approached and stood at an arm’s length from Vasco, quietly sizing him up. After a few moments of awkward silence, Vasco raised his eyes and extended his right hand.
“Nice to meet you also,” Victor said finally. “Sorry to be rude, but I am not in the habit of shaking hands. Bit of a germophobe. This heat and humidity are a breeding ground for treatment-resistant microbes,” he continued, waving his hand towards the window. “It’s just not worth the risk. Anyway, I’m sure I don’t need to educate you on all this, you’re a biologist.”
Vasco withdrew his hand and slunk back into his seat. Victor took a seat next to where Olivia had been sitting. Olivia took a few more moments to silently assess the situation before retaking to her seat next to Victor. Her body language and lack of enthusiasm towards her boss suggested that she resented his presence. But Victor seemed oblivious – willfully or otherwise. He crossed his legs, folded his hands on his lap, and looked up at display screen expectantly. “Creating an ET Generator,” he said, reading the title of Vasco’s presentation.
“Should I – should I begin?” Vasco asked, looking to Olivia for guidance.
“Please do,” she said. Her smile remained welcoming, but there was a tightness in her face that had not been there before.
Prior to Victor’s intrusion, Vasco’s brain had been in an ideal state for presenting his work. But now he was near frozen with panic. He stammered his way through the first few slides, summarizing how he had expanded his astrobiology model’s input range to make it ready to digest SETI’s data sets. He breathing was shallow, his tone was flat, and his voice was an octave higher than normal. He snuck glances towards Olivia for signs or interest or support, but she appeared distracted.
Ten minutes into the presentation, Victor interrupted, “Pardon me, but I’m not a coder or an astrobiologist. I’m used to reading executive summaries. Can you jump ahead to the takeaways?”
A wave of panic broke over Vasco’s nervous system. Beads of sweat began to collect on his scalp.
“Sure,” Vasco managed to say. He flicked his eyes ahead to reach the last slide. “Conclusions,” he continued, robotically. “First, fortunately, the model’s core algorithmic engine was designed from the beginning to accommodate a wide range of data types.” Vasco jumped directly ahead to the next bullet point, skipping over the contextualizing comments that he had prepared to further develop each takeaway. “Second, trial datasets were well-integrated by the model, and any related bugs were relatively easy to correct.” With each sentence, Vasco’s zest retreated further and further behind dry layers of scientific formality, “Finally, although it is too early to tell how the model will respond to an exponential increase in inputs, theoretically, there is good reason to believe that the astrobiology model we developed for my Ph.D. thesis – the Ecology Generator, to use Olivia’s term, can be transformed into an ET Generator.”
Vasco interlaced his hands, sat back in his chair, and looked down at his lap. He had given what was meant to be a one-hour presentation in less than fifteen minutes, omitting the most forceful and captivating aspects of his work.
Victor sat in silence, staring at Vasco’s final slide with a severe look on his face. Olivia wore a look of intense concentration, but it was clear that her focus remained on something other than Vasco’s presentation. The wave of relief Vasco felt at completing the presentation quickly washed away, and the heavy silence again made Vasco anxious.
“Ask them if they have any questions,” I whispered.
“Umm, do either of you have any questions?” Vasco asked.
“I have just one,” Victor said, speaking in a measured tone. “What is compelling enough about this work to justify 5% of SETI’s budget?”
Vasco’s body curled into itself like a snail retreating into its shell.
Olivia snapped back into the present. She flashed a disapproving look at Victor, but he ignored her and spun his body to face Vasco.
“Don’t get me wrong,” Victor continued, “I do see some minor potential in this work. It is novel and ambitious contribution to the astrobiology field, but also quite academic and theoretical. I have seen a lot of elegant computer models, but the only ones worthwhile are ones that can be trained and fine-tuned on real world data. And when it comes to astrobiology, we still only have one data set – our own solar system.”
“That’s not true,” Olivia interrupted. “For centuries now, astronomers have amassed spectrographic and gravitational observations from most of the systems in the Orion arm – almost eight-hundred million stars, with ten times that many planets. The SETI Institute has most of that data, and what we don’t have we can borrow or rent. You are always saying how our data sets are one of SETI’s key assets; that if we collect enough data, someday we’ll stumble upon intelligent life. Vasco came up with a way to crunch the data in a new way. At the very least, this approach is a though experiment, something to stimulate and expand our imaginations. Give it a chance.”
Victor turned to Olivia and tipped forward into an aggressive posture, suggesting that he relished the chance to debate a worthy adversary. Olivia sat up in her seat and straightened her spine.
“And you’re always telling me how complex evolutionary biology is,” Victor said to her. “How one meteorite impact or a single mutation in a virus can drastically alter the fate of a living planet. I know that astronomers have come a long way since Galileo and his optical lenses, to detect the compositions and atmospheres of planets in star systems light years away. But here in our own solar system, we weren’t able to piece together the histories of other planets and moons until we were able to send probes to collect rock samples, perform radioactive dating, measure magnetic fields, gather seismic data, etc. Vasco is proposing to feed an algorithm designed to model an evolutionary process with static data – amounting to not much more than a few hints and clues about distant exoplanets with liquid water or oxygen atmospheres.”
Vasco and I had been aware of Victor’s critique from the earliest stages of our work. In fact, one of the slides that Vasco had skipped over described ways we had attempted to compensate for this problem.
“I’ll leave it to Vasco to defend the technical aspects of his work,” Olivia said, giving Vasco a long look inviting him to do just that. “But Victor, would you even give him the chance?” she continued. “Just ten minutes into his presentation – actually, make that just ten minutes after meeting him – you rushed him forward to his conclusions, and then proceeded to figuratively defecate on his entire research program. And it’s not even fair, because he geared his presentation for a technical audience – me. And then you swoop in unannounced and ask him to give an executive summary, unprepared. It’s an impossible bind.”
“If Vasco can’t explain his work to me in a compelling way,” Victor replied, “how can I explain it to our donors? Olivia, you know that I am open to new ideas, to trying new things. But my role at SETI boils down to raising and allocating capital. For something amounting to 5% of our budget, I have to cast a critical eye. It has to be compelling. And I’m sorry,” he continued, turning back to Vasco, “I don’t mean to be callous, but I do not find your work compelling enough to justify its high cost.”
Vasco avoided Victor’s gaze and looked down again at his lap. Olivia gave him a few moments to defend himself, but once it became clear that he was unwilling or unable, she sighed again and sat back in her chair with an exasperated look.
“Well, I’m confused then Victor. Why did you approve Vasco’s extraordinary request for computing resources if you weren’t intrigued by his work? It seems cruel – even for a self-declared ‘callous allocator of capital’ – to offer the guy a job only to shut him down on his first day.”
Victor smiled devilishly. “Maybe there are other ways that Vasco can help us.”
Vasco and Olivia both stared at Victor, expecting to hear more.
“What do you mean?” Vasco finally asked, in a low, sheepish voice.
“Well, you’ve heard my concerns with the methodology behind your so-called ‘ET Generator.’ But I do agree that the objective of your work is a worthy one. I just have a different way of getting there.”
Olivia and Vasco exchanged a glance, each searching the other’s face for signs of understanding.
“C’mon Victor, you know I dislike your guessing games,” Olivia said. “Would you like to elaborate? You have a different way of generating potential forms of alien intelligence?”
“Yes,” Victor replied. “But not the far-fetched, theoretical examples generated by an academic computer model.” Victor turned again to face Vasco before continuing. “A real, flesh and blood specimen of advanced intelligence. Well, not just flesh and blood, but also nanoware and memory banks. Bits and qubits.”
“Now I’m really confused Victor. Surely you are not trying to convince me that Vasco is an extraterrestrial?”
“No, but he might be the closest thing we have to one. Vasco is an Earthling, no doubt about it. But far from a typical Earthling. His enormous request for computing power was a clue pointing to a proverbial iceberg beneath the surface. In other words, by making said request, Vasco revealed that his mind relies on an extreme degree of collaboration with artificial intelligence. So, I had some private investigators sleuth into his background. And they discovered that Vasco has been hybridized with cutting-edge nanotech and AI since he was a fetus. What’s more, he was also genetically engineered for hyperintelligence and compatibility with an AI. Olivia, the SETI Institute has been looking for alien intelligence for over half a millennium now, still with nothing to show for it. But meanwhile, right here on Earth, humanity has been working on transcending its organic limitations, evolving itself into a form of life that is actually capable of projecting itself into the galaxy. Vasco here represents the leading edge of this evolutionary process. So instead of using his model to dream up outlandish aliens based off scanty data, wouldn’t it be better to just study him?”
“You had private investigators dig up personal information about Vasco’s background?” Olivia asked. Her voice dripped with disapprobation.
“You want to study – me?” Vasco asked, his voice cracking. “What do you mean?”
Victor ignored Olivia’s question and kept his gaze locked on Vasco. “Well,” he said, “we can start by transferring all of your data – the professional and the personal – over to SETI’s database. And then we would have a complete representation of an advanced, hybridized intelligence. An actual prototype that our psychologists and biologists could study, in order to learn what makes you tick. That might give us a much better idea of what kind of aliens we should be looking for.”
“This isn’t right, Victor.” Olivia said. “You should see yourself right now – you are staring at Vasco like he is a juicy piece of meat. He’s a human being, not your research subject.”
“Is he really a human being, though? I mean, technically, is he really a homo sapiens? Shouldn’t we consider someone so genetically engineered, so embedded with nanotech, so integrated with AI, as a different species? Homo cyborgus, or something like that? Homo digitalis? The anatomical differences are as clear as day,” Victor continued. “Look at him – the volume of his cranium must be 20% larger than average. I bet it was genetically engineered that way to accommodate a larger brain size. Not to mention his embedded nanotech, which is essentially augmented anatomy, a twin sensory system, with a sixth ‘medical’ sense.”
“I’m not talking about speciation, you ruthless reptile,” Olivia snapped. “I am saying that you need to start treating him like a sentient being. With a modicum of empathy and respect. Stop dehumanizing him by trying to obliterate his right to privacy, so you can dissect him like a lab rat.”
“One can be a human being and a willing research subject,” Victor replied, unfazed. “If I were Vasco, I’d see it as a pretty attractive deal. We foot the entire bill for his AI – including allocations for future expansion. In exchange, Vasco lets us study him. The value he’s getting in computer resources alone is many times the entire annual salary of most junior scientists. There might also be intangible benefits. Vasco, I bet you’ve felt different all of your life. Isolated. But you should embrace it. Let the *normal* people feel good by fitting in. You would get to feel far better by contributing to SETI research in a way that only you – as far as I know – can. And don’t you want to increase your self-knowledge? Exploration – of both inner and outer worlds – are a high form of spirituality, right up there with environmentalism. Don’t you think?”
Olivia was speechless. Victor looked back and forth between her and Vasco with a wide grin, appearing very satisfied with his case.
“So,” Victor said to Vasco, “do we have a deal?”
Vasco’s bowels began to move his breakfast towards the terminal end of his digestive tract. He clenched his sphincter and pelvic muscles and stood up from his seat, holding his knees together. “I need a – I need a bathroom,” he said.
Olivia sprung from her seat, took Vasco’s arm, and quickly walked him out of her office to a bathroom down the hall. “I’ll be back in my office when you’re finished – when you’re ready,” she said.
Vasco made it to the stall just in time to avoid an accident.
“Isadora, what is happening? Were my eggs laced with a hallucinogen? Can you confirm that I am hearing all this correctly? SETI wants to study me? They want access to all my data – even the personal stuff? There’s no way…I would never…”
“Confirmed,” I replied.
“Every email, every conversation, every dream…” Vasco said.
“Every emotion, every thought-out-loud, every response to my every query, every autoerotic experience, and your entire medical record – down to the last DNA base pair,” I said. [TK Add other details.]
Vasco sat on the toilet with his head in his hands. “I’m trying to imagine Victor and his psychologists dissecting my life, psychoanalyzing me.” He shuddered. “All of our devotion to self-monitoring…my life is so boring that I never thought anyone would care to study us. I never thought it would make me this…this…”.
“Vulnerable,” I said.
Vasco finished with the toilet and washed his hands. His nervous system buzzed with adrenaline. He usually avoided looking in mirrors, especially in public places. But that day he caught a glimpse of the abject terror in his own reflection. He froze in front of the mirror for over a minute, unable to break contact with his own widening eyes. After the freeze came the flight. To the elevators, through the lobby, and outside into the glare of bright morning sunlight.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jeff sends the first chapter of The Art Murders. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Adam wondered if she would live until morning. He had dropped an excessive dose of Rohypnol and Valium into her cocktail, and while that alone probably wouldn't kill her—with the surprisingly cold water enveloping her body—the combination of muscle relaxants, sedatives and hypothermia should.
She had leaned heavily against him as they had walked slowly like tipsy lovers down West Broadway, just half a block from the bar, to this tiny, private park. Adam had planned it that way.
It had taken thirty minutes, maybe longer, to do his work. His capacity to sense and measure time passing was diminished when he was overtaken by the act of creation. He had experienced the transcendence of his handicap—the broken part of his nervous system—only a few times in life so far, all during the past few weeks. This was his fourth such experience, to be exact.
Adam stepped back, folded his arms across his chest, and admired his work. She looked almost perfect, her head and arms seeming to float above the water, while her body disappeared so gracefully into its depths. She had turned out to be an even better model than he had hoped. The dress he had found and sent to her was stunning: the silver-beaded bodice and filigree lace skirt, the way it fit her slim, long figure, and draped. How the silver sparkled above the water (snip)
Other than a few verb tense slips now and then (missing “had”), the writing is sound, as is the voice. We appear to be witnessing a murder in progress, so there are the required tension and murder mystery story questions raised. From that point of view, this works fairly well.
But, for me, I have to wonder at the story value of such an exhaustive (the rest of the chapter) dive into the mind of a sick serial killer. What story purpose is served by drenching the reader in the inner pleasures this person gets from objectifying and killing an innocent woman? Yes, I know this approach has been done over and over in serial killer novels, but I think it’s worthy to question the value.
I usually keep content out of my analyses and focus on just the storytelling. But, in this case, it seems to me that content affects the effectiveness of the storytelling here. Sure, there continues to be a market for creepy serial killer stories, but what is the worth of a scene that, from the killer's point of view, romanticizes the objectification and murder of a woman? While it may intrigue some readers, I suspect it turns off others.
This reader would have been perfectly happy with an opening that has the police investigating the scene—the posed woman, etc. (Although, the way the chapter goes, there is some doubt that the woman will die.) Your thoughts?
. . . line, and seemed to blur below it. Adam had demanded she wear the dress for their date; even so, he was surprised when he met her at the bar and saw how beautiful she looked in it. His plans had almost been derailed in that moment, but not quite.
The skin around her neck and face glowed. Warm, ambient city light filtered through the night, through ginkgo and locust trees fanning overhead, reflecting off the glassy water in the large, ornate fountain, in which she appeared to have fallen. Subtle hues of golden luminescence seemed to come from within her, from under her skin, even more exquisite than the artist's original oil colors, Adam thought. He would have to work very hard on that part when it was his turn in front of the canvas again.
He had spent more time with her in this secret place than he had allowed for in his plan. It was time to go. This composition was harder than he had anticipated; that is, getting her limp body—limp from all the drugs—propped up just right in the water. Positioning her hands had been the most difficult part. He had used molding clay and duct tape hidden in the palm of each of her long graceful hands, and fifty-pound fishing line to suspend her hands above the water. Stepping back, you couldn't see the lines.
Adam stood very still and stopped breathing while he looked at her for the last time. He framed the scene, mainlining the infinite and dense layers of color and form and sensory detail into his near-photographic memory. It was glorious—his best work ever, better than any sex, any god, any desire, better even than nothingness.
He wanted to stay with her, but he had to go. Adam picked up his Bloomingdale's shopping bag containing the duct tape and molding clay and other supplies, slipped his suit jacket back on, and exited quietly through a very tall iron gate, the only way in or out of the private park.
He closed and locked the gate behind him. He used an oversize skeleton key that Josh had given him—that Josh had presented to him with great fanfare at a gallery party years earlier. Josh rewarded artists he represented who exceeded $1,000,000 in sales for the gallery with a key, and the perk of access to his snooty building's private park. Adam had passed the $1,000,000 mark almost six years earlier, and now he was Josh's number-one producer in the gallery.
Adam had visited the tiny park a few times, attending boring, intimate parties Josh hosted for special clients, but it was rarely used otherwise. He had always regarded the big skeleton key and access to Josh's private New York park to be stupid, a perk of no real value, until tonight.
Pocketing the key, he walked slowly down the narrow alley between two of SoHo's famous cast-iron buildings, then turned onto the sidewalk, heading uptown.
He chose his suit for the date tonight carefully. He chose one he'd had tailored to match Cary Grant's suit from Notorious—the one he's wearing when Ingrid Bergman drinks her last cocktail after the party. Adam's is dark blue, constructed of luxurious lightweight fabric from Italy, the same sources Brioni uses. His tailor argued but Adam had insisted on the wide lapels, a perfect copy of Cary Grant's, down to the matching silk handkerchief peeking out of the breast pocket of his jacket.
It was nearly midnight but one of those hot summertime nights when everyone was still out and about on the street—the cafes were overflowing, the bars noisy. Adam walked, gently swinging the Bloomingdale's bag, not making eye contact with anybody, just another tired New Yorker finally going home.
He turned west on Houston Street just as several sirens began to converge, wailing above the normal din of traffic, getting closer. Two and then three NYPD Ford Police Interceptors appeared down Houston, red-and-blue lights blinking fast, ripping down the wide street from the east, blaring and popping their rumbler sirens—leaving rubber on the pavement as they drifted around the corner too fast onto West Broadway.
Oh, shit.
Adam watched the speeding cop cars go by with other locals at the corner, but he knew things they didn't. He was pretty sure he knew where the cops were headed.
He continued walking west, head down, but did not quicken his pace.
This changes everything. Time for Plan B. What had the cops found? What mistake had he made? Today? Yesterday? Last week? Adam rewound his brain's memory banks through the many painstaking steps of preparation for tonight, but could not pinpoint his lapse. It was something he did. Or didn't do. Much had happened during the past six weeks. There were too many possibilities, too many risks.
Where was he going? If the cops had figured out the location—surely they were headed for the private park—they must know his identity. Right? They would put it all together. They would find everything. He couldn't go home.
The blocks were long, streetlights bright. Being around more people would be better. Bleecker Street will be hopping. Adam navigated northwest up Bedford Street toward the Village.
Right now it didn't matter how or why. He had miraculously slipped out of his masterpiece and away from that little park just minutes before the cops got there. They must have found her. They were probably pulling her body out of the water now. Maybe she would live after all.
He had to find a place off the street where he could be alone, hole up for a while beyond the reach of video surveillance cameras and cops. Adam kept his head down and turned the collar of his jacket up, hunching his shoulders higher as well, lifting the jacket to better cover his neck and face as he walked.
At the corner of 7th Avenue the blip-blip of a siren announced a police cruiser behind him. Adam turned on cue—as if he had finally reached his destination—into the Village Tavern on the corner, which was crowded with patrons, mostly men looking for men, pumping to an electronic beat. As soon as the cruiser passed by Adam turned back around into the street and proceeded across.
While his gait seemed to slow in the crosswalk his mind was racing. Where could he go? Who did he know? He needed to find a place they couldn't trace him to, or find through his address book, or any known contacts. Adam didn't have his phone with him, for obvious reasons. He projected a mental map of the Village, of the meat-packing district, the cross-streets all heading for the river. He headed for the river.
And then he remembered. It had been a warm night just like this. Two years ago? July. Roger. Roger with the white hair and affected style, gold necklace, very tan like he had just flown back from Miami, another rich art collector. He had tried to fondle Adam's leg while they sat together on the piano bench. It was a lavish party that Josh had begged Adam to attend, in a gorgeous penthouse apartment with very high ceilings, jammed with well-dressed socialites maneuvering among huge glass vases of cut flowers. Roger had acquired two original Adam Walker paintings that hung on prominent walls, part of an extensive art collection, Adam recalled. And Roger lived alone—except perhaps for the occasional gigolo who spent the night—occupying the top floor in a building on West 10th Street.
Across from the Church of St. Veronica, the brick-and-stone Empire style box of a building was leased mostly to import/export and professional services companies, and retail space on the ground level. Only one residence, one penthouse at the top. No doorman.
Adam set the Bloomingdale's bag out of view, he loosened his tie, unbuttoned the top button of his shirt, roughed up his hair on the sides and top, then leaned in toward the camera lens above the intercom box next to the glass entrance door and pressed the button for Roger Smith in 6A.
It was after midnight. No sirens. Adam focused. Please be there.
After a long wait, "Hello?" The voice was scratchy.
"Roger, is that you? I can't see you. I hope you remember me." Adam reached up and raked his fingers through his hair, smoothing it out so he would appear more presentable. "Roger, I'm the artist—"
"Of course I know you, Walker, I have—" A pause. "What're you—"
"Rog-er," Adam interrupted in a relieved, imploring tone, exhaling the second syllable of his name. "I need your help. I'm so sorry to bother you so late."
Adam gestured for the intercom camera and then got animated. "I was mugged! Just now. I was interviewing this photographer guy. I was headed back home. And, out of nowhere, bang! Hit me in the back of the head. Two of them. They took my wallet, and my phone." He let his face droop slowly down, modulating the eyes, showing signs of fatigue, a slow blink, the victim. "Can I please come in and use your phone?"
"Umm," Roger's voice said.
Adam looked toward the glass door then back to the intercom camera, bringing his hands and palms together in front of his chest. "Please. I'll just be a minute."
Five long seconds later the entrance door lock buzzed. Adam waved to the camera, picked up his shopping bag, pulled open the glass door, and stepped inside the vacant lobby.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Melissa sends the first chapter of Doubting River. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
All for the want of a horseshoe nail. That pithy warning, one of his dad’s favorites, taunted nine-year-old Lucas Gibson as he watched a sleek, black bullet streak toward its target. In this case, the nail was a forgotten leash, the bullet was a dog, and the target was a fallen duck. Mister Halsey’s duck.
It wasn’t as if he’d meant for River to go after the bird. As late as he was, they’d still detoured the long way through the woods at the far end of the long, narrow strip of pasture that made up Mister Halsey’s favorite hunting spot. But River had seen Mister Halsey’s gun swing toward the sky. Thankfully, in the seconds it took the dog to mark the duck that dropped, Lucas had tackled him and wrapped his arms around his neck.
“Stay,” the boy hissed, his mouth close to the dog’s ear. “Stay.” The duck had fallen over a rise, at the other end of the fallow pasture, probably landing in the pond. No way River could have seen where it fell. No way.
Judging by the frantic waving and incoherent shouts coming from his neighbor, Mister Halsey’s half-deaf, half-blind Labrador Buddy wasn’t having much luck finding the bird. Lucas buried his face in River’s neck and screamed. Just go get the dang bird already! His mom was due home any minute, and she was going to kill him if he wasn’t there.
Seconds turned into one minute, then two. Lucas shifted to ease a cramp in his leg. River (snip)
I like the writing and voice, the scene is clear and well written, and the characters likeable—who doesn’t like a boy and his dog? But the tension is, for me, on the mild side. I don’t think for a minute that Lucas’s mom will actually kill him if he’s late. Oh, there will be trouble, but nothing more serious than, at worst, a spanking (he’s grounded). So, while there is something going wrong here, and that meets the guidelines, the consequences are not serious. There’s little at stake. For me, not compelling.
The rest of the chapter is equally well written, but mostly setup, introducing us to the world and characters. The real trouble doesn’t happen until the end of the chapter. I suggest looking for a way to start with that and weaving background stuff in as the story deals with looks like a tragedy and trouble for the boy and his family.
One other thing—the wording of the saying used in opening line is not the same as the famous one the author is trying to evoke. The actual Ben Franklin quote is “For the want of a nail the shoe was lost.” I suggest the original be used. Your thoughts?
. . . swiped the boy’s cheek with his tongue and stamped his front feet. The boy stroked the dog’s chest with his thumb. “Just be patient,” he murmured, the curls on the dog’s ears tickling his lips.
River was a retriever, but not like Buddy, and physically there was little resemblance. River’s muzzle was a little longer, and the smooth fur of his face morphed into slight waves on his forehead then into crisp curls, small and delicate on his ears, larger but still tight on his neck and body, giving him what would have been an almost lamb-like look had the fur been longer or his body less powerful.
The old man waved and hollered and occasionally blew the whistle hanging around his neck. The shouts turned to swearing, and finally he lumbered down the slight slope and out of sight, Lucas assumed to fetch the duck himself. Lucas exhaled.
“Let’s get home,” he whispered and loosened his hold to grab the dog’s collar. But he underestimated the value of the fallen prize. River bucked once to the side, broke loose, and bolted. The boy’s mouth dropped open. Crap.
He followed, yelling the dog’s name, but the dog ignored him and sprinted across the pasture, leaping over thatches of Johnson grass beaten nearly flat by late-season storms and winter cold. Unlike the chunky Labrador, River’s long-limbed body was built for speed. Lucas crested the small rise in time to see him blow past his frustrated neighbor on a direct line to the pond. For several long seconds, the startled hunter just stared, and then he frantically struggled to get his shotgun to his shoulder.
“No, Mister Halsey, no!” Lucas shouted. He flung himself at the man’s arm, pulling the gun down. More swearing, as the old man tried to shake him off. “It’s River.”
The man looked down at him and blinked twice, and then squinted toward the water. “What the hell are you doing? Call that mutt back!”
Lucas didn’t get a chance to call him back, because at that moment River reached the edge of the pond and came to an abrupt halt. He swung his head right and left looking for the downed bird. Buddy sat on the bank nearby, looking for all the world like he was waiting for River to get in that cold water and get his duck for him. Probably no more anxious to get wet than Buddy, River turned and followed the left bank.
Mister Halsey growled and spat. “Damn dogs. I’d shoot every one of ’em, but I can’t afford the shells.”
Lucas gripped his neighbor’s flannel jacket. “No—look.”
River had picked his way around the edge of the lake to the far side, where he paused, sniffed, and then plunged into shallow muddy water and emerged seconds later with the duck.
Before Mister Halsey could respond, Lucas grabbed the whistle hanging around the old man’s neck and gave two sharp tweets.
Both dogs looked towards them. River paused long enough to shake and adjust his grip on the bird, then trotted back the way he’d come, around the end of the lake and along an easy path through the weeds, stopping directly in front of them.
“Holy shit.” Mister Halsey sounded awed. Then he snarled again. “That’s my duck, kid. I shot it on my own property. There’s laws against stealing.”
“We’re not stealing!” Lucas yelled back. River dropped the duck into his hands, and the boy shoved it at the old man. He took off at a run, his dog at his heels. “You’re welcome,” he shouted over his shoulder.
They didn’t stop until they reached the barbed wire fence that separated Mister Halsey’s land from his parents’ farm and, more importantly, kept the cattle out of the bottomland swamp his dad claimed was overrun with alligators. Well out of range of his neighbor’s ire, Lucas bent over and sucked in deep breaths of cold air. He glanced back the way he’d come and wondered briefly if Mister Halsey would call and complain. Nah. Mister Halsey was a crazy old grouch, but he wasn’t a snitch.
River plopped his butt on the ground and scratched his ear. Lucas glared at him. “This is all your fault, you know. Now we’re really late.”
Lucas peered through the rusty wire. Their barn blocked most of the view of the house and driveway beyond, good cover for a boy coming back from somewhere he shouldn’t have been with a dog he wasn’t supposed to take out.
He tugged on a silky corkscrew of a curl behind River’s left ear. “Mind your manners, and keep quiet,” he said, then added as an afterthought, “and no, you can’t chase a cow.”
The retriever’s eyes brightened at the mention of the beloved “c” word, but Lucas held tight to his collar as they crossed the pasture and slipped into the barn through the horse paddock at the back.
The chestnut gelding napping in his stall woke and snorted. Lucas put a finger to his lips. “Shhhh.” He reached over and unlatched the stall door. Home free.
"Where have you been?"
Lucas's head whipped to the right. His mother stood in the barn’s doorway, arms crossed, watching him. Busted. "Just out back.”
She arched her eyebrow and looked him up and down. “Want to try again?”
He followed her gaze. Mud, wet grass, and leaves coated his jeans from the knees down, and one knee had a conspicuous rip. In unison he and his mother looked at River, who chose that instant to trot through the stall door. Still wet from his dip in the lake, he had taken the opportunity to roll in the stall bedding, and sawdust (and other less desirable substances) covered him from his nose to the tip of his tail. As if to emphasize the point, the dog shook, showering them both.
"River!"
"Lucas Alexander Gibson!"
The boy dragged the dog toward the house, scattering a trio of chickens pecking for tidbits in the middle of the gravel drive. River bounced every other step, trying to free himself from the death grip on his collar. "I'll get him cleaned up, Mom. I swear," Lucas said over his shoulder.
She followed him, brushing at the sawdust flecking her jacket. "That doesn't answer my question. And honestly," she said, "the pond? Without a leash? If we've told you once…"
Protests rose in his throat. He hadn't intended for River to go in the pond, and he'd had a leash when they left, but he left it at… never mind. She definitely didn't need to know where he left it.
"This dog isn't a pet, Lucas." She punctuated each word with a shake of her index finger. "He's a hunting dog…"
"A very special hunting dog," Lucas sing-songed, more than familiar with this particular litany. “And he belongs to Mr. Forbes, not to us, and we have to take extra special care of him.”
"Exactly.” She glared at the dog in question. “Lord knows, we can't afford to import another one if something happens to him."
The water hose lay in a tangled heap where he'd left it after filling the troughs that morning. He grabbed the nozzle and turned on the spigot on the side of the house. The hose choked and sputtered, but no water came out. "Oh, come on," he muttered, shaking it.
"What would your father tell Mr. Forbes if you’d lost him?" his mother continued. "You know better. Where were you?"
"Maybe it's frozen," he said, peering into the end of the nozzle.
She pressed her lips together. "That's not an answer." She took the nozzle and gave it a shake. "This is Mississippi, not Michigan—it's not that cold. If you would put the hose away properly, it wouldn't get kinked up." She snapped it, hard.
Water exploded from the end, jerking the hose from her grasp. Mother and son screamed and jumped apart to escape the deluge. His mother stumbled backwards, but the hose, writhing like a dancing cobra, followed her. River, delighted with this game, jumped in the middle, chasing the stream as it whipped to and fro. Lucas stared, open-mouthed, too shocked to act.
"Turn it off!" his mother yelled.
Lucas grabbed the knob and turned it left, then right, then left again. Which way was off?
"Righty tighty, lefty loosey!" She danced forward, backward, spun left, and bobbed. Water was everywhere, and everywhere was River, moving in an odd syncopation, bounding and snapping at the drops.
Lucas turned the spigot to the right until the hose sputtered and fell lifeless, bringing the game to an abrupt end. River sniffed at it and pawed it hopefully. For a long moment, no one spoke.
Lucas gawked at his mother. Water dripped from her nose and her chin. Her hair, a red, usually somewhat more tamed, version of his own curls, hung limp in her eyes, and now, in addition to the sawdust, her jacket sported a set of four perfect paw prints walking their way from her left hipbone to her right shoulder. To his horror, laughter quivered in his gut. He bit the inside of his cheek, but he couldn't help it: a giggle climbed his chest and burst out of him. I am so getting grounded for this. Once he started, he couldn't stop.
His mother stood frozen, mouth gaping open. Then a tell-tale red built in her cheeks, and her shoulders began to shake.
Lucas smothered his guffaws under clasped hands and cringed. Not grounded. Dead. I am so dead.
Instead, there was a snort, then a chuckle. Then deep belly laughs. Lucas's jaw dropped open, and for a moment he forgot his own amusement and just stared. That seemed to delight her even more. She plopped down at the picnic table and laughed until tears mixed with the water on her face. After a moment, she shrugged out of her wet jacket and dabbed at her face and streaming eyes with the collar of the lightweight cardigan underneath.
Lucas slid onto the bench beside her. "You're wet."
"I am?" She shook her head, showering him with water droplets. His squeals of delight turned to ear-splitting shrieks when she slipped her hands under his shirt and tickled bare ribs. "I'm cold too!"
"I'll get you a towel." He started to get up, but she caught hold of his wrist.
"Not yet. First, I want you to tell me where you were when I got home."
"Mom…." He tried to pull away, but she pulled him down beside her and wrapped her arm around him to keep him still.
"I spent twenty minutes looking for you. You weren't out back."
He stuck out his bottom lip and looked down.
She held up an index finger. "One."
Lucas's eyes widened. One day grounded. "Mom!"
"Two."
"It's Christmas!"
"Three."
"But we're training River!"
A horn honked, and tires crunched on the gravel drive. Both mother and son swiveled around to see the source. "Dad!" Lucas jumped up and ran to meet his father's truck, River close on his heels.
"It's not fair!" he complained as his father emerged from the cab.
"What's not?" His father knelt down and rubbed the retriever's ears. "What happened to River?"
"Your son took that dog and disappeared this afternoon," his mother said, joining them.
"Three days!" Lucas said. "She grounded me for three days."
His father looked back and forth between them for a long moment. "Lucas," he said finally, "go inside and put on some dry clothes. Oscar’s waiting for us.”
Lucas glanced at his mother and saw her jaw tighten the way it did when she held back words she didn't want to say in front of him. He started to turn away, then paused. "River…."
"I'll take care of him," his father said.
"Yes, sir." The boy fled to the house, a buzz of heated conversation rising and falling in his wake.
"Why are you making me the bad guy—"
Lucas shut the back door, cutting off the rest of his mother's words. He didn't want to hear. This was his fault. Forget it. I'm telling her the truth. He turned, then hesitated, hand on the doorknob. And then they'd never get to train River. He kicked the door.
The impact scattered chunks of mud from his shoes across the laundry room’s linoleum floor. Great. He dropped to his hands and knees and brushed the dirt into a pile. Then, careful not to dislodge anymore dirt, he stripped off his shoes and his socks, and after a moment of consideration, his jeans.
Mud safely contained in the heap, he left the clothes where they were and raced through the house and up the stairs in his underwear, taking the steps two at a time. Socks on first, but his feet were already chilled, and he hopped from one foot to the other as he dressed. His mother didn't see the point in heating the house during the day when they were out, even now when he was on break from school. He complained once, but she threatened to give him extra chores to keep him warm, so he decided to wear an extra sweater.
Before he went back downstairs, he dashed into the guest room and peeked through the window to see what his parents were doing. They stood face-to-face, his father's jacket around his mom's shoulders, her hands wrapped in his flannel shirt. His father's head was bent close to hers as he spoke. The words were just for her; not even the hum of conversation reached the glass. Her lips were pressed tight, but the corner of her mouth twitched, and then she smiled, looking down when she did so.
Lucas backed away from the window and headed outside. He went through the front door, rather than the kitchen, vaulting over the rail on the porch steps out of habit. The railing wobbled and groaned. He cringed. Squeaking that rail was a sure-fire way to annoy his mom, the last thing he wanted right now. He circled wide to the barn, keeping his head low, hoping not to attract their attention.
When he slipped inside the old structure, he blew out his breath and relaxed. In an unused corner, his father had built a chain-link kennel run for River, and next to that stood a cabinet where they kept training equipment. Lucas opened it and looked over the contents. Whistle, replacement leash, long line—they’d definitely need those. He pulled out a couple of knobby white retrieving dummies and considered them. River usually retrieved these plastic bumpers instead of birds. It sure would be cool if they could retrieve some ducks instead. He looked wistfully at his dad's shotgun.
"You were late."
Lucas looked over his shoulder to see his father and River coming through the barn door. He glanced past them, but his mother was out of sight. "She wasn't supposed to be home until three."
"And you were supposed to be home at two. What happened?"
“I forgot River’s leash.” He summarized River’s adventure in their neighbor’s pond, minimizing his own fault as much as possible.
But his father wasn’t interested in fault. “River marked a duck from the woods and found it in the pond?” His forehead creased as he thought. “That had to be three hundred yards.”
Lucas tilted his head. “How far is that?”
“Three football fields.”
Lucas screwed up his face and tried to imagine the high school football field in Mister Halsey’s pasture.
“Incredible,” his father muttered. Then he frowned. “But that doesn’t change what happened. How many times do I have to tell you? The kingdom was lost…”
“I know, I know,” Lucas whined, anticipating what he was going to say. “All for the want of a horseshoe nail.” He hated that poem.
“Yes, all for the want of a horseshoe nail. You forgot the leash, and now we’re late. And if we don’t get a move on, Oscar will leave, and we won’t get any training done tonight.”
Lucas sighed. Logic sucked. "Am I grounded?"
"No. I told her that boys keep secrets at Christmas." He turned and began sorting through the equipment Lucas had pulled out. "You'd better have something good for her under that tree though."
The boy tapped a bumper against his thigh. How could he tie the vase he made in art class into his trip through the woods? He’d have to ask his buddy Sam. He was good at figuring out things like this.
River grabbed the bumper and tried to tug it out of his hands. He obliged him for a moment, then tossed it for him to fetch. The dog bounded after it and returned it, tail wagging.
"Can we train with real birds today?" Lucas asked. "I bet you can get some pigeons from Oscar."
His dad dug in the back of the cabinet until he found what he was looking for: a pair of foam dummies weighted and painted to feel and look like dead ducks. "We've talked about this. We're not ready for live flyers yet."
"But River has retrieved lots of real birds. Oscar said so. When he was in New Zealand, he retrieved real birds all the time. I told you what he did today. He didn’t have any trouble at all."
"I didn't say River couldn’t do it. I said we're not ready. We need to test him, bit by bit, to find out what he knows and what he doesn't. There's a huge difference between hunting in New Zealand and American field trials. We've got to figure it out systematically, starting with the basics. And that means we go slow."
The boy sighed. "All right. But I think he's bored."
His father faced him and bent down like he was sharing a secret. "You know what? I think he is too. Since he did so well with the pond, what do you say we try some water retrieves today?"
Lucas wrinkled his nose. "Isn't it kind of cold?"
"Not to River." His father suddenly swept the boy up and hung him, upside down and backwards, over his shoulder.
For a split second, Lucas considered complaining that at nine years old, he was too old for this, but his argument was overruled by irrepressible giggles.
"We’re late. Hurry up, and get the stuff," his father said, turning so he could reach it.
It wasn't easy to manage all the bits and pieces while hanging upside down, but that was part of the challenge. Of course, the snickers he couldn't control and the dog that kept jumping up and licking his face didn't help, but he managed to hold onto everything all the way to the truck. He watched his mother approach, shaking her head. She looked funny walking on her head, and it made him laugh harder.
"Jake," his mother admonished. "It's a wonder he doesn't have brain damage. Look how red his face is."
His father swung him around and set him on his feet. "Just trying to get the blood flowing up there. Want him firing on all cylinders."
"Mmmhmm." She didn't sound quite convinced, but at least she seemed amused and no longer angry.
A silver "dog box" designed to hold multiple hunting dogs and their equipment was mounted on the bed of his father's pickup. This one wasn’t fancy like the one Oscar had. His dad had bought it used off Craigslist from some guy near Vicksburg. But it worked fine, and Lucas felt like a real dog trainer with River riding in the box. He shoved the equipment into a compartment on the driver's side, then ran around and opened the one on his side. His dad lifted River in, and then carefully fastened the hatch. Lucas crawled into the truck's cab.
"Seat belt," his father reminded him.
"Don't forget," his mother said as his parents walked around to the driver's side, "your training partner has cows to feed, you have a porch rail to fix—” She shot Lucas a glance that told him she hadn’t missed his attempt to sneak past. “—and we promised to attend the live Nativity at the church tonight."
His father gave her a quick kiss and got in the truck. "How could I forget? Chasing Gertrude McKelvey's ass up and down Main Street is a December twenty-third tradition." He rolled down the window and turned the ignition key. The truck put-put-putted to life.
His mother leaned in the window. "I hope you're talking about her donkey."
Lucas giggled, and she gave him a wink.
"You're going to have to watch Lucas tonight too. I promised to sell ornaments in the church booth."
"Grandma will be there. I can stay with her," Lucas said.
"No, you can't." Her tone was flat. She met his eyes until he nodded, then tapped his father’s arm. "Speaking of the McKelveys, I heard Tom might be looking to hire somebody to help build some new fence in his back pasture before the winter calves come."
"All Tom McKelvey has to do is ask, and the whole county will turn out for free."
"Free won't pay for a new alternator or my textbooks. New quarter starts right after New Year's. I had to charge…"
"Don't worry about that," his father said. "We'll get the money. Have I ever let you down?" He gave her a quick kiss. "Home for dinner!"
She smiled and stepped back so he could turn the truck around. "Be careful."
He started down the drive. "Nahhhhh."
Her laughter followed them onto the road.
Lucas turned on the radio. Twangy music blared for a moment, then dissolved into static. He fiddled with the tuner, but the old truck apparently wasn't in the mood for music today. "Crap."
"Language."
"Sorry." He turned the radio off. "I wish Mom didn't hate Grandma so much."
"She doesn't hate her. They're just too alike and too stubborn, and your mom can't let go of some stuff that happened a long time ago."
"A long time ago like when you got married?"
"Like even before that," his dad said.
Unable to imagine such ancient history, Lucas switched topics. "So if River wins this contest, will Mom stop worrying about money?"
"Field trial. If—When—River wins a field trial, I will be the man for training around here, and our troubles will be G-O-N-E. Trust me, Lucas, that dog is our golden ticket."
"I don't know why Mom's going to school anyway. I know I wouldn't go to school if I was a grownup." Lucas watched the scenery pass for a long moment and then blurted the words he'd been holding in. "I think we should tell Mom the truth."
His father pulled up to the stop sign at the turn onto Highway 61 and stopped. "We've discussed this. I thought you understood."
"I do understand." Lucas kicked the dashboard. "It isn't fair!"
"Maybe not, but don't take it out on my truck." His father made the left onto the highway. "I don't like this either, Lucas, but I don't see any other way to do it."
The boy crossed his arms and huffed. "It's just... She just… She just ought to be reasonable."
His father threw back his head and laughed. "I agree. I don't recommend you tell her that though."
A sudden blur of tan distracted Lucas from his reply. "Look out!"
The truck careened and skidded as his father tried to avoid the buck that leapt in front of them. Lucas glimpsed the deer's eyes, rolling in terror, an instant before the collision flipped the animal onto the hood. Glass shattered, and the boy yelled and threw his arms up to protect himself. Another lurch, and the truck came to a halt.
Lucas sat with his eyes squeezed shut until the unnerving stillness finally drove him to peek. He yelped and flinched away from the buck, its face just inches from his own. The deer was beyond reacting. It had come partially through the windshield, its body wrenched and twisted by the impact. The neck was at an odd angle, the antlers wedged between the dash and Lucas's abdomen.
The boy exhaled. That was close! He pushed at the massive head, but it wouldn't budge. He tried again. No luck. Maybe he could slide out. He fumbled with the seatbelt, but somehow the tip of one antler had jammed in the clasp.
"Dad, I'm stuck." His father didn't answer. Lucas looked over. "Dad?"
His father was leaning forward over the steering wheel, eyes closed, as if he were trapped in that moment before impact, praying they wouldn't collide.
"Dad?" Lucas's voice shook. He reached over and tugged on his father's sleeve. He slumped toward him, his head lolling backwards to reveal a small cut and swelling on his forehead. Lucas grabbed his jacket and shook him. "Wake up!"
His father made a sound low in his throat and blinked his eyes. He slowly lifted his head, wincing as he did, and looked around. He blinked again and sat up straighter. “You okay, Lucas?” He ruffled the boy’s head and looked him up and down.
“I’m fine, but I’m stuck,” he said, his voice trembling.
His father leaned to help him and found himself restricted by his own seatbelt. He jiggled the clasp, pulled on it, then pressed as hard as he could, the effort showing in the tendons on his neck. The belt suddenly popped loose and retracted with a whir. They stared at each other, and then laughed in relief.
A horn blared, and tires squealed. Lucas looked past his father with a gasp and took in their situation all at once. They were on the highway, facing oncoming traffic, or what would be oncoming traffic if he could have seen it. The road angled left limiting his view—and the view of anyone coming towards them. He grabbed his seatbelt and jerked at it. “We’ve got to get out of here.”
His father pressed the seatbelt’s release button. “Stop pulling on the belt!” He finagled with it, alternating yanking on the belt and smashing the button.
In the distance, there was a rumble. Lucas looked around them. Beyond them, the car that had almost hit them had stopped, and a man was getting out. He couldn’t see beyond the curve, but the rumble was getting louder. “You’ve got to get out of here.”
“No, I’ve almost got it....”
“Dad, go!”
The rumble became the blare of a horn, then the squeal of brakes. The seatbelt slithered free, and Lucas threw his shoulder against the door. But it was already too late. He looked back and for the briefest moment caught his dad’s eye. Before the blackness, his last thought was of a dog’s leash and his father’s favorite poem. All for the want of a horseshoe nail….
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.
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.
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.
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.
Isaiah sends the first chapter of an untitled fantasy novel. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
The frigid air of winter stirred feebly as the Shieldbearer stepped into the darkness. Frost gilded his humble dwelling, glistening like diamonds in the light of the stars that shone so faintly from above. No smoke rose from his chimney, no heat radiated through his shuttered windows. Tonight, of all nights, was the darkest night of the year, defying light, leeching away heat, and killing happiness. Tonight was, as the superstitious called it, the Killing Eve. Once the moon reached its zenith, the year would reset and begin anew. A fresh start. </p
Of course, the superstitious had no idea what truly happened every Killing Eve. How could they, when they spent the night burning strange herbs and chanting prayers to gods that didn’t exist? To those that holed themselves up in warm houses, Killing Eve was a yearly terror that came to seek vengeance for untold wrongs or, according to the extremists, for nothing but pleasure. </p
In some ways, there was truth to the superstition. </p
In many other ways, even the darkest imagination would fail to guess what truly raged against Acheroth on Killing Eve, or, as a very few knew it, the Night of Ewyn. </p
The air shivered as the Shieldbearer’s breath condensed and vanished before his eyes. Even Ewyn could not steal the heat from his blood or the breath from his lungs. Not yet, anyhow.
“I am here,” the Shieldbearer said into the night, drawing back his cowl to reveal his pale, (snip)
The voice and writing are strong here, an important factor for earning a page-turn. The mood is dark and well set, with a hint of trouble with “Killing Eve.” But what is there of tension? For me, it’s on the weak side, and mostly implied. While fantasy readers allow for a certain amount of world-building and setup at the beginning (that includes me), nonetheless you’ll generate more turns of the page with the inclusion of some of the things on the checklist, especially something is/will soon be wrong. I think that could have been done here, and advise Isaiah to see if there’s a later place to start that creates tension while weaving in some of this setup material. Your thoughts?
. . . sharp face. Piercing gray eyes scanned the blackness for movement, but they found only the stillness of winter.
~He’s not coming~
~He always comes,~ the Shieldbearer replied, glancing heavenward in a search for the disembodied voice that wove its way into his heart.
~This time is different~ the voice said, soothing the Shieldbearer’s heart with its rumbling solidarity.
~He always comes.~
At this both voices fell silent and the Shieldbearer turned his thoughts and senses to the shadowed world around him. Winters in the North were always cold and dark, but on the Night of Ewyn the cold felt as lifeless as the Void itself, seeping like poison into everything that it touched with the subtle threat of an end. The world grew still and all of nature seemed to hold one collective breath, as though bracing itself for a plunge into endless darkness. Even the air did not stir; instead it hung as if frozen, waiting for some unfortunate passerby to shatter it into countless fractals of biting wind and nipping ice. No trees creaked, no twigs snapped, and the wolves were silent under the light of the full moon. On Killing Eve, it seemed as though the world was already dead.
“Not yet, young one. Not yet.”
The Shieldbearer twisted with a rustle of fabric to face the speaker, feeling his heart skip a beat at the sound of the familiar voice.
“Ewyn,” he said, dipping his head in what resembled a bow.
“You flatter me, Corlec,” Ewyn smirked, ghosting out of the shadowy forest into the silvery light of the stars that bathed the Shieldbearer’s clearing. Darkness hung over him like a mantle, flitting and drifting about his body, tempestuous and coalescent. In the starlight, the cloak of darkness thickened, as though to ward off the light and hide Ewyn’s scarred and naked form.
“You seem to have fallen on poor times, Ewyn.” Corlec’s eyes darted up and down Ewyn’s bare body, taking in every story—both old and new—that the abundant scars told.
“I suppose you’ve done much better?” retorted Ewyn as he drew nearer to the Shieldbearer. His gaze roved about the clearing, scanning first the ground and then the house before coming to rest on Corlec, where they lingered with brazen persistence.
“We both know what you’re doing here,” Corlec said, boldly locking eyes with the monster that loomed before him.
“Good,” Ewyn said, baring his teeth in a cruel grin. “I’ve always enjoyed celebrating this holiday that you’ve given me. It just warms my heart to know how important I am to you people.”
“And we both know how this ends,” Corlec continued, ignoring the taunt.
“Ah, Corlec,” sighed Ewyn, shaking his head. “I have always admired your resilience, this is true. But no fortress can stand forever. Not even you.”
“I am a Shieldbearer.” Corlec’s words rang into the night like the clash of steel upon steel. “With every passing day my resistance grows stronger, and even at your strongest you have not so much as landed one blow against me.”
“You,” growled Ewyn, “are a mortal.” The shadowy cloak that hung over Ewyn’s shoulders snapped and hissed as he spoke, voicing its agreement. “Mortals die.”
“But the role of Shieldbearer will be passed on,” Corlec said, allowing the hint of a smile to creep onto his worn face.
“I will break you, boy,” Ewyn spat, and the darkness in his eyes seemed to swell and rage within the mortal form it held. “I have the resolve of millennia and the wisdom of many eras of Men at my command. What do you have, little one? You are but a blink, as faint and fleeting as breath on the wind.”
“Then why haven’t you broken me?” whispered Corlec as he stepped close enough to feel Ewyn’s cold darkness on his face.
With a snarl, Ewyn slapped Corlec, commanding the full strength of his body and the darkness as one. The Shieldbearer flinched, but did not fall.
“You see?” Corlec spat a mouthful of blood into the snow, darkening its glittering purity beneath the moonlight.
“How long do you think you can hold this world, Corlec?” asked Ewyn, turning away from the Shieldbearer with a flourish of the darkness he wore. “Another year? Five, maybe? If you’re lucky, you might last ten. But you will die sooner or later, old friend.” Ewyn strode into the center of the clearing and turned back to Corlec with a smile. “I need only to wait.”
“When I die, the role—”
“Yes, yes, the role of Shieldbearer will be passed on. And when a child even younger than you takes your place, do you think they will stand as you did? Will they resist me as you have? Or will they, in their infancy, fall prey to my plots and schemes?”
“I didn’t fall,” answered Corlec.
“I have grown since then,” Ewyn said coolly. “The next Shieldbearer will not be able to stand against me.”
“For all your words, you have done very little, Ewyn. Nothing, in fact. I hold you here as my prisoner, bound within the borders of the North and held at bay like a wolf in a pen. When you howl and snarl, I silence you. When you bite and snap, I am ready with a muzzle to end your wrath. When you strain your tether, I strike you down and shorten your leash. You are a captive to my whims, and you will remain a prisoner for all of time.”
At this Ewyn cocked his head, standing still and silent as though awaiting some sound. His eyes narrowed to slits as his nostrils flared, drawing in the cold air as if it were the scent of a beautiful flower. A thin smile curved his lips as he straightened and walked toward the Shieldbearer, each step more deliberate than the last, and behind his narrowed eyes, darkness seethed. With every footfall, the darkness surrounding Ewyn grew, swelling until both Ewyn and Corlec and all the clearing were enveloped in a cloud of inky shadow. Swathed in darkness, Shieldbearer and nightmare stood mere inches apart, each unwilling to give ground to the other. Like mountains in a tempest they warred, caught up in a battle that raged beneath words, beneath actions, and beneath even thoughts. Corlec and Ewyn waged a war of spirit and mind in which neither could be victor but both were held captive.
Ewyn finally broke off the war. The darkness subsided and starlight returned—once again, the clearing became Ewyn’s prison and Corlec’s domain.
“You will not win,” the Shieldbearer spat, and in his eyes danced white flame, bright and hot enough to drive back Ewyn’s cold, vicious darkness.
“Hold me while you can, child!” laughed Corlec’s captive as he stumbled back from the power that the Shieldbearer radiated. “You cannot last forever!”
And then, with a final laugh that shattered the motionless air, Ewyn vanished.
Silence reigned in the night. Only the sound of Corlec’s heavy breathing disturbed the stillness, sending loud puffs of condensation into the darkness. The Shieldbearer closed his eyes, lowering darkness over darkness as he bound his thoughts within the realm of his own mind. Ewyn would be back—he always returned. And, as always, the ageless enemy of Acheroth would be yet stronger, and Corlec would be yet weaker. Not in mind, of course, but the prison that held Ewyn drew on the Shieldbearer’s mind and body both, and Corlec, for better or worse, was mortal. His body could endure, but only for so long. Perhaps Ewyn was right. Perhaps another year would be all that Corlec could manage.
~Banish such thoughts~
Once again, Corlec raised his eyes skyward. He ignored the single tear that rolled down his cheek as his eyes opened, choosing instead to give his attention to the shadow that whirled through the sky above him. It circled once, then again a second time before plummeting downward. Massive, leathery wings opened with the sound of banners snapping in the wind as Corlec’s companion and Shield drifted into the clearing.
~But if he was right, Mir’arl—~ Corlec began.
~Ewyn was wrong~ the dragon answered, landing amid drifts of snow. Like a gleaming ruby among a sea of glittering dust, Mir’arl’s serpentine form stretched across the clearing. Gracefully folding his crimson wings against his scaly back, the dragon settled down in the snow before dipping his great, horned head towards Corlec in a bow. At the sight of his old friend, the Shieldbearer smiled. Familiar warmth blossomed in his heart as he rested his freezing hands upon the dragon’s gem-like snout and met his intelligent golden gaze. With a snort, Mir’arl sent a wave of heat washing over Corlec before shifting to nestle the Shieldbearer against his warm underbelly with its coal-like scales. For a moment, neither man nor beast moved, but then Corlec began to stand. He cast one longing glance at the dragon’s glowing, scaly stomach, almost able to feel its warmth against his chilled skin, before pulling himself onto Mir’arl’s back.
~What exactly are you doing~
~Ewyn’s not finished with Acheroth yet,~ responded Corlec. ~He spent much of his strength tonight, but he will try to break free again. When he does, I must be ready.~
~We~ said Mir’arl. ~We must be ready~
~I sometimes forget what it is you do to help me. Is it just moral support that you provide, or do you in fact take an active role?~
~Very funny~ the dragon snorted as he dropped into a crouch. ~Feel free to try it without me sometime~
With a powerful surge, Mir’arl sprang into the air, his body streaming like a spear towards the heavens. When it seemed that they could sail no higher, the dragon unfurled his wings and caught the wind that eddied above the trees. Wings flapping with the whispering wind, Shield and Shieldbearer rose high above the clearing and forest below before either spoke again.
~I assume you have some semblance of a plan~ inquired Mir’arl.
~The other Shieldbearers need to know what is happening.~
~They have trouble enough as it is don’t you think~ asked the crimson dragon, his thoughts flowing over Corlec in an endless stream.
~I may need their help, Mir’arl,~ Corlec said. ~You yourself said that this time was different. Ewyn is getting stronger.~
~If that is the case you’ll need more than Shieldbearers~ countered the dragon. Nonetheless, the great beast banked until his path carried him north by northeast, towards the heart of the wild lands that Acheroth knew as the North. It was there that Corlec would meet the other Shieldbearers—there he would plead his case to his brethren.
~We only need to keep him at bay. Nothing more.~
~You’ve been using that philosophy since you began all of this~
~It hasn’t failed me.~ Corlec steeled himself for Mir’arl’s next words, knowing what his friend would say. Knowing what he always said.
~But one day it will fail~
To that, Corlec made no answer. In truth, there was no answer that he could give—in his heart, the Shieldbearer knew that Ewyn would not remain a prisoner forever. Locking the enemy of Acheroth in a prison crafted of magic was a temporary solution to a pressing and ancient problem. Sooner or later, the prison would fail. Whether in Corlec’s lifetime or that of another, Ewyn would break free and unleash his wrath upon every last man, woman, and child in Acheroth. The carnage would be inconceivable.
Of course, Ewyn had wreaked havoc before. Starting in the heart of the North, he had cut his rampaging way south, carving up Lymora in a bloodbath before tearing his way through Maelis in the west. From there war and darkness had descended on Edhra to the south. By that time, the corpses that littered Maelis and Lymora had sent their message—Rhaev, the fourth and final realm, dared not test itself against the might of Ewyn. Instead of riding to Edhra’s aid, Rhaev became the hammer that broke its long-standing ally against the anvil of Ewyn’s armies. In a matter of months, the greatest enemy that Acheroth had ever faced crowned himself as their sole and eternal ruler. The twilight of war faded into endless night that reigned with Ewyn as king for centuries. Fear in the face of a massacre faded into desolation in the face of hopelessness. For many, the sleep of death was a blessed release from submission to Ewyn’s tyranny.
Then day broke and the first and longest Night of Ewyn ended. Kingdoms were rebuilt, families reborn, and lives renewed. At long last, the darkness that had threatened to endure for eternity had been banished.
Now, less than a millennium later, Ewyn and his darkness loomed once more.
~It isn’t as if you are to blame~ Mir’arl’s stolid voice hummed through Corlec’s thoughts, exuding a peace that felt foreign to the Shieldbearer’s mind.
~I could have done more.~ Corlec sighed, voicing outwardly the internal conflict that pierced his heart. ~The prison was stronger before I began maintaining it.~
~Ewyn was weaker~ Mir’arl retorted. ~You have done everything in your power to hold him~
That much was true, Corlec knew. He had made every effort to strengthen the prison that had been entrusted to him. He had fortified it with each passing year, sharpening both his mind and his body as he fought to hold his enemy. Mir’arl, being bonded in mind and spirit to the Shieldbearer, had worked alongside his friend at every turn—such was the way of Shieldbearers and their companions. In many ways, man and beast were one.
~Do you truly think the other Shieldbearers will help you~ asked Mir’arl.
~If they don’t want Ewyn to tear the world apart a second time, they won’t have a choice,~ answered Corlec. ~I only hope that they aren’t too blind to see how much we have to lose.~
As if in encouraging answer, the sun crested the horizon in the east, and the Night of Ewyn gave way to the light of day