Had a great first-page workshop at the CWA Uncommon Writers Conference yesterday. Even better, I enjoyed and learned from other workshops presented by strong and smart writers. CWA put on an excellent conference, and I hope to be invited back one of these days. For writers who want to expand their capabilities, this is a conference that can help you do that.
Now I'm off to visit grandkids in Bloomington for a couple of days. I may post from there, might not.
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, it’s educational to take a hard look at their first pages. A poll follows concerning the need for an editor.
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.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of Chapter 1 of Retribution. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?
The birthday celebration had ended, and many restaurants and bars on Rush Street were emptying out. It was Sunday night, and Jesse was ready to hit the pillow. Monday would come early enough. Following dinner, drinks, and a few celebratory shots with his old college buddies, Jesse was ready to call it a night.
“Tonight was great, but let’s not wait for special occasions to get together again. You all know where I live, and Bandit would love to have more people around. He’s probably sick of seeing nothing but my ugly mug day after day.” Jesse exchanged back pats with his buddies and once more wished Steve a happy birthday. The men parted ways outside Gibsons and disappeared to their cars.
Thanks to the proximity of Jesse’s home—a redbrick mid-century modern walkout that was a reasonable eleven miles away via Lakeshore Drive—he knew he should land in bed by one o’clock. He pulled up his jacket collar and sank his hands into his pockets to ward off the early fall chill as he crossed the street, walked north a block, and turned right on East Cedar Street, where his car was parked. The gusts coming off Lake Michigan swirled around buildings, giving the “Windy City” effect Chicago was nicknamed for.
Jesse continued toward the lake. Halfway down the street, a man and woman stepped out of a high-rise condo with their small dog, likely giving it one more walk before bedtime. They (snip)
This received 4.5 stars on Amazon. I wonder why. It must really take off after the opening page, but I’ll never know that—actually, I did look a little further and found an amateurish glitch that killed my interest for sure. More on that in a moment.
So here we are, in the throes of an opening that is supposed to truly engage us, and we are showered with detail. How on earth can it matter at this point that his house is a “a redbrick mid-century modern walkout that was a reasonable eleven miles away via Lakeshore Drive?” It doesn’t. Nor does it come into play later. The whole beginning about birthdays, etc. has no relevance to what happens next.
What happens is that when he walks to his car he is attacked and kidnapped, thrown into the trunk of his car. Now THAT’S a good opening scenario—but it comes way too late. It’s also when the narrative trips over the author’s intrusion referred to earlier.
Our man, who we belatedly learn is a cop (why isn’t that established right away?) is hit with a stun gun and KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS. I put that in caps because, after he’s knocked out, the narrative continues with what happens in violation of the basic rules of point of view—a character can’t know things that he could not normally know, do, etc. Yet here we get this:
The man ripped the keys from Jesse’s clenched hand, popped the trunk, then dragged him by the arms to the bumper. With a grunt, he lifted Jesse over the trunk’s opening and threw him inside. He dropped Jesse’s cell phone safely into his own pocket, slammed the trunk lid, and climbed in behind the wheel. Tires screeched as he peeled away from the curb and disappeared down Chicago’s side streets.
Then our guy wakes up in the trunk and the story proceeds. I’m sorry, but if the rest of the narrative is as clumsy as this opening page, I’m just not interested. Your thoughts?
Note:I’ll be on the road for the next week, partly to teach a first-page workshop at the Chicago Writer’s Association conference, and then visiting family in Illinois. I’ll post as well as schedule and travel allows.
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.
Kirsten sends the prologue and first chapter for LaVonda Robinette Takes a Life. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Prologue
The first two murders weren’t deliberate. Not really. Neglecting to help until it was too late, well you couldn’t call that actual murder could you? The second one, well yes technically that was murder but it was accidental. Almost. She’d been a little bit drunk and upset, and she hadn’t realised what she was doing at the time. She was just fantasizing about killing him; she hadn’t meant to actually kill him. It was just bad luck. Or good luck, depending on how you looked at it.
This time was different. Because this time she was planning it. Cold-heartedly and calculatedly. She was going there armed with determination and deliberate intention, and she was going to stop that awful man from ever hurting anyone again.
Chapter 1
Three things happened on the morning of LaVonda Robinette’s 49th birthday that changed the course of the rest of her life. Although two of those things didn’t seem quite as important at the time, so if you had asked LaVonda what happened on her 49th birthday she would have said: Oh that was the day my husband told me he was leaving me.
To be fair he probably hadn’t meant to pick her actual birthday to leave her; in fact, he’d admitted as much. He’d been planning to break the news on Easter Friday (he’d emphasized the word Friday as if that made all the difference in the world) because if he had told her on Easter Friday, then she would have the whole long weekend to come to terms with the news before she had t
o go back to work. So that was considerate Dave. Thoughtful, almost.
But apparently Jemima, his new girlfriend, (yes the birthday surprises kept coming!) had thrown a bit of a spanner in the works when she booked the two of them a romantic get-away for the upcoming Easter weekend so he’d been forced to move the departure date up, so to speak.
LaVonda couldn’t speak. She simply couldn’t absorb what he was saying. From somewhere across the kitchen, she watched herself holding her coffee mug, standing at the bench opposite her husband of almost 25 years and she screamed silently at herself: He’s leaving you! He’s got another woman! You’re being dumped! Yet she still couldn’t seem to (snip)
The prologue was concise, brief, to the point, and intriguing. While it’s not a scene, which is what I usually recommend for a prologue, this works well because it raises lots of juicy story questions.
But, for me, the chapter's first page doesn’t achieve the same appeal. It’s much in the same style and voice of the prologue (I like the voice), but it’s all telling. While that worked for the prologue, for me this falls far short of immersing me in a character. To do that, IMO, you need a scene. One with action, dialogue, emotion. Put me in that kitchen with LaVonda (set the scene). Have her or her husband say or do something that kicks off the scene with the promise of conflict of some sort. Clearly there’s something going wrong for her here, but it isn’t shown. Show it, and show how she deals with it. The prologue teases a fun story, now it’s up to the narrative to deliver it in story form. Keep at it, Kirsten, this tale sounds promising. For what it’s worth.
A novel I edited some time back has now been published, and I want to urge you to check it out. It’s science fiction, and has many entertaining twists and turns. Plus a sardonic kind of protagonist that injects humor at the right places. I enjoyed the voice, the story, the world, and its characters a great deal, and I recommend it. It is free for Kindle Unlimited readers.
Here’s the Amazon blurb:
On rebel planet Elysium, a man is executed on live video streamed by religious extremists. Nothing terribly original so far for Elysium.
Only this time, the man doesn't die.
When security expert Asher Perez is sent to find him, it becomes clear that nobody in the rebel colony is who they seem, and that something dark is stirring in the shadows.
Something that has been watching humanity since the dawn of history.
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, it’s educational to take a hard look at their first pages. A poll follows concerning the need for an editor.
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.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of Chapter 1 of The 28th Gate. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?
You’ve never seen a warlock, but it’s a gun you’d remember if you had. I’ve heard them compared to starship-grade particle cannons rather than typical firearms, despite the fact you can carry one with a single hand. Of course, that’s because the tech inside a ’lock dates from the Gate Age, the height of civilization before we lost it all.
Now, I know this seems like a strange place to start, but I’m sick of being asked to start at the beginning. That’s all I’ve been asked since I arrived here. You don’t really care about the beginning. You want to know how I got here.
But that doesn’t matter to me. Going back to help Katherine does.
So, if I’m gonna go through another round of telling this story, I’m giving you enough detail to make sure this is the last time. And that’s why this story starts with a gun.
Course, given how many of my jobs were as a freelance bodyguard or contract bounty hunter, you could say all my stories start with a gun. But those other guns were nothing like my warlock.
Imagine a quick flash, intense and accurate, but it passes so quickly you don’t have time to recognize it. Then, after the flash has faded, the real blast flares to life like the expansion of a dying star, following the trail of that initial flash in a blossoming fire trail. A moment later, the sound hits you. Compressed air from the shot creates a shockwave that makes your ears feel as if (snip)
This received 4.4 stars on Amazon. I suspect that if you’re a hardcore science fiction fan that this detailed bit of world-building, along with the strong voice, could compel you to turn the page. But if you’re looking for a compelling story question, I don’t see one buried somewhere in this anatomy of a fictional weapon.
There were a couple of “information questions,” the kind that irritate me and that should never be imposed on a reader. In this case, one piece of missing information is where “here” is. I don’t really want to know how he got here, as the story says, because I don’t have a clue as to what here is, or to what it means to this character or the story. What’s the reason for holding out? And then there was the notion that he’s telling this story again. Again from when? Why did he tell the story then, and to whom, and why retell it now? I’m afraid I’ll never find out the missing information because the use of information questions plus the lack of a story question stopped me from reading on. Be honest with your reader, let them know what’s going on with the character. Your thoughts?
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, it’s educational to take a hard look at their first pages. A poll follows concerning the need for an editor.
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.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of Chapter 1 of The Last Necromancer. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?
The other prisoners eyed me as if I were a piece of tender meat. I was someone new to distract them from their boredom, and small enough that I couldn't stop one—let alone four—from doing what they wanted. It was only a matter of who would be the first to enjoy me.
"He's mine." The prisoner's tongue darted out through his tangled beard and licked what I supposed were lips, hidden beneath all that wiry black hair. "Come here, boy."
I shuffled away from him but instead of the brick wall of the cell, I smacked into a soft body. "Looks like he wants me, Dobby. Don't ye, lad?" Large hands clamped around my arms, and thick fingers dug into my flesh through my jacket and shirt. The man spun me round and I gaped up at the brute grinning toothlessly at me. My heart rose and dove, rose and dove, and cold sweat trickled down my spine. He was massive. He wore no jacket or waistcoat, only a shirt stained with blood, sweat and grime. The top buttons had popped open, most likely from the strain of containing his enormous chest, and a thatch of gray hair sprouted through the gap and crept up to his neck rolls. Hot, foul breath assaulted my nostrils.
I tried to turn my face away but he grasped my jaw. The wrenching motion caused my hair to slide off my forehead and eyes, revealing more of my face than I had in a long time. A new fear spread through me, as sickening as the man I faced. Only two prisoners seemed interested in a boy, but if they realized I was a girl, the others would likely want me too.
This received 4.2 stars on Amazon. This author really has the hang of injecting “something wrong” into this character’s life. The opening is a terrific example of creating jeopardy for someone, and this is particularly scary, IMO. It’s concisely done so that the real hook—she’s a girl—is on the first page. We don’t even want to imagine what could happen next – but, for me, I sure had to turn the page to find out. As an editor, I think I’d trim and simplify a little here and there—for example:
The wrenching motion caused mMy hair to slide off my forehead and eyes, revealing more . . .
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.
Judy sends a first chapter—I didn’t get a title. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Running to catch the subway, my heel got caught in a groove and I would have gone flying head first, had my foot not dislodged itself from its shoe. This was not a great start to my day, but then things hadn’t been going very well for me for a while. I picked up the shoe, and limped in search for the missing heel, which amazingly flew quite a distance. An elderly woman, in very sensible shoes, approached and handed me the offending heel. She looked at me as if to say that’s what you get for wearing such ridiculous shoes. She was right, of course. I have a soft spot for shoes and spend way too much money, which I don’t have, on them. Of course these were my most expensive pair. I had bought them a year ago, right after Cecil broke up our engagement, to assuage my grief and humiliation.
I was late for work as it is, so I decided not to go back home to change shoes, instead I limped onto the coming train. I hate being late for anything, having inherited my Teutonic father’s penchant for punctuality. Also having a job where the staff doesn’t respect me much, I dot my ‘t’s and cross my ‘I’s, and am never late. Coming up from the station at the 92nd Street stop, I dodged the throngs in the crowded street and I ran as best I could holding onto the heel in my hand. I stooped to pick up a discarded paper cup and dump it into a trashcan. I hate filth. Mayor Koch had promised to clean up the city, but so far his success was negligible.
Still clutching the heel in my hand, for a split second I contemplated running across the (snip)
This opening page doesn’t raise a story question for me because it's all setup and characterization. There’s no problem other than a broken shoe. As it turns out, the shoe does not figure in the chapter at all. If it doesn’t influence what happens, why is it here? Yes, it goes to character, but it’s a fairly petty side of her character. And, as I said, the shoe incident does not impact the story at all.
The rest of the chapter is pretty much the same thing—setup and exposition on the character’s workday. But nothing happens that creates a problem that she has to deal with. In the last paragraph a stranger rings the clinic’s doorbell and then the chapter ends. I suspect the start of the story is in the next chapter, so I recommend finding that starting point for your first page.
A couple of editorial notes on this narrative: while I don’t usually tinker with a writer’s voice, I found the phrase “had my foot not dislodged itself from its shoe.” to be clumsy. Such a complicated description of action slows things down. Wouldn’t it be more effective with something simple such as “but my foot slipped out of the shoe.” One other little nitpick: This is in the narrative:
I dot my ‘t’s and cross my ‘I’s
The expression is to dot one’s ‘I’s and cross one’s ‘t’s, not the other way around, seeing as how ‘t’s don’t get dots and ‘I’s don’t get crossed. Did you do that deliberately?
Meanwhile, check out the checklist and look for a point in the narrative where it begins to do those things—especially raise a story question. Your chapter does a fine job of establishing the character's life when undisturbed, but there's too much of it. We need to have things disrupted--you don't have a story until something goes wrong, and breaking a shoe heel with no consequences is not that.
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.
Max sends the first chapter of The Vulture. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
Listening to Luke beg for his life hit Theo the same visceral way every time. “Buddy, you gotta help me. He’s eating me. We’re best friends dude, why won’t you listen to me? I’m being eaten alive.”
The same damn dream, sixty-five nights in a row since the end of grade 11. Theo avoided Luke in real life; being near him made the recurring nightmare worse. Having to push his friend away was hard, but necessary. The lesson painfully inflicted itself on Theo after their 1st of July road trip.
They stood in the backyard of Theo’s old red house in the faded blue tree fort. The dream made the room bigger so that the teens would fit in it. A luminescent night sky always shone with a waning crescent moon. His friend stood there, wearing clothes from the last day of grade 11. The same black and white sneakers, the pair of light blue jeans, a rough red hoodie that said “Zombicide” in big black letters. The hood; that absurd and heavy hood. It covered his best friend’s face so much, Theo could barely ever make out any features.
Theo knew the point of a dream was to tell him a story, maybe a lesson about himself. Then why did this recurring dream have such hard-to-remember, inane topics? He watched another version of himself interacting with Luke, speaking pure babble. The one consistent unnerving change: new human-sized bites from Luke’s flesh. Now at the end of the summer, little remained except rags flapping in the wind over emaciated flesh or open bone. Why was the face left alone?
“Theo. Dude, you gotta help me,” Luke said, which was the last problem.
The begging. The never-ending begging.
There's good writing here, so that's not the issue--for this reader, though, the storytelling is, beginning with the dream. ”Don’t open with a dream” is a consistent meme in writerdom. Literary agents caution against it over and over, saying things such as “It has been done so many times by so many writers that it’s almost impossible to avoid the clichés.”
The caution is generally against waking up from a dream. That doesn’t seem to be the case here—Theo is thinking about his nightmare. I don’t think that saves it, though. The problem is that the reader knows that the dream is not the actual story, and the actual story is what a reader is here for.
Other than that, I have at least two issues with this opening. One is clarity. One paragraph ends with a sentence about a lesson painfully inflicted after a July road trip. Fine. I’m all ready to read about that painful lesson. But then the next sentence is not about that at all—it’s a scene from the dream. What happened to the lesson from the road trip we were just told about? Having skimmed ahead, I didn’t notice a reference to this lesson in the narrative that followed—maybe you will.
The second issue is that this opening does not create a story question. There’s no real reason to read on, as far as I can see. This is dream stuff, so there’s no jeopardy to Theo, nothing he has to deal with that is a problem for him. Sure, it’s tough having a recurring nightmare, but what are the consequences? He says he has avoided his friend, but what are the consequences for that? I think the story needs to start with Theo encountering a problem that will affect his life in a meaningful way, and I don’t think dreaming about a friend constitutes such a problem. What do you think?
Writers, send your prologue/first chapter to FtQ for a “flogging” critique. Email as an attachment.
Many of the folks who utilize BookBub are self-published, and because we hear over and over the need for self-published authors to have their work edited, it’s educational to take a hard look at their first pages. A poll follows concerning the need for an editor.
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.
Next are the first 17 manuscript lines of Chapter 1 of Don’t Tell Meg. A poll and the opening page of the first chapter follow. Should this author have hired an editor?
I waited until my fortieth birthday before I betrayed my wife. If I hadn’t spent that night with Ellie, who knows how things might have turned out. As it was, five people lost their lives before the truth was finally forced out of us all.
I’d been sent on a weekend training course with work. Perfect timing. I was celebrating my special birthday on the Saturday. I tried my luck at wriggling out of it, but my boss Diane wouldn’t budge. She’d been promoted to managing editor less than a year ago, and she had a new boss of her own to impress. Perhaps I should have tried for the senior position when it came up, but I had other things on my mind. I was more interested in Meg.
Meg and I had been married for seven years. We met when I was thirty-one and Meg twenty-nine. She was sexy, gorgeous, great fun and an addiction for me. However long we spent together, I always wanted more. It was only a matter of time until we got married. We lasted two years, then got hitched. It was the natural conclusion to the most intense, passionate and exciting time of my life. We were crazy in love. We didn’t bother living together for years and years, there was no dithering about commitment, we both dived straight in, not even bothering to look for rocks.
But the hazards are always there, in any marriage. I gleaned that little nugget from Martin, our marriage counsellor.
This received 3.8 stars on Amazon. Remember that what is on the first page foreshadows the narrative to come. In this case, the writer starts out with a strong hook—infidelity and murder ahead. But then he diverts into backstory, completely abandoning the opening paragraph. This signals more of the same—devotion to backstory and exposition rather than getting on with the story. Reading the comments from people who did read on, that’s what this narrative turns out to deliver. As for this first page being compelling, not for me. 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.
Roberta sends the first chapter of The Poor Girl Murders. The rest of the narrative is after the break.
This takes place in 1932.
When I was a little girl I felt safe here in America. Maybe you think I was being a dope considering what had happened to me and Ma in Russia before my sister, Manka, was born but here on the Lower Eastside I knew everyone. Everyone knew me. As a kid, I pretended my building was The Murmansk, the ship that had brought us from Russia and that our tiny apartment where everything from thimbles to needles to combs and hairbrushes had to be tucked away in their own particular place, was the ship’s cabin where Ma had been so seasick during the endless voyage. I could almost see the water in the wash basin on the kitchen table rippling with the ship’s movement when I scrubbed my face in the morning.
As I grew older, I realized the Lower Eastside was not a safe place for little girls. I was nine when a beer truck drawn by four Clydesdales nearly crushed me. When I was ten, I was having a glass of tea with Pa. He leaned over to kiss me goodbye, got up from the kitchen table, put on his coat, and walked downstairs to buy a copy of the Jewish Forward from the newsboy on the corner. That was the last anyone saw of him. Except me. Last year.
Today I learned the Lower Eastside wasn’t a safe place for big girls either.
Good writing and a strong, clear voice tell me this could be worth reading. For my taste, the opening paragraph dwelt more than was necessary with background information. But then it shifts to the perils of growing up there, and then the finish of the second paragraph raises strong story questions. What happened to her father? What happened when she saw him?
And then the last sentence lets us know that there is jeopardy ahead with another strong story question: why isn’t it safe for her? If you read on, I’m interested in your reaction. The good writing continues and the world is very well established, and the chapter ends with murder as a threat—yet, for me, there was more setup exposition that I felt slowed the pace of the story too much. Your thoughts, readers?