Flog a Pro: would you pay to turn the first page of this bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | February 15, 2018 |
Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page online or at the bookstore.
Here’s the question:
Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents.
So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those three dimes or the quarter and a nickel. It’s not much, but think of paying 30 cents for the rest of the chapter every time you sample a book’s first page. In a sense, time is money for a literary agent working her way through a raft of submissions, and she is spending that resource whenever she turns a page.
Please judge by storytelling quality, not by genre or content—some reject an opening page immediately because of genre, but that’s not a good enough reason when the point is to analyze for storytelling strength.
This novel was number two on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for February 18, 2018. How strong is the opening page—would this narrative, all on its own, have hooked an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer? Following are what would be the first 17 manuscript lines of the first chapter.
It was the mustache that reminded me I was no longer in England: a solid, gray millipede firmly obscuring the man’s upper lip; a Village People mustache, a cowboy mustache, the miniature head of a broom that meant business. You just didn’t get that kind of mustache at home. I couldn’t tear my eyes from it.
“Ma’am?”
The only person I had ever seen with a mustache like that at home was Mr. Naylor, our maths teacher, and he collected Digestive crumbs in his—we used to count them during algebra.
“Ma’am?”
“Oh. Sorry.”
The man in the uniform motioned me forward with a flick of his stubby finger. He did not look up from his screen. I waited at the booth, long-haul sweat drying gently into my dress. He held up his hand, waggling four fat fingers. This, I grasped after several seconds, was a demand for my passport.
“Name.”
“It’s there,” I said.
“Your name, ma’am.”
“Louisa Elizabeth Clark.” I peered over the counter. “Though I never use the Elizabeth (snip)
Was this opening page compelling to you? If it was, you can turn the page here. My votes and notes after the fold.
This is Still Me by Jojo Moyes. Was this opening page compelling?
My vote: No.
This book received a high average of 4.7 stars out of 5 on Amazon—it is the third in a series. Well, for this reader (and editor), this first page was a waste of time and electrons—I’m glad I didn’t print it out. To summarize the action, a woman—we don’t know where she is—is asked for her passport and name. We can conclude that she is arriving somewhere that is not England, but are clueless otherwise. The only thing that goes wrong for her that she has to deal with is that she doesn’t understand his request for her name.
If you had turned the page, you would have seen this writing gem:
My voice bounced nervously off the Plexiglas screen.
Really? I’ll agree that the sound waves that constitute a voice can bounce off of things, but nervously? Based on the tension-free first page, I’ll save my 30 cents for a more deserving narrative. Your thoughts?
You’re invited to a flogging—your own You see the insights fresh eyes bring to the performance of bestseller first pages, so why not do the same with the opening of your WIP? Submit your prologue/first chapter to my blog, Flogging the Quill and I’ll give you my thoughts and even a little line editing if I see a need. And the readers of FtQ are good at offering constructive notes, too. Hope to see you there.
To submit, email your first chapter or prologue (or both) as an attachment to me, and let me know if it’s okay to use your first page and to post the complete chapter.
[coffee]
Ray Rhamey is the author of five novels and one writing craft book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. He’s also an editor of book-length fiction and designs book covers and interiors for Indie authors and small presses. His website, crrreative.com, offers an a la carte menu of creative services for writers and publishers. Learn more about Ray’s books at rayrhamey.com.
I liked the first paragraph well enough but I think she takes it too far and ultimately gets a no from me. As for the “gem” I will admit that sound waves aren’t people and thus can’t be nervous. but it might be a stylistic thing. I haven’t read her so I don’t know.
Chuck Wendig had a column where he defended the use of the speech tag “hissed” when the sentence had no s. While technically it was correct, he said that sometimes metaphor is needed. The key is not to overdo it. If every noun has two adjectives and every verb an adverb then its too much, but some times you can use it to good effect.
I might have voted yes if the paragraph beginning “The man in the uniform motioned me forward…” had been the opener.
Then maybe a bit later, if the the mustache business had been been incorporated into the dialogue (the millipede came to life and wiggled with every syllable) I might have kept reading.
I voted Yes.
I think there is tension on the page, because the MC is distracted. The customs official had to say maam more than once to get her attention. What’s distracting her so much here? When I go through customs, I don’t need to be asked to move forward to show my passport. Does she travel so often that she daydreams about mustaches while waiting in line?
I’d read a little more.
At the time I am commenting, the vote is evenly split, 50/50. I’m not surprised.
This opening is meant to engage by voice alone. Mustaches? Daydreaming at passport control? Not exactly high action, or high anything.
It does, however bring us inside the consciousness of Louisa Elizabeth Clark. We’ve barely met her and she is already taking her clothes off–as it were. She is exposing herself. She is being intimate, inviting us in.
Now, do I like Louisa Elizabeth Clark? That’s the question. What kind of woman is she? Not much to go on yet, but she seems a bit goofy. Fun. Thinks about whacky things like mustaches. She is distracted, daydreaming. She’s also got agency. When the passport control officer asks her name she’s, like, can’t you read?
I sense that this will be the kind of novel that places high value on writing, prose, and that very stray thought will be spun out in elaborate detail, then restated. Every idea will be punched with a metaphor or smilie. We will muse our way through, spending more page time wondering and wandering through the protagonist’s thought process than really going anywhere.
But this is not a novel for readers who want to go anywhere, at least not quickly. It’s for readers who want to journey inside more than they want to pass customs and get moving. I judge that to be about half of all readers, exactly as the poll results show.
Me? I’d turn the page and muse for a while longer. I like Louisa enough for that anyway. More to the point, I like Jojo Moyes’s stories. I trust her. That trust isn’t built on this one page, it was built on many prior pages in prior novels.
I didn’t vote because I have read the whole novel and the two previous novels in the series already. I’m in the target readership for this book – people who loved the other two and who want to know what happens next for Lou Clark, protagonist of all three. I agree this first page is not very compelling, and in fact I thought this instalment was the weakest of the three. But I did love the wonderfully flawed Lou, especially in Book 2, ”After You”, and wanted to know what happened to her. I think the series should stop now, as there are just so many ginormous life crises you can reasonably put your central characters through.
I voted yes, because I enjoyed the humorous element of her musings over the mustache. A millipede, a broom head, a cowboy mustache. I visualized Hercule Poirot, Sam Elliot and Charlie Chaplin.
Unlike the proverbial agent or editor, I usually turn the page before I decide. I would need a few more lines to make an official judgment on this one.
I voted yes, based on the voice.
No, there’s no conflict, but there’s a personality, and so far I like it. So I’ll stick around for a least a few more pages.
I voted yes. I already like this character. She’s amusing and I think she’d have a quirky, unique take on life. I’d definitely give it a full first chapter and then decide whether to keep going.
Whats’s interesting to me is that I voted “yes” because I enjoyed the immediate quirkiness of the character and the very clear voice. I found the mustache measurement of nationality hilarious as well. I would continue reading for awhile, see if I can get into it.
That said, once I saw which book it was, I thought, OH. Nope. I wouldn’t continue reading. I read the first book in this series and found the MC a bit insipid, lacking in real goals or motivation until almost 2/3 of the way through the book, and I was also frustrated by the way it changed POVs to that of a secondary character one time only, just because it was convenient for the author. So. No. I wouldn’t read this. And yes, I liked the voice. Ha!
Oh, interesting…
Other folks have covered the bases. It’s competent but doesn’t go anywhere. I thought as I voted “no” that it was probably by a well-known author with her own tribe that trusted her to have something for them.
Indies have no such luxury.
I with those who found it funny, original, engaging. I don’t need car chases on the first page. I do need to be either worried about the character or curious. I was certainly curious here.
No.
Sure, there’s no story question, no clue what the book is about, not much tension. That’s not why I said no.
It’s the mustache. Who did it belong to? “The man in the uniform” ? Maybe, maybe not: he didn’t look up from his screen, so I think not. So who does the mustache belong to? No one, apparently. It’s just floating there, disembodied, facial hair without a face. I can’t visualize it, even though it’s obviously intended to be visualized.
Two pages later we learn that, yes, even though he had been looking down at the screen the whole time, the mustache belong to the immigration agent. Logic fail. But by then we have also learned that the MC is an idiot who, in the post-9/11 reality, still babbles irrelevancies and doesn’t pay attention to the immigration agent, making the wait even longer for the other people in the long queue behind her.
She’s not someone I want to read a story about.
No. Just reading that first paragraph my eyes glazed over. It’s a superficial voice and doesn’t inspire me to want to get to know the character or read any of the subsequent dialogue.
Voted No.
But a writer who has built up an audience can bend the rules. They have the reader’s trust. If this was the first book from a new writer – caveat emptor. As I’ve never read anything by the author, this opening certainly doesn’t grab me.
Yes! This isn’t a thriller. It’s romantic women’s fiction, which is all about the woman’s journey. The most important element of this story is the MC, and this page gives you a peek into the character you’ll be following. Therefore, it comes down to whether or not this character intrigues you on any level. She’s quirky, which I like. She’s distracted, which tells me she’s got a lot on her mind. And she’s got a passport, which tells me we are about to take a trip. That’s enough for me. Everything doesn’t need to be spelled out on page one. This gives me enough (with humor, too) to turn a few more pages.
Good points regarding genre expectations.
It’s boring. Period.
I voted yes. I love the voice. Generally voice won’t engage me all on its own but this time it did. Maybe it’s because I understand being so mesmerized by an oddity I don’t hear what’s being said to me. Maybe it’s because I need a little humour right now and I can see this woman getting into all sorts of trouble so I want to follow her. At least for another page or two.
I voted yes. I liked the voice and the little snippet of character was appealing. I would definitely give it a few more pages, at least. In fact, I’ve seen these books at the bookstore, but have never picked one up, but am now thinking I’ll check them out next time I’m there.
For me, there is a difference between a story that drags and one that invites lingering, getting to know a character or two, and seeing the world from their perspective. If I pick up a suspense or thriller, I expect it to move along–I don’t expect a lot of introspection from someone dangling from a cliff. But, there are other stories, the ‘mysteries of the human heart’ stories, if you will, where the plot (action) merely serves to inspire the introspection that is the heart of the story–that resolves an issue or answers a question, changing a character’s perspective. I guess it’s the old ‘plot-driven’ vs ‘character driven’. For me, as long as a story is well-written (meaning, entertaining) I don’t think one is necessarily better than the other, just different.
I was torn between a yes or no response, so I would say yes–the author clearly engaged me enough to make me read at least a little further.
BTW, is “maths” a dialect thing? Every time I see that I want to edit and remove the ‘s’.
That’s what the English say. Mathematics is shortened to maths, as it is truly plural. We Americans have it all wrong. Ha! But I say math, because I’m one of those Americans…
Mustaches interest me, and I smiled as I read. Enough said.
Yes.
I appear to be channeling Donald Maass and Keith Cronin, both of whom said what I would have, except much better.
I voted yes, based on the first sentence. Did not change my opinion once I finished.
Voice and character. The first tells me I’m in good hands with this author, the second is a person I want to get to know better.
I’d turn the page. Not because of conflict or drama, but because of voice. I was really enjoying the character’s voice.
I didn’t keep reading because the distraction with the mustache for an entire first page was not compelling enough to me, and I was worried there might be other things like this throughout the book. Maybe if there would have been more setting given, I might have found it more interesting.