Flog a Pro: would you pay to turn the first page of this bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | March 16, 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.
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 one on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for March 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 How strong is the opening page—would this narrative, all on its own, have hooked an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer?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.
That spring, rain fell in great sweeping gusts that rattled the rooftops. Water found its way into the smallest cracks and undermined the sturdiest foundations. Chunks of land that had been steady for generations fell like slag heaps on the roads below, taking houses and cars and swimming pools down with them. Trees fell over, crashed into power lines; electricity was lost. Rivers flooded their banks, washed across yards, ruined homes. People who loved each other snapped and fights erupted as the water rose and the rain continued.
Leni felt edgy, too. She was the new girl at school, just a face in the crowd; a girl with long hair, parted in the middle, who had no friends and walked to school alone.
Now she sat on her bed, with her skinny legs drawn up to her flat chest, a dog-eared paperback copy of Watership Down open beside her. Through the thin walls of the rambler, she heard her mother say, Ernt, baby, please don’t. Listen … and her father’s angry leave me the hell alone.
They were at it again. Arguing. Shouting.
Soon there would be crying.
Weather like this brought out the darkness in her father.
Leni glanced at the clock by her bed. If she didn’t leave right now, she was going to be late for school, and the only thing worse than being the new girl in junior high was drawing (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here.
This is The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Was this opening page compelling?
My vote: No.
This book received a high average of 4.6 stars out of 5 on Amazon. First, I have to set aside the editor and writing coach in me, who is flinching at less-than-effective craft. I’m speaking of breaking close third pov to describe her as having long hair parted in the middle, skinny legs, and a flat chest. In close third, she wouldn’t be thinking those things about herself. Are we in close third? I think so. We’re inside her head, knowing her thoughts. (I would avoid the filter “felt” which tells me about an emotion but doesn’t show me or help me feel it, and the “heard” that distances me from the character’s experience.)
What of tension? Story questions? The narrative saps its own strength, beginning with a weather opening. Then there is fighting going on between her parents, so there’s conflict—in another room. But what about Leni? Here’s where the narrative loses its grip on the tension stirred by the fight; it’s old news. Leni has been through this before. There will be crying. It’s just another day in the life. But, as far as we know, there’s nothing more than that to trouble Leni. She has no emotional reaction to the fighting. Does it even matter to her? No clue.
Her biggest problem is going to a new school, an opening that exists in countless YA novels and feels clichéd to me. I’ve been a shy new kid at a grade school . . . junior high . . . high school (my parents moved a lot), so I have empathy for her situation. But, still, her plight didn’t draw me in because it isn’t much of a plight—she just “feels” edgy. So? Other than fairly normal teen angst, what are the stakes here? For me, bottom line, there wasn’t enough story suggested on this first page to draw me onward. 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 line. It had a portentous feel to it, but that drained away the further I read. But what clinched the ‘no’ for me was that after a description of near-apocalyptic weather damage (which felt more omniscient that third person) and deteriorating relationships, the next line was “Leni felt edgy, too.” The understatement made me spit coffee. I usually love this author. I wouldn’t have guessed this was her.
Ray –
First off I wanted to mention that I enjoyed your editing observations and comments in yesterday‘s post.
On today’s selection I would vote “yes“.
My slant on a couple of the things you mentioned is different than yours.
While opening with description of weather/setting can be hackneyed, in this case it’s very well done and effective. I found the description of weather and setting emotionally evocative. It fused well with the introduction of the girl and her situation.
I recognize the slight breaks in point of view. and the use of the “telling” words heard and felt, but they did not pull me out of the story. I believe that often times these identified violations do not meaningfully compromise story and are not as damaging as many would suggest.
You suggested as cliche or normal the girl’s status as a new in school, alone, and with family discord-my take is that if effectively communicated her common issues can establish a universality within the story rather than a tired trope.
Bottom line-this page one worked for me and I would read on.
Thanks.
I was very engaged with the first paragraph but not with the second, but despite pleas not to judge based on genre, I can’t help it. In the first paragraph, it gave the image of an epic sweeping story about to come. Then the 2nd paragraph shot that down in an instant. So for me personally, the answer is no.
Was anyone else *confused* by the first paragraph? “Rattled the rooftops” would make this a strong but routine storm, and then it goes on to erosion “taking houses and cars and swimming pools down with them.” That’s simply a contradiction, without some “it had started as… until…” to unify it. And then, when we’re revved up for a disaster scene, it goes back to ordinary family drama, not threatened by the storm but merely egged on by it.
The only thing I can think is that that destruction is happening in other areas of the county where the rain is harder and the buildings are less sturdy. But there’s nothing to separate that threat level from Leni’s situation, and certainly nothing to say why a little girl busy with her own life is even aware of all this happening to other people (another viewpoint violation).
This is a powerful image (even if it’s as old as “dark and stormy night”), but like the river, it’s spilling its boundaries and leaving confusion in its wake.
I liked the start and thought this story would be about a natural disaster, but no. It’s about a girl going to school. How is she going to do that, though? Homes have been ruined and roads got destroyed, but none of that gets mentioned again. I feel like that first paragraph belongs to a completely different book.
For this well known writer the weather seemed a worn out trope for the beginning — then confusing use of POV. I voted no but have read the book. I guess after her other successes she gets away with it. The Nightingale was so much better.
I balked like most but for different reasons than Ray. What he points out about PoV is correct, but I believe there can be such a thing as “intermediate third”: it’s the same voice that someone uses to describe a person they’re really close to. Not the girl, but like her guardian angel. So I was OK with the descriptions of her hair, etc. didn’t phase me.
Where I lost it was at the grand assumption about how the weather acted on people. Frankly, I reject that notion completely. People PULL TOGETHER when the weather daunts and threatens them. This family was already broken if they keep on arguing through it, or increased as the water is rising. It simply was not believable to me.
I said yes, largely because I was a girl who read Watership Down obsessively, and that book being open gives me an idea that the story I’m about to read might in some way attempt to mirror or pay homage to that story. I liked the mood-setting first paragraph. I’m not so interested in the girl at a new school with fighting parents, but I have hopes that the story will have more scope than that, because of the aforementioned Watership Down and disruptive weather. I fully admit that if it had been almost any other book open on her bed, I might not keep going.
I’ve read ‘Watership Down’ at least 10 times myself, and seen the movie 4 or 5 times as well. It’s on my ‘read every few years’ list, along with ‘I Capture the Castle’, Heinlein’s early works, and several titles from the Christie and Stout cannon.
Adams had a way of letting us into the lupine mind which I still find fascinating. My sister read the book at the recommendation of our mother, who neglected to tell her that Hazel died at the end.
Sis didn’t speak to her for a week after that.
I said no. Like others who commented before me, I liked the first sentence, but grew detached as the paragraph went on. – I did not feel any connection to Leni, not the way she is described so far. Nothing really special there to draw me in. The only really interesting sentence for me (after the first one) is “Weather like this brought out the darkness in her father.” But then the focus goes back to Leni being almost late for school, and the glimmer of interest is gone.
I voted yes, but only because when I got to “snip” I was wondering “where is this going?”
I liked the first paragraph (I ‘m a patient reader and have no objections to stories that begin with setting the scene, familiarizing the reader with the characters’ physical world), but the subsequent paragraphs didn’t seem to have a connection to it. It felt like the beginnings of two different stories. I did click on the link to the book and read the first two chapters–so far, dramatic weather has nothing to do with this story.
My “no” was simply that none of it interested me. The disconnect between the weather and the girl, and the no conflict issue, and the lackluster prose simply turned me off.
Good description of a rain storm but if it was really this bad, there’d be flooding and massive potholes, in which case she wouldn’t be going to school.
I said no twice. I read a snippet when deciding whether to download the book, and nothing about it interested me, so I didn’t. Thought maybe I’d missed something when I saw how well the book is doing.
For me, the main turn-off was Leni. She seems nothing more than a cliched teen with a cliched problem. I need more than that to hook me.
Not a YA fan, normally, so that was one strike against it.
The wording seemed forced to me.
The content made this rain seem somehow more catastrophic and unusual, rather than just another long and dreary stretch of rainy days, which is where I think that the author was going.
I would have liked to meet the protagonist in the first few lines, getting her reaction to the rain, rather than seeing her as just another victim of the downpour, like a stray cat or a weather worn shop sign.