Flog a Pro: would you pay to turn the first page of this bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | June 20, 2019 |
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 paperback trade fiction bestseller list for June 23, 2019. How strong is the prelude—would this narrative, all on its own, hook an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer? Following are what would be the first 17 manuscript lines of the Prelude.
AUGUST 3, 1939
My story begins on a sweltering August night, in a place I will never set eyes upon. The room takes life only in my imaginings. It is large most days when I conjure it. The walls are white and clean, the bed linens crisp as a fallen leaf. The private suite has the very finest of everything. Outside, the breeze is weary, and the cicadas throb in the tall trees, their verdant hiding places just below the window frames. The screens sway inward as the attic fan rattles overhead, pulling at wet air that has no desire to be moved.
The scent of pine wafts in, and the woman’s screams press out as the nurses hold her fast to the bed. Sweat pools on her skin and rushes down her face and arms and legs. She’d be horrified if she were aware of this.
She is pretty. A gentle, fragile soul. Not the sort who would intentionally bring about the catastrophic unraveling that is only, this moment, beginning. In my multifold years of life, I have learned that most people get along as best they can. They don’t intend to hurt anyone. It is merely a terrible by-product of surviving.
She produces the very last thing she could possibly want. Silent flesh comes forth—a tiny, fair-haired girl as pretty as a doll, yet blue and still.
The woman has no way of knowing her child’s fate, or if she does know, the medications (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here.
This is Before We Were Yours by Lisa Wingate. Was this opening page compelling?
My vote: Yes.
This book received a strong 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. The writing alone deserves a handful of stars—I found the mood-setting description involving and interesting. The scene is well set, and there is something happening to a character, even though the object of the narrative is not the narrator. There are story questions here—what will happen to the pretty woman and her stillborn child? And how is this the start of the narrator’s story when she isn’t there and never will be? I felt I was in the hand of a strong storyteller, and turn the page I did.
Your thoughts?
You’re invited to a flogging—your own You see here 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.
“in a place I will never set eyes upon.”
“She produces the very last thing she could possibly want. Silent flesh comes forth—a tiny, fair-haired girl as pretty as a doll, yet blue and still.”
Those were the lines that got me interested. However I would have cut the descriptions a bit. Or made them a bit more vibrant.
Just one thought. While it’s true that agents have to make instant choices to keep their margin of profitability, as a reader, provided the writing isn’t meandering and/or confusing, I’m more than willing to read a score or so of pages before deciding whether or not to put a book down.
I thought the descriptions were good, and the last line made me want to turn the page. Would I continue to read? Once I learned more about the story, I’m sitting on the fence. There seems to be a bunch of books that cover similar topics about children being sold during this time period. I don’t know if I would read yet another one, unless it was non-fiction.
My no vote was prompted by the detailed scene set and my having to get into the third paragraph before we had a person – and we still at the end of the page have no name with which I can identify.
While the verbiage is beautiful and evocative, the story simply isn’t there yet. And since is has such a depressive beginning, I feel no promise of future.
I might be tempted to go to page 2, but if it is substantially as floating as page 1, I’d still give it a no.
I felt I was in the hands of master storyteller when I began this. And there are a LOT of story questions from the first page. And the more I read, the more I fell in love with the people. My review: https://vijayabodach.blogspot.com/2018/07/reading.html
I must be showing my trailer-park side, because to me this felt overwritten and purple-prosey. (Hey, prosey *might* be a word.)
The final nail in the coffin was dropping the V-word (verdant) into the very first paragraph. That’s a strong indication that this author is not my soulmate.
To me, this type of writing is trying too hard, and would quickly become too tedious to wade through. But that’s just me.
Keith, you put your prosey finger on it with “that’s just me.” If only readers wouldn’t employ those annoying personal filters to my compellingly witty and involving vampire kitty-cat novels, they would see them as compellingly witty and involving. Sadly, when it comes to readers, it’s always “all about me.”
YES! I was expecting to see the word ‘purple’ all over these comments.
I tend to agree with Keith. The writer begins with an interesting premise “I know how it all started but I was never there” followed by far too much description until the turn of the page. By Ray’s own parameters, the hook has to be set by the first 16-17 lines. But, too much time was wasted getting to something gripping, what we assume will be a still birth. As a reader, I’m thinking that if this is representative of her scenes, I’m going to be frustrated wading through details I don’t need to get to the next piece of action. I’ve just finished reading two books that did that and I’m not likely to read those authors again. For me it’s, “set the hook, please” then put the lovely details into their proper place. I had thought about reading this book, but I would have to read a whole first chapter before I’d buy it now.
I’m interested so far. We start with not one real person but two: the narrator, and the woman in labor (not counting the nurses, so obviously this is not a “nurse story”).
The instant leap from “my story” to “a place I will never set eyes upon” sets up a mystery to be explored.
The private suite suggests privilege; good marker there. Also the season and weather are well evoked. Contrary to some objections, we do need some hints about the setting so this story doesn’t begin in a featureless vacuum.
It’s not clear to me from the “blue and still” description that the infant was born dead. Blue, still infants have been resuscitated into wailing life, as I have witnessed. We are told the mother was drugged; therefore, effect on the baby? If the narrator is not the infant (yes, I’ll find out by turning the page, perhaps) then why is this her story? I need to keep reading to find out.
I voted yes. It’s interesting to see that so far the votes are more evenly balanced than usual; most commonly we all dump on the first page with a load of No’s and then hack away at all the weak points.
It seemed a bit over-written with some word use that stopped me (ex., ‘multifold’) reading while I rolled it around in context to the sentence. But the inciting incident with its dead or alive moment hanging there made me want to read along.
I voted no. The voice struck me as overdone and overdramatic, as if the narrator were under the influence of David Copperfield or Tess of the D’Urbervilles.
As an adoptive dad, I have cannot be wholly sanguine about adoption-gone-wrong novels, though this one is good. The novel’s editor at Random is also an adoptive mom, though, so I set aside my qualms in reading the comp copy she gave me.
This is not my favorite opening, it’s a bit self-consciously arty for my taste but the voice is strong and the author obviously in command. The book gets better from here, too. I recommend it.
I cheated and clicked on to the Amazon link and by the end of the first section, she had lost me. I wasn’t interested, at all, I’m afraid. Sorry!