Flog a Pro: Would You Pay to Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | June 17, 2021 |
Today’s flogging is the 100th Flog a Pro post.
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 two on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for June 20, 2021. How strong is the opening page—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?
She receives a message from the front office: a new soul is about to join them, and this soul has been assigned to Martha.
Martha puts on her reading glasses and finds her clipboard. The soul is arriving from…Nantucket Island.
Martha is both surprised and delighted. Surprised because Nantucket Harbor is where Martha met her own fateful end two summers ago and she’d thought the front office was intentionally keeping her away from coastal areas so she didn’t become (as Gen Z said) “triggered.”
And Martha is delighted because…well, who doesn’t love Nantucket?
Martha swoops down from the northeast so that her first glimpse of the island is the lighthouse that stands sentry at the end of the slender golden arm of Great Point. Martha spies seals frolicking just off the coast (and sharks stalking them a little farther out). She continues over Polpis Harbor, where the twelve-year-old class of Nantucket Community Sailing are taking their lessons in Optimists. One boat keels way over and comes dangerously close to capsizing. Martha blows a little puff of air—and the boat rights itself.
Martha dips over the moors, dotted with ponds and crisscrossed with sandy roads. She (snip)
We have a new poll supplier and the form is different. The Vote button is faint, but you’ll see it if you mouse over it.
Loading ...You can turn the page and read more here. Were the opening pages of the first chapter of Golden Girl by Elin Hilderbrand compelling?
My vote: yes.
This book received 4.6 out of 5 stars on Amazon. I gave this a weak “yes” because, due to the supernatural aspects of the opening, I was curious enough to want to sample more. It appears that this is an angel named Martha—by the way, the name “Martha” was used 9 times in 11 sentences? It became too repetitive for me—the author needs to invest in a few more pronouns.
What I come to novels for is story, and this narrative, while not loaded with tension, does suggest a story is ahead. After all, what do we know about angels coming to collect a soul? Good story questions raised. However, it needs to get to the story soon or I’m gone. Probably not to Nantucket, but still outta here. 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.
I gave it an “iffy yes” for the same reasons. I’d read a few more pages and hopefully, be compelled to put out another 30 cents for the next chapter.
The first sentence was phrased awkwardly and I have to agree about the regrettable absence of pronouns. That said, I enjoyed the snarky commentary about triggers and Martha’s effervescence. I have to wonder if she’s about to be challenged by a whole bunch of unfinished business around her own death. I’m a yes.
I voted yes, though not with the hearty enthusiasm suggested by the wording of the vote. It’s clear from the opening sentence that we are in the hereafter, and that is intriguing, especially with the homely details of reading glasses and clipboard.
Other strong points are the visual descriptions and bits of action—seals, sharks, sailboats, all in motion.
A weak point, I thought, was the use of parentheses, which interrupted my reading experience. The first “(as Gen Z said)” struck me as too coy, too much of a wink to the dear reader. It should have been killed. The second, about sharks stalking seals, could have been handled with a simple comma after “coast” and that would have given the sharks equal weight instead of making them parenthetically subordinate to the seals, which clearly they are not.
Wonder how this book is selling on Nantucket this summer? Interesting timing!
My reason for my no vote is… I don’t read fantasy, or paranormal, so I didn’t even have to read the whole excerpt to know that I wouldn’t spend 3 cents, let alone 30 cents on the rest of this chapter!
Congratulations on your 100th post! I always enjoy these. My thinking was right in line with yours. Too many “Martha’s” but I am interested enough to keep reading. Part of me wants to see how many more Martha’s are in there!
I chose yes. I sort of jumped over all the Martha’s. but it was the detailed description in the last paragraph that got me started skimming-maybe because I was eager to get to what was going on in Nantucket. :)
To be honest, if a real .30 was on the line to turn the page I probably would have saved my money, but it was an interesting start to a book that I would want to “Look Inside” for.
I voted No. I’m not feeling anything for Martha. I don’t usually want first person, but I think this would be a good place to use it. (I might be wishing this was The Lovely Bones.) Or maybe it’s just because the voice here feels like it’s going to take shortcuts. The term “the Front Office” is a signal to me that someone is being lazy. That’s an abstract term. More interesting would be someone’s name, like Michael. Overall, the writing didn’t impress me and the story sounds, at this point, like something that’s been done before.
I voted no, but not a strong no. I was intrigued by the first paragraph, but it wasn’t enough to make me want to deal with a whole novel written in that style.
Strong no. The writing is unremarkable. The use of first person seems an odd choice that adds nothing to the telling of the story. As has been noted, the use of parentheses is distracting, and for me annoying. And it’s just too twee for me. Oh, and why would an angel need reading glasses? The one point in its favor is that this opening did make me curious about the angel’s own death.
Agreed. She can right a sailboat with a puff of breath, but she needs glasses–and clipboards? The very definition of cozy.
There is only one way to read Elin Hilderbrand’s summer-soaked novels and that is on the beach. I am not currently relaxing on a beach but that is not the reason I voted “no”, an opinion as weak as the “yes” reported by you and others.
The angel conceit is not new and perhaps should not dissuade me; after all, it’s been used in literature for a long, long time. (See: The Bible.) Likewise, stories and legends about the Devil and his minions. (See: Milton.) There’s been a recent upsurge, with novels about Satan’s secretary, librarian and on and on, and who knows how many angels fallen or fooling around on Earth.
I don’t mind any of that but I’d really like to read something new in this vein. So far, Hilderbrand’s Martha is more of the same. Now, the conceit of Golden Girls is pretty good. A mom newly arrived in Heaven is given three chances to “nudge” her three careening children onto better paths. If you suspected that your Mom is watching you from Heaven…guess what, she is. It’s nice.
And count on it, there will be beach houses, white wine and no need to actually work for a living. I’m okay with that. I need a vacation. I just wish for a little more surprise in my escapism, I suppose, though I do give the publisher points for not using an Adirondack chair on the cover.
Maybe I’m just being grumpy. If a beach read is what you need for your striped canvas bag, go for it. I’m just in the mood today for something other than Nantucket, heartfelt family drama and angels who work from an office. A vacation from vacation reading, you know?
Curious, the very word. But since this was an overall bestseller, not YA urban fantasy which is what I would have thought from the page, I decided to vote no. Certainly it’s close.
But coming from me, to an agent? Oh hell no.
A soft no from me. The premise was mildly intriguing, but the writing was… just not very good. While I’m not opposed to present tense, to me this was a very stilted use of it, and as others have pointed out, the number of Martha’s gets to be a bit much.
So even though I’m a little curious about the angel angle (see what I did there?), I’m just not willing to spend that much time on such weak writing.
The concept is intriguing, but this got a no from me. It may simply be my personal taste, but I prefer a deeper-in POV, whether it is in 3rd (as this one is) or in 1st. I liked some of the lightheartedness and the puff of wind to right the tipping boat; I was also intrigued by the idea that the soul she is collecting may be a child–this, when she mentioned the 12-year-old class of boaters. I’m also influenced by my too-large stack of TBR’s, so that had some bearing, too. Overall, I need more juiciness to get me in.
My vote is no. I’m intrigued by the Nantucket setting, but I generally don’t like after-life stories and there’s nothing original here to grab me. What I feel is: Meh, Haven’t I read this before?
I noted no. Reading this felt like eating meringue: all sweet, little substance. Even in a beach read, I look for something to sink my teeth into.
I vote a strong yes. This sounds like an upbeat story with humor, and I’m always on the lookout for those types of stories. Extra points for magical realism, which I have a keen interest in. It’s fun, light-hearted, and compelling (to me). Did the writing “wow” me? No, it’s fairly pedestrian. But I do enjoy a good story. I’ll be picking this one up. :)
That’s a hellz NO from me. I recently read another of this author’s books and it was ghastly in the first degree. I vowed never again. And I knew this was her book after reading a couple sentences. Her books make me never want to go to Nantucket – and that is just crazy!! Non. Non non non