Flog a Pro: Would You Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | November 16, 2023 |
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.
How strong is the opening page of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?
Keith Bridgeman was alone in his room when he closed his eyes. The morning medical rounds were over. Lunch had been delivered and eaten and cleared away. Other people’s visitors had clattered along the corridor in search of relatives and friends. A janitor had swept and mopped and hauled off the day’s trash. And finally a little peace had descended on the ward.
Bridgeman had been in the hospital for a month. Long enough to grow used to its rhythms and routines. He knew it was time for the afternoon lull. A break from getting poked and prodded and being made to get up and move around and stretch. No one was going to bother him for another three hours, minimum. So he could read. Watch TV. Listen to music. Gaze out of the window at the sliver of lake that was visible between the next pair of skyscrapers.
Or he could take a nap.
Bridgeman was sixty-two years old. He was in rough shape. That was clear. He could debate the cause—the kind of work he had devoted his life to, the stress he had suffered, the cigarettes and alcohol he had consumed—but he couldn’t deny the effect. A heart attack so massive that no one had expected him to survive.
Defying odds that great is tiring work. He chose the nap.
These days he always chose the nap.
Bridgeman woke up after only an hour. He was no longer alone. Two other people were in the room with him. (snip).
Loading ...You can turn the page and read more here. Kindle users can request a sample sent to their devices, and I’ve found this to be a great way to evaluate a narrative that is borderline on the first page and see if it’s worth my coin.
This novel was number four on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for November 19, 2023. Were the opening pages of the first chapter of The Secret by Lee Child and Andrew Child compelling?
My vote: Yes.
This book received 4.3 out of 5 stars on Amazon. I turned the page not because of what was happening in the story but because skilled storytelling created a mood of tension and impending trouble. In particular, this:
Bridgeman woke up after only an hour. He was no longer alone. Two other people were in the room with him.
I think it’s the short, crisp, declarative sentences that signal tension to come. In terms of what’s happening, he doesn’t seem to know the people, and certainly didn’t expect them. His routine has not had visitors in a month.
Due to my flogging rules, I had to cut out this short sentence that followed the sample above:
Both were women.
I think adding that would strengthen the tension and I would look for a little trimming in the description to get it on the first page. What do you think?
Sidebar: I couldn’t use the number one and number two bestsellers in hardcover fiction because you would have known who the author was from the first page—one mentioned Stephanie Plum and the other Mitch McDeere, the leads from Janet Evanovich and John Grisham novels. The power of bestsellerdom. I’m pretty sure you would have turned the page for Janet’s novel and declined to read on for Mr. Grisham’s.
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 voted yes for similar reasons to your own. There should be nothing magical about the sum of the first page, to the letter. But just as including the next two short sentences would have increased the power, CUTTING the existing last three would have come close to cratering the impact. He’s hurting, he took a nap. So what! Often this exercise cuts it pretty close.
I wouldn’t object to giving you the latitude to stretching the snipping rule in cases like this. You have an objective sense of where the hook is set.
Agreed. This is one of those openings that dares to slow down just to set up an acceleration, and it runs longer than most writers should probably risk — at least, when it isn’t using that space to set up other things too. And since the Flogging uses a strict cut-off point, this could have utterly failed or succeeded at your test if that transition was just a line or two differently timed.
(I guess there’s a lesson for authors who self-publish, or think they know their publisher’s format perfectly: you can write your opening scene to be certain that key line makes it “above the fold” onto Page One. Though that’s mainly for the print version, since ebooks’ settings change with the reader.)
The thing that’s so hard about a first-page “flogging” is that everyone has different likes. I don’t tend to care for thrillers, and it was evident by his style that this is a thriller. For his audience, this probably hits all the right notes. The style says it’s a thriller, and you can instantly see that something bad is about to happen just by the fact that he’s in the hospital with people around him that it sounds like he doesn’t know. But I had a hard time even reading that first page because I’m just not his audience.
I voted no. The last line intrigued me, but not enough. However, considering readers don’t actually go in totally blind — there is a summary provided, after all — I probably would have kept reading if I’d known this was a thriller.
I vote Yes because of the last line. Not knowing what it is about made the choice more difficult, but I was intrigued by the visitors..
I voted no. I found the writing klunky and belabored, and began mentally editing it as I read, cutting probably 25% of what I was reading to make it tighter and get to the damn point already.
Now that I know it’s a Reacher book, I’d be interested in reading a few more pages. Lee Child seldom disappoints, and I’m curious about the literary passing of the torch that’s currently making headlines. But if this were a debut from an unknown author, I doubt I’d get to page 2.
I also voted no. Passive voice and telling of boring routine about unidentified hospital staff that showed little interest in hard working people – yawn. Nap time.
I enjoy Lee Child’s work, but I’m sorry to say his brother doesn’t have the same voice at all. Despite usually having good antennae for thriller beginnings, I found this completely lacking in microtension.
I’m willing to give published (not self-published) authors more time than one page because I know a gatekeeper has already established that there is some value in the book. (Or in the author’s name, but most made their name for a reason.) In this case, I felt I was in the hands of a pro who was setting something up, and by the end I would have bet that thirty cents the author was Lee Child. That said, had I seen only this much on a Look Inside or a library Read an Excerpt, without any knowledge as to whether anyone but the author had evaluated the work, I’d likely have moved on to another book.
My finger hovered over no but as I read on, I changed my mind.
The second paragraph could be condensed to a sentence or two, in my opinion.
I agree with others who say they’d keep reading, knowing it was a Reacher, but with reservations.
I voted no because, frankly, I didn’t get past the first two passive paragraphs. They simply didn’t engage my interest. It’s a bad sign when my fingers itch to pick up a red pen and start editing in that first paragraph.
I was iffy on both. The first two were slow but that last bit made me curious. Ultimately i would say yes.
As for your comment on #1 and #2, I recieved an ARC copy of Patterson’s latest and it.is.horrible. Do not recommend
So if we know it’s a thriller by an author who “seldom disappoints,” we would read on — but the exercise is supposed to put us in the chair of an agent reading a submission from an unknown author. I don’t enjoy thrillers and don’t buy or read them, but even if this were described as a story about personal challenges, conflict and growth, family, community, etc. — the kinds of subjects that interest me — and the first page certainly has that potential — I would vote “no.” Even with the added sentence: “Both were women.” So what? Anyone who’s spent any time in a hospital bed knows that even during the supposed lull, hospital personnel show up to change the IV, test some function, clean the bathroom, etc. Now if one of those women was wearing a rubber Trump mask and the other was wearing a Nixon mask, we might have a thriller. A political thriller! But even so, that intro needs to be tightened up. A lot.
PS: So, being a curious sort — I did read part of the sample offered through the link above. Oh yeah, they are creepy women; they might as well be wearing masks. If you like thrillers (or you’ve ever had cardiac trouble) you’ll be hooked by page 3.
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I voted no. Basically, because it felt like a mystery, or at least a story whose major players would be men. Yes, that line about the women might have change my mind. But there is so much to read, that over time I have chosen not to reader thrillers.
I voted yes because I really wanted to know who those two people were and why they were there.
I voted no. Everything before the last line bored me. The POV wasn’t deep enough for me to feel anything for the MC.
I voted yes. the turning point for me were the lines: “Defying odds that great is tiring work. He chose the nap.
These days he always chose the nap.” There was enough humor and intrigue to convince me that the writing might get tighter and the tension increase
I voted Yes because of the two strangers, then followed the link and read on.
After a few pages I’d had enough. I found the threats cliched. the similes clunky and the withholding of information about whatever it was that happened in 1969 irritating.
I found the not-proper-sentences irritating too, which surprised me. I don’t usually object to that sort of thing. I guess it was because I was losing interest and looking for reasons to criticise.
I voted no. The lead-up to that last sentence was boring, it went on too long, and the prose was limp and uninspiring.
Nope and then some.
Ray, I voted yes for the same reasons you did. We know the protagonist, his problem, the setting, and the question, what is he about to face. I like crisp, descriptive writing. 📚🎶 Christine
My first impulse was to say no, but hospitals interest me. Then, when he said he was opting for a nap, I thought, what??? Now, in retrospect, I should have said no because the nap was a device to slip in two strangers. It could have been done in a more interesting way. My gut instinct was right because I never read that series.