Page 98
By Donald Maass | April 3, 2024 |
I’m writing this post in a public library. It isn’t a research library, the awesome university kind where you might go to dig up fabulous story details. It’s a humble branch library. The patrons are either kids from the nearby high school or their moms. The adult fiction shelves are not deeply stocked with classic novels but rather with plastic-jacketed titles from recent decades, the kind of stuff that regular people want to read.
It’d say that 70% of the fiction titles on the shelves are mysteries and thrillers. We’ll come back to that.
First, a nod to my fellow WU contributor Ray Rhamey. His monthly Flog a Pro posts are popular, and with good reason: They highlight first pages and ask us to judge them, yes or no, would you turn to the second page or not? Brilliant.
Ray knows a lot about first pages. His website has a checklist of things that a first page should accomplish. There are two primary areas. With respect to character, something should go wrong or challenge the character; the character should desire something; the character should take action. With respect to setting, the reader should be oriented, what’s happening should be happening “now” not “then”, set up isn’t needed.
The final element is a story question. Got all that and you get a gold star. I like Ray’s checklist; it is a good, basic starting point for beginnings, which bring us right away into the story action and are how the vast majority of manuscripts begin. Ray is the first to say that his checklist is only a guideline and that’s wise. There are many ways to open a novel besides kickstarting the action. There are atmosphere openings and voice openings (sometimes called the letter to the reader) among a variety of other approaches.
Whatever the opening strategy, in my observation effective openings offer us the following:
- Commanding voice. Skillful language, sonority and cadence lull us into the semi-dream state in which story begins to seem real. I’ve written about that previously HERE.
- Character presence. Whether first person or third, close or distant, we are anchored in a character and strongly sense who that character is. Furthermore, we have a reason to care about, identify with or hope for that character.
- Intrigue. This is commonly understood as story question, the puzzle unsolved, the mini-mystery that doesn’t yet have an answer. Intrigue, though, can be anything anomalous, odd, out of the ordinary, curious or leading. The crude application of intrigue is seen in thriller hook lines, but there are many other ways get us interested.
- Story expectation. The type of story experience we’ll have is signaled through tone, sensibility and word choice. I’ve written previously about promise words HERE.
- Necessary knowledge. This is emphatically NOT set up. Set up is the unneeded explanation of how the story circumstances came about. It assumes that the reader is a dummy, unable to understand or accept why a story is happening. Necessary knowledge, on the other hand, tells us something specific about person, place or story that is different enough as to be critical to the verisimilitude of the story we’re going to read, or at least is unique detail or unusual perspective that, paradoxically, contributes to the illusion of reality.
- Mood. Our frame of mind is set. Stories can be broken down into two fundamental categories, invoking in us either fear or hope. Gloom sends us one way. Delight sends us another. As with the underlying musical score in a movie, we’re emotionally prepared.
- Story world. We find ourselves in a place which is not only particular—a place which we can imagine in the mind’s eye—but a place in which we sense that things are going to happen. Big things. Significant things. Meaningful things.
However, my post today is not about openings. I’m fairly confident that the opening of your WIP is going to bring us some, if not much, of what I’ve identified above. My post today, rather, is about page 98.
When we are that deep into your novel, is page 98 still bringing us stuff which engages, intrigues, informs, sways, and suggests to us that there is more to come? Is there still a strong feeling of character, sensibility, and promise? Do we find ourselves in a particular mood or frame of mind?
Or to put it simply, is page 98 as good as page 1? To find out how—or even whether—that can happen, let’s go back to the library.
A Random Grab from the Stacks
Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to, right now, leave my cubby in the quiet reading room and walk through this library’s fiction shelves. With my eyes closed, I’m going to let my fingers land on four random novels. I’m going to bring those back and open each to page 98. Ready?
[Hum the theme from “Jeopardy”.]
Okay, I’m back. Amazingly, only one of my four randomly-selected novels is a thriller, one I’ve read before. The others are titles I’m aware of but have not previously read. So, let’s turn to page 98 in each one and see what’s going on.
The first is Kate Atkinson’s A God in Ruins (2015), a follow-up to her multiple-lives novel Life After Life (2013). It examines the life of the younger brother of the prior novel’s Ursula Todd: he’s Teddy, a poet, heroic pilot, husband,, father, and later grandfather. It’s about the challenges of living in the post-war world, a novel about an ordinary man living through extraordinary times.
Okay, so what about page 98? Here, Teddy is contemplating marriage and looks to the example of an elderly family acquaintance to measure the pros and cons. The family acquaintance’s outcome is a puzzle to Teddy:
The Shawcross girls were enormously found of their ‘old Pa’, an affection that was more than reciprocated by Major Shawcross. Hugh was close to Pamela and Ursula, of course, but Teddy was always rather surprised at the way that Major Shawcross was so free with his feelings, kissing and cuddling ‘my girls’ and often reduced to tears merely by the sight of them. (‘The Great War,’ Mrs. Shawcross said. ‘It changed him.’) Hugh tended to reticence, a temperament that, if anything, the war had reinforced. Had Major Shawcross wished for a son? Surely he must have done, didn’t all men? Did Teddy?
He intended to propose to Nancy. Today perhaps.
So, tell me…what do you get from this passage? Imagine that this passage was not on page 98, but part of page 1. Would it bring you enough to keep you going?
My analysis: possibly, leaning yes. Despite a certain confusion resulting from the mix of “Hugh” and “Major Shawcross” (they are the same), there is a warmth and fine sensibility at work in Teddy’s contemplation of a man farther down life’s road than he. He’s puzzled by Major Shawcross’s contentment, especially his mawkish affection for his two daughters. How can that be? (“The Great War…it changed him.”) Teddy doesn’t get it. Why is the man so happy? And therefore, given Teddy’s uncertainty, is it really a good idea for him to be proposing today to Nancy? (Story question!)
Overall, I’d say that Teddy’s sensibility infuses this passage. We know who he is: a man possessed of a uniquely British befuddlement. He is present on the page. The intrigue is mild but Major Shawcross is portrayed with warmth and mild wonder. There’s a sweetness and a certain sadness to the passage.
Teddy is lost but looking for something. Marriage? I think it’s more than that. What that is I’m not exactly sure, but I’d like to find out. I think this will be an emotional novel, signaled in the promise words: …affection…free with feelings…kissing and cuddling…tears…war…propose. A potboiler or thriller this is not; however, I’m pretty sure that I’ll be getting an affecting story of one man’s journey…oh, wait…I am getting that! This is page 98!
Let’s take a look at novel number two. This one is from the writer of stunningly authentic WWII era European espionage novels, Alan Furst: A Hero of France (2016). This is the one I’ve read before, one of Furst’s finest. It’s set in 1941 at the beginning of the Occupation, and concerns Mathieu, leader of a resistance cell that helps downed British airman escape back to England. He’s aided by a wide variety of exceptionally brave ordinary people, one of whom is introduced here:
A note had been left at the Saint-Yves, asking him to contact Ghislain, so, when Mathieu left the office, he found a bureau de poste, called Ghislain at the Sorbonne, and find him still at his desk. “Can you meet me at the Notre-Dame de Lorette Metro Station?” Ghislain said. “Outside the entry?”
“I can be there in twenty minutes,” Mathieu said.
The Nortre-Dame de Lorette church, and the Metro that served it, were in the Ninth Arrondissement; a sombre, run-down quarter with low rents for the white-collar working class, and commercial buildings where long hallways were occupied by cheap travel agencies, confidential agents—private detectives, pebbled-glass doors that said IMPORT-EXPORT, and, on street level, narrow shops where the merchandise was new but looked used and was forever on sale. Daylight was just fading when Mathieu reached the Metro entrance, Ghislain showed up ten minutes later. Mathieu was glad to see him arrive because he’d caught the attention of a policeman. “Let’s walk,” Mathieu said.
Again, imagine this was not on page 98 but on page 1. Does this passage bring us enough to keep going?
My analysis: hell yes! Talk about atmosphere! This is not a cute Paris, but a dangerous Paris. The mood of menace is terrific. Just look at the promise words: “…contact…run-down quarter…low rents…working class…long hallways…confidential agents…pebbled-glass doors…daylight was fading…policeman…”Let’s walk”…” We are not in Candyland, Toto. We’re in Noir Land. We’re on edge.
What the meeting will be about, we don’t know, and that’s the point. Furst withholds. (Story question!) It’s not going to be about tea. We don’t yet know much about Mathieu, but his cautious sensibility is already evident. Is something going to happen? Without question. Are we anchored in the here and now of the story world? Certainly. Altogether this is an irresistible lure of an opening…oh wait…hold on…this isn’t the opening, it’s page 98!
The third novel is Toni Morrison’s A Mercy (2008), a multi-POV novel set in the 1680’s about the effects of mother-daughter abandonment and slavery. The main character is a young slave girl named Florens, who seeks connection and love wherever she can find it, but there are other voices as well. Here, the POV is Rebekka, a victim of religious intolerance back in England. Her ambitious husband Jacob has recently died:
It would be all right. Just as the pall of childlessness coupled with bouts of loneliness had disappeared, melted like the snow showers that signaled it. Just as Jacob’s determination to rise up in the world had ceased to trouble her. She’d decided that the satisfaction of having more and more was not greed, not in the things themselves, but in the pleasure of the process. Whatever the truth, however driven he seemed, Jacob was there. With her. Breathing next to her in bed. Reaching for her even as he slept. Then suddenly, he was not.
Were the Anabaptists right? Was happiness Satan’s allure, his tantalizing deceit? Was her devotion so frail it was merely bait? Her stubborn self-sufficiency outright blasphemy? Is that why at the height of her contentedness, once again death turned to look her way?
Again, imagine that this passage is excerpted from page 1. Does it bring us enough to keep going?
My analysis: for a novel of this type, yes. Could Rebekka’s sensibility and worldview be more evident? Hardly. She is holding off grief, reconciling to it, or trying to. Her moment in time is pinned to the page…melted like the snow showers that signaled it. Her story world is clear, it’s a world of…
…childlessness…loneliness…greed…pleasure…Anabaptists…Satan…deceit…devotion…blasphemy…death…
Do you get the feeling that this story is going to have a nobly tragic aspect? Of course, and not only because this is the author of Beloved. The language of the passage creates that expectation, as does Rebekka’s fatalistic mindset. Intrigue per se may be low, but do you also get the feeling that something is going to happen? Rebekka is a widow, so her life must go somewhere from here, mustn’t it? Her sensibility is so fine that I’m on board to find out where that may be. Morrison’s opening hits several of our marks…oh wait…hold on…this isn’t the opening, it’s page 98!
Our fourth novel is Elizabeth Strout’s comically titled novel Oh William! (2021). The main character is Lucy Barton (see also My Name is Lucy Barton, 2016), a writer, whose subject here is her ex-husband William, who has always been a mystery to her. The plot is…well, it’s William, or rather Lucy’s observation of him. The framework is William’s invitation to Lucy to accompany him on a trip to deal with a recently discovered family secret:
When William met me at LaGuardia Airport I saw him from afar and I saw that his khakis were too short. A little bit this broke my heart. He wore loafers, and his socks were blue, not a dark blue nor a light blue, and they showed a few inches until his khakis covered them. Oh William, I thought. Oh William!
How nice that we get here the title reference! Now, imagine again that this is page 1, perhaps even the first paragraph of page 1. Does it bring us enough to keep going?
My analysis: yes. We’re instantly anchored in Lucy’s mind. We don’t know anything about her, as yet, but we do know that she’s a keen observer of regrettable details. What she feels for her ex-husband is a kind of exasperated pity, based on—what? Blue socks showing at the bottom of pants too short. Oh, dear! Oh, William indeed!
What kind of reading experience will this novel be? “Closely observed” human behavior, certainly, but also handled with a light and loving touch. Consider the promise words: “…Airport…khakis were too short…broke my heart…socks were blue…Oh William!” Rueful and funny-sad.
I wouldn’t say that there’s high intrigue, but there’s definitely a sense that we’re going somewhere from here. Somewhere amusing and touching. Strout in a mere four lines hits many of our marks, it’s a virtuoso opening such as we would expect from a Pulitzer-winning and highly lauded author…oh wait…hold on…this isn’t the opening, it’s page 98!
Conclusion
Have I made my point? Every page is a test. Are you bringing enough to each page to keep your readers going? Are you putting into each one as much as you have put into page 1?
I can tell you that many manuscripts do not hit many marks, if any at all, on page 98. Oftentimes, on page 98 the novel is grinding along, a slave to a sequential portrayal of events, pressing only plot buttons or mired in the dull domestic business that I call the Static Hiss (see HERE). Sensibility, atmosphere and anticipation are weak. Language is flat and plain. I get the feeling that the writer isn’t paying attention, coasting along and presuming that by this point in the novel we’re hooked like fish and the writer can take plenty of time to reel us in.
On the other hand, page 98 in enduring novels brings us many rewards. We are intrigued, anchored in a character’s sensibility, captured by language, put in a mood, present in a particular world, learning something we need to know, and expecting more to come. There’s a reason that page 98’s are effective in novels by the masters: They put in the work.
Have a look at page 98 of your WIP. How much are you bringing to the page? Confess!
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
[coffee]
Oh boy. Great exercise. Ugh, my promise words are so dark, yet my intentions are for a hopeful read. I’m trying to convince myself the other POVs are more hopeful. I think I’ll have to spin a wheel for more page numbers to check.
Thanks, as always, Don.
Page 98 is one sentence, the last in the chapter, so I added most of the preceding page of a conversation of the mobster and his young daughter.
“Daddy, will you be going back to jail someday?”
“You can’t go to jail if you don’t get caught.”
“Maybe, when I’m older, we can be in jail together.”
He laughed quickly, then shook his head. “Look around. We’re already in jail. Life is a prison term, Belladonna. We’re all lifers.”
“You look sad today. Are you sad, Daddy?”
“I don’t feel anything.”
“I thought you would be happy today.”
His eyes shifted to her. “Why do you say that?”
“I make you lucky, remember? I’m your Rabbit’s Foot. I made you lucky today.”
She had his full attention now.
“I was very lucky today and some people were very unlucky. Did you do that? Did you make them unlucky?”
She shook her head, nervous now. “No.”
“You sure? One person’s lucky means someone else isn’t.”
“I only know how to bring the luck.”
“Yeah?” He looked back into the shadows. “Keep it coming then, kid.”
My vote: Yes! Wonderful dialogue. I would definitely turn the page.
Wonderful, Don.
You have advised us so well over the years on the pitfalls of–what do you call it?–the muddy middle. (Fudging this, out of laziness.) Choosing a page to bring exactitude to this insight shines a light on our habit or our self-deceptive tactic to wave a broad hand and say “my middle is working well enough.”
I went straight to my page 98s. For today, I’m pleased to see my absorbing your guidelines has taken root.
Now what about my page 128s?
Not to mention PP163, 241, and 312…
I’m writing picture books. So there’s no page 98. I’d say my page 98 is maybe page 3. And in my PB manuscripts, there’s lots of white space for page turns and picture reveals that make words unnecessary. But thinking this way is helping me consider all the more the weight of each word and punctuation mark and white space I use. As always, thanks for posting.
LOL. The reductive nature of picture book text is a terrific discipline. I doubt there’s a wasted word–yet it each word fully chosen? That might be worth a look.
Love this analysis, Don, on a topic so damned relevant and important. As an editor, anytime I’m doing a sample edit for an author I may potentially work with, I ask for an excerpt from a midpoint–not necessarily page 98, but not page 1 either. That’s mostly because page 1 tends to be polished to within an inch of its life, and not necessarily a representation of what the rest of the draft may hold.
But I’ve had many authors offer an explanation of the scene or what led up to it, or ask if I want one, and I never do–largely for the reasons you deftly point out here: that a reader should be able to turn to any random page of your story and get a strong sense of the character, what’s happening, the mood and voice, the setting, what’s in question, and the tenor of the story.
Love this very clear breakdown of how and why it works. I’ll be sharing.
Clever of you to sample the middle! That is so revealing. One measure is, does this middle page read as if it could be the first page? If so, that’s promising.
Thanks, Don. Once again great exercise…in my novel, which you have read parts of, Jude, raped as a child, struggling through life, has just rescued the MC’s daughter from a possible kidnapping, but then..Jude keeps her.
Jude stays by the bed, watching the child sleep, her little face blotchy from crying… Jude calm, calmer, Jude who’d never known contentedness. But the child had. The child a gift, someone to reveal life’s secrets. So breathe, give it time, you will be a pair, mother, daughter.
Jude has disconnected the phone, worried the child knows how to use one. But a bigger concern; has anyone in the building seen the child, heard her screaming? And why was she screaming? Jude being kind, doing what she can to take care of her…still, they must leave, find a more crowded neighborhood, one where people ignore you, push past you, their own lives pulled so tightly around them they can barely breathe. And the car, Jude must get rid of the car, layers of duct tape now securing the front headlight, now devoid of glass, but still lighting their way through darkness—that being the only time it’s safe to make necessary changes: pack, leave.
For the first food run, she makes sure the child will sleep, forcing her to drink one of Jude’s pills, crushed in water. The combination of the drug, the car’s movement, the child quickly falls into groggy sleep. Twenty minutes to Super K-Mart, open all night, far enough away, no one will recognize them. And though terrified, Jude leaves the child in the car, the shopping taking only 15 minutes: one huge box of powdered milk, twenty cans of soup, fifteen boxes of crackers,
As I just wrote to Tiffany, one could read page 98 and ask, could it actually be page 1? In this case…you know, I think it could!
Love this Beth: “… still, they must leave, find a more crowded neighborhood, one where people ignore you, push past you, their own lives pulled so tightly around them they can barely breathe.” 💜
I ran around the house, pulling my books off shelves to read the ninety-eighth page. LOL. What a wonderful opportunity for self-reflection! I’m pleased the pages caught my interest, and I even found myself reading an entire chapter. Your post is a keeper, Don. I’m printing and saving it now!
Much thanks,
Dee
Yes, it is a keeper, partly because of all the callbacks and links to previous posts. I’m putting this one in my “How to Write Good” files. Thanks again, Donald.
You’re welcome, Dee, glad this is a “keeper” but I hope it’s also one to use, eh?
Hi Don, I looked with trepidation at p. 98 of my WIP and found this passage where my protagonist (who is staying with her ex-husband and his second wife following the destruction of her home in a tornado) has just spoken to her ex on the phone and wonders if he senses that his current wife is having an affair:
“His words are reassuring, but there’s a strain in his voice, and I wonder how much he knows about what Amber is up to. At home, I’ve been watching for signs that he knows or he doesn’t. I think about the things, years ago, that made me realize he was having an affair. A disinterest in sex. His switch to a new aftershave, a spa brand. A change in the passcode on his iPhone.
Her smell on him.”
Enough for the reader to keep going?
Enough to keep going? I’d say yes, we’re nicely in your MC’s head, just hoping that this piece of exposition doesn’t reiterate something already obvious to the reader?
Don: Even though we all respond to praise, I have to think that, now and then, you must grow a little weary of it. But when faced with such compressed meaning and value as you give in this post, what else can a poor writer do? Thank you.
I went to p.98. My protagonist is a retired journalist. He is talking to his next-door neighbor, a blind retired doctor who’s the only person in their Florida golf community still talking to him:
“You can’t recognize yourself in what I wrote unless you want to. I never name the club or the town. How many thousands of people in retirement communities fit those same descriptions? That’s my point, Murray. The descriptions are generic. How many engineers have crew cuts and wear short-sleeved white shirts? It’s a type, a cliché. How many women in clubs like Donegal wear Lilly Pulitzer, to go with the junk jewelry they bought on cruise ships? If people want to think I picked them out and wrote about them, what can I do about it?”
Grunwald says nothing.
“One more thing,” Ritz says. “I think people are using me as a scapegoat. A lightning rod. It’s like the letters to the editor in the Naples Daily News. All these people with money and gold-plated health care can’t stop hating Obamacare. Why? We know why. Here, people find out I wrote Vanitas, and start looking for themselves. Why, Murray? Vanity, that’s why. And they ‘find’ what they’re looking for, even though I didn’t write about them. They find a generic detail here and there, and grab the chance to be offended.”
“You’re mad about what I said.”
“No, Murray, not mad. Just disappointed.”
“You thought I’d be sympathetic.”
“I don’t want sympathy, I want understanding. I want thought.”
Aside from a snippet in Alan Furst’s novel, none of your four quotes involve dialogue. My page 98 is all dialogue, but I’m playing by your rules. What’s interesting is that being called on to scrutinize a specific page led me to make several changes. Only two hundred more to go. Three hundred if I start with page 1.
That is an absolutely marvelous page, Barry. I would not only turn to the next one, but turn many following pages. Beautifully done.
Thank you, Mr. Maass. I always learn from you.
Most welcome!
I am relieved and happy to report page 98 of my present WIP is, in my eyes, a page turner.
[ Master Zeno entered one’s bloodstream one drop at a time before bursting into flame. While we waited for him, the forest aperture slammed shut in a mighty gust of wind startling a crow warily eyeing Fetch. She’d had him in her sights before he flew landing temptingly close to her nose, but she paid no notice. “He’s small pickings,” she said.
Individual trees waved their branches like starting pistols and ran alongside our bus dodging oncoming bears and the occasional darting willow-the- wisp. A hitchhiking slack-jawed, Big Foot stood on the left shoulder the road absentmindedly scanning a mobile phone – his hairy thumb extended. Spider webs that webbed from is arms to his waist attested he’d had no takers for quite some time. Once a Green Man stepped from his bark matrix, bowed reverently and saluted. A stray fairy alighted on a wiper blade as the first raindrop hit the windshield.
I tried to locate my equilibrium and found myself floating in empty space.
“Help me, I’m going to be sick.”
Report to the school nurse,” the voice said.
“That’ll be me,” Cumulus answered. “I multitask anything that requires hands on assistance. He opened a cabinet and took out a bottle of pills that chimed like a bell when he shook them. He broke one capsule in half. “Take this with a grain of salt,” he chuckled. “No worries you just left your sea legs back there on the corner is all. Corners do that to reluctant legs. As we speak, they’re running behind us as fast as the poor wee things can. Until they catch you up, take a few deep breaths and focus on a spot on the horizon. Once you’ve found it let it pull you inside. Resist nothing. It’s only the first of a hundred such horizons. You’ll get used to it. Motion sickness is, believe it or not, one of the perks of time travel. ]
Thank you, Donald, for this most enlightening discovery.
Bigfoot? A Green Man? This is trippy stuff! While I don’t feel solidly anchored in a character’s POV, there’s so a lot happening, I definitely have dropped in to a very different story world.
Wonderful exercise, Don. What a great post!
And, yes, Ray’s checklist is outstanding. I am nestling your Page 98 checklist next to his in my arsenl of writing weapons.
I am happy to report that my page 98 is rife with conflict. The chapter is the end of act one where my protagonist defends her new friends against the school’s decision to disband a dance group because their charter mentions LGBTQ.
“After-school activities must be authorized and I can’t allow it knowing this is a workaround. I won’t risk our funding.” This is bullshit. Asia is angry and the rest simply look dejected. I see Becca, hands clenched under her chin, eyes glossy. Her lips quiver. This means the world to her, to all of them.
My jaw tightens. I grit my teeth, but the words come out, anyway. “I guess that’s why they say go to Carson Pulse to get dicked.”
Mr. Vernon’s eyes bulge, “That, young lady, gets you a week’s detention.”
“Can’t. Gotta take my sister to chemo every day. You know, my twin sister Kayla, who’s dying of cancer.”
That’s a lie. It’s every three weeks, but he doesn’t know that. Plus, I am support and comfort every day so he can suck donkey balls. That almost comes out, but I think better of it.
“I will call your mother. You can make other arrangements.”
“Go for it. She’s going to have the same message as me.”
“And what would that be?”
“To go fuck yourself.”
Gasps and murmurs come from my new friends.
“You are suspended, Miss Griffin. Two days!”
“Great. More free time to look after my dying sister.”
“Make it three days.”
I open my mouth, but Becca touches my arm and quietly says, “Stop.”
She’s probably right. I don’t know how I can explain this to Mom.
Mr. Vernon turns his attention back to Stephan, “There’s nothing I can do, Mr. Miller.” And he makes an efficient retreat from the room.
There are plenty of good page 98 examples above. To be expected from people following WU.
My fists clenched reading that. I hope Mr. Vernon dies a hideous, painful death. I would read on in that hope.
I love this exercise! I am going to check pg 98 in all my favorite books!!
In the meantime here is my WIP – a fantasy centering on an elderly witch and her young companion on a quest to bring down a fascist government.
“Jessie took the paper from the girl’s outstretched fingers and unfolded it. Deep black
lettering screaming of purpose and malice scrawled across the paper.
THE TIME HAS COME
WE MUST RID OUR LAND OF
DEVIANTS!
WITCHES!
OUTLANDERS!
AND ALL WHO THREATEN THE VERY FABRIC OF OUR GREAT REPUBLIC.
Below that was a screed filled with veiled threats and vague promises. Beyond stirring up fear and ginning up hatred there was no substance to the words at all.
“No one is buying this crap, are they?” Jessie asked.
“I don’t know.” Lina said. “Some are I suppose, most just want better lives and are willing to go along with the Counsellor because he promises them that.”
The old witch scoffed. “Pie crust promises.”
“Pardon?”
“Promises that are easily made, easily broken.””
So – yeah – this is the first setback/revealing of the true stakes of an Epic Fantasy novel – it should give my readers motivation to keep turning pages!
That’s a good page! I would certainly read the next.
From picturing you heading down the library stacks to the borrowed excepts, I lived every word of this post. As someone who used to spend the odd half-hour between sports drop-offs at the library, going right down the shelf reading first paragraphs, I’m thrilled to add this exercise to my bag of research (and book-buying!) tricks. Also thrilled that my published novels passed because who wants an already-published novel to come up short? Also thrilled to be forwarding this to my Your Novel Year writers—thank you for such a cogent lesson, Don!
Coming from a craft guru herself, that’s good to hear. Hope you’re well. Still waiting for…ahem…a promised ms?
I had to part a sea of obligation to create time for it, but was well underway by mid-February. I am working on it daily now, and am approaching the halfway point—thanks for asking! Hope to have something to you by early-to-mid summer? Fingers crossed…
Another wonderful post, Don. I would love to visit this library where four novels picked at random from the shelves are all so brilliant. ARE YOU SURE YOU DIDN’T CHEAT!?
Ahem.
Echoing a sentiment expressed several time above: Hoo boy. And: Here goes.
Cocktails on the veranda.
Beers on the roof, more precisely. And not a dark creamy stout or porter—some hoppy American ghastliness impersonating lager. Which is fine. The view is strangely hypnotic, both above and below.
The Overhang drapes rooftop-to-rooftop as far as the eye can see, like a giant mosquito net, ten to twenty feet overhead, propped up by poles rising from the corners of every building. Above the dense black mesh, in the dark bronze sky, surveillance drones blink and thrum, a poor replacement for the constellations, and no less obnoxious for being ineffectual.
I’m reminded of a decade in the twelfth century, when the moon disappeared entirely. Even the greatest minds of the time interpreted the vanishing as a sign of divine wrath, the arrival at last of the Apocalypse, or simply black magic. Took a thousand years to understand it was volcanic ash from an eruption in Japan. Now it’s not just the moon that’s vanished, but the entire celestial arrangement, making the earth feel smaller, less wondrous, darker in every sense.
Below, the Zona Dignidad sprawls away, dotted by flaring, shimmering pools of smeary lamplight. It compensates a bit for the dark and dreary sky, while human voices echoing off the brick and concrete conjure a sense of life—congested, urgent, caged life.
A few wooden chairs lie scattered across the tarpaper. I take a sip of my thin bitter beer. “Have this all to yourself, then? The rooftop, I’m meaning.”
“Not exactly.” Gunny strokes the cat, which lies draped over her shoulder. “I have the key to myself, one of my little perks.”
“Courtesy of your mysterious sagamore, sachem, shotcaller, boss: Maradona.”
“Yes. Among others.”
She gestures for me to follow as she steps to the waist-high parapet at the roof’s edge.
She explains the barrio’s layout—numbered avenues running north to south; alphabetical streets, single letters giving way to double, triple, and so on, progressing east to west—then points to a spot perhaps a mile off, distinctive with its tiered and flashing lights, its multi-colored neon.
“That is the entertainment district. At the dark end you have streetwalkers, dice parlors, shebeens. At the other end, all lit up, that is where you find the pricier nightclubs, casinos, brothels”
“So the ZD’s not just a poverty pocket.”
“Not for the politicos, the gang captains. Or the city hotshots who bribe their way inside the wire at night to go slumming.”
“That happen a lot?”
“There have been times I have been on call twenty-four-seven because, sooner or later, one of those fuckers will get into trouble—get too loaded to walk, beat on a working girl—and I will have to drive them home.”
See you in Seattle!
That is a densely-packed page, such as one expects from David Corbett. I would definitely need context. Looking forward to seeing you in Seattle next week, and to discussing The Truth Against the World, which I read last year.
Thank you, as always, Don!!
As always, you’re welcome.
A crow perched high on the leader of a nearby pine called three times. Angelo tapped his finger slowly on his guitar, counting. He turned his head to where a second later, another crow called back. He nodded slowly and went on tapping the guitar… one… two… three… four, then stood up straighter, made a precise quarter turn, took five deliberate steps forward, and extended his hand palm upwards as though checking for rain.
A pine cone dropped neatly into it.
I laughed in disbelief. “That was amazing!”
Angelo smiled. Not the delighted, self-satisfied reaction I would have had if I’d managed to pull off a similar feat. It was a bitter smile, a smile that wanted to be a scream. His hand clenched tightly around the cone, crushing it. Spinning around, he hurled it at a tree trunk.
“I. Am. Still. Here.”
Yes he was still here, and I was glad. I knew how desperate he was to go home, but I was selfishly happy he hadn’t left. His eyes narrowed as though he’d heard my thoughts and didn’t like them. He turned on his heel and strode away. I almost didn’t dare follow.
Almost.
That is a textbook example of immersive POV done right. We are right inside your character’s head. I don’t know exactly what’s going on–the prior 97 page context will take care of that, I’m sure–but this character cares, and therefore so do I. I’d certainly turn the page.
I’m not sure what happened, my previous comment cut off the first bit. Trying again.
Great post, as always!
Looking at page 98, or some other page well past the first chapter is a great idea for getting a truer sample of the writing and whether the story seems to be going anywhere. I hope my own page 98 works without added explanation.
Angelo blinked slowly in the dim light, and frown lines appeared between his eyes. “I’m sorry. My memory is a bit muddled. So many repetitions, it is hard to keep things straight. Did I say that?”
“Yes, you said, ‘Remember me! You must remember me!’ I was sure I couldn’t forget you, and I didn’t.” I was proud of this, and it showed in my voice.
He let out a long breath. “I remember now.” His strange eyes focused on something far above my head. “It was worth a shot.”
A crow perched high on the leader of a nearby pine called three times. Angelo tapped his finger slowly on his guitar, counting. He turned his head to where a second later, another crow called back. He nodded slowly and went on tapping the guitar… one… two… three… four, then stood up straighter, made a precise quarter turn, took five deliberate steps forward, and extended his hand palm upwards as though checking for rain.
A pine cone dropped neatly into it.
I laughed in disbelief. “That was amazing!”
Angelo smiled. Not the delighted, self-satisfied reaction I would have had if I’d managed to pull off a similar feat. It was a bitter smile, a smile that wanted to be a scream. His hand clenched tightly around the cone, crushing it. Spinning around, he hurled it at a tree trunk.
“I. Am. Still. Here.”
Yes he was still here, and I was glad. I knew how desperate he was to go home, but I was selfishly happy he hadn’t left. His eyes narrowed as though he’d heard my thoughts and didn’t like them. He turned on his heel and strode away. I almost didn’t dare follow.
Almost.
Don, page 98 of my book sequel is smack in the middle of Blake Snyder’s Fun and Games beat. It delivers on the promise, and a scene that hints where things get good for the reader. The protagonist nurse’s best fried and boss in the ER gets sick and covers it up. The protagonist goes along with whatever the boss & best friend tells her But, she’s hiding something. It couldn’t be a first page. There’s too much not known. But it answers a question why the protagonist wants to get out of nursing and go full time into music and being a superstar. It’s not the same without her best friend who dies. Thanks for the post. It made me think more about the first page. Loss and suspected loss plague the protagonist on the first page and throughout the sequel. Keeps the reader reading, I hope. 📚🎶 Christine
Without having the page itself to read, it sounds like plenty is going on both in the plot and inside your MC.
Don, rather than Static Hiss, I give you Dynamic Clap (not that kind) for this post. Wonderful that you plucked those novels at random, and sharp tacks in hanging p. 98 on the wall to review. I am going to do the same thing for four novels at random in my house and nose around.
As for my own p. 98, I’ve been working nonfiction lately, but here’s 98 from a 2018 novel of mine (Swirled All the Way to the Shrub) set in Prohibition Boston in which Pinky, the protagonist has made a wretched drunken scene in a tony restaurant in front of his literary agent, whom he secretly loves, and is being led home by his best friend:
No way out but to pick up two hats off the table—and even in his condition, he saw that his was splotched with some heavy cream sauce—hand one to his friend, and shuffle, head down and shoulders bent, towards the front door of Stuyvesant’s.
Cyril Van Horn, presiding over a table of stiff-collared Boston magnates, swiveled as Pinky moved past his table. In a low but clearly audible tone he said, “Good god man, this is most unseemly. Take yourself home and clean yourself up.”
Unctual insisted they walk home. In actual fact, he walked; Pinky tottered. And they didn’t talk much, but Pinky did say one thing over and over again.
“I couldn’t help it, don’t ya see? Elfred, I’m dizzy for her. Have I ruined it forever? What am I supposed to do?”
Unctual had no answer for such an existential question; he was most concerned with keeping Pinky upright. Pinky, exhausted, an evening of words too many, took small solace in the quieting blur of his sozzled thoughts.
The Boston night, clear above but icy below, inscrutable, offered no counsel.
My vote: yes. Een thought this is the aftermath to an embarrassing episode, the POV is strong, the story world is coming through, there’s a particular language in play, we’re anchored in character…yes, this works for me. I’d turn the page.
On page 98 of my novel The Night Fogs my protagonist, a rational neuroscientist, is having his fortune told by his landlady, a modern British pagan who is using an ancient Welsh practice of reading the future. It doesn’t end well.
Sounds delightful!
Checking page 98 of my novel now!
Great! Then move on to P153, 291, 342…and so on, randomly, until you’ve taken a look at all of them.
Don, this harkens back to your lessons on microtension on every page…thank you for the great (random) examples.
Here’s my pg. 98 from my historical wip: Note that it’s customary for Indian kids to call their parents’ friends Auntie and Uncle. And I couldn’t help but edit as I typed it up :)
“But with Baba gone from this world, Uncle is free to divorce Auntie and marry Ma.”
“Divorce?” That was unthinkable. “Ma wouldn’t do that. She’s always loved Baba.”
“I don’t know,” said Asha. “Remember she said our new religion is survival. But I worry that Jeet would not want to marry me with such a scandal.”
“I don’t believe it.” But now I understood why Auntie hated us so much. Uncle loved Ma.
We scrubbed the pots and pans in silence. Before we were finished though, we heard Auntie shouting. “I will not stay one minute in this whore’s presence.”
Asha dropped a pot.
The front door slammed. That had to be Auntie flouncing out. We never even got to say goodbye to Uncle. All of Asha’s fears were coming true. Maybe the Chatterjis were going to get a divorce.
I parted the beaded curtain. Ma looked stricken. “Go!” She shooed us back into the kitchen.
We could hear Ma defending herself. “I never did anything but show kindness.”
“Of course not,” said Mrs. Singh. I could imagine her bobbing her head. “Don’t you worry.”
“I’ll finish up,” I said. “Go catch Jeet.”
Asha threw her dish towel on the counter and went out. Through the window, I saw her walk into Jeet’s arms. It’s going to be alright, it’s going to be alright, I kept repeating in my head. Jeet loved Asha and nothing and nobody could change his mind.
Ah, family conflict…nothing like it, so familiar, which brings me also to another lesson on Universal Human Behavior, which this page gives us. I connected. The tension is not only in the house, but in your POV character’s hope that everything will come out okay.
Thank you Don. Mystery solved on my almost primal distrust of first pages as a lifetime. Now I know why I randomly flip and scan 3 or 4 paged on pages when choosing a story. Then head for the counter confident. Ready hide out and read.
What a fresh lens for holding the reader in mind and consider continuity of experience as we surprise, thrill, delight, horrify, and surprise. I think you put your finger on why some well written and richly plotted stories disappoint. They feel inauthentic.
Yes, you can tell when a writer is coasting, going easy, enduring novels don’t do that, page 98 is as engrossing as page 1.
I always look forward to your posts. Very helpful and great reminders.
I checked my page 98 and I feel like I checked all the boxes. What a great exercise. My WIP is a dystopian thriller, the first in a series. This is only a part of what’s on that page:
*************
“Must have been different where you come from.”
“It was,” Hazel said. “Aabeys and Others weren’t separated. Families were mixed, and our community worked together to ensure the safety of everyone.”
If only it could be that way here. “Sounds like Heaven.”
Hazel glanced away from me, then bowed her head and huddled closer to her husband. “We had some wonderful friends there, good people we’ll never see again.”
Here they were, forced to leave the community they loved, and I wanted only to leave this colony and its oppressive leaders behind. There had to be something better out there; a kinder place for me and my family.
A rumble through the ground beneath our feet made the stalls shake.
Hazel held out her arms. “Do you get a lot of earthquakes here?”
“Not in my lifetime,” I said.
The shaking got worse and huge cracks opened in the muddy ground. People started screaming and abandoning their stalls to run back to their homes.
You picked Alan Furst by chance?
Yes, randomly, and I was glad because I know it to be one of this best–and page 98 did not disapoint.
You had me before the earthquake, but throw that in an there’s not much choice but to turn the page.
Here’s mine. From a work in progress. It’s a historical mystery featuring Jane Eyre, now Mrs. Rochester:
His face blanched white, truly white, so that his dark eyes flashed even more resolutely. He seemed to give himself a shake however, and turned his gaze away from me, to the high hills beyond the village. A resolution, deeply held and firmly kept, aided him, I thought. He clenched his hands behind his back and walked on.
“You mean well, Mrs. Rochester, but there is nothing else to be done. I can assure you I have thoroughly gone over this line of reasoning, again and again. The facts are as plain before me as they are to you. But what you don’t know—” He stopped once more, his eye on the distant hills. In a very low voice, scarcely audible, he said. “I have seen it, you know.”
“Seen what?” For in pleading Mary’s case, I had forgotten my original purpose.
“The gytrash. It is as real as they say, I am sure of it. I came to Morton because my heart is weak. I wished to give what days I had left to an English village. To spend the remainder of my life ministering to those of my own country. But you must understand. I cannot doubt the evidence of my own eyes. My time is much shorter than I previously believed. God has given me a warning, that I may live my final days accordingly.” I watched him raise his chin, his face set in a look of stoic endurance. “Let us leave matters as they are.”
I always love your posts – the way they build and then inform in a way that sticks with me. I’ll be sharing this over at Writers In the Storm. And now, I’m off to check all my page 98’s!
Belatedly, because I live on the West Coast and had a really busy day, so I got to WU only now, here’s p. 98 of my WIP.
Always lurking at the back of his mind was his plan to visit his sister Ruth and track down his father, using a visit to Lucy at her summer camp as a cover story. He decided to put it off until he was done with the roofing. Pat told himself that if he worked longer he’d earn six weeks’ pay and give Charles several days while he was gone to decide how best to exploit his labor for the rest of the summer. Pat wrote Lucy a short note on the back of a postcard saying he hoped to get down to see her in a few weeks. She wrote back a four sprightly pages about the summer’s adventures so far and at the end she told him that late July was an ideal time for a visit.
On the other hand, he hadn’t yet written to tell Ruth he planned to see her. She and her family lived on the coast near Blackport. Pat thought if he surprised her, her defenses would be down. He might even startle her into spilling the entire pot of beans.
While this all seemed like good strategy, Pat knew it was also feeding the inertia that gripped him as time wore on. As the days and weeks went by, smooth-surfaced as water behind a dam, he felt less and less inclined to stir up trouble and disturb the slow, tedious, yet peaceful unwinding of the summer. Yet he knew he had to make this trip. In some way his life was at stake.
He was nearly finished with the shingling, aware he was slowing down deliberately, dragging out the job as long as he could, when one hot morning around ten o’clock, he looked up from his work to see a long red and white car rolling down the driveway, trailing tall clouds of dust. The driver made a sharp turn in front of the house, reversing right into the dust. Almost comically, Pat thought, both front doors swung open, and two men got out as dust fell around them. They flapped their hands in front of their faces and coughed, and then they both turned and waved and shouted his name up to him.
Gunner and Spike. Spike and Gunner. His roommates, his companions, his cohort, his friends. In an instant he understood how long it had been since he’d left them. Pat left his tools where they lay, slid down the roof slope without reaching for the safety rope, and scrambled down the ladder.
“Finally! We’re here!” cried Spike, flinging his arms out as if he wanted to embrace the ranch house, the vehicles parked around them, the dust and the cottonwood trees and the entire landscape.
Gunner smiled wryly and rolled his eyes in Spike’s direction, letting Pat in on his brotherly tolerance for Spike’s exuberance.
“We’ve come to save you,” said Gunner.
Page 98 is the end of a chapter:
Santana hesitated, opened her mouth but then closed it. She pursed her lips, something Cecelia had seen her mother do. Then she gave a small nod and left.
Cecelia’s head hurt, the bandage itched, and her bladder was full. She laid her head back on the pillow, and closed her eyes trying to ignore the growing urgency. Despite all the talk, there were still things Santana was not telling her. But then that seemed to be everyone these days.
Secrets, untold truths. No matter what, Santana and Parker had no clue what they were in for. The long stretch of years ahead. A good marriage was more of an ideal than reality. Like something to shoot for, but rarely attained. Look at Franny, God bless her, she still kept trying. Things never turned out like you planned. People change. Grow apart. Kids, too. Everyone winds up disappointing one another. One day, years down the road, you wake up and realize you’re fed up with your job, your spouse, and yes, even your own kid. There are days when you’re ready to chuck the whole thing. But you stay out of loyalty or devotion or the family phone plan. You stay because filing jointly is easier, and health care is cheaper, and it’s too complex to untangle the retirement accounts and change the title on the cars and the house and rejigger the will. You stay because of the children.
You stay because you are too proud to admit you made a mistake.
In the first paragraph of my until-very-recently-WIP Amiant Soul, the narrator finds himself suddenly on fire and is then knocked overboard. Can he swim? No, he can’t.