Flog a Pro: Would You Turn the First Page of this Bestseller?
By Ray Rhamey | December 19, 2024 |
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is the opening of this novel in its storytelling—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?
“Y’know, there’s really no need for all this violence.”
It was common knowledge in Zilvaren City that to lie to a guardian meant death. I knew this in a first-hand, painful way that most other Zilvarens did not. Almost a year ago to the day, I’d watched one of the queen’s men clad in beaten golden armor gut my neighbor for lying about his age. And before that, and far worse, I’d stood silently in the street while my mother’s throat had been split wide open, spilling jets of hot, peasant blood into the sunbaked sand.
As the handsome guardian’s hand closed around my neck now, his beautifully engraved gauntlet reflecting the glare of the twin suns overhead like a golden mirror, it was a miracle I didn’t crack open and yield my secrets like a piece of overripe fruit. His metal-tipped fingers gouged deeper into the hollow of my throat. “Name. Age. Ward. Spit it out. Low-tier citizens aren’t permitted in the Hub,” he snarled.
Like most cities, Zilvaren, the Great and Shining Banner of the North, was fashioned after the shape of a wheel. Around the city’s outer limits, the different spokes—walls designed to keep people contained in their wards—towered fifty meters high above the shanti towns and overflowing sewers.
The guardian gave me an impatient shake. “Answer quick, girl, or I’ll have you dispatched through the fifth gate of hell directly.”
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 one on the New York Times trade paperback fiction bestseller list for December 22, 2024. Was the opening of Quicksilver by Callie Hart compelling?
My vote: Yes.
This book received 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. I know a bunch of you don’t go for fantasy, but what if you evaluate this opening for its storytelling merits?
It definitely raises strong story questions as the story opens in medias res, right in the middle of dramatic action and jeopardy to the character. What will happen next to this young woman who has already encountered terrible violence in her life? For me, she is definitely an interesting and potentially likeable character. For one thing, it’s a girl in the cruel hands of a powerful man. Having seen her mother killed, what must she be thinking will happen to her now? How will she get out of this?
Amazon says this is available for free with Kindle Unlimited, and I’m looking forward to reading it.
Your thoughts?
[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.
Sorry to get all literary and pretentious, but: UGH.
I voted a reluctant “Yes.” I’d probably go on a bit, but this story’s on a short leash. It might get more interesting but I’m wary of another typical, cliched fantasy novel. There are a couple of other things that throw me off, too, like starting with dialogue and also the protagonist recalling her neighbour being beaten first before she goes to her mother having her throat cut.
I want to like it, but it’s too comfortable with doing too much. The author seems *so* sure the first page needs all that world-building and backstory right in the same instant the heroine’s being throttled. Even a bit less of it might have felt like a better balance, but this feels like not only mismanaging the mood but letting a genre cliche dictate the opening words.
I’d be a no. The first line doesn’t ring true. The prose is heavy and overwritten. It does promise a good story, but . . . . it would be a slog.
The opening piqued my interest, but not enough to convince me to read high fantasy heavy on the gore.
I’m with Anmarie. I am moved, but only to reach for my expectorant bowl.
Adjectives can move a story, but when they are piled one on top of the other….well, it makes me queasy, as does the subject. No blood and guts for me.
The dialog is awful, even for something that might be MG. Hard pass, and not because of the genre.
So, a standard issue fantasy—not horribly written but not anything terribly new, so far—is finding a wide audience. Why?
Let’s see…oppressive regime…male controlled…a hulking man’s hand on a girl’s throat…she is utterly helpless…fiction reflects our view of the world, so what view is reflected here?
I appreciate the appeal (if that’s the right word) of this opening. What I hope is that this will prove to be a tale that is challenging and nuanced, and not one that plays out simply and predictably. We’ll see.
As this was free for my Kindle, I read it after doing this post. There are a large number of extremely specific sex scenes, and on the rough side, too. The adventure was okay, but the sex . . . no thanks.
Thanks, Ray. With what went on in France recently and the attitude of many toward women in our country during the recent election…we don’t need to curl up with a book that also degrades women.
I protest! It’s _not_ standard issue fantasy.
Based on Ray’s comments, it sounds like what they’re calling romantasy, which includes novels like Fourth Wing and A Court of Thorns and Roses, where the focus is on romance and sex. Lots of sex. The fantasy is mere trappings.
Oh, I’d definitely check this out. Opening in media res…check. Centering us in the world…check. That said, those who went on further and their comments might lead to me not finishing the book, but this is MUCH more interesting than a bunch of the other works cited that just kinda start with a snooze fest. I’m sorry, but most of the litfic that pops up in this column and receives praise from the readers here just bores the heck out of me from the very start. Predictable, jaded…if I want real life I’ll not pick up a book, thank you very much. Now if this one continues on to be heavy on the gore and so forth with a predictable plot, it would be a DNF. But this opening is promising and engaging, which so many of the works that others here praise are NOT.
Maybe … if I liked this kind of fantasy, which I don’t. But the voice turned me off. What kind of person casually thinks about their mother’s death like that? It felt crass, and I’m not a fan of crass characters.
Ray, I come to your posts to practice staying open–to use craft as a discriminator not preference or subjective opinion. But I tell you for certain that although the author did not deeply grab me, I was moving with it reasonably OK–until I was yanked out with the layout of the city. May my own beta readers and critique partners help me with the same whenever I fail.
I’m not a fan of fantasy, so maybe I don’t appreciate the conventions of the genre. But to me, it was too much too fast. The characterization was particularly rough, abrupt, and cliched.
I’ve got a totally different perspective on this, as a learning exercise. Just by the cover and that first page, I’m going to bet my bottom dollar that this is romantasy – and not one that you’re supposed to be able to just pick up if you’re not a fan of the genre already, either. I’m relatively certain it’s capitalizing on the runaway success of said genre and taking certain liberties that a book aimed at a more general audience wouldn’t. In that light, I think maybe a more interesting exercise here is examining how this author plays to that audience and tells them what kind of book this is right on her first page. Anyone writing genre might find that kind of thing useful. These days, there are genres within genres, and telling your audience what they’re getting up front can be helpful in avoiding missing expectations and getting bad reviews. This is ESPECIALLY true in romance, where people can be looking for VERY specific things. So how does she do it?
For example, I’m a fantasy reader, and things like describing the city doesn’t bother me a hair, because I know it’s there to show she’s not in Kansas. Okay, so right there she’s establishing the type of fantasy this is in shorthand – this isn’t historical fantasy, for one – and it explains why the situation is so dangerous. Is it high literature, no, but it’s not meant to be – this is one for the fans.
So I’m looking at what else she does – fantasy also tends to do stuff like the quick flashback, and it’s very common to have characters with tragic backstories, and worlds with less genteel settings than our own. Where people grow up hardened to violence in order to survive. Several people commented on the ick level and the character’s callousness at remembering her mother’s death, but that’s part of a character who’s had to overcome a harsh existence in order to survive. It’s super common in fantasy, so again, didn’t bother me. The author knows she doesn’t need to explain WHY the character isn’t wringing her hands at the memory – I get it inherently. And there the author has told me a ton about the type of fantasy character I’m going to be reading about. Some people only like to read about certain types of characters, so they can tune out if they don’t like this type.
As for the violence – it’s more shorthand to tell the reader what they’re getting into in terms of the tone of the book. This isn’t light fantasy, it’s darker. There’s violence, there’s death, and a certain level of blood. That’s by FAR not the goriest she could have gotten, either, so this is probably not as explicit as Game of Thrones. And since this is romantasy, you can usually equate blood level to sex level – they got bloody right away, so you can probably expect that the sex isn’t going to be demure, either, but again, not as explicit as it could go. So if you’re not okay with that, or if you want darker, it’s not the book for you.
Now I know all of that, and I can look at the other aspects she’s introduced to see if they interest me, knowing what I’m getting from the tone, setting, and character. Since it’s fantasy, the reader is often looking for the fantastical twist, the worldbuilding uniqueness, to hook them. Using shorthand to introduce the other elements can be a good thing to get your reader to the fantasy part of your fantasy (or the mystery part of your mystery, say), can be a good thing. That’s what they bought the ticket for.
That’s a lot to tell me in not very many words, and she does it by working with the expectations of genre fans to play to her audience and make sure she’s reaching the right readers right off the bat. Not too shabby, if you ask me.
Elizabeth–excellent analysis! I intuitively picked up on the signals (and while I don’t read romantasy, I know the cues) and thought that the author did an excellent job in targeting the right readers immediately–which is something other genres might want to consider.
It did catch my interest. But it may take me quite a while to get into the story. 🌻
Of course a yes from me- I write epic and heroic fantasy and admired how the writer painlessly slipped the world-building into context, always keeping the focus on the MC, keeping it personal. This is the way.
Nit-Pick Dept: I defaulted to male gender and took a double-snap to hear it was a girl, not even an adult. The wise-crack spoke of age as well as the Y chromosome.
Honestly, this is not fantasy but dystopian so far anyway. The tribes for both genres are not big but they are fiercely loyal.
Huh? First it says there should be no reason for all this violence, and then it gets graphically violent? I’m sure some people like this type of gothic irony, but I do not. Plus, why do these types of novels have unpronounceable names like Zilvaren? It took me three tries to sound it out and I’m sure I got it wrong anyway. I dislike this genre, but I can usually get through the whole of your samples of books, despite the genre not being to my taste. I gave up after her mother’s throat was slashed.
Fair warning: I hated this opening. Begin rant:
Speaking as a fantasy writer, I say this opening is an insult to good fantasy writing.
Opens with an unattributed line of dialogue, then dives immediately into set up and backstory. Horrific and very personal backstory, I might add, yet it is delivered flatly, without even a whiff of emotional resonance or subtext. POV character might have been reporting on last week’s weather. Not to mention it’s way too early in the story to deliver a backstory bombshell like that. Whatever power it might have had is now gone. Moving along, we find out (finally) that she’s being held by throat(!) by one of these guardians, and what does she notice (after mentally remarking that her own mother had her throat slit by such a man) about this guy? He’s handsome. And his gauntlets are all glittery and fancy. Tension is destroyed. Character is unsympathetic and unrelatable.
And then, in the midst of this presumably tense moment, there’s a segue into a description of how the city is laid out, which is dreadfully unimportant to know right at this moment.
Sorry to be so blunt, but this is an embarrassment of an opening for any genre and NOT representative of good fantasy.
A resounding NO, NOT EVER.
/rant