Last week I blogged about the importance of feedback for fiction writers, and that our good friend Ray Rhamey over at Flogging the Quill has devised the Flogometer (TM), a forum where he will critique the first 16 lines of your opening and see if it meets his exacting standards. If you can get him to turn the page, you’re in the running for a free three-chapter edit (and that’s money in the bank).
Unfortunately my sample failed the test.
However, I am thrilled with experience. See, here’s where it’s important to have unvarnished criticism from disinterested professionals. So I didn’t get Ray to turn the page, big deal. What I learned from my essentially first-draft sample was:
A) The idea intrigued the forum panel. They wanted to know more. My problem was I gave them too much back story before hooking them, so I lost them.
B) The writing itself was smooth and professional. Ray didn’t have any nits or copy edits. This tells me I’ve finally internalized the rules of grammar, and I’ve mastered a degree of rhetorical competency that used to take me many agonizing drafts to accomplish. And, most importantly,
C) My voice—the indefinable something that no other writer has or can take away from me—came through loud and clear.
D) As a bonus, the panel essentially came up with a killer hook for me. Later I might decide I don’t like it. But right now it looks pretty good.
A few years ago, an experience like this would have really taken the wind out of my sails. But now I recognize that helpful, constructive feedback can work wonders.
One still has to be very careful–I can’t stress this enough–to make sure that those who critique your work know what they are doing. Just as good feedback can take your writing to the next level, bad feedback can be damaging to your self-confidence, or worse, lead you down the wrong path. It’s a subjective business. At the end of the day, you—the artist—have to make the call.
About Kathleen Bolton
Kathleen Bolton is co-founder of Writer Unboxed. She writes under a variety of pseudonyms, including Ani Bolton. She has written two novels as Cassidy Calloway: Confessions of a First Daughter, and Secrets of a First Daughter--both books in a YA series about the misadventures of the U.S. President's teen-aged daughter, published by HarperCollins, and Tamara Blake, for the novel Slumber.
It’s a strong sample, Kath – especially impressive since you’ve only been working on that story a few months. I think the “fix” is going to be a snap for you, if you choose to make it. Congrats on the positive feedback!
That sounds like a great opportunity. Glad to see you survived the flogging. It sounds worth it!
Thanks, you guys! Another valuable point, it’s also fun to see what people are working on. Ray had a glom of fantasy there for awhile, now we’re onto women’s fiction with a few thrillers thrown in the mix. It’s really worth checking out.
It takes guts to put your work out there, especially for something called the Flogometer!!!
I’m delighted to find someone who shared my experience in the Flogometer. I came away from it feeling pretty much the same as Kathleen describes.
I also came away with these thoughts.
Subjectivity is everything. Just because one reader doesn’t turn the page, it doesn’t mean another reader might be unable to put your book down.
There seem to be three kinds of openings:
(1) The classic style — still used in genre and literary novels even though it is universally spit upon by many — a fairly long description of setting, or backstory setting up the character for the launch.
(2) The ultra-action-style that plunges reader directly into drama, with backstory cut to minimum and woven in throughout the rest of the book. Reader is “hooked” by a “what’s going on?” seduction which transfers to a “what’s going to happen next?” suspense.
(3) Third, the journalistic-style that establishes who, when, where, what, then unrolls into why and how.
I’ve tried all three and my most recent version represents the journalistic style. It appears to me that everyone who is responding to the Flogometer favors the ultra-action-style — which is what sells the best-sellers these days.
Writing guru Dwight Swain instructs that the place to open your story is when the status quo changes. I’ve been circling around that spot for a long time, and decided it’s hard to tell when the status quo changes if you don’t have a baseline to compare against. This is why I added setup paragraphs to what was originally a plunge-in-and-go opening.
Members of my writing group compared the original and the revised side by side and unanimously agreed the new one was better. That version caught the attention of a Big Name Agent who represents Big Name, Best-Selling Authors. The original opening earned me dozens of rejection letters.
So, as Ray says, the Flogometer is totally subjective. What failed that test simlutaneously led to a request for 100 pages after Big Name Agent found the first 1-10 interesting.
It’s all about finding your audience!
Good points, Carolyn. Good luck with that Agent!