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 March 31, 2019. How strong is the prologue—would this narrative, all on its own, hook an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer? Following are what would be the first 17 manuscript lines of the first chapter.
FOR WYOMING GAME WARDEN Katelyn Hamm, April really was the cruelest month. And this year was turning out to be the worst one of all.
And that was even before she got her pickup stuck eight miles from the highway.
It was the last week of the month and she was in the middle of what was known as shed war season. Bull elk and big mule deer shed their antlers throughout the winter, and now the war was heating up due to the low snowpack and the antlers’ high price.
Shed war season was why she’d been grinding her green four-wheel-drive Ford F-150 through sagebrush, snowdrifts, and rock formations in the high foothills of the western slope of the Bighorn Mountains. Gnarled ancient cedars stood as sentinels among the granite formations towering on both sides, and she’d tried to keep her front tires in a set of untracked but snowpacked ruts meandering up and through the rough country toward the mountains.
Her destination had been a set of high, vast meadows just below the tree line of the mountains. Those meadows were designated as critical elk and deer winter range, and her aerial surveys two months earlier had revealed thousands of both. The elk liked to descend by the hundreds from the shadowed low timber to feed in the open on the meadows at night where the wind swept the benches clean of snow. Hundreds of mule deer moved up from draws and arroyos to do the same thing. Now the meadows were littered with forty-pound elk antlers and (snip)
You can turn the page and read more here.
This is Wolf Pack by C.J Box. Was this opening page compelling?
My vote: No.
This book received 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Well, I learned something about elk and mule deer, and what the scenery is like in the Bighorn Mountains. And that her pickup is green. And there was this woman who was driving and got stuck. I guess that’s her problem. The stakes? Unknown. The trouble she faces and has to deal with. Getting unstuck, I guess, but there’s no indication that she won’t or can’t. If you’ve read Flog a Pro before, you probably know what’s coming next. There are no story questions of any consequence to make me want to turn the page. So I didn’t. 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.
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About Ray Rhamey
Ray Rhamey is the author of four 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.
Rebeca Schiller says
March 21, 2019 at 11:02 amWow, I am the first to comment. Now that’s something. I would turn the page. I anticipate something creepy to about to happen. I liked the voice, pacing, and the description. It placed me in the setting and with the feeling of what other shoe will fall after getting stuck in the mud.
James Fox says
March 21, 2019 at 11:23 amIt’s a yes for me Ray.
This may sound like an info dump about migrating Elk and Deer, but for me it worked to build tension since the animals were gathering in an open area in large numbers. Likewise the Game Warden is stuck out in the open and exposed at a time when the low snowpack and high price for antlers would draw people to the area, along with predators.
Keith Cronin says
March 21, 2019 at 12:18 pmNope.
Info dump, boring and long-winded voice, belaboring each point he or she is trying to make, starting with the marathon-length exploration of just how cruel a month April is.
Maybe something cool is about to happen. But I’m gonna miss it – I lack the patience, and this isn’t even my cruelest month.
Brian says
March 21, 2019 at 12:38 pmI think this is the second CJ Box book we’ve flogged since I’ve been reading this column. We didn’t like the other one either and for the same reason — no tension.
P.D. James is famous for introducing characters and taking her time to get to the main issue. But her openings have a good measure of tension. that leads us to (usually the body).
Was it Sol Stein who preached “TENSION ON EVERY PAGE”? For me, this is a holy commandment for fiction writers.
The setting is wonderful in this piece, but there is no reason to care about Katelyn –yet.
Were I standing in front of the shelve at B&N I would put this one back and move on.
Donald Maass says
March 21, 2019 at 12:58 pm“Tension on every page.” That was me. Not to brag but, you know. Just sayin’.
Donald Maass says
March 21, 2019 at 1:08 pmC.J. Box is a terrific storyteller and wilderness guide. My reason for voting no is that the pessimistic tone (“This year was turning out to be the worst one of all.”) is not offset by anything especially likeable about Katelyn Hamm.
She’s full of dread. Her Ford F-150 is stuck. Nothing but problems. There’s not even anything magnificent about the herds of elk. If Katelyn Hamm was unusually observant or insightful or wry, I would have been more interested but as it is I’m not sure I want to spend a couple of hundred pages with this protagonist.
That’s just the opening, though. It’s a bit pedestrian, in C.J. Box terms, but I might give it more of a chance because I do trust this author. It might pick up, but the beginning is not promising.
Jan O'Hara says
March 21, 2019 at 2:14 pmWhat struck me as reading this was that I have no clue about this book’s genre, and that would potentially guide my decision. (Yet another instance where the writing itself doesn’t compel me but the writing plus context might.)
Stuck vehicles make for common meet-cutes in romance, to the point that if this is a romance, I’m actually less interested. But this could also be a story more along the lines of the Horse Whisperer or the beginnings of a crime novel. Interesting, despite the menace outright mentioned in the first paragraph, that I don’t really feel the tension.
I appreciate these analyses, Ray. It helps me understand how critical marketing (covers and blurbs) can be in driving interest when the writing, in and of itself, wouldn’t push me to purchase.
Bob Cohn says
March 21, 2019 at 2:38 pmI might not finish the book, but I’d turn the page. There is some description, but it’s clear and unornamented; I know where we are and what it’s like. I understand some of the forces that come with the location and season and can see how they could precipitate conflict. I like the voice; a little more personality might be nice (as Mr. Maas says) but the narrator paints a clear, strong picture without wasting words. This is a good setup for an inciting moment. If it comes pretty soon, on the next page maybe, I’d read further. I haven’t read C. J. Box, but I’m going to look into it.
Lynn Bechdolt says
March 21, 2019 at 8:29 pmAlthough I agree that the author substituted info about deer and elk and gave us only that her truck was stuck 8, as in 8 MILES from the road, there wasn’t much tension. But I’m a sucker for stories about wild animals. Something unusual is about to happen here between a human being and wild animals.
For that reason, I would have read a little farther hoping something else to hook me would soon pop up.
Nancy West says
March 21, 2019 at 8:37 pmYes, I would turn the page! I’m a big believer in giving first pages a little more time to simmer, especially when the writing is strong. I believe that many good books have a low trajectory in the first few paragraphs. I felt that the author knew what s/he was doing, and I could feel the set-up building–possibly to the inciting incident–so I was ready to put my faith in the author and hang-in. My one criticism would be to cut back on a bit of the description. For example, “Gnarled ancient cedars stood as sentinels among the granite formations towering on both sides,” is lovely writing, but distracted me. (Full disclosure: my current WIP is guilty of the same!) And after “just below the tree line” I would remove “of the the mountains.” Readers know where the tree line is.
Judith Robl says
March 21, 2019 at 9:24 pmIn addition to some of the reasons enumerated above, I learned nothing about Katelyn as a person, so I was not invested in her or her circumstances.
There were two consecutive sentences beginning with the conjunction “and”, and the following paragraph began with a run-on sentence.
Thanks, but no thanks. I’d be editing all the way.
Jennifer Worrell says
March 22, 2019 at 10:20 amI’d keep going, only because with all that rather dull detail on elk, there must be something coming. There must be a point Box is getting to.
My issue was with the repetition. There was almost an obsessive quality to the focus on minor details. I feel like the “info dump” needed to set a scene for those not familiar with the landscape and shed war, and the tension was meant to come from that harsh life. But concision would have helped that along immensely, allowing richer description to fit on that first page.
Jamie Miles says
March 23, 2019 at 8:59 amI don’t know if I’d buy the book but I’d turn the page — and read a bit more before I’d decide.
To your point if it past the agent test for unknown author, I’d like to think they’d keep reading. But “no dialogue” or “ info dump” could apply.
Will says
March 23, 2019 at 1:54 pmNo. Two cliches within 200 words – April = cruelest month, trees as sentinels – does not bode well for the quality of writing through the rest of the book. Reading those in a middle chapter would be bad enough, and here they are on page one.