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 one on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for May 23, 2020. How strong is the opening—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it came in from an unpublished writer?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.
You can turn the page and read more here.Leo spun to life in late July in the restless waters of the far eastern Atlantic, about two hundred miles west of Cape Verde. He was soon spotted from space, properly named, and classified as a mere tropical depression. Within hours he had been upgraded to a tropical storm.
For a month, strong dry winds had swept across the Sahara and collided with the moist fronts along the equator, creating swirling masses that moved westward as if searching for land. When Leo began his journey, there were three named storms ahead of him, all in a menacing row that threatened the Caribbean. All three would eventually follow their expected routes and bring heavy rains to the islands but nothing more.
From the beginning, though, it was apparent that Leo would go where no one predicted. He was far more erratic, and deadly. When he finally petered out from exhaustion over the Midwest, he was blamed for five billion in property damages and thirty-five deaths.
But before that he wasted no time with his classifications, advancing swiftly from tropical depression to tropical storm to a full-blown hurricane. At Category 3, with winds of 120 miles per hour, he hit the Turks and Caicos head-on and blew away several hundred homes, killing ten. He skirted low beneath Crooked Island, took a slight left, and aimed for Cuba before stalling south of Andros. His eye weakened as he lost steam and limped across Cuba, once again as a lowly depression with plenty of rain but unimpressive winds. He turned south in time to flood (snip)
Was the opening page of Camino Winds by John Grisham compelling?
My vote: No.
This book received 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. Allow me to open this critique with a quote from literary agent Janet Reid. In February of this year, on her blog she said,
Sales isn’t about how good the book is; sales is about how many people buy the book.
There’s nothing like a nicely written history of a storm to compel a reader to eagerly turn the page for MORE!, right? And here we have this storm treated as though it (he) is a character, perhaps even the antagonist, running wild and killing and destroying. That would be a good reason for a novel to start this way, amirite?
Perhaps it could have been in the hands of another storyteller, but in this novel Leo blows hard and then peters out without committing a crime. Turns out Leo is here just for background and, perhaps, atmosphere (pun intended). I skimmed ahead and didn’t find any interesting goings-on until the fourth chapter. After a quick tease, the narrative goes quickly back to more exposition and backstory. According to the Amazon blurb, there is a murder somewhere along the line. Something is being murdered here, all right—tension.
I’m a fan of a number of Mr. Grisham’s novels, and not so much of others. It seems to me that sometimes he just indulges himself. Since he’s no doubt wealthy enough for several lifetimes, he should do whatever he wants. But I sure wish his publisher would bring in an editor for his work now and then.
What are 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.
The photons left the great nuclear furnace at the center of our solar system with enough speed to travel 93 million miles in a little over 8 minutes, aimed at the redhead farmers’ neck right at the vulnerable skin his spray-on sunscreen missed.
/Love Grisham, but not a good opening.
In the first para I had to shift abruptly from Leo as a shipwreck survivor lost at sea to Leo as a threatening storm. Still, I was intrigued and engaged, partly because Leo (he) was personalized. Then I began to wonder whether I was intended to root for Leo as a protagonist or despise Leo as a destructive villain.
Would para 4 swoop down, Leo-like, and focus on “One of those deaths”? It did not. Just more statistics. Further on, still with the lingering impression of a person or lion named Leo, and encountering “his eye weakened,” I couldn’t help visualizing a poor fellow with impaired vision.
Leo, I scratch your furry ears and admire your mane and lashing tail and move on to a more immediately rewarding read.
I loved it and if I hadn’t already preordered the book, would have wanted to read more. He always hooks me and this is no different.
I loved this opening and even without knowing who the author was (which I didn’t and I’ve read all of his books), I would definitely buy this and read on. Why? Because this storm went where no one predicted, hundreds of homes were destroyed and 45 people died, To me, that’s going to be a big dramatic story, and I want to know more.
I’m in the minority too. The intent of the opening is to create portentous mood. As Marcie said, a big storm signals a big story. The Grapes of Wrath does the same thing, opening with a two-page description of a drought.
Hey, are we going to argue with John Steinbeck?
However, there are storm warning flags for readers. The third paragraph blocks the storm’s punch, deflating its power with a lame denouement. Why? What’s the point? Storms build, the opening page does not.
I worry that this may be one of Grisham’s less effective novels. When he’s on his game–A Painted House is a masterpiece–he’s great. When he’s not, I wish I had my thirty cents back.
This new one may lose me, but if it does it will be later on. I’d turn one more page. However, marriages aren’t successful just because the wedding day was great. There are long years ahead which can either be a lively adventure or a dull grind. What will it be in this case? We’ll see.
I voted yes, but that’s because I’ve lived in South Florida for more than 30 years, and hurricanes tend to command my attention.
I liked that he made it a character – which is in keeping with the fact that these storms are named, and also reflects the way that many people who live in the danger of these storms tend to see them as living, breathing monsters.
He also captured the unpredictability of these storms – which again can make them seem alive. Even with all our technology, we can only guess where a storm will go, and sometimes guessing wrong can cost lives.
So yeah, I’m onboard!
I was game until the last paragraph was still about the storm. If it had introduced a human character (or even a dog) I would have read on.
I don’t know that I would have gotten 40 pages on description alone, but I would definitely have paid to turn the page. Leo may have weakened and died in the Midwest, but I would have demanded to see the incident report, the autopsy report, and the movie, when it came out. For me, the opening portends a lot more than a weather report. I need what I think of as dramatic action, a progression of events that moves the story from the inciting moment to the climax, but if the voice is appealing, and it feels like something is going to happen, it doesn’t have to happen with a bang on page one for me.
I got this from the library and haven’t started it yet. This saved me a bit of time. I am going to return it. Not my cup of tea.
It all turned (south) for me as I realized he WASN’T going to do something interesting like make the storm a character. My brain gets stuck on nit-picky phrases, like how something nobody could predict soon became apparent, somehow…
And it’s infuriating isn’t it, that the loyal tribe will slosh through all the back story and world-building he wants to get out of the way at the start, a crime NO ONE on this board would ever be allowed to commit. I could write a smooth, grammatically correct data dump, I know I could! It would even be fun.
No.
I was willing to give it a chance at first because it seemed to be building toward something ominous. But the third paragraph came near to killing that momentum after it tells us where Leo ends up and how much damage he did. Still, I kept reading to see what the point of it all was, only for the narrative to step backward and start describing the now-boring and seemingly irrelevant details of Leo’s lifespan. At this point, who cares? I certainly didn’t.
I had no interest in reading more after that. The author didn’t give me a single reason to keep going.
Without knowing who it was, no. I didn’t make it thru the second paragraph. However, after realizing that it’s Grisham, I would pick it up and give it a try. I enjoy his non-lawyerly fiction, so maybe this would end up surprising me.