Submissions Needed--none in the queue for next week. If you’d like a fresh look at your opening chapter or prologue, please email your submission to me re the directions at the bottom of this post.

The Flogometer challenge: can you craft a first page that compels me to turn to the next page? Caveat: Please keep in mind that this is entirely subjective.

Note: all the Flogometer posts are here.

What's a first page in publishingland? In a properly formatted novel manuscript (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type, etc.) there should be about 16 or 17 lines on the first page (first pages of chapters/prologues start about 1/3 of the way down the page). Directions for submissions are below—they include a request to post the rest of the chapter, but that’s optional.

A word about the line-editing in these posts: it’s “one-pass” editing, and I don’t try to address everything, which is why I appreciate the comments from the FtQ tribe. In a paid edit, I go through each manuscript three times.

Before you rip into today’s submission, consider this checklist of first-page ingredients from my book, Mastering the Craft of Compelling Storytelling. While it's not a requirement that all of these elements must be on the first page, they can be, and I think you have the best chance of hooking a reader if they are.

Download a free PDF copy here.

Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of this list before submitting to the Flogometer. I use it on my own work.

A First-page Checklist

• It begins connecting the reader with the protagonist
• Something is happening. On a first page, this does NOT include a character musing about whatever.
• What happens is dramatized in an immediate scene with action and description plus, if it works, dialogue.
• What happens moves the story forward.
• What happens has consequences for the protagonist.
• The protagonist desires something.
• The protagonist does something.
• There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
• It happens in the NOW of the story.
• Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• What happens raises a story question—what happens next? or why did that happen?

Caveat: a strong first-person voice with the right content can raise powerful story questions and create page turns without doing all of the above. A recent submission worked wonderfully well and didn't deal with five of the things in the checklist.

Rachel sends the first chapter for an untitled novel. The rest of the chapter after the break.

Some people thrive under pressure. I’m not one of them.

‘What do you mean, you can’t do it? You’re not stupid.’

Mum pushes me out of the way and stands in front of the door. 

‘Let me do it.’

She glances at the list of numbers on the panel. A perfectly manicured nail (French manicured, anything else is tarty) flies across the buttons. Five seconds later, the intercom buzzes.

Mum fixes me with a must-try-harder frown.

‘Honestly, Martha.’ 

‘Neurology department. How can I help?’ says a voice.

‘You can start by opening the door,’ replies Mum.

‘Do you have an appointment?’

‘Professor Hopkins to see Doctor Randall at 1.30pm.’

Mum checks her watch. It’s now 1.25pm. Mum is the type of person who gets somewhere ten minutes early and waits on the doorstep for nine minutes and 59 seconds before she rings the bell. A buzzer sounds as the metal door springs open. Mum ushers me in with a don’t-dare-dawdle stare.

Lovely writing and voice in this chapter, and at the end the protagonist, Martha, is faced with a terrifying prospect. But will a reader get there? There’s low-level tension between mother and daughter here but, for me, no story questions are raised. What’s going to happen next? They’re going into a building for an appointment. An appointment for what? We have no idea. It turns out that Mum has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. If there were some sort of hint, perhaps a page turn would be warranted—Here we are, ready to learn if Mum is losing her mind in a most terrible way. That would raise a strong enough story question to get me to the real story question raised at the end of the chapter.

The chapter continues with well-done characterization. I enjoyed Martha—but, for me, the process of getting to the appointment and the description of the waiting room and its occupants, while interesting, do nothing to propel the story forward. Even though Rachel uses the chapter to set up and define the characters, I urge her to get much closer to the inciting events, which are the diagnosis for Mum and the fact that Martha has a fifty-fifty chance of, as she refers to it at chapter end, the time bomb in her brain going off some day. That was a compelling sentence for me, and if the first page could get there I’d be on board. You can characterize Mum and Dad as they deal with this rather than before the big story questions are raised. I’d like to read this novel, I think, but I’m not sure a lot of readers would get to the chapter’s end. See what you think after the rest of the chapter.

Comments, please?

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Tweet

Submitting to the Flogometer:

Email the following in an attachment (.doc, .docx, or .rtf preferred, no PDFs):

1. your title
2. your complete 1st chapter or prologue plus 1st chapter
3. Please include in your email permission to post it on FtQ.
Note: I’m adding a copyright notice for the writer at the end of the post. I’ll use just the first name unless I’m told I can use the full name.
4. Also, please tell me if it’s okay to post the rest of the chapter so people can turn the page.
5. And, optionally, include your permission to use it as an example in a book on writing craft if that's okay.
6. If you’re in a hurry, I’ve done “private floggings,” $50 for a first chapter.
7. If you rewrite while you wait for your turn, it’s okay with me to update the submission.

Were I you, I'd examine my first page in the light of the first-page checklist before submitting to the Flogometer.

Flogging the Quill © 2015 Ray Rhamey, story © 2015 Rachel

Continued

I step into the hallway and check the board of names on the wall. Mum likes me to figure things out for myself. I shouldn’t rely on other people, not at my age.

She tugs down her jacket and brushes an invisible fleck from her skirt as we wait for Dad to shuffle across the carpark, a carrier bag in each hand. Mum bought him a leather satchel but he says it’s too nice to use. Not that there’s anything important in the bags. He just likes carrying stuff around.

‘Sorry darling, didn’t have the right change for the meter,’ puffs Dad, wiping at his bald head.

He shakes the plastic bags and a splatter of rain drops flies in every direction. Drying his glasses on the edge of his shirt, he gives me a rueful smile. Mum rolls her eyes. We now have three minutes to find the right department.

‘Which floor, Martha?’ demands Mum.

‘Third,’ I say.

Mum checks the board and runs a laser-focused eye down the names.

‘Lead the way, then.’

Reluctantly, I climb the stairs. Mum knows I don’t like going into a room first. She also knows I don’t like speaking to people I don’t know. The more I do it, the easier it will get, she says. It doesn’t.

When I get to the third floor I crouch down and pretend to do up my laces. Today I’m lucky. Mum has more important things on her mind than my social incompetence and her patent-leather shoes click-clack right past me. She presents herself at the reception desk with a flick of her long black hair. Sometimes I swear her heels actually click together.

The receptionist, a plump woman with eyebrows plucked out of existence, waits a few moments before looking up.

‘If you’d like to take a seat, Doctor Randall will be with you shortly.’

Her lips twitch upwards in a gesture not to be confused with a smile. She’s met Mum’s type before. Full of self-importance, these professor types. Never a please or thank you. She looks at me quizzically. I pat down my hair. Perhaps it’s sticking up from the rain. She turns her attention to Dad who flattens his non-existent hair. Then I see the cause of her curiosity: two brown lines have been drawn on her face just above where her eyebrows should be. The result is a face that’s permanently surprised.

Mum answers with a perfunctory nod and sets trajectory for the seating area. Self-doubt isn’t in Mum’s genetic code. Besides which, her hair wouldn’t dare be out of place.

As I pass, the receptionist flashes me a pity smile - the kind she reserves for teenagers with overbearing mothers. Or ones about to be diagnosed with a brain tumour.   

I keep my head down and follow Mum into the waiting room. With its beige walls and brown carpet it couldn’t be any more dismal. A fish tank bubbles away in the corner: a single clown fish bobbing near the surface. Presumably it’s soothing for the patients. Poor Nemo’s been soothed to a watery grave.

Thankfully Mum sits a safe distance from the other nine people waiting. (I always count how many people are in a room.) I take a seat next to Mum and pull Dad down next to me. I’ve always been a stranger-magnet. And they nearly always smell weird and want to tell me their life story.
Aside from the hum of the fish tank, the occasional cough and the ticking of the clock, the room is quiet.
Tick tock. Tick tock.

The longer we wait, the louder it gets.

Do they make clocks with extra loud ticks just for waiting rooms? I bet someone did a study and found that hospitals with loudly-ticking clocks have the shortest waiting times. People would rather stick their head in a fish tank than be driven slowly mad. 

I glance at Mum. Sitting bolt upright with her eyes wide open, anyone would think she is daydreaming. Anyone who doesn’t know her, that is. Mum never switches off. She’s always analysing, judging, problem solving. Right now, she’s probably working on a cure for cancer. Or about to give the receptionist something to really be surprised about.         

Tap. Tap. Tap.

Just when the ticking can’t get any more annoying, Dad takes waiting-room torture to Jack Bauer level. It’s called Emotional Freedom Therapy and is meant to help with his nerves. Basically, he taps two fingers of one hand on the wrist of the other. If he’s not tapping, Dad is tuning into the mother ship: twiddling with a tiny needle sticking out of his earlobe. It’s an acupuncture thing. For anxiety. Jumpy Joe Mum calls him, on account of his fidgeting. Right now Jumpy Joe could out-run the Duracell bunny.

I pick up a copy of Celebrity Sizzle and am about to find out what happens When boob jobs go bad when Mum snatches it off me and shoves National Geographic in my hand.

‘Every day you don’t learn something new is an opportunity wasted,’ she whispers. 

Mum turns her attention to Dad next. I can almost see the red dot hovering between his eyes. An Aviation magazine almost lands on his lap, until Mum spots: Worst air disasters in history, and sends it flying back to the table.

Bereft of reading material, Dad’s eyes jump from one public information poster to the next. He wraps a hand around his throat and feels for an imaginary lump under his armpit as he reads: ‘Influenza can kill’ and ‘Don’t ignore the lump in your breast, it could be cancer.’ You know it’s bad when he cracks open the Rescue Remedy. It’s a wonder his ears don’t spring a leak.

Luckily, I don’t have to feign interest in the ancient civilizations of Antarctica for long, as just then the receptionist appears. Twelve pairs of desperate eyes swivel in her direction, hoping that she will utter the winning syllables of their name. When she calls Petra Hopkins, it feels as if we’ve won a prize. I’m not sure who looks more surprised – us or her.

*

Mum pushes open the door to the consultant’s office. Doctor Randall is young with a soft face and dimples. He stands and smiles hopefully. I don’t have to look at Mum to know what she’s thinking. The boy is barely old enough to shave, how can he be: driving a car/getting married/a brain surgeon [insert as appropriate]. Perhaps that’s why he keeps his credentials on the wall.

‘Hello Petra,’ says Doctor Randall, stretching out a hand to my mother.

The way she glares at it, you would think she’d been offered a snake to hold.

‘Professor Hopkins to you.’ 

A patch of red flushes across the doctor’s face. Apologising, he blusters swiftly on. 

‘And you must be Mister Hopkins.’

‘Joe, please,’ replies Dad, shaking the doctor’s hand. 

I stare at the floor. Thankfully, the doctor’s hand snakes its way back to his hip. 

‘Please, do take a seat.’

The three of us sit in unison, like performers in a well-rehearsed play.

The doctor pauses a moment and clears his throat before launching into the speech. He’s reviewed the scans, read the notes and conferred with a senior specialist, and there is no doubt in his mind. Mum is presenting with early onset dementia. He realises that this must come as quite a shock and we must have questions and he will do his best to answer them.

The three of us stare at him blankly.

Early onset dementia.

He must be talking to the wrong family. Mum is 45. Old, but not old enough for dementia.

Dementia.

The word rolls around my head like a marble – perhaps I am losing mine too?

‘Familial Alzheimer's disease is called that because it’s passed down the family via a faulty gene,’ explains the doctor, as if using small words is going to make the monster he’s just unleashed into the room any easier to wrestle into a corner.

Mum frowns and says: ‘Mutations to the amyloid beta A4 precursor protein located on the long arm of chromosome 21.’

‘Yes,’ says Doctor Randall in surprise.

He scans his notes. Obviously they don’t mention the fact that Mum is a world-leading geneticist who won the Nobel Peace Prize in Medicine five years ago. And anyway, surely statements like this prove that Mum can’t be losing her mind? 

Finally, the jigsaw piece falls into place on his face.

‘You’re not the Professor Hopkins?’

Dad nods wearily. He’s been the husband of the Professor Hopkins for twenty years but still hasn’t got used to it. Professor Hopkins casts a long shadow, and I should know. Next to her, I’m a pale imitation. Mum is as beautiful as she is smart: tall and slender with olive skin, almond-shaped eyes and long, black hair. As luck would have it, I didn’t inherited her brains or her beauty. 

Doctor Randall sits a little straighter in his chair before continuing: ‘It usually strikes between the ages of 30 and 60 years of age but can be earlier. Even as young as 16.’

He looks at me with this last bit. 

Dad glances nervously at Mum, who is now standing up and peering at the doctor’s framed certificates on the wall.

‘What can we expect to happen?’ asks Dad.

‘Rates of deterioration are usually slow. In your wife’s case, however, it’s occurring very quickly. It’s like nothing we’ve seen before.’

Mum turns around and looks bizarrely pleased. Even when it comes to losing her mind, she has to do it better than anyone else. 

‘It really is quite remarkable,’ says Doctor Randall, shuffling through some MRI scans on his desk and waving one in our direction.

Dad looks like a man who’s just been offered a dirty magazine in church. No, he does not want to see his wife’s remarkably diseased brain, thank you very much. Mum takes the scan and sits back down. Whatever she sees, her face is a blank.

Dad groans and twiddles with the needle in his ear. If he were the one with the rare brain disease, Mum would develop a new drug to slow down its progress. Mum has a brilliant mind – which is why it’s inconceivable to think she might be losing it.

‘What can we expect to happen?’ asks Dad, leaning forward and pinching the bridge of his nose.

He’s way beyond Rescue Remedy. We’re across the border and heading for panic attack city. 

‘Breathe slowly, Dad,’ I say, resting a hand on his back.
Before the doctor can explain, Mum cuts in.

‘Patients with Alzheimer’s experience memory loss, have difficulty concentrating and take much longer to do things than they did before. They lose track of dates, seasons and the passage of time. They may forget where they are or how they got there. They forget words they once knew and –.’

The three of us watch her in amazement. The way she lists things so matter-of-factly, she could be describing things that are going to happen to someone else, not her.

‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ asks Mum. ‘I was just answering the question.’

Mum goes back to staring at the doctor’s certificates. She’s often distracted when she’s focused on her work but there’s something different about the way she looks lately. Vacant almost. A shiver runs down my back. I can’t believe she has dementia but I can’t pretend everything is normal either. 

Doctor Randall interrupts the silence: ‘There’s something else. I’m sorry to have to tell you that most people with the disease have a life expectancy that is - .’

‘How long?’ asks Dad.

‘Five, eight years at most.’

The doctor pauses for us to absorb this latest body blow.

‘We have a specialist nurse who can run through what to expect and the support options available. Though, as I say, the speed of deterioration is unusual, so it’s difficult to put a timeline on things.’

‘And what about me?’ I whisper, feeling instantly selfish for asking.

The doctor shoots a worried look at Dad.

‘There is a fifty-fifty chance that you carry the same gene. Genetic counselling can be made available to you once you’re eighteen,’ says the doctor.

I stare at him blankly.

‘Genetic counselling is a chance for you to decide whether or not you want to take the test. It’s a big decision to make.’

Dad and I instinctively look at Mum. Professor Hopkins makes the big decisions in our house - but right now Professor Hopkins is lost in another dimension.

‘And if Martha has the same gene?’ asks Dad.

‘I’m afraid there are no treatment options available.’

‘There must be something?’ asks Dad. ‘A research programme, a new drugs trial, something?’

‘I don’t want to give you false hope,’ says Doctor Randall, glancing at the framed certificates on his wall.

Dad, who doesn’t have any certificates on his wall, looks as if he would happily shake the hand of false hope right now. He’d hug it to him like a drowning man clings to a life buoy.

‘Martha will take the test as soon as she turns eighteen,’ says Mum, snapping back into wakefulness.

I listen in amazement as I’m relegated to the spectator bench of my own life. It’s better to know so that I can prepare. Apparently. How do you prepare for losing your mind? Write Post It notes to remind yourself where you left your keys? Write a memoir while you still can?

It’s my life! I want to shout but I know there’s no point. I am sixteen-and-a-half. Eighteen months is plenty of time for Mum to change her mind. Or for me to write a million Post It notes.

‘That’s something for Martha to think about,’ says Doctor Randall, closing the notes on his desk with an air of that-concludes-business-for-the-day.

The three of us stare at him. This man with a soft, cheerful face, who has turned our world inside out.

‘I am available if you have any further questions.’

I take Dad’s hand, then reach out a hand to Mum. They look as vacant as each other. I stand up slowly, my legs heavy as if they belong to someone else. Slowly, we make our way back into the waiting room. 

Tick. Tock. Tick Tock.

The ticking is louder than ever, only this time it’s not the clock. It’s the time bomb in my brain.