Next week I’ll be subjecting you all to another one of my rants…but today, we’re going to take a gander at another anonymous first page submission:
Harvey Rodriguez waited till daybreak before he ventured out to look at the body. He wanted to make sure that the men with the guns were long gone before he turned himself into a target, so he’d spent most of the night lying still in his tent among the trees, trying his best to remain invisible.
If he’d had a brain in his head, he’d have used the cover of darkness to scoot out of here, but every time he’d flexed his legs to move, he’d talked himself out of it. He’d used the time to plot his strategy.
On the one hand, he’d been living out here long enough to be running pretty low on everything, and even if the killer had stripped the dead man’s pockets clean, the corpse was likely to have something of value, if only a pair of socks that actually covered his whole foot. Or maybe a watch. Harvey’s ten-year-old Timex had crapped out a month ago.
On the other hand, when you’ve got no home and you make your living—such as it is—off the sometimes unwilling largesse of others, the last thing you need is to get yourself wrapped up in a murder case. It wasn’t as if he had people who could vouch for his alibi, you know? He could almost hear the interrogation in his head:
Where were you last night?
I was at home.
And where’s that?
Wherever I make it. Last night, it was in the woods out by Kinsale.
Right where a murder happened?
Yes, sir. That’s a hell of a coincidence, ain’t it? I was just lying there in my tent and I heard somebody in the woods. I started to peek out and then I heard a gunshot, and I ducked the hell back in.
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All in all, I think this opening is pretty darn impressive. A lot of the typical mistakes we’ve been discussing aren’t present here. Great first sentence, it really grabbed me. We get a little bit of information about Harvey, but not his entire life history. There’s some dialogue–imagined, but it’s there. We get a sense of the setting, the predicament that Harvey finds himself in…I really wanted to turn the page to find out what happens next. So the main goal has been accomplished: I was hooked.
The only constructive criticism I can really offer is that it needs some tightening up. I’m currently revising my fourth book in the series, and I see a lot of my own mistakes here. I’ve been forced to trim approximately ten-to-fifteeen thousand words from every one of my manuscripts during the editing process. And the majority of those removed words were superfluous fat clogging up the flow. The main culprits for me are “just,” “that,” “the,” “started to,” and “began to.” I’m also a sucker for overusing pronouns.
For example, take the first sentence. If I was fine-tuning this manuscript, I’d say, ” Harvey Rodriguez waited till daybreak before venturing out to look at the body.” It’s a minor change, but the sentence flows better. I’d do a similar thing in the following sentence: [the bracketed words and passages would be removed] “He wanted to make sure [that] the men with [the] guns were long gone [before he turned himself into a target], so he’d spent most of the night lying [still] in his tent among the trees, trying [his best] to remain invisible.” (I’d also consider changing “remain invisible” to “become invisible.”)Beware of slipping from first person to second (“you know,” and “On the other hand, when you’ve got no home and you make your living…”). In fact, those two middle paragraphs could be combined:
Harvey had been living out here long enough to be running low on everything. Even if the killer had cleaned out the dead man’s pockets, the corpse was likely to have something of value. A pair of socks that covered his whole foot, or maybe a watch to replace his crapped-out Timex. Making his living —such as it was—off the sometimes unwilling largesse of others, the last thing Harvey needed was to get wrapped up in a murder case. It wasn’t as if anyone could alibi him. He could almost hear the interrogation in his head…
I’d recommend that this writer go back through the manuscript with a fine tooth comb. Be merciless. Trim any and all fat, because the meat here is nice and juicy.
Great suggestion Michelle. I recently read Meg Gardiner’s, The Dirty Secrets Club. I thought that was a great example of economy of language – especially the first three chapters.
CJ
Michelle, your assessment and advice are spot on. This story seems to have started in exactly the right place, and has a strong grab. I would definitely keep reading. Like you said, it needs a lot of cleaning up, but all the right elements are here: it starts with the moment of impact; an apparently homeless person happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time as a murder occurs and it tosses him out of the normal. He envisions a police interrogation, probably from experience. Like you pointed out, what’s needed here is line editing, not plot revision. The only thing that stopped me, and it stopped me cold, was the verb “scoot”. Homeless guys living in the woods in tents, at least in my mind, don’t scoot. In the process of trying to get away from the murder scene and possibly becoming a victim, a guy would crawl, run, sprint, maneuver, sneak, or a hundred other verb choices. But I really don’t believe he would scoot.
I’d still counsel going further into the chapter to find some action to start with. This is all narrative summary. We are being told what Harvey did. We’re not seeing it “real time.” His thoughts seem placed there to give us mostly background info. And watch out for that “had” construction. (He’d, etc.) That should be avoided in the opening because it’s putting us into the past.
A simple fix is to have Harvey actually looking at the body. Going over it. Checking out the watch, etc. Then you could drop in these other thoughts and speculations. “Marble” them in with the present moment action.
That’s a good thing for any scene, BTW. Instead of slowing down for summary or exposition, drop it in between active beats.
I agree that this is a very good page overall. I would keep reading. I was wanting a bit of a sense of who this character is, outside of his current predicament. Perhaps that will come in the next page. It’s hinted at with the Timex.
I agree Michelle – and I too think it’s a very strong opening. I like the idea of him actually making a move and looking over the body – that would add the action Jim suggested and up the tension even more.
And just what is it that we like about the set up here?
First, it’s a disturbance, as discussed in Sunday’s post. This is not the start of an ordinary day.
Second, he’s vulnerable. He’s a character in a weak position in society, with murderers and cops potentially after him.
Vulnerability is a great way to get a sympathy factor going. So the basic foundation is solid. Now it’s just a matter of making the first page tighter to take advantage of that.
I agree that Michelle’s fixes make the story flow better and stronger. An author once told me, “Cut everything you can possibly live without, then cut some more until it’s naked.” All in all I’d certainly keep on reading.
This is a neat opening. I wonder how Harvey concluded there were men (plural) with guns when he only heard one gunshot? And why men? Could be a woman with a gun. And one gunshot could be a suicide.
Perhaps the following pages answer these questions. I’d probably read on a bit to find out.
I like this opening. I immediately imagined the face of a couple of the local street corner panhandlers up here, and imagined their camps in the wooded parks around the city. Anchorage has a number of dead bodies that appear in the homeless campsites as the snow mets each spring. The cops don’t always know the how or who.
I’d keep reading.
I like Jim’s suggestion: maybe Harvey could actually be examining the body on page one, imagining the police dialogue as he debates about what to do.
I like that idea, Michelle. Because those internal dialogues are a real chance to characterize Harvey. I’m getting more interested by the minute.