First Page Critique

Today, another brave author has stepped into the TKZ spotlight with this untitled First Page critique. Thank you, author, for your courage. We all learn from critiques. I certainly do.
“No Title” is mostly set in Tripoli, Libya. Read it first. My comments are below.  — Elaine Viets

tripoli_0001NO TITLE

Prologue

March 1972 Brooklyn, New York

Lilah stood with her twin, Daniel, under the big black umbrella, fat rivulets of rain dripping off its sides. She barely heard the words of the minister as he said the final prayers committing the remains of her parents to the ground, but the smell of damp dug-over earth on that wet spring morning would stay with her all her life as a reminder of the end of her childhood. Walking unsteadily to the graves with a fistful of dirt, Lilah fell as her knees buckled, and an arm caught her around the shoulders.

“I’m here,” said Harry.

Part I – The beginning of always
(Remember tonight, for it is the beginning of always – Dante Alighieri)

1 November 1973
Tripoli, Libya

“Hide, Lilah! Don’t come out till they’ve left.” Her aunt shoved the sixteen-year-old towards the back stairs as hammering continued at the door below. “Hurry!”

Lilah was tearing across the second-floor gallery when the deadbolt shattered, and black-clad men rammed into the house, demanding to speak to the Sheppards. Mrs. Sheppard, Lilah’s aunt, ran down the wide curving central staircase to join her husband.

The taste of blood filled Lilah’s mouth as she bit her lip to muffle the shriek. She slid to the floor behind the pillar, back against the marble. The kitchen stairs were just a few feet away. Almost there. She clenched clammy hands on her white cotton nightgown. Her heart thumped painfully against her ribs as she waited for a chance. Pushing aside the long tendrils of dark hair that clung to her damp cheek, she ran, bent double, to crouch by the side of a chest.

Dark eyes widened as she scanned the scene below through the railings. She almost sobbed with relief when she saw Harry wasn’t there. The Sheppards’ son was her best friend. Be safe, be safe. Oh, God, be safe, Harry.

One of the intruders kicked over the ottoman in the living room, sending colorful pillows sliding across the polished wood floor. The tall lamp crashed down and sputtered, throwing the room into shadows. Blue moonlight filtered in through gauzy curtains as menacing figures continued the escalating argument.

Keeping to the darkness, she crawled on all fours towards the door to the back stairs, tripping when the folds of her nightie twisted around slim legs. Uncle Dev shook off the hands of one of the men as another swung a lethal looking cane at his head and he crumpled to the floor wordlessly. Her aunt stretched out a hand, her cry choking in her throat.

Lilah gasped, instinct yanking her to her feet. A hand clamped over her mouth, cutting off the scream, and drew her inside the door.

_________________________________________________________________
Elaine: What you have here is well-written and action-packed, but reads like a sketchy outline by a professional writer. You have a good idea, but you have to put meat on those bones. I suggest ditching the prologue. Prologues often raise red flags for editors. You could expand this prologue, and the same information could be used much later in the story, when we know Lilah better.
Your novel really starts in Tripoli, which you call Part I. Are you planning to have several parts? I like the quote, though I wonder if it detracts from the action. Is there a reason for the date and city? Are you going to be moving the novel to other cities and back and forth in time? If not, I’d get rid of the dateline and year. I’m guessing you are not a US writer, since standard date style is November 1, 1973.
The action in Libya gets your novel off to a rousing start, but there’s too much confusion. Readers need a clearer picture of the house to understand what’s happening. We’re told it has a “second-floor gallery,” but how tall is the house – just two stories? Three? Five? The aunt shoves 16-year-old Lilah “toward the back stairs” as “black-clad men” hammer at the door below and shatter the deadbolt. Why push Lilah toward the back stairs? Where do they go? Will they take Lilah to safety? To a hiding place? To an exit or an escape route? Are these the same stairs as the “kitchen stairs”? Please clarify.
You give us an excellent picture of Lilah. Give us more clues about the Sheppards, her aunt and uncle. How old are they? Who are they? Are they Libyans? Foreigners living in Libya? Why do they fear the intruders? Who are these men? Terrorists? Criminals? Where does the Sheppards’ wealth come from: are they merchants, or in some shady business like arms dealing, human trafficking or drugs?
This is an excellent description of the invaders destroying the house: “One of the intruders kicked over the ottoman in the living room, sending colorful pillows sliding across the polished wood floor. The tall lamp crashed down and sputtered, throwing the room into shadows. Blue moonlight filtered in through gauzy curtains as menacing figures continued the escalating argument.”
However, this sentence stopped me: “Uncle Dev shook off the hands of one of the men as another swung a lethal looking cane at his head and he crumpled to the floor wordlessly. Her aunt stretched out a hand, her cry choking in her throat.”
Where is Uncle Dev? Still downstairs? Then help us out by adding “Downstairs at the doorway,” or something similar. That phrase “lethal looking cane” was another stopping point. Can a cane look lethal? Who is wielding it – is the attacker an old man or a young one? Did he take the cane away from Uncle Dev? If we can’t see the attackers’ faces, tell us what they’re like: are they muscular? Wiry and whippet thin? Slight but deadly?
The section ends on a suspenseful note. You have the beginnings of a good opening here. Answer these questions and you’ll be on your way to giving readers a first-rate yarn. Hope you’ll keep writing. I’d like to see where this novel goes.

viets-brainstorm-smallLast month, Brain Storm was #1 in hardboiled mystery books and #1 in hardboiled Kindle books on Amazon. Win an autographed copy of my first Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery. Click on Contests at www.elaineviets.com

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About Elaine Viets

Elaine Viets has written 30 mysteries in four series, including 15 Dead-End Job mysteries. BRAIN STORM, her first Angela Richman, Death Investigator mystery, is published as a trade paperback, e-book, and audio book. www.elaineviets.com

17 thoughts on “First Page Critique

  1. Agree with Elaine’s comments so far – I think ditch the prologue and then give a clearer grounding for chapter one so the reader can be fully engaged in the action. I think the bones are here, though, for a good start to a novel!

  2. I sent in a first page for critique at the end of October, and again the first week of November from a different e-mail address, but haven’t heard anything. I’m afraid I’m ending up in the Spam filter, since I have quirky e-mail addresses. I don’t want to be a bother, but I’m eager for feedback and was wondering whether my submission was received. Thanks!

      • Hi, Rachel,
        I checked with TKZers Kathryn and Lynne. We are now on September requests. They’ve seen your request for October 25th. There are 25 people ahead of you. The critiques are assigned, logged in, and an acknowledgement is sent at the same time. Your critique is about a month away from being logged, assigned and acknowledged. After that, you’ll have another wait until it’s actually critique. Thank you for your patience.

        • Awesome! Thanks so much. Like I said, I have such funky e-mail addresses, I know they can get mis-sorted. 🙂 I can wait as long as necessary, just as long as I know it actually got through! Thanks again for checking, and I’ll look forward to getting to see all the other submissions and comments inbetween!

  3. Overall there is a lack of detail. I know the general layout of a traditional Arabic house, many readers would not. It needs a description. The same with the items around the house. What color is that column for example?

    I made the following notes while reading: Rainy funeral is common and overdone. Deadbolts don’t shatter, the door frame does.

    Rammed is an odd word choice.

    “Blue moonlight filtered in through gauzy curtains as menacing figures continued the escalating argument” What argument? The intruders (police? secret police? drug dealers?) don’t say anything at all.

    You also have traditional Jewish names and Anglo names all meeting up in Tripoli. How did everyone get here?

    There is sufficient action and it does draw you in, but it needs some work to bring the readers to chapter 2.

  4. Here are a few comments:

    1. It’s not usually a good idea to begin a book with a funeral or a prologue. That’s not to say there aren’t times when you should, but I can’t find a compelling reason to do it here. When you introduce your protagonist (I assume it’s Lilah), there’s no real reason that we have to know all about her backstory. Readers don’t need to know everything about a main character when that character is introduced. When you meet someone in real life, you find things out a little bit at a time. Therefore, I recommend that you skip the prologue and work in the backstory later.

    2. The beginning is filled with a lot of action, but I haven’t bonded with Lilah enough to want to continue reading. You have to do more to make me care about what happens to her. Mastering point of view can help solve this problem.

    3. Practice writing in a close third person point of view. You want to tell the story from the point of view of the person who has the most to lose in the particular scene. It seems that would be Lilah. Ok, so let’s look at this excerpt as an example:

    “Dark eyes widened as she scanned the scene below through the railings. She almost sobbed with relief when she saw Harry wasn’t there. The Sheppards’ son was her best friend. Be safe, be safe. Oh, God, be safe, Harry.”

    Whose eyes widened? If you are going to tell the story from Lilah’s point of view, she would not see her own eyes widen.

    The statement “She almost sobbed with relief” seems silly. If she almost did it, why tell us about it? Don’t waste important first page real estate telling us what someone almost did.

    “Be safe, be safe. Oh, God, be safe, Harry.” These are inner thoughts of the character and should be in italics.

    4. “I’m here,” said Harry.

    In the US, we’d write this: “I’m here,” Harry said. Using the word “said” first is more old-fashioned.

    5. Let’s look at another excerpt for point of view:

    “Hide, Lilah! Don’t come out till they’ve left.” Her aunt shoved the sixteen-year-old towards the back stairs as hammering continued at the door below. “Hurry!”

    If you want to write this from Lilah’s point of view, you would use something like:

    Aunt So-and-so shoved her ….as hammering continued at the door below.

    You would not put Lilah’s age in there if you want to use Lilah’s point of view.

    6. Let’s look at another excerpt for point of view:

    Mrs. Sheppard, Lilah’s aunt, ran down the wide curving central staircase to join her husband.

    Now, if you want to tell this from Lilah’s point of view (recommended), you’d write it like this:

    Aunt So-and-so ran down the …. to join Uncle So-and-so.

    I would rewrite the whole thing from Lilah’s point of view and keep the point of view consistent. Some writing classes might be helpful if this seems difficult.

    Best of luck, and keep writing.

  5. I liked this a lot and would definitely keep reading!
    One thing bothered me – the positioning of the characters. I wasn’t clear as to whether Lilah got up the stairs. I assume she did, because she “scanned the scene below through the railings”, but I need a clearer picture of her getting up the stairs without being seen. The passage begins with her aunt shoving her towards the back stairs, but then shortly after she is scanning the scene below and then she crawls on all fours to the door leading to the back stairs. This was confusing to me – is there a second set of stairs?
    This didn’t stop me from reading and enjoying this piece of writing however and I would love to see more.

  6. Lots of action gets this one off to a great start. I would, however, like to see the following:
    1) Who are the Sheppards and what are they doing in Libya, of all places. Since Libya was not known as a retirement haven in the 1970s, I’m assuming they’re there for government reasons. I’d like to know.
    2) By “second floor gallery”, did you mean the portion of the 2nd floor hallway adjacent to the railing, overlooking the downstairs? A gallery can often mean a balcony, so a little more description here would clear that up. When you have this much action going on in a darkened house, you want the reader to have a clear perspective on where the action is taking place.
    3) Can you give me at least a sense of who the intruders are? Libyan secret police? CIA? Terrorists?
    4) You have to ask yourself, is the prologue really, really, REALLY necessary. Can this 1972 information not be woven in at a later time?
    5) I have a neurosis about words like “towards” and “afterwards”, thinking they should not end in an “s”.

  7. Also, one more thing. You do yourself a great disservice by not providing a title. Titles often evoke if not the story, the genre, or at least the mood of the book. “Untitled” leaves the reader cold. Give it a title, even a working title. You don’t have to be married to it, just something that will tip us off as to what we can expect.

    • We were checking up on critiques recently and I just found out that this page does indeed have a title: The Empire. Somehow it got lost in processing. Sorry about that!

  8. My first 400 words have already been assigned to a Kill Zone Blogger but I’m hoping it hasn’t been critiqued yet, because I’ve made some significant changes (including the title) and would love for it to be evaluated instead of the previous draft. I emailed the new version a minute ago, but thought that giving you all a heads up via this comment might help the new version get to the appropriate Kill Zoner as quickly as possible. Thanks.

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