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Today we’re critiquing the first page of A RAGING NEED TO KILL, which was submitted anonymously by a reader. I’ll add my comments at the end, and then please give your feedback in the Comments.

A Raging need to Kill

Lilli missed her mom and she hated her dad, Henry, but she still cooked dinner just for him. Lilli opened the oven door and ducked over the golden brown turkey to check if it was done. When she poked the turkey with the fork, a piece fell off, she picked it up, and threw it in the trash bin. A smile spread on her face. “Perfect,” she whispered. She stirred in rosemary seasoning, butter, and garlic salt into the cubed potatoes. Thanksgiving dinner was ready when Henry walked into the living room with a beer in his hand.

Lilli’s mom, Kaitlin, had insisted on having the dinner each year and Lilli was determined to honor her tradition even though Kaitlin was dead. Henry walked closer to Lilli and rested his back against the wooden cabinet. The mouth-watering smell of turkey and cranberry sauce was overpowered by the smell of beer mixed with nicotine, wet hay, and manure.

“Did you prep the girls for the auction?” he asked Lilli, making her neck tense up.

“Not yet, sir. I’ll do it after dinner,” Lilli said while she stared at the yellow stains on the backsplash. She resisted moving even if every cell in her body wanted to step a couple feet away, instead she clenched her jaw to steady her uneasiness.

“Are you hungry, Dad?” she asked trying to remind him that she was his daughter.

“She’s not here anymore. Don’t hold on to the past, Lilli. It’ll be easier,” he said in a calm voice but she still noticed his irritation. He took a step closer to her and she grabbed a plate, served the potatoes and turkey, walked to the table, and back to the kitchen.

After serving two dinner plates for the two of them, she sat at the small wooden table. Henry ate the dinner and after a few minutes, he put down the fork and looked at Lilli with suspicion. “What did you put in the food? You haven’t touched yours. What, you poisoned me?”

“No, Dad,” she said and looked down with a small smirk.

He got up and tried to steady himself with the table. His eyes looked disoriented and he reached out for her but she staggered backwards. He threw a punch at her but Lilli ducked and he missed her.

My comments:

Whoa, talk about a dysfunctional family! I felt the bleakness of the narrator’s world as I was reading this page. I appreciate the way the writer used small details to put the reader inside the Lilli’s POV, such as her staring at the yellow stains on the backsplash.

This scene definitely made me want to learn more about Lilli’s world. I would suggest doing an editing pass to tidy up some punctuation and break up sentences for rhythm and flow.

I would also suggest rearranging the dialogue between Lilli and Henry to increase the tension in the following exchange.

Henry ate the dinner and after a few minutes, he put down the fork and looked at Lilli with suspicion. “What did you put in the food? You haven’t touched yours. What, you poisoned me?”

I suggest breaking up the something like this:

Henry ate the dinner. After a few minutes, he set down his  fork.

 

“You haven’t touched your dinner.”

 

“No, Dad.” Lilli stared down at her plate and stifled a smirk.

 

”You put something in the food?” Henry staggered to his feet, then tried to steady himself against the table. “What, you poisoned me?”

In general, job well done! I’m hoping we will find out in the next page whether Lilli did in fact poison Henry. (Sounds like he deserved it).

Our thanks go out to today’s brave writer for submitting this first page! TKZers, how did you react to this first page? Please share your feedback in the Comments.

An analysis by Larry Brooks

As usual with these First Page Critiques, here is the untouched submission, followed by a hands-on analysis. Also as usual, caveats apply.

First page critiques provide a valid quick first look at a writer’s narrative skills, and perhaps, how they launch a scene. And in a rarer instance, some visibility as to how that opening scene launches a story.  That said, first pages – and first scenes, for that matter – are unique among all the pages and scenes that appear in a finished novel. The criteria is different. The context and the mission is different. And because it doesn’t demand either a payoff within the confines of a “first page,” nor does it need to be completely clear (often the comments offered on a first page, perhaps because so little else is contextually available, seems to criticize a lack of a sense of what the story will end up being about), any input to it beyond the writing itself, at a story level, should come with an asterisk.

Heck, we don’t even know the genre yet, something virtually every reader of every published novel knows before they even pick it up from a bookshelf, or click the BUY NOW button on Amazon or elsewhere online.

Here is today’s first page, asterisks and caveats implied, as submitted:

*****

Charlotte clutched the armrest with a vice-like grip. The plane pitched. Black clouds loomed outside the window.

I’m going to die!

A chime sounded. The seatbelt sign lit up.

I knew this would happen.

She squeezed her eyes tightly shut.

Think of something nice. Freshly shaved truffles–Domingo singing O Sole Mio–Rosy waiting for me at the airport.

Reaching up with a trembling hand, she twisted the air vent nozzle to full. A baby screamed in the row behind.

Shit! ­­­– Another frigging bump. I don’t like this. Get me off this plane!

The wine in her glass sloshed from side to side. She gulped it down.

I need another drink.  

Thoughts flashed through her brain so fast, everything blurred. She’d been impulsive, booking this trip. And she desperately needed a change. But this? Going half-way around the world? Perhaps she be running away from her problems. Perhaps she should have done something safe and boring, like she’d always done.

She jumped when she felt a gentle touch on her arm.

“About a million people travel safely by plane every day,” said an accented voice in her ear. “Statistically speaking, you’d have to fly every day for nearly two hundred years to experience a problem.”

Was it that obvious she was scared? Could the stranger hear her heart hammering?

She looked into the rheumy eyes of the man in the aisle seat. An elderly gentleman swathed in an immaculate pinstripe suit two sizes too big leaned toward her.

Ravi Shankar!—Is Ravi Shankar still alive?

Enormous eyebrows sat like whiskery caterpillars on the stranger’s broad forehead, tufts of white hair sprouting from his ears. A spotless white handkerchief peeked from his lapel, and the Band Aid on his chin showed evidence of a tour of his facial terrain by an unsteady hand.

He patted Charlotte’s arm with a sinewy hand.

“I think of turbulence as bumps on a road. Does it bother you when you’re in a car and go over a few potholes?”

“No.”

“Then imagine the sky as a big road and the plane as a car. A couple of bumps won’t make a difference to a safe journey. Besides, there’s less traffic up here.”

He let out a high-pitched chuckle, covering his mouth as a cough caught in his throat. Pulling out the handkerchief, he dabbed beneath his eyes. A piece of paper floated from his lap beneath his seat.

“Oh! My landing form. I didn’t fill it out yet since my eyesight’s not too good these days. I’m a bit concerned I may do something wrong. Would you mind helping me please, young lady?”

Charlotte unbuckled her seatbelt and leaned down to retrieve the form from below his seat. The stranger handed her a sterling silver fountain pen with the initials “RCF” engraved into the cap.

“Use this. It’s my lucky pen. Perhaps it will make the flight smoother.”

******

A Few Comments

First impressions: I like this. It has a sense of being in the moment, and it is something to which we can relate. It also has a dash of wit, countering a hint of fear. And a final line that leaves a question mark – perhaps compelling, perhaps not – that may be addressed on the next line page… or not.

Short of a few comments on specific lines – the low hanging fruit of editing – I don’t have much beyond this positive overall take away. And yet, in many first page panels I’ve seen (at workshops) and read (here, and elsewhere), there seems to be an obligation to find something to criticize, all of it, of course, within the context of trying to find something to help.

But in this piece… honestly, I think it works. Do I know what the story is yet? Not at all. Unless accompanied by a short synopsis that includes, at a minimum, the target genre, it’s impossible to tell. Are we reading the first plucked strings of a love story? A setup for a seduction, perhaps one with nefarious intentions? Will the plane crash land and strand these two on an island?

We don’t know. Should we criticize it because we don’t know? Absolutely not. Full disclosure is not the mission, or even the expectation, of a functional first page. Rather, highest mission is simple and clear, beyond delivering narrative that makes sense either in or out of context.

That mission is simply this: does the page make the reader want more?

My answer here is hell yes. Not so much because of the story – there’s not a lot of story here yet – but because of the writing. I think this writer has some chops, and this story may have legs. Chops and legs combine tend to become a sum that exceeds either part.

So, not to short-change this writer, here are a few little nits. There aren’t many.

When you say, “Perhaps she be running away from her problems,” I’m not sure if you’re trying to be colloquial or if it’s an outright omission of a word or two. Either way, it doesn’t seem to fit the tone. The italicized inner thoughts you offer don’t sound like someone quoting from Shakespeare or Eminem, which this particular line does.

Your narrator poses the rhetorical question: “Was it that obvious she was scared?” and does so in an odd way… because this isn’t an inner thought, which you show in italicized first person. And yet, by definition it is an inner thought, a musing, because an omniscient narrator wouldn’t pose the question, while she absolutely would. And yet, it’s clunky, because it’s pretty darn obvious – to the reader and to the guy sitting next to her – that she actually is scared out of her mind. He notices, which is why he reaches out to her. So posing the question makes her seem a little dim, a little less than self-aware.

The initial description of the Ravi Shankar-esque seat mate… wonderfully done. But you can do better than a “sinewy” hand. You’re being sarcastic in describing him, be sarcastic in describing his hand, too. Like, “his hand looked like it belonged to Keith Richards.”

For a moment, after that paper slips from his lap, we don’t know who is speaking the next line of dialogue. ‘ “Oh! My landing form,” he said’… might work better.

And a landing form – whatever that is… I’m not sure, do we need a slip to land? If you’re suggesting a customs slip to land in another country, say that instead. Otherwise, this sounds like the author has never been on an airplane before.

See, I’m having to work hard to find something to help here.

If there is one thing that might make it stronger, I’d say to give us some stronger hint of what’s coming in a dramatic/story arc sense. A bit more of a hook. A little nub of foreshadowing. Remember, in virtually any genre that isn’t “literary fiction,” it isn’t a story until something goes wrong. And while it doesn’t have to go wrong on the first page (in fact, it really shouldn’t), it helps if we get a sense of something that will be happening, even if it is barely discernable, which is a bit light here. Short of that paper drop, which doesn’t really qualify as a hook, and the assumption that the airplane isn’t about to crash, there’s not much of a sense of what that might be.

A nice start, me thinks. Says the guy who doesn’t recommend trying to sound Shakespearean, ever.

What are your thoughts on this first page submission?

This is my last Killzone post.

I’d like to thank the folks who run and contribute to this post for inviting me and tolerating me. These two years have been rewarding, and I’ve connected with a lot of writers who I wouldn’t have bumped into otherwise.

I’m in the midst of reinventing and relaunching my website, Storyfix.com, working in conjunction with writing guru and contributing writer Art Holcomb. I invite you to check it out (there are nearly 1000 posts archived on all forms of the craft of writing fiction), and if you like what you see, subscribe to the email feed.

I’ll remain active in this wonderful community of writers, though, chipping in when I feel I can contribute.

I wish massive success for you all. And I join you in welcoming my friend Sue Coletta, who slides into my every-other-Monday seat here armed with a wealth of knowledge and enthusiasm to share.

By Elaine Viets

Don and I have had no phones or Internet since last Thursday. We live in a mandatory evacuation area in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. When we were ordered to leave our condo at noon, Thursday, Sept. 7th, we packed up the cats and headed for our friend Anne’s house in Boynton Beach to ride out the hurricane. Irma was coming and she was mean. We didn’t know if we’d see our condo again.

It was a week before we could go home. We had electricity, but no Internet and no phones. We still don’t.

It may be the best thing that ever happened to me.

My agent wanted me to write a short story, and write it fast.

“Do you have any ideas?” he asked.

A couple. He nixed the idea that involved cute animals. “I think your heart is really on the dark side,” he said.

So I told him about an idea flitting around in my head. You know what I mean. It’s in your brain like a mosquito in your bedroom late at night. You can hear its annoying whine, but you can’t get rid of it. The only way to make it go away is to turn it into a story.

My agent liked the idea: a conversation I’d had with a man in a bank line several years ago – yes, it had been buzzing around that long.

I knew the story’s main characters. I had an idea for the opening. But what did I do after that?

I hadn’t the foggiest. I didn’t know where to take the idea. I had no plot. I had no ending. But it was time to get it out of my head.

“How quickly can you write that story?” he asked.

“Three weeks,” I said. That was fast, since I hadn’t written one word.

I started writing the story three days ago and it’s almost finished.

Why?

No Internet and no phones.

I discovered I’m an Internet addict. I’d get so far in my writing and then, when I got to a difficult part – when I needed to start a new scene or describe a character – I’d automatically go online to answer a question for my story: How do you spell Keurig? What are some names for the Devil?

Except I’d get distracted by the political news. A cute cat video. Click bait about a movie star who was big in 1975. A video tour of a tiny house. An unsolved murder from 1898.

You get the idea. It would be a half hour or more before I got back to my writing. My train of thought had been derailed. I’d write for a bit, but with less enthusiasm. Then another question would come up, and I’d be back on the Net. And I’d post on Facebook, tweet, and answer my e-mail. That took more time. Then I’d see a fascinating video about the 90-year-old sweethearts reunited after 50 years. Their great-granddaughter was the maid of honor . . .

Now I can’t do that. I still have the urge to run to the Internet when I have a question. My fingers itch to hit that browser button. They actually twitch when I see the Firefox icon. Then I realize I don’t have the Internet.

Instead I take a break, have a cup of tea, walk around the house – and the idea comes to me. Suddenly, I can see the next scene. That character is standing in front of me and I can describe him. Or I didn’t paint myself into a corner after all. I know how I can solve the problem. And damn, that opening, the one I’ve cherished for two years, is dull. I need to tear it up and rewrite it.

Writing is faster and easier without the Internet.

The AT&T repair person will be here Friday morning to restore our phones and get us back on the Internet.

I hope I can stand the itching and twitching of withdrawal, and not get caught in the Net again.

Note: I finished the short story, “The Deal,” two days later, and sent it to my agent. At last, it was out of my head. Our condo is livable, but damaged: Don’s bathroom ceiling collapsed and water damaged one wall and our bedroom ceiling. Compared to how Irma pounded the Caribbean, we are lucky. We got phones and Internet Friday, September 15, and well, I went on the Net again. Just to check my email. I swore I’d be strong, and stay away the distractions, but I had to find out what was going on in our country. And if Bo Derek still looks good now. And how to clean my house using all-natural ingredients. I’m supposed to finish a manuscript, but there’s this story about two women who tried to take selfies with a freaking elk. My name is Elaine and I am an addict . . .

By John Gilstrap

I’ve never understood very much about my own creative process (God, I hate that phrase), and because of that, I try not to think about it very much.  Where do ideas come from?  I have no idea.  They just arrive, and always just in time.  I talk to writers whose minds are filled with stories demanding to be told, and I admire them.  My ideas stumble into my head one, maybe two at a time, and they just sit at the bar and stare.  “Go ahead, Writer-man,” they say.  “Do your job and make us pretty.”

One constant in my life for more than a decade now has been a September 15 deadline for the next Jonathan Grave book.  I plan my entire year around that deadline.  A second constant is a July 1 publication date for the book that was submitted the previous September 15.  That early July drop date is important because of its proximity to ThrillerFest, and the boost in publicity brought by that.  But July is also Gilstrap Beach Vacation Month, so that’s another week gone from the ten weeks leading up to my deadline.  (I bring my computer and writing pad to the beach, but if I get 1,000 words written over those seven days, I’m lucky.)

On the far side of my deadline is Joy’s and my wedding anniversary, which almost always includes an exotic trip to somewhere.  This year, it was 16 days in Scotland, commencing September 12.  That shortened my deadline by three whole days!  That means there was no possibility of overshooting the deadline by only a day or two.  It was either submit two days early or four weeks late.  In my world, we call that “motivation.”

Because I’ve been doing this for so long, I’ve figured out a system that (almost) always works.  If I can be at the 200-page mark by the opening of ThrillerFest, I can be at 70,000 words by August 1.  Given a 100,000-word manuscript length, that makes August busy but doable.  Plus, by then, I’m transitioning to the third act, which for me is the easiest to write.  I can usually have a polished first draft done by the first week in September, which leaves me 10 days or so for final revision.

This year, reality bitch-slapped me.  ThrillerFest didn’t start until July 13, easily a week later than usual, and from July 19-23, I was on the faculty of the Midwest Writers Conference in Muncie, Indiana.  When all was said and done, I’d effectively lost 16 writing days in July.

And September 12 still sat there, immovable.

I hit my 70,000-word milestone on August 8, three days after I taught an all-day seminar at the Smithsonian, and the one day after an all-day charity signing event.  Math was beginning to work against me.  I needed to write 10,000 words a week for the next three weeks in order to give me the cushion I needed for final revisions.  Sounds horrible, but doable.

Then came the long lunch with a grieving friend who reached out because he didn’t want to be alone.  And the long overdue birthday dinner with another friend.  The un-turn-downable invitation to a luxury suite at the Washington Nationals.  Let’s not forget the long-standing three-day commitment to the always-fabulous Creatures Crimes & Creativity Conference from September 8-10.

Tick and Tock were both laughing at me.  In fact, they were mocking me.

Oh, and God forbid the book actually pull itself together at 100,000 words.  Perish the thought.  The final count came in at 112,230 words, and I clicked send for Scorpion Strike on the evening of September 11, 2017.

Never in my life have I written so much in so little time.  That’s 42,230 words in what was effectively 14 writing days (as opposed to editing/revision days).  If I wrote evenly, that would be over 3,000 words per day, but that’s never how it works for me.  The last two writing days were each 6K-plus.  It was exhausting.

As I jetted off to Scotland, I fully expected to receive a polite but scolding email regarding the revisions that would be necessary.  And that was fine, because that’s what revisions are for.  Instead, the email from my agent included the phrase, “best book you’ve ever written.”  Surely, she was pulling her punches so she wouldn’t ruin my vacation.  No, she promised, she and her assistant both read it through in one long gulp, loving it the whole way.

When we returned from our trip, my editor called and told me that they were sending Scorpion Strike straight through to copy editing.  For the first time in the history of history, there would be no editorial letter.  No structural changes, no punching up of this character or toning down of that one.  Just spelling and continuity.

So . . . what the f-bomb?  How could my most hurried book turn out to be my least-flawed, in the eyes of my writer universe?  I don’t have an answer–not even close–but if I were one to be introspective about my creative process (have I mentioned that I hate that phrase?), it might be worthy of consideration.

Here’s what’s off the table: I’m not going to try to recreate the magic of 6,000-word writing sessions.  I like being able to feel my legs and stand up straight.  I like a focal length longer than twenty-four inches. And that much coffee can’t possibly be good for me.

Next deadline: First two chapters of the next Grave book by November 1.  Piece of cake.