First Page Critique: What Fresh
(And Fetid) Hell Is This?

By PJ Parrish

Our brave writer tells us we are in “mystery genre” with this submission. And yes, indeed, we are. For there are many mini-mysteries to unwind in this spare but evocative opening. Let’s read and then discuss.

A Wolf Near Woman Howling Creek

Andi Wolf escaped hell at eighteen and swore never to step foot in it again.

Yet twenty-five years later, here she stood, back in Texas, wishing she had on her Georgia Giant ranch boots, surrounded as she was by bison excreta. But no. The boots were packed in a box, sitting in a closet at her mom’s house. Which, she supposed, was her house now too.

She stood in the middle of a pastoral scene gone wrong. Bison dotted the land around her, bellies up and bloated, stiff legs poking the air. Bison were enormous creatures, weighing anywhere from 700 to 2000 pounds. But these looked smaller, likely calves and yearlings. When she and Isa, the investigator who hired her, first arrived on the scene, the first few dead bison she saw pinched her heart. When the count rose past a dozen, she inured herself against it to focus on her job.

Andi stationed herself by the heavy-duty inner perimeter fence near the corner at the western edge of an expansive property comprised of a few thousand acres, according to Investigator Bastos. The mid-afternoon sun shone without mercy, glaring off of everything it touched. At least she’d remembered her sunglasses. There were no clouds in hell. The heat baked the fresh manure around her, filling the air with an aromatic stench that made Andi’s eyes water. Behind her stretched the perimeter fence. The three strands of barbed wire on top of traditional cattle fencing made the five-foot-three fence the same height as Andi, entrapping her and the bison. The still-living ones, in any case. It joined with the high-tensile wire fence to her right, splitting the front pasture from the back, where she stood now. It stretched parallel to the road, as far as she could see.

A scratching sound caught her attention. She turned to see a turkey vulture sitting nearby on a post, distinguishable from its black cousin by its wrinkly redhead and two-tone underwing, now visible as it stretched out to peck at something.

“They creep me out.”

She spun around at the sound. Detective Bastos walked toward her, picking her way through the excrement minefield.

___________________________

When I first received this submission, I read it very quickly and you know, I wasn’t that impressed. But days later, I read it again. And then a couple more times, trying to read it both as editor and pure reader. (It is sometimes hard to keep those two entities separate, I confess). I concluded finally that I have some mixed feelings about this one. Not because I don’t like it. I do. Not because I think it has major issues. It doesn’t. It’s because I kept coming back to one big question.

I often talk here about finding the prime dramatic moment to enter your story. Too early and you get throat-clearing. (Example: Cop, usually hung over, gets phone call in middle of night to come to a crime scene and we get him slinging his bare feet onto the cold floor and padding off to look at his sad unshaven mug in the bathroom mirror. No…open at the crime scene).

But if you enter a scene too late, sometimes you miss a golden moment to engage the protagonist (and thus the reader) emotionally.

So my big question: Did this writer come into the opening scene too late?

It’s a heck of a dramatic scene — the protagonist is surveying a prairie-like landscape littered with dead bison. Very young bison. Which is even more appalling and mysterious, of course. And as I said, there are several other small mysteries unfolding here: Why, 25 years later, has Andi Wolf returned to her Texas home, which she tells us is “hell.”  Why, given this history, is she here? What happened to her mother? And of course, what killed the animals? So, kudos, writer, on hooking us with all this in such a small sample. I would definitely read on.

But I have to go back to my big question: Would this submission be even better if the writer had opened with Andi Wolf arriving at the scene. The writer tells us that the first sight of the dead bison “pinched at her heart.”  Why not show us and let it pinch at our hearts? I think by opening with the “escaping hell” idea, the writer drifts into backstory when, in fact, the present story — coming upon a pasture of dead animals — is so very visceral, immediate and yes, heart-pinching.

As much as I like this opening, I really wanted to see, hear, smell, and experience that first sight of the corpse-ridden landscape at the same moment Andi did. That hell, to me, would have been far more powerful than the metaphoric backstory hell.

And consider, dear writer, that “hell” can perhaps mean two things: The hellish deathscape Andi sees before her resonates with her own inner hell. The dead bison become a metaphor, perhaps even of her emotional journey over the course of your story.  There’s a reason you opened with the dead animals. Use it thematically if you can.

And that, folks, is my only issue with this submission. Very quickly, before I do a quick line-edit, let me point out some things the writer did well:

  1. Identified the protagonist gracefully. We get her name, gender and age quickly. .
  2. We know where we are. Somewhere in rural Texas.
  3. There is a pretty major disruption in the norm. Dead bodies everywhere.
  4. We know Andi has some issues in her past. Nicely hinted at but not defined yet and thus dragging us down in info-dump backstory.
  5. Some pretty darn good description.

Let’s do a quick edit, my comments in red:

Andi Wolf escaped hell at eighteen and swore never to step foot in it again. Again, not a bad opening line at all. Until you get down to the dead bodies, which is more compelling, in my opinion.

Yet twenty-five years later, here she stood, back in Texas, nice and clean way to slip in age and place wishing she had on her Georgia Giant ranch boots, I know this brand cuz my brother-in-law swore by them. They are heavy-duty lace-ups, favored by construction workers. To me, this implied she once had a different kind of job? surrounded as she was by bison excreta. Nit picking here but this strikes me a $50 word when excrement would have been fine. But no. The boots were packed in a box, sitting in a closet at her mom’s house. Which, she supposed, was her house now too. As I said, I like that this iota of backstory was slipped in. 

She stood in the middle of a pastoral scene gone wrong. This, to my ear and eye, is telling rather than showing. You don’t need to TELL us it has “gone wrong.” Let your powerful details SHOW us, and trust the reader to get it. Bison dotted the land around her, bellies up and bloated, stiff legs poking the air. Bison were enormous creatures, weighing anywhere from 700 to 2000 pounds. But these looked smaller, likely calves and yearlings. That got me, intriguing me and pinching at my heart. When she and Isa, the investigator who hired her, first arrived on the scene, the first few dead bison she saw pinched her heart. When the count rose past a dozen, she inured herself against it to focus on her job. This is where I think things could have been better. We are now in PAST TENSE.  By not showing us this powerful first impression ON CAMERA, as it happened, the writer might have missed a chance to really involve us. Try this as an exercise, dear writer: Start with Andi cresting a small rise or something and then, like some awful battlefield revealing itself, she sees the killing field. And don’t forget to bring ALL Andi’s senses into play. What does it smell like? What does it sound like? What sounds are the surviving bison making? (I Googled it and normal bison sound like something out of The Exorcist). And I have to wonder: You say some animals are still alive — are they reacting? Are cows hovering over their dead calves? Don’t just pinch at our hearts, wrench them.  

Andi stationed herself by the heavy-duty inner perimeter fence near the corner at the western edge of an expansive property comprised of a few thousand acres, according to Investigator BastosThis is a little clunky. Try: Andi stopped at the perimeter fence, three strands of barbed wire atop five feet of heavy wood posts. (“traditional cattle fencing” means nothing to those of us outside Texas)  The mid-afternoon sun shone without mercy, glaring off of everything it touched. We are in a pasture. What is there to glare off of? At least she’d remembered her sunglasses. Make this mean something. Maybe she takes them off, the better to absorb the terrible scene? Or she puts them on, almost to shield herself from it? There were no clouds in hell. The heat baked the fresh manure around her, filling the air with an aromatic stench that made Andi’s eyes water. Behind her stretched the perimeter fence. The three strands of barbed wire on top of traditional cattle fencing made the five-foot-three fence the same height as Andi, entrapping her and the bison. The still-living ones, in any case. It joined with the high-tensile wire fence to her right, splitting the front pasture from the back, where she stood now. It stretched parallel to the road, as far as she could see. I think we get too much time on the fencing. Describe it once above and move on. 

A scratching sound caught her attention. She turned to see made her turn. A turkey vulture sat atop sitting nearby on a post, distinguishable from its black cousin by its wrinkly red head and two-tone underwing, now visible as it stretched out to peck at something.

“They creep me out.” I like this bit of dialogue here to break things up and to intro Bastos. 

She spun around at the sound. Why spun in surprise? She was summoned here by Bastos and Andi knows she’s there. Detective Bastos walked toward her, picking her way through the excrement minefield.

So, in conclusion, I want to emphasize that I really liked this. It is well written and pretty darn polished. I was drawn by the first line because it works, in its own way, by making us wonder what was it that made Texas such a hell that Andi had to escape it. But — and for me, this is a major but — when I got to the dead bison, I was really engaged because I was experiencing something that was real and visceral. I just wish I had seen and felt it as Andi did, not as a memory. Present tense is always more powerful than past.

Keep going with Andi’s story, brave writer. And thanks so much for sharing with us.

 

This entry was posted in Writing by PJ Parrish. Bookmark the permalink.

About PJ Parrish

PJ Parrish is the New York Times and USAToday bestseller author of the Louis Kincaid thrillers. Her books have won the Shamus, Anthony, International Thriller Award and been nominated for the Edgar. Visit her at PJParrish.com

21 thoughts on “First Page Critique: What Fresh
(And Fetid) Hell Is This?

  1. I love this piece. The strong sensory description is vivid–I can’t imagine the smell but reading about it gags me. I can feel the glaring sun and oppressive heat.

    Why and how these young bison were slaughtered makes a compelling mystery.

    Andi is an interesting haunted character. The reader doesn’t know her exact profession yet except she’s been called in by an investigator so she’s evidently an expert–perhaps a wildlife biologist? That goes along with the boots she wishes she had. Most important, she doesn’t want to be there for several reasons–some obvious, some to be revealed.

    Great tension, lots of questions that hook the reader, beautiful writing.

    One sentence jumped out as a possible first line: “There were no clouds in hell.”

    This reminds me of Reavis Wortham’s style and that’s a high compliment.

    Kris, excellent idea to start with Andi’s first sight of the gory scene.

    Brave Author, let us know when this is published b/c I will buy the book.

    • Nice endorsement, Debbie. No sweeter words for an author than “I’ll buy it!”

  2. Thanks, Kris. I would like to read a finished product as well.

    Hope you’re having a great week!

  3. So my big question: Did this writer come into the opening scene too late?

    I actually think the writer comes in too early. This is almost all exposition. As such I’m still at arm’s length from Andi.

    What I like about this material is the dead bison, something I haven’t seen before. But we’re told about it…and it sometimes feels like a classroom (Bison were enormous creatures, weighing anywhere from 700 to 2000 pounds).

    My advice: act first, explain later. We don’t need all that exposition to get caught up in the moment. Readers will wait a long time for the “why and how” if they’re first interested in the “who.”

    My suggestion: start with the vulture. Weave in just a bit about the dead bison. Put in the part about the manure stench (great sensory image). Then bring in Detective Bastos. Start the dialogue, which can carry a LOT of the expository info. But sprinkle it in, and the bits about the weather, and some of Andi’s backstory (but not too much). Let the “why and how” slowly unfold, creating a bit of mystery for the reader, which is an inducement to turning the page.

    Attend to Kris’s notes, writer. Your style and material are promising.

    • Thanks for weighing in, Jim. This perspective and suggestion also gives the writer something good and positive to think about. Writer: Please note Jim’s remark that this is almost all exposition. Background info may be essential but it almost always acts as a brake in the early moments of your story.

  4. I agree with JSB. I don’t think brave author starts too late. Perhaps a bit of rearranging will solve the big question.

    Obviously, you don’t have to take this, brave author, but here are my thoughts. Start with the bison. Give us the gut punch of emotion. If Andi is a wild life specialist, introducing that would be all the more interesting. And if she copes in this bad situation by listing animal facts, make that explicit. (I’m assuming a lot here, so I apologize if I’m way off.) Save the boots and mama’s house for a little later when she actually goes back there.

    • Yes, I agree…start with the bison. That is what I meant when I suggested the writer begin the story a little earlier. I still believe revealing the sight of the bison in past tense isn’t serving the story as well as it should.

      • I guess this would depend on whether the action picks up on the second page. This might not be the right place to start at all. Brave author, ask yourself what kind of story you want to tell. Does it focus on the crime here or the relationship with the mother?

    • I didn’t read it that the bison land was her mother’s land. Just that her mother’s house (somewhere else) is now hers.

  5. Thank you, Brave Author, for your submission. I’m intrigued.

    I also agree that there is a lot of telling in this piece. I would have preferred to be introduced to the main character as she crests the ridge, haunted by the odor and heat, before she sees the horrific landscape laid out in front of her. It seems like a great opportunity to set the stage through the MC’s sensory perception.

  6. OK, I am an outlier. To me this is a cut jumbled mess. Why would someone raised around cattle not wear boots to a field of dead cattle? “…excreta. Nit picking here but this strikes me a $50 word when excrement would have been fine.” Yep. Ditto for any reader who has never seen fencing in a cattle ranch. This could have been handled better.

    Everything just seemed off. Maybe I missed something. Maybe it’s me. I am OK with that.

    • This is why we do these critiques, Alan. So a writer gets input from all types of readers (and fellow writers). I’m not sure I read this that Andi was “raised around cattle.” We really don’t know where she has come from (another state obviously since she left Texas 25 years ago). And we don’t know WHY she’s even there because the writer has so far withheld what her job and role in this scene is. We are told only that Andi has been “hired” by the investigator Isa Bastos. We do need this basic info pretty soon, imo. A little mystery is a good thing. Confusion is not.

    • I agree some. Only one quibble. Scientists use terms like excreta all the time. It’s their natural language. A geologist friend was doing a thesis field walk with his prof. When the prof said, “We’re nearing a bifurcation in the surface drainage,” Don replied, “Hey, not only that, we’re comin’ to a fork in the crick.” A stony silence ensued, lasting to the end of the exercise, letting Don know he had sinned most grievously by departing from the standard terminology, and, worse, making fun of it.

      Excreta succinctly, maybe too succinctly, identified Andi as a biologist. Or a pedant. Or both.

  7. Brave Author, you hooked me and kept me reading. I really like the page and want to keep reading. I concur with this assessment given on this piece & wanted to add a few random thoughts:

    While they communicate meaning clearly, both “excreta” and “inure” sounded like $50 words thrown in.

    It didn’t take away from my engagement with the page, but I wasn’t sure if you meant she returned to hell meaning simply returning to Texas, or if you meant that the property she was on was her family’s? I was confused because she seemed to need the amount of acreage to be stated by Investigator Bastos–if it was family property, why wouldn’t she know the acreage, even if she’d been gone 25 years? If it is not family property, then the comment about “supposed, was her house now too” doesn’t really fit there or could be misleading.

    And if it literally is family property you are referring to, and not just the fact that she’s back in TX, then it would certainly up the tension to make that clearer to the reader–because that will creep them out even more wondering what caused these dead bison.

    And a slight picking of nits, but I think you probably mean the turkey vulture has a red head not “redhead” which seems to imply a different meaning, at least to me.

    Enjoyed your first page submission.

    • Good points all, BK. And it goes to my comment about confusion vs mystery. I don’t think anything you brought up is nitpicking. If it causes a hiccup for the reader, it begs clarification. But that is what rewriting is for.

  8. Late to the party, as usual, which often brings on the weeping and the gnashing of teeth. In this case, Kristy covered the material so thoroughly, I was relieved not to have to add much. Yes, I’m a little bothered by the excess hooks. One good one or a few minor ones usually suffices. Too many hooks is like too many themes; each successive one weakens the first and can cause confusion.

    The major hook here is WTF killed all these bison, a true mystery hook. Other hooks are mostly the what-does-this-mean? sort, a recipe for confusion.

  9. Brave Author, I want to read on. I agree with much of Kris & JSB’s comments for tightening and perhaps even reorienting the start. But you have a very nice opening line and an intriguing idea.

    Speaking as someone currently living in “hell” (accurate epithet as we’ve already hit high 90s mid-May, even here in North Texas), and very close to bison ranches, I experienced this piece with several senses!
    I feel the need to back you up on that sun glare. There is something inescapable about Texas sun. Perhaps it’s my Yankee blood, but some days, living under it is very reminiscent of existing on a hot plate under a fast food heat lamp. Everything hurts the eyes, reflective or not: blades of grass, rocks, a white gravel road… Unforgiving is also an apt description.

    I kindly suggest reading your work aloud to yourself. You structure sentences as I do. Sometimes they’re too dense. Sometimes you leave danglers at the ends (“…according to Investigator Bastos.” is a good example.) Reading aloud has been the most effective way for me to catch and prune those brambles. I hope it works as well for you!

    We also share a love for big words. Honestly, I read right past “inure” and thought nothing of it.
    But “excreta” tripped me up because it sounded too clinical for the character. I wouldn’t have blinked an eye at “sh!t.” (I tempered that one for the other blog readers.)
    It’s an easy trap to fall into when you hit the comfort zone of writing; we slip into our own headspace and out of the character’s. If Andi is indeed the type to use a word like “excreta” then, by all means, keep it. But if Ms Georgia Giant boot-wearer says sh!t, then that’s what needs to be there.

    The same goes for description vs exposition. It’s tough to give readers detail they might not otherwise know (bison & vulture factoids, fencing…I’m sure there will plenty of other agricultural trip hazards if the opening is any indication.) You have to ask yourself: what does the reader NEED to know to further the story, versus what’s fun to geek out on?
    It always comes down to Show vs Tell, of course. One of the ways I circumnavigate (ugh…see? Big words.) exposition is to put it in dialogue. That sometimes helps motivate the story, too.
    Best of luck, and I want to read this story!

Comments are closed.