by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell
Here is another first page for critique. See you on the other side.
At the Edge of the Radiant Sea
If Larissa Jackson squinted hard enough, the blue tents massed on the plain below might almost look like the ocean. A barren strip of beige separated the refugee camp from the Atlantic, vast and forbidding under the glaring sun. And if she tried really hard, the faint din of two hundred thousand Slavic refugees could almost sound … like seagulls’ cries?
Except that the Arctic War, as it exploded across the Northern Hemisphere, had wiped out seagulls almost a decade ago.
Larissa shivered on the café’s patio. Despite the canvas canopy sheltering her, she settled her sunhat more firmly on her head. Eight years after the war’s end, the nuclear winter that had frozen the world under unending clouds of smoke was lifting. But the price for sunlight was skyrocketing levels of UV radiation, thanks to the tattered ozone layer, another casualty of the war.
Taking a final gulp of her milky coffee – now lukewarm, barely worth drinking – she turned away from the view, unease settling over her like a blanket of nettles. She wanted to be back in the bright sterility of her lab in Texas, not on the windswept edge of Portugal’s Algarve coast, about to enter a refugee camp.
She’d hoped a coffee would calm her nerves and wake her up after the long flight from Dallas to Lisbon, and the ensuing two-hour drive south.
But when she’d entered, the pastelaria was unlit, and its cold interior smelled of dirty dishwater. Glass cases that should be filled with a bounty of pastries held nothing but a few pastéis de nata, the iconic Portuguese custard tarts. Patch jobs of grey cement marred the black and white tiled floor. The spotted mirror behind the counter reflected the server’s thinning hair and scowl as he banged white ceramic cups onto metal shelves attached to the back wall. Dumpy, brown-haired, brown-eyed Larissa had never been a beauty, but even with fatigue written across her face and bags under her eyes, she looked indefinably healthier and more prosperous than anyone she’d seen since stepping off the plane.
Maybe the server had seen her get out of the sleek black sedan and assumed it belonged to her. He couldn’t know she was here on someone else’s orders.
***
JSB: We have a promising start. The first two paragraphs give us enough information to set the scene and offer quite a disturbance—a post-apocalyptic sea coast teeming with refugees. And I like that Larissa is trying to avoid thinking about the reality of it. I’m ready for some action. But—
Paragraph 3:
Larissa shivered on the café’s patio. Despite the canvas canopy sheltering her, she settled her sunhat more firmly on her head. Eight years after the war’s end, the nuclear winter that had frozen the world under unending clouds of smoke was lifting. But the price for sunlight was skyrocketing levels of UV radiation, thanks to the tattered ozone layer, another casualty of the war.
This is a paragraph of exposition. It exists only to feed us information. Larissa is merely a peg to hang it on. Keep this in mind: act first, explain later. Readers will happily wait for exposition if they are connected to a character doing something of moment. Larissa adjusting her hat is not the kind of something I mean. A scene needs to have some sort of tension or conflict, almost always by way of another character. I’ll have a suggestion about that later.
Paragraph 4:
Taking a final gulp of her milky coffee – now lukewarm, barely worth drinking – she turned away from the view, unease settling over her like a blanket of nettles. She wanted to be back in the bright sterility of her lab in Texas, not on the windswept edge of Portugal’s Algarve coast, about to enter a refugee camp.
Once again, the paragraph is exposition. This time the author wants us to know the precise location and a bit of character background. Again, don’t be in such a hurry to give us all this information!
You do have some interior emotion here, but I had trouble picturing a “blanket of nettles.” Or, more precisely, I didn’t have trouble—I couldn’t help seeing a bunch of spiky leaves stitched together draped over her body. Coming up with fresh metaphors for feelings is an ongoing challenge. We don’t want to use clichés, but we also need to avoid pictures that yank us too far out of the moment. And we don’t want to overuse them, either. Sometimes just write she turned away from the view and took a deep breath.
Paragraph 5:
She’d hoped a coffee would calm her nerves and wake her up after the long flight from Dallas to Lisbon, and the ensuing two-hour drive south.
More background information. Do we really need to know this?
Paragraph 6:
But when she’d entered, the pastelaria was unlit, and its cold interior smelled of dirty dishwater. Glass cases that should be filled with a bounty of pastries held nothing but a few pastéis de nata, the iconic Portuguese custard tarts. Patch jobs of grey cement marred the black and white tiled floor. The spotted mirror behind the counter reflected the server’s thinning hair and scowl as he banged white ceramic cups onto metal shelves attached to the back wall.
I like the detail work, the colors, the smell. But they are piled on. The author’s voice begins to intrude (the iconic Portuguese custard tarts) then takes on full volume when describing Larissa from an Omniscient POV:
Dumpy, brown-haired, brown-eyed Larissa had never been a beauty, but even with fatigue written across her face and bags under her eyes, she looked indefinably healthier and more prosperous than anyone she’d seen since stepping off the plane.
This is the author telling us what Larissa looks like, especially in comparison to others. Now, I’m not saying this is fatal. Sidney Sheldon and Danielle Steel sold millions of books with just this kind of Omniscient POV. I just want you to be aware of what you’re doing and understand that if you’re not careful it can distance us from the main character.
The page ends with a potentially page-turning mystery: whose orders is she here on? But by this time I fear the reader might be getting antsy. Let me suggest an exercise. Try going to the first line of dialogue in your book and start there. Don’t give the readers any exposition except what you reveal in the dialogue itself. There will be plenty of time to get all the information in that the reader needs, but only after we have a real scene going on.
I think it was Elmore Leonard who said most of what the reader needs to know can be given in dialogue. That’s an overstatement, but writers often don’t give dialogue enough thought for exposition. I don’t mean the kind of dialogue known as “Here we are in sunny Spain” or “As you know, Bob.” The characters must sound like they are really talking to each other. A tip is to make the dialogue tense or confrontational. That “hides” the exposition.
NOT:
“Boy,” Larissa said, “the windswept edge of Portugal’s Algarve coast sure isn’t like my home base in Texas.”
“Did you have trouble getting here?” the server said.
“The flight from Dallas to Lisbon was all right, but the two-hour drive south was almost too much.”
RATHER:
“This is no place for a woman,” the server said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Larissa said.
“You’re here to help the refugees.”
“So?”
“Where are you from?”
“Texas, if that’s any of your—”
“Go back,” he said.
And so on.
One final note. I’m not sure if At the Edge of the Radiant Sea is the title of the book or the chapter. If the latter, fine. If the former, I’m not wild about it. It sounds “literary.” Try coming up with five alternative titles. Compare it with others in your genre.
You can write. You know how to string sentences together and have an eye for detail. All good. Now it’s a matter of being strategic with your exposition. Less is more on the opening page.
Thanks for your submission, author. Now let’s hear what others have to say.
I’m reading this at the end of a long day so maybe my brain isn’t operating on full thrusters, but just a few thoughts:
First of all, I appreciated the detail crafted into this opening page.
But I confess, I was thrown out of the story in the first paragraph when it ended with “…like seagulls’ cries?” The reason I was thrown out was for the life of me I couldn’t imagine why this would be a question in the observer’s mind. Either it’s like seagulls’ cries or not.
And JSB mentioned in his critique that he feared the reader might be getting antsy. That was me. And when I got to the last paragraph where it says “He couldn’t know she was here on someone else’s orders” my immediate thought was that I wished that had appeared much further up in the story–I wanted to know what she was doing there, and why any of her observations mattered. I wanted a sense of purpose for all the details and observations.
Thanks for submitting!
Brave Author, your writing is full of wonderful sensory detail and you do a great job evoking the post-apocalyptic mood.
As Jim says, action is lacking. Is the initial disturbance/action on page 2 or 3? Probably. Can you move the action to page 1? Keep these vivid details and weave some of them in between the action.
Try asking yourself two questions:
1. Does the reader need to know this? If not, cut it.
2. Does the reader need to know this NOW? If not, save it until later.
From the vivid quality of your writing, I’m sure you have a good story. Find the right place to start it and I’ll look forward to turning the pages.
Brave Author, you can certainly write, and provide us with plenty of immersive sensory detail. Your opening two paragraphs pus us squarely in a compelling post-apocalyptic scene, but then, as Jim noted, the action is lacking.
I like his suggestion of moving your first dialogue exchange to where paragraph 3 is. Either that or action–either way, an opening disturbance of some kind, as Debbie noted. An opening disturbance will push us forward and further hook our interest.
The backstory details can always been salted in later. In general, I believe it’s best to avoid backstory in the opening, especially in what looks to be a visceral post-apocalyptic novel.
I also agree about the omniscient POV–it can be done-it’s not as immersive as a deep 3rd person POV, and, as Jim notes, care must be used in order to not distance us from the reader. Alas, the description of Larissa in the mirror is very distancing, looking at her from the outside.
Braver author, you clearly have an engaging story here–the final paragraph’s point about her being her on someone else’s orders is a dynamite reveal for a bit later.
Thank you for sharing your opening with us. I hope the feedback here is helpful.
I liked this first page a great deal. It presents a great sense of place–and of dread. The imagery worked for me. I appreciate and admire the inclusion of all five senses.
While I don’t disagree with any of the previous comments–one is always wise to listen to Brother Bell–I do think the critiques highlight some of the inherent weaknesses of our First Page Critique program. First is the perceived need to criticize writing that we would simply appreciate and absorb if we were reading it strictly for entertainment. For me, this was an example of journeyman craftsmanship. If I were reading it on an airplane, or in my comfy reading chair, nothing about the sample page would have caused me to regret my purchase.
A second weakness in the program is the lack of context. When we speak of too much exposition–which, to my eye was not a big issue here–we don’t know whether that exposition is essential for understanding what happens on the very next page. I appreciate being told what a pastéis de nata is. Sometimes, that intrusion is necessary.
Finally, there’s walking the line between “is this well written as it is” and “is this the way I would have written it.” This piece is definitely not written in my style, but that’s fine. Everybody gets to have their own.
Be proud of this piece, Brave Author. But do give serious consideration to getting rid of the blanket of nettles. That one phrase didn’t work for me at all.
Good inquiry. My understanding of our context for first page critiques has always been: What would keep a busy acquisitions editor or reader browsing for a next book engaged? What might give them pause, and how can that be fixed? I think our record of critiques here is pretty darned impressive in that regard.
I like this submission. As a reader, I can put up with some description and exposition (not much, though!) on the first page . . . if it grounds me a bit.
I agree with the “blanket of nettles” discussion. It would work just as well for me to have the sentence end without it, just–“unease settling over her.”
She wanted to be back in the bright sterility of her lab in Texas, not on the windswept edge of Portugal’s Algarve coast, about to enter a refugee camp.
That description, for me, reveals much about the MC…I like it because I can identify with her. She craves the order of her universe, not the chaos of a refugee camp. I want to see what happens to her! Good job…
Thanks, BA, for your submission.
I won’t argue with your advise. I agree that breaking this up with dialogue that reveals, actions that draw us in will bring the reader closer to the scene, but I loved her exposition. There are times wrong is right, and I felt this was one of those times. The exposition pulled me in. I also felt a rewrite with Bell’s advise would take something beautifully written and put it in the face of the reader, making it better.
I agree, Jim. By paragraph three, I needed something interesting to happen, not background info. I also don’t have a sense of who Larissa is as a person. Dialogue, inner thoughts, and action would help that, as well.
This is why I think the First Page Critique program is such a worthwhile tool for authors. The feedback from the critique as well as from the commenters is a wealth of information for the author to sort through. In the end, of course, it’s the author’s decision on how to proceed.
Personally, I liked Jim’s suggestion to start out with dialogue. It’s an immediate grabber. I didn’t mind the “blanket of nettles” so much, but I did stumble over the refugees sounding “like seagulls’ cries.”
This had a literary tone to me, and while the writing is descriptive, I wanted action sprinkled in to show some of the details. And I realize this is just one page, but that’s all you have anymore to grab a reader.