by Michelle Gagnon
This week, TKZ is embarking on a new experiment. The first thirty people who sent us the opening page of their thriller WIP are receiving a critique. We’re keeping the authors of the submissions anonymous. I’ve posted a first page below, with my recommendations directly following.
STEALING GENIUS
Northern Waziristan
Pakistan/Afghanistan Tribal Region
Thomas watched the gathering crowd of Pushtun tribesmen from the tent’s relative cool. Some of the men were locals, but most were exhausted Afghani warriors and neighboring tribal militia gang members seeking sanctuary in the no-man’s land while they licked their wounds.

Once fortified and re-armed, they would return to their personal battlefields to kill again. Unless they found Thomas. He knew the languages of the region and wore the appropriate garb, but his blond hair, blue eyes and pale skin would betray him as much as his Australian accent. If anyone noticed Thomas, the killing would start much sooner.
He backed deeper into the dark as he checked his watch and hunkered down by the cases he’d humped into the village hours ago when it was still dark. His patience and cool exterior were growing thin. The lunatic was late. Again.
Thomas had asked for permission to end this particular arrangement — end it with the slice of his bowie knife. But the old man denied his request.
Sweat beaded on his clean-shaven face, the robes he wore over his Kevlar unibody armor providing little relief from the hellish conditions. Thomas longed for his uniform — any uniform. He would be even hotter and by now as damp as a fish, but he’d still be more comfortable. Thomas had spent most of his life in one uniform or another and missed the security it gave him.
His last official uniform was Australian military, his homeland. He hadn’t seen the shores down under in almost three years. But even as an Australian commando, he’d rarely seen them, spending most of his time in East Timor or Papua New Guinea as a Peacekeeper.
The shouts from outside the tent rose in volume and frequency. Thomas eased his six-foot frame back towards the mouth of the tent. The shouts had changed in tone and temper. Anger was more prevalent now, as were mentions of Americans.


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There are the bones of a truly amazing opening here. I love the setting, the detail, and the situation Thomas is facing.
That being said, you really need to grab me. The first few paragraphs succeeded in that regard. But then the bulk of the rest of the page is exposition. I find out way more about the protagonist (I’m guessing that Thomas is the protagonist) than is necessary at the outset of the story. All I really need to know is that he’s waiting for someone, and that he’s in imminent danger of being killed. Paragraphs five and six could be condensed into a single sentence about him wearing robes over Kevlar.

Personally, I’d stop right after, “The lunatic was late. Again.” and jump into some action. I’m going to hazard a guess that somewhere in the next few pages either the lunatic will show up, or Thomas will be discovered. Take me there. Then fill in the rest of the backstory more gradually in terms of his military past. It’s even more interesting if I’m not sure whether or not Thomas is a good guy at this point, he could just as easily be the villain. Not telling me about his military connection adds an element of ambiguity to the scene.

Also, if possible I like to see a little dialogue on the first page–personal preference, so take it with a grain of salt. But instead of “the shouts from outside the tent,” maybe you could cast those shouts as dialogue. Then I could find out what language they’re speaking, how much of it the main character understands, and what he’s afraid of.
One more suggestion: this is still a fairly passive opening in terms of Thomas. You write, “He backed deeper into the dark as he checked his watch and hunkered down by the cases he’d humped into the village hours ago when it was still dark.” So right now he’s waiting, which isn’t the most exciting activity. Why not start with him humping those cases? That actually seems like the time he faced the greatest danger of discovery.
But either way, there’s a lot of potential here. Just be wary of exposition at the outset. You have another 399 pages to tell us about Thomas. I’d recommend doling out the details more gradually.

By William Word Smith (AKA John Ramsey Miller)

A friend of mine once told me, “You should always quit when you’re on top, but most everybody will know your career is over before you do.”

At some point you might feel the loose rocks shifting under your boots, and you will perhaps be able to hear the young turks gaining on you. Your incoming calls, letters, and emails will slow down, and you will go longer and longer between hearing from your contemporaries. I get emails almost daily from a fan from somewhere asking when my next novel is coming out. I answer the same way––I have one making the rounds to editors and another half written. That is all true. What I haven’t said publicly is that I wrote this last book under an assumed name and so the editors who are seeing it think it’s a debut novel by an unpublished author. As a debut author I’ve gotten a lot of thoughtful comments and outright compliments, but in the end my novel just doesn’t seem right for anybody’s list. I’ve been right here before but I never thought I’d be here again. It’s enlightening and disappointing. It’s like going to a costume party and being able to hear things about yourself that are not shaded by the fact that you are there.

Every publisher is looking for a book that will stand up on its own and take off, just like they have since the first book took off on its own by word of mouth and sold a million copies with no effort or expenditure on the publisher’s part. Can’t blame them for wanting to hit a home run every time they swing a bat. Every coach knows you take the home runs when you get them, but it’s runs batted in that win games. They don’t have any idea what they are looking for, and mostly they won’t know it when they let somebody else buy it. It really is funny, this business. Nobody knows anything …and how.

I was thinking about Cormac McCarthy the other day and how his career has ebbed and flowed, but he has always been there. You can see why he’s still around and remains the heavyweight champion. Almost years ago Shelby Foote told me to read McCarthy because he was my generation’s William Faulkner. Shelby was right. It is often hard to read McCarthy’s books, but also impossible to turn away. Pain under McCarthy’s pen is so matter of fact, evil so banal and death so frigging random that it astounds. Everything about his writing astounds. He’s only lately become a best-selling author. Most people would think it started with “All The Pretty Horses”, but “Outer Dark” was where it started for me. I’ve been a fan ever since, patiently waiting for every new book. When “Suttree” came out I was waiting for it at the book store.

In my opinion, nobody writes description, dialog and defines characters like that man. He draws blood and tears with those keystrokes. Only in a McCarthy book can a backwoods, murderous necrophile give a toddler a baby bird to play with, and watch impassively as the child snaps off the creature’s legs. Only in one of his books do a group of scalp hunters spend the night playing with an Indian child then kill and scalp him before breaking camp. Cannibals will eat a newborn for him. Some author’s books will make you laugh or cry. A McCarthy book will make you wince and sweat and your eyes hurt.

I’m no Cormac McCarthy. I’ve been tempted a lot lately to walk away from this craft of ours before I make a fool of myself, standing at the door with my hat in hand, looking at the floorboards while I beg for work. I’m thinking that, since 1995, I’ve made my living writing fiction and maybe it is time to set my keyboard aside and find an “otherwise” employment opportunity. Trouble is, I’m sure I’ve got a dozen books left in me, and if that’s what it takes, I will write them under some name or other even if you don’t ever get to read them. It’s about the writing, not the publishing, after all.

I’ll tell you this: I won’t ever quit typing stories, that’s for sure. I just might write some books that I want to write and maybe in the process I’ll just reinvent myself one more time.