Thanks to a recent pitch/query contest (Pitch2Pub16), I came to the sad realization that although I had written a solid first chapter in terms of grammar, punctuation, and content, there was something lacking. The aforementioned contest requested authors to send in the first five pages of our manuscripts, only then did I realize something...
My first five pages were not attention-getting. They were not engrossing. There was only one word for those pages, and that was EXPOSITION.
All I was doing was detailing character relationships, setting up for the inciting incident, which evidently took more than five pages.
At first I was frustrated that all I could send were 5 pages. I thought, if only I could send the whole first chapter, or even three chapters, then they would see.
But then it hit me. With today's fast-paced, gotta-have-it-now generation of millennials, that is exactly what's required.
I once heard that a website has 1.54 seconds to draw a visitor in. I suppose now that applies to our novels, only we have 5 pages to make an impact, to place the inciting action, to spin an attention-getter so sweet, it won't just be swiped left and put into the "delete" pile.
I realize this may not apply to all audiences, but for YA, it no doubt applies, and I'm sure it'll only get worse with time.
So, I cut the whole first chapter...
Highlight.
Delete.
It felt a little like this at first:
Maybe I lost a little piece of my soul when I cut those 3,000 words. But it feels right.
See the following two examples of my first three pages:
BEFORE:
From somewhere close by a rooster was
crowing…
A big white chicken morphed into my dream
and suddenly I was a farmer being chased by a big white, fluffy chicken. Something just didn’t click.
“Gavin…” An airy voice called out from some
distant land.
With a sleep-numbed hand I plopped it onto
the source of the rooster crowing. My phone must have been crowing all morning
– the battery was already down to half.
“Gavin,” the voice called again softly.
“Wake up…it’s your birthday…”
March 7th.
And then it hit me just as a wave of
chocolate permeated my senses – snapping me awake like smelling salts. I
creaked open one of my eyes to the hilarious sight of my mom holding a flaming
cupcake.
One step closer to eighteen – it couldn’t
come soon enough…
“Mom,” I muttered, half-embarrassed,
half-grateful. “We don’t have to do this you know…I am sixteen after all…most
kids my age have already gotten pregnant and gone on MTV…”
“Well,” my mom replied, rubbing my hair in
a maternal sort of way. “You will do neither of those while I’m
around…especially the MTV thing…it’s too cliché these days...”
I couldn’t keep the smile from creasing my
face. Though she was my mom, it always seemed like our relationship was much
more mature than that.
“You got it Sue,” I conceded, leaning up
halfway out of my knotted Pac-Man bedspread.
She always hated when I called her that. “Shall we get this over with
then, a happy birthday song or fireworks or something?”
The wax had already spread across where the
frosting should have been, leaving only a tiny stubble burning.
“Not before your wish mister! And you know
my first name…it’s M-O-M…I gave up my real name when you came into the
picture…”
“Sure thing M-O-M” I replied smugly. The
only reply was a sudden pillow to the face.
I wish today would be different…
I repeated it, what must have been a
million times in my head, because I wanted it so badly to be true. Ever since
my dad left, and my step dad stepped into the picture, my life had taken a turn
for the mundane and torturous.
And with a quick processional happy
birthday song, I blew out the candles, engraving my wish in my mind. With a quick curtsy, my mom ran out of the
room, yelling for me to get ready since I was late already.
I scooped up one of my red band tees tossed
over the bed post, and smoothed my shaggy dark hair while examining myself in
the mirror. I looked deeply into the green eyes that stared back at me.
I wish today would be different…
Strike one to my wish came as I was walking
down the hallway toward the stairs, when suddenly a jabbing pain came out of
nowhere. That could only mean one thing.
“Happy birthday d-bag!” Connor Sherman
called out as he threw a high velocity punch into my arm. Connor stood slightly taller than me, either
because of his blond, poofy hair or his stuck-up-in-the-air nose. But he was the spitting image of my step dad
Tom.
“Thanks Con-stipated,” I called out – it
was the only thing I could come up with at the time. “And good luck scoring a
point tonight in the big game…I think you’ll need it…”
I couldn’t wipe the smugness off my face as
I met his fierce glare threatening me – though it startled me when walking into
the kitchen the same exact loathing stare sat across from me behind the morning
newspaper.
“You’re late…” Tom growled, returning to the
headlines. “You think it’s your birthday or something princess…”
AFTER:
I choked against the thick smoke filling the air.
Desperately
glancing left and right, the only thing I noticed was the sheer panic on the
other seven passengers in the tiny plane.
I was
going to die.
I willed my
eyelids shut, aware of a horrible noise filling the air. The smell of gasoline
and something burning made a pungent combination in my nose.
Muffled sobs came from a couple nearby that
had been holding hands a second ago. Shouting from one of the businessmen was
being directed at one of the flight attendants. And that annoying noise kept
ringing in my ears.
It was as
if someone had taken the fastest roller coaster in the world and placed it on
top of Mount Everest. My stomach felt as if it were sitting on the ceiling by
now. The plunging motion was sickening and exhilarating at the same time.
In my last
moments before I would completely black out, a million questions formed in my
mind…
Why had
I agreed to go on this stupid tiny plane my stepdad had arranged?
What would
it be like to die? Would I even notice it? Or was there nothing after?
Where was the pilot now if he was even
still alive? I should’ve known he would kill us, acting so weird before the
flight.
And what in the world was that stupid
noise?
And then it
hit me, right before I succumbed to the engulfing darkness. That noise was me.
Unaware I was screaming at the top of my lungs, my disembodied self finally
came to the realization. Fear had taken hold.
Another
loud crash as something mechanical failed and stole my nerves away.
More
screaming.
More
crying.
More
shouting.
The choking
had become unbearable. The steep motion was overwhelming now.
A wave of
something like relief and fear washed over me as the shouting, crying, and
screaming suddenly died down.
I would
die soon also.
I tried to gasp
one last breath out, but it was stifled. Rolling my eyes back into my skull,
darkness swallowed me whole.
The last
thing I could hear was one more deafening crash.
Then...
Nothing.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A faint light danced in front of my face. I
would’ve reached out and grabbed it had I some kind of an arm to get it. It
felt like my consciousness had somehow continued living somewhere between life
and death. I just was. Time had no meaning – I could’ve been staring at
this thing for the past century and I would’ve had no idea.
Though the light was dim at first, it was
almost blinding now, even though I had no eyes to actually see the thing.
The light exploded in the darkness where I
now existed, only to be replaced suddenly by a figure - a girl in fact.
She must have been an angel, because she
was singly the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on. In stark
contrast to the chaotic rush before the darkness, she stood calmly looking down
at me. Her skin was porcelain white, while her hair sat in tight, jet-black
ringlets on her head. Her eyes were the purest blue that could have been
created. Flowing white wisps surrounded her as her dress enveloped her body. On her face, she wore an expression of pity.
I tried to reach an arm up to her, but it
felt at the moment like I was just an observer, not an actor in the play. She
spoke, almost singing as she did so. Though she looked in my direction, it
didn’t seem like she was speaking to me, but to some invisible force.
It sounded like some kind of Latin to me.
“Sanetus.”
She repeated it over again, as she reached
out her gentle fingers. A glowing ball of light appeared at the tip of her
index finger, and she immediately placed it where my forehead should have been.
She spoke again, “You must not die Gavin
Ashmore…you are the one…I know it.”
I bolted up in what must have been a body
bag.
It took a loss to figure out where I needed to go. Countless rejections prior to this point, I am now hopeful this will add the needed flash to engage my agent/editor/reader and move to the next level. It's hard to edit, remove whole chapters, but sometimes it is just what is needed to make the story go from well-written mediocrity to nail-biting insatiable, must-read literature.
Join me this week and cut out some fluff!
I would love your comments, please DM me or mention me @CHSmithAuthor
As always, thank you for reading.
