First Page Critique: How to Better Establish the Tone in Your Opening

Ask the Editor is a column for your questions about the editing process and editors themselves. It also features first-page critiques. Want to be considered? Submit your question or submit your pages.

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Deadline August 20th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top lit agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

A summary of the work being critiqued

Title: The Walking Ladies
Genre: mainstream/upmarket fiction

Four women set off on their weekly suburban walk expecting no more than a little cardio and the usual banter about kids and husbands. Instead, they discover a severed arm. The newcomer, Corinne Wilder, is a former war-correspondent with a drinking problem who decides to report on the case to escape her personal problems. Recent empty nester Jorie Eckholm becomes Corinne’s reluctant sidekick, flirting with repressed childhood memories of her best friend, who died after losing her arm in a shark attack. Only plunging into their past traumas can save the women from turning into people they never intended to become—and maybe even from death at the hands of a depraved killer.

THE WALKING LADIES is a complex relationship drama embedded in a murder mystery… with a side of body parts. The book has comedic undertones—think: Janelle Brown’s unlikely character pairings meet Shirley Jackson’s creepy gothic—and will appeal to readers who like character-driven fiction with a serving of suspense.

First page of The Walking Ladies

The sun surfaces behind the eucalyptus trees, spilling rose-colored light onto the street. Jorie can’t will herself to walk faster. She’ll be late, as usual, but she didn’t sleep well again and her feet refuse to hurry.

Turning right onto Sea Breeze and left onto St. John, she spots her friends at the edge of the empty school parking lot. Pegeen’s hands are shoved in the pockets of her warm-up jacket. Melanie is untangling Winkie’s leash from a wooden post. A third figure stands a few yards away, a tall, sculpted-looking woman with a ponytail, bouncing on the balls of her feet like a boxer. The stranger wears three-quarter-length tights that show off her calves and look good on women of Jorie’s age only if they exercise obsessively or are born lucky. Or both.

The Shih Tzu yips as Jorie approaches, anticipating their regular Saturday walk.

“Sorry!” Jorie waves and the women turn. “Were you waiting long?” Jorie has always been the unpunctual one, rushing to beat the bell on those long-past middle-school drop-off days with Steph scurrying alongside trying to eat a waffle folded inside a paper napkin.

“It’s fine.” Pegeen answers automatically. “We were talking about how energetic we’re feeling. I mean, whether we’re feeling energetic.” She backbends and digs her thumbs into the fleshy fold above her waistband, tilting her neck so her frosted blond hair brushes her shoulder. “This is Corinne, by the way. My new neighbor.”

“Pleasure.” The ponytailed woman extends her hand as if they’re at a business breakfast.

Corinne has a tall voice to go with her tall, sculpted body. Her grip is cool and her hand is almost as large as Victor’s. She doesn’t squeeze hard, but Jorie feels she won’t be able to extricate herself until Corinne decides to let go. The handshake’s firmness and formality surprise her. She can’t remember ever shaking hands with Pegeen or Melanie, not even when they first met, over greasy muffins and bitter coffee at the sixth-grade volunteer meeting on the first day of school.

“Nice to meet you.” Jorie says the expected words, although the stranger’s presence unsettles her.

Their group, which they’ve come to refer to as the Walking Ladies, has been just the three of them since they began these weekend walks to fill the void left when their kids started high school. This unexpected presence sends the ground shifting a little, as if an earthquake might be starting. She lets the newcomer pump her arm. Corinne is some years younger than she first thought, with hair that lies sleekly against her skull in a manner Jorie’s red-blond curls never do.

Continue reading the first pages.

Dear Audrey,

Thank you for submitting your work for critique. Your opening pages read very smoothly, and your imagery—from the greasy muffins at the volunteer meeting to Corinne’s hair “swishing like a horse tail”—is so much fun. Jorie’s character comes across as smart and perceptive, namely when she realizes why Pegeen walks ahead with Corinne and away from her and Melanie: “Perhaps, having invited her without telling them in advance, Pegeen feels a responsibility to keep Corinne entertained.” The fact that Jorie is an empty nester is another plus: As The Guardian reports, women in this age group and older are “a hugely important demographic and increasingly, want to see themselves represented in books.”

What concerns me, however, is that it doesn’t seem dark enough to be considered a murder mystery, at least not so far. Granted, the group of friends will discover a severed arm, as explained by the summary, but there’s little in the tone or the wording of the novel—besides the brief mentions of Jorie’s anxiety and Corinne’s skull—that indicates the story is about the search for a depraved killer. To lay the groundwork for this plot point, perhaps …

• Jorie can have read about a missing person in the paper that morning, assuming the arm belongs to this person?
• Or maybe, rather than notice Pegeen’s frosted blond hair, Jorie can notice how pale she suddenly looks?
• Should the rose-colored light of the novel’s first line, though lovely, be replaced with an eerie glow?

Could the severed arm be described in an ominous way, especially considering that opening a mystery/suspense novel with a severed body part is a common trope? Novels published this year alone that begin as such include Reef Road by Deborah Goodrich Royce, in which a severed hand washes ashore; City Under One Roof by Iris Yamashita, in which both a severed hand and a foot wash ashore; and Bad Cree by Jessica Johns, which “opens with a startling image: a severed crow’s head in someone’s hand.”

It’s unlikely that the arm found by this group of friends—or more specifically, by Melanie’s dog Winkie—belongs to Jorie’s childhood best friend, who, per the summary, died after losing her arm in a shark attack, but perhaps the two victims can have something in common, such as the same tattoo or a watch, if this isn’t already the case? Creating a link between Jorie’s childhood friend and the murder victim should help make the novel’s premise more haunting and memorable.

Of course, this work is intended to be as humorous as it is dark, but somehow the comedic undertones referenced in the summary aren’t quite coming through. Granted, Melanie is described as a “frustrated stand-up comic,” but right now, though she’s said to “delight in putting a spin on mundane conversations,” she isn’t actually shown to do this. Instead, Jorie only imagines Melanie asking her how “the peach tree [is] shakin,’” for example. To make Melanie’s character funnier, perhaps she can mock Corinne’s “tall, sculpted body” and the “tights that show off her calves” to comfort Jorie, who seems conscientious about her appearance? Alternatively, maybe Melanie, rather than Jorie, should make the comment about how Corinne is “bouncing like a restrained racehorse”? This way, instead of repeating the image of the horse, you can position Melanie’s observation so that it complements Jorie’s, and the two friends can then share a laugh about how they think alike. Alternatively, perhaps Melanie can smell alcohol on Corinne’s breath or clothing (since the summary indicates that Corinne has a drinking problem) and make a joke about early morning drinking?

I’d introduce a conflict for Jorie—who appears to be the principal protagonist and sole narrator of the novel—that is separate from the mystery surrounding the murder. Currently, Jorie mentions several times that she hasn’t been sleeping well, but she doesn’t say why. If her insomnia has to do with Victor or Steph, she might touch on the tension she is experiencing with her husband or daughter. If Jorie is having trouble sleeping because of her career, she might reflect on how the real estate market is in decline. Perhaps this is why, as the summary reveals, she decides to become Corinne’s “reluctant sidekick” as Corinne reports on the murder? It’s possible that the reason Jorie can’t sleep has nothing to do with family or career. Instead, maybe she is haunted by sudden and unexpected nightmares about her childhood friend? If this is her situation, it should fit nicely with the main plot about the discovery of the severed arm. Just be sure to mention Jorie’s childhood friend before or at the same time as the murder victim.

One more suggestion is that you provide additional context about where the story takes place. It’s clear that the main characters live in a hilly neighborhood close to a school, and in some ways, this information is sufficient. But what’s puzzling here is that at least three streets are named, and Jorie is curious about where Corinne moved from. This brings up the question about where Corinne moved to—or where the characters currently live. Given that Jorie walks down a street called “Sea Breeze,” that a shark attack claimed the life of her childhood friend, and that she references earthquakes, it sounds like the story takes place near the coast, specifically the California coast. If so, can Jorie feel the ocean breeze as she walks? Think about how she never cared for the ocean because of what happened to her friend? Then, as the story progresses, she or another character can provide more details about the city or region where it takes place.

I hope this feedback is helpful. Rest assured that The Walking Ladies reads beautifully as is. You might just check that your vision for it matches the content and style. Might I suggest that you have a look at the work of bestselling author Carolyn Brown, in addition to that of Janelle Brown and Shirley Jackson? Carolyn Brown’s novels include The Empty Nesters and The Ladies’ Room, which might be relevant. Best wishes to you!

—Sangeeta Mehta

This month’s Ask the Editor is sponsored by Book Pipeline. Deadline August 20th for the 2023 Book Pipeline Unpublished contest. Awarding $20,000 to authors across 8 categories of fiction and nonfiction. Multiple writers have signed with top lit agents and been published. Use code Jane10 for $10 off entry.

Sangeeta Mehta

A former acquiring editor of children’s books at Little, Brown and Simon & Schuster, Sangeeta Mehta (@sangeeta_editor) runs her own editorial services company. Find out more at her website.