Today’s post is by regular contributor Peter Selgin, the award-winning author of Your First Page. He offers first-page critiques to show just how much useful critical commentary and helpful feedback can be extracted from a single page—the first page—of a work-in-progress. Learn more about getting a first-page critique.
First Page
I left the island of Jumana under a cloud, deported for an undisclosed crime. As my daughter and I boarded the plane, I turned for a last glimpse of palm trees backlit by the setting sun and a pale horizon of sand framed by a turquoise sea. My hand trembled as I gripped the railing to steady myself.
“Go ahead, Sunny,” I said with a gentle nudge. She stepped into the plane.
I followed, bumping my wheelie suitcase up the last metal tread. Arab and Asian families and businessmen with attaché cases blocked the aisle, but moved ahead all at once. I put our bags in the overhead compartment. We took our seats, and Sunny huddled against me.
As we buckled our seatbelts, a voice in my head kept repeating why? why? I shifted in my cramped economy class seat that was ill-suited for a six-foot-tall woman with long legs.
At least the flight to Dubai would be brief, since Jumana was only thirty kilometers off the south coast of the Arabian Gulf. It was a flight we had taken many times on excursions to Dubai, but this trip was different. My thoughts kept circling around the same obsessive orbit. Caught in the whirl of my mind, details and fragments of things churned like a sand devil spinning across the desert. I leaned over to squeeze Sunny’s hand. “Don’t worry. It’s going to work out.”
“I know, Mom.” She peered at the photo she was clutching of our dog. A friend was taking care of him. Her face clenched up, but she didn’t cry. “When can he come to Dubai?”
“Once we find a place to live, someone will bring him here on the ferry. I promise.”
Sunny nodded, but anguish flickered in her eyes. She was being brave for my sake. What could I say to my ten-year-old daughter, who’d had to pull up stakes abruptly, leaving her friends, her school, and her beloved dog?
I had been given forty-eight hours’ notice to leave the country. No reason why. No explanation why the Women’s College of Jumana University fired me after seven years of teaching. It was a mistake. It had to be. What could I have done to warrant being branded persona non grata and thrown out of the country like a piece of trash?
First-Page Critique
“The writer’s task isn’t to answer the question, but to frame it correctly.” —Chekhov
Sometimes everything we need for our openings is there, more than we need, in fact. It’s just a matter of cutting and rearranging.
This opening is of a novel about the experiences of an expatriate professor at a fictional woman’s college located on the island of “Jumana” (a feminine Arabian name meaning “silver pearl”) in the Persian Gulf thirty kilometers from the city of Dubai.
The first page finds the narrator/protagonist boarding a passenger plane with her ten-year-old daughter, having been fired from her job and deported without explanation, raising in readers the same questions the protagonist asks herself, namely, Why are we being deported? What did I do? From here the novel is bound to go back in time to tell us this woman’s story.
The strategy being used here is called a framing device or a framed narrative. What it “frames” or sets up is a long flashback—in this case presumably the length of a novel—one that will answer, or at least partly answer, the question[s] it raises.
The author launches her first page not with an experience, but with information: “I left the island of Jumana under a cloud, deported for an undisclosed crime.” The drawback to this approach is that the information provided answers a question that hasn’t yet been raised in the reader. We read this first sentence with no awareness that the protagonist is boarding a plane, let alone where she’s going, or that she’s been forced to leave against her will. Only halfway down the first page, when the narrator tells her daughter, “Don’t worry. It’s going to work out,” are we given cause to wonder what circumstances have prompted this involuntary voyage.
By answering up front the very question that the scene exists to arouse in us, the author subverts her own purpose. This is not the same as withholding information or creating what I call false suspense. It’s simply a matter of giving readers the experiences before supplying information that explains or categorizes them, rather than afterward.
Otherwise the scene makes too much ado of boarding the plane, of rolling and stowing luggage—mundane actions with which most readers are familiar and that don’t require dramatization. The sooner we get to “Don’t worry, it’s going to work out,” the better.
Here’s my edit, with the crucial dialogue engaged within a few lines. What’s been cut is implied or can wait (we needn’t know, yet, that the narrator has lost her job at “The Women’s College of Jumana”). In the original opening, the beloved dog’s name is withheld, why I don’t know. I have included it, since withholding it from us seems artificial and adds a note of false suspense.
Revised Opening
“Go ahead, Sunny,” I said, nudging my daughter past Arab and Asian families and businessmen with briefcases. We took our economy-class seats (mine ill-suited for a six-foot-tall woman) and fastened our seatbelts. Sonny huddled close. I squeezed her hand.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “It’s going to work out.”
“What about [name of dog]?” she asked.
We had left under a cloud, deported for reasons undisclosed. Through the puddle jumper’s window I caught a glimpse of palm trees backlit by the setting sun and a horizon of pale sand framed by a turquoise sea. My hand trembled. At least the flight would be brief, Jumana being only about thirty kilometers from the coast. It was a flight we’d taken many times.
“When can he come to Dubai with us?”
We’d been given forty-eight hours to leave. No explanation. After seven years. It was a mistake. It had to be. What could I have done? And what could I tell my ten-year-old daughter, who’d had to pull up stakes abruptly, leaving her friends, her school, even her beloved dog?
“Once we find a place to live, [name of person taking care of dog] will bring him to us. I promise.”
Sunny’s face clenched. Anguish flickered in her eyes, but she didn’t cry.
This version raises and answers the same pertinent questions, in that order.
Your turn: How would you assess this opening? (Be constructive.)
Peter Selgin is the author of Drowning Lessons, winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction (Univ. of Georgia Press, 2008). He has published a novel, Life Goes To the Movies (Dzanc, 2009), three books on the craft of fiction writing (Writer’s Digest, Serving House Books, Broadview Press), and a children’s picture book, S.S. Gigantic Across the Atlantic (Simon & Schuster). His first essay collection, Confessions of a Left-Handed Man (University of Iowa, 2012), was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Prize. A novel-in-manuscript, “The Water Master,” won the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize for Best Novel. His memoir, The Inventors (Hawthorne Books), which won the Housatonic Book Award, was among Library Journal’s Best Nonfiction Books of 2016. He is Associate Professor of English at Georgia College & State University. Find out more at his website.
A very interesting and explicated example. The first example isn’t bad, but the revision really lifts it.
The original first paragraph drew me in but I when I read the part of boarding the plane my eyes skimmed to the next paragraph.
The revision does elevate the entire first page and provides for a much faster read.
The original opening sentence was way better. I agree with the writer that this first page could use a number of edits to cut out unnecessary details, but now the story opens with meaningless dialogue, then places the protagonist and Sunny on a plane. Only at the end of the first paragraph and beginning of the second one do we get tension, but not much. They are on a plane. The daughter is nervous. Sounds like nothing more than a case of pre-flight jitters.
The original opening gives us tension and worry right away. Someone is being deported and doesn’t know why. Bam! Exciting. The reader wants to read on to find out what happened. I don’t see a reason to change this, but if you must open with action, dramatize the deportation. That would be much stronger than a scrap of throwaway dialogue.
Starting with a scene where the protagonist/narrator learns she is being deported would certainly make sense, though it would be an entirely different scene. Assuming the author wishes to frame her story with the departure, I think readers will wait a few lines to learn the reason behind it. What they are given, meanwhile, isn’t meaningless dialogue, but a mother who, for some reason, must prod her young daughter onto a passenger plane “crowded with Arab and Asian” passengers. Already this raises questions. True, one could ascribe the child’s hesitation, along with the mother’s assurances, to the child’s fear of flying. But no sooner does one do so than the issue of the left-behind dog arises, and—one line after that—the news that this mother has been deported. We have every reason to keep reading, and without the baldly stated, disembodied headline of the original.
I see your point about the original first line being baldly stated. Still, the revised opening suggests, at least to me, that this could be any mother and child boarding a plane that may or may not be flying to or from somewhere in Asia. The mother might be prodding her daughter because the child is fidgety or clowning around. Maybe starting with the visual of Sunny huddling close and clutching her mother’s hand would help.
Fabulous blog post, Peter! I stopped short at the “cloud, deported” in the first sentence and knew it was downhill from there. Bravo for showing the clear revision of using scene to frame a storyteller structure. -xo fellow Antioch writer
Your revision keeps the story in the present. We want to know why. The first is interesting but the urgency didn’t grab me. Personalizing it with names helps. If I were to rewrite, I’d add a touch more emotion but that’s the romance writer training. I’d have tears trickling down the daughter’s face at leaving her dog. A lump in the mother’s throat at seeing that. Could just be that I’m a dog lover. I’d be hysterical if I left my dog.
Actually, it would be interesting to see what the mystery writers, thriller writers, literary writers, would do.
The first sentence is not the first page. In the first 22 words we learn that the protagonist is being deported (obviously against her will, which is, by definition, what deportation is about) from an island for an undisclosed crime and is boarding a plane with her daughter.
Is she really a criminal? Have the Jumana authorities invented the charges? What is/was the purported ‘crime’ that prompted deportation? Is she leaving anything else behind? This ‘information’ prompts the reader to ask these questions and read on.
The original version informs us in the first 22 words that the protagonist and her daughter are boarding a plane. The revised version informs us in the first 22 words that the protagonist and her daughter are boarding a plane. The revised version is no more than gratuitous editing/rewriting. The author conveys in the first sentence a somewhat surreal sense of mystery, dread and foreboding which the revision manages to destroy. This is a great example of how an editor can screw things up by playing editor. Sometimes it’s best to leave well enough alone.
The questions raised by the original opening (“What prompted deportation? Have the authorities invented charges? What else has the narrator left behind?”) are still raised in the revision, but only after we’re given an experience (boarding plane with frightened daughter), not before. As for the original sentence evoking “a surreal sense of mystery, dread, and foreboding,” I just don’t see it, Jon. What I see is a baldly stated premature answer to those same questions before they’ve been raised in the reader’s mind. But anyway the point of my version isn’t to say, “This is how it should be done,” but to give food for thought and provoke discussion via comments like yours that are appreciated.
Simply put, I would read on with the original, but I wouldn’t with the revision. Nothing wrong with either, except that the revision pushes me into the story, whereas the original allows me to ride on the character’s experience.
As an editor, I understand (and sometimes struggle with) the idea of clarity and introducing information at a pace and timing that allows the most comprehensive absorption by the reader.
In the original, I don’t mind being given an answer, which some might call a spoiler alert — as long as the writer then re-frames the questions, perhaps even layering those questions to build to the immediate concern: her daughter’s happiness and comfort, which is being upset due to the left-behind pet.
Sometimes, the mundane aspects of a scene are what allow the reader to relax, plump the mental pillow, and be more ‘available’ to the text.
Personally, I prefer to be mentally dropped into a story, like parachuting into a war zone, but not all stories benefit from that treatment.
Thank you for your tremendous critiques – always enjoy your ‘take’ on a story start.
Thanks, Maria.
A minor, but I think important, observation about the rewrite: The phrase “Through the puddle jumper’s window” threw me off. I either never heard the term puddle jumper or had forgotten it, and because it’s used here as a modifier for window, at first I figured it must be a person. Scratching my head, I thought, “What’s a puddle jumper? The person in the window seat? Doesn’t seem to make sense.”
Finally I realized what it was. I also realized why it threw me off. We usually don’t make possessives out of nouns (puddle jumper’s); instead, we’d say “the window of the puddle jumper.” It’s not a hard and fast rule, but it is customary. My head scratching (which took me out of the story) was in part due to this ‘rule’ being ignored. Subconsciously I interpreted it as if it were in accordance with this “rule”, thus my first impression that a puddle jumper was a person, not a thing. This is a case where sticking to the rule would bring clarity. (Sometimes sticking to if might sound stiff or formal, which would be a good reason not to.)
I also like the original first line. Maybe it’s because I’m an expat, but the question of why she was being deported grabbed me. I like other parts of the rewrite, though, as the original is weighted down with lots of unnecessary baggage–and everybody knows you have to travel light in a puddle jumper!
Since it’s traveling over such a short distance (<30 kilometers), I assumed the aircraft must be a small, local commuter plane—hence "puddle jumper" (rather than "small, light commuter aircraft," which strikes me as too many syllables). I'm not familiar with the rule that says don't make possessives out of nouns. So, for instance, instead of "the aircraft's engine" we should say "the engine of the aircraft"? I wouldn't. But I agree that "puddle jumper's window" may cause confusion. Oh the things we have to think about!
That’s what I get for being an English teacher. As I said, it’s not a hard and fast rule, but it often sounds better and, as in this case, avoids possible confusion.
I agree that, for instance, “the aircraft’s engine” sounds fine. But think about “The table’s legs were uneven.” as opposed to “The legs of the table were uneven.” Often it just sounds better, so someone made a rule out of it, I suppose.
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