Page 1 Critique

This continues the reprisal of my series of page 1 critiques - you can read about the project HERE, and there's a list of all the critiques so far too.

I'm also posting some of these on my Youtube channel (like, subscribe yadda yadda).

It's worth noting that I critique whole batches of chapters on a monthly basis for my top teir patrons.

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I gave doing this up about 6 months ago, but I missed it and asked for some new, unpublished page 1s so that I would be critiquing work where the author had the opportunity to change things if they agreed with any of my comments.

Today I'm feeling too ropey to write my own stuff, so I'm casting an eye over one of the page 1s that came in last month.

(My standard disclaimer)

It's very hard to separate one's tastes from a technical critique. There are page 1s from popular books with which I would find multiple faults. I didn't, for example, like page 1 of Terry Goodkind's Wizard's First Rule (I didn't pursue the rest of the book). But that book has 150,000+ ratings on Goodreads, a great average score of 4.12 and Goodkind is a #1 NYT bestseller. His first page clearly did a great job for many people.

I'm not always right *hushed gasp*. You will likely be able to find a successful and highly respected author who will tell you the opposite to practically every bit of advice I give. Possibly not the same author in each case though.

The art of receiving criticism is to take what's useful to you and discard the rest. You need sufficient confidence in your own vision/voice such that whilst criticism may cause you to adjust course you're not about to do a U-turn for anyone. If you act on every bit of advice you'll get crit-burn, your story will be pulled in different directions by different people. It will stop being yours and turn into some Frankenstein's monster that nobody will ever want to read.

Additionally - don't get hurt or look for revenge. The person critiquing you is almost always trying to help you (it's true in some groups there will be the occasional person who is jealous/mean/misguided but that's the exception, not the rule). That person has put in effort on your behalf. If they don't like your prose it's not personal - they didn't just slap your baby.


I've flicked through some of the pages looking for one where I have something to say - something that hopefully is useful to the author and to anyone else reading the post.


This one is from Amir Hammami-Gulliksen and a projected book called Discovery of Magic.

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I've posted the unadulterated page first then again with comments inset and at the end.

"Let's do one final check to see that we have everything set up correctly. We only have one chance at this," LoreSeeker says while addressing his camera sitting on his desk, next to his three monitors. The first monitor shows photocopies of two pages from an old book. The second monitor shows the view from the cameras in use so that LoreSeeker know what his viewers see, and can adjust any mistakes or bad angles. The final monitor show the active chat of his viewers. Just short of a thousand viewers today he notices as he glances at the chat. Not his best numbers, but far beyond what he usually got when live-streaming games. It seems people really are desperate to escape reality, grasping at any slim chance of hope for a better world.

LoreSeeker steps back from his monitors and walks to the other side of a large table positioned in the middle of the well lit room. Behind the table is a large green sheet covering the back wall, where for the viewers LoreSeekers personalized logo is projected. A rather simple logo made by some free image generating AI tool, the letters L and S surrounded by swirls of purple color and white stars.

At the corner of the table is a second camera, positioned so that it captures everything laid out on the table in high resolution. On top of the table are three powdery circles, each centered on points of an imaginary equilateral triangle and interlocking so that they form four sections whose interior belong to at least two of the circles. Each circle is made from a drizzle of spice; salt,  pepper and cinnamon. In each of the three outer sections is a cup filled with liquid. The cup in the salt-cinnamon section is a cup of vinegar, in the salt-pepper section a cup of water and in the cinnamon-pepper section a cup of olive oil. In the middle section that all three circles encompass is a burner with an empty bowl sitting on top.

"Okay…," LoreSeeker says while examining a sheet of paper, "We've assembled the trinity circles, with the salt ring facing towards north. With the salt as the reference point we have cinnamon right and pepper to the left." A ding comes from the chat and LoreSeeker looks up "Thanks for the tip McSnuggly, we're pretty sure it means True North and not magnetic north. We covered this in the last stream, you can check out the VOD on Youtube" he says after glancing at the message, returning to the table.

LoreSeeker continues through the list of steps on his sheet of paper and verifies that everything is set up correctly. Will this Wicca-esque ritual hold the secret of magic? Probably not, but it’s worth a shot, and the viewership it attracts is good.

 

"Well then. I say we are ready," he smiles to the camera, "let's discover magic!".

 

 

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"Let's do one final check to see that we have everything set up correctly. We only have one chance at this,"

Opens with dialogue - often a good move as dialogue is an engaging form. I would reverse those two sentences as "We only have one chance at this!" is a solid first line and "Let's do one final check etc etc" is rather weak.

 LoreSeeker says while addressing his camera sitting on his desk, next to his three monitors.

I wouldn't lump this scene setting in with the dialogue tag - it's too cluttered. Make a new sentence.

We're in present tense, which is an infrequent choice and the unfamiliar often annoys readers. So if you're going to use it, have a reason for paying that price. Present tense offers an immediacy that can enchance action scenes or tension building. It helps create the illusion that whatever is happening is ongoing rather than in the settled past. 

 The first monitor shows photocopies of two pages from an old book. The second monitor shows the view from the cameras in use so that LoreSeeker knows what his viewers see, and can adjust any mistakes or bad angles.

So, I've highlighted five instances of numbering/counting in the first few lines. That could get irritating/repetitive.

The PoV feels rather shallow, almost omniscient, although there's no concrete example that can be argued to be outside his PoV. We're not getting any of his feelings/sensations except as unvoiced dialogue.

 The final monitor shows the active chat of his viewers. Just short of a thousand viewers today he notices as he glances at the chat. Not his best numbers, but far beyond what he usually got when live-streaming games. It seems people really are desperate to escape reality, grasping at any slim chance of hope for a better world.

Here we've dipped behind LoreSeeker's eyes and are getting his thoughts as if we are him.

LoreSeeker steps back from his monitors and walks to the other side of a large table positioned in the middle of the well-lit room. Behind the table is a large green sheet covering the back wall, where for the viewers LoreSeeker’s personalized logo is projected. A rather simple logo made by some free image generating AI tool, the letters L and S surrounded by swirls of purple color and white stars.

This, along with the careful accounting of camera and monitor positioning, is starting to feel like too much information. It's a mechanical rather than florid description, but the writing question is why does the reader need to know all this detail? The low-budget effects do give us an insight into our character's "mom's basement" vibe, but we already got some of that from his relatively low viewing numbers. He seems to be a mid-tier youtuber.

At the corner of the table is a second camera, positioned so that it captures everything laid out on the table in high resolution. On top of the table are three powdery circles, each centered on points of an imaginary equilateral triangle and interlocking so that they form four sections whose interior belong to at least two of the circles. Each circle is made from a drizzle of spice; salt, pepper and cinnamon. In each of the three outer sections is a cup filled with liquid. The cup in the salt-cinnamon section is a cup of vinegar, in the salt-pepper section a cup of water and in the cinnamon-pepper section a cup of olive oil. In the middle section that all three circles encompass is a burner with an empty bowl sitting on top.

Now we're back to the counting, and have yet more detailed mechanical description. Description works best when it's from a PoV, ideally one with opinions. The description then illuminates both the items/place and the person seeing it.

This description serves to underline that this magic is a fiddly recipe-based type, but 7 more lines on page 1 is too high a price to pay for just that.

"Okay…," LoreSeeker says while examining a sheet of paper. "We've assembled the trinity circles, with the salt ring facing towards north. With the salt as the reference point we have cinnamon right and pepper to the left." A ding comes from the chat and LoreSeeker looks up "Thanks for the tip McSnuggly, we're pretty sure it means True North and not magnetic north. We covered this in the last stream, you can check out the VOD on Youtube," he says after glancing at the message, returning to the table.

This part earns its keep, combining humour with an underscoring of the amateur / crowd-sourced nature of the thing. The repeated description could in fact replace all the previous description since it conveys the same idea by itself without the completionist vibe.

LoreSeeker continues through the list of steps on his sheet of paper and verifies that everything is set up correctly. Will this Wicca-esque ritual hold the secret of magic? Probably not, but it’s worth a shot, and the viewership it attracts is good.

 Again this encapsulates some of the earlier fiddliness in a more palatable form and tells us more about our character. He's only part faking it - he wants to believe it will work and seems to believe that magic is real even if this isn't the key to it.

"Well then. I say we are ready," he smiles to the camera, "let's discover magic!".

And a nice finish which makes it feel potentially like a piece of flash fiction. But if it gets them to turn the page, then job done.

This page 1 had a number of things to recommend it: primarily an amusing situation and some liveliness to it.

The present tense and the shallow PoV don't do it any favours in my view, but potentially their time to shine will come later in the piece. Not everything has to pay off on page 1!

My main complaint though concerns the excess of mechanical description. This description doesn't reflect its source and delivers a very dry accounting of what is where, exactly. The reader doesn't need to know most of the detail, and may even be bored by it. They may be turned away by this level of detail, especially since if it's here on page 1 we can probably expect much much more of it to come. 

The space occupied by the enumeration of which candle was where is space that could have been used to better effect, either by making the character more interesting or by asking more questions that the reader needs the answer to.

We have only one real question here and only a small level of implied threat (and thus tension). The question is: Will the magic work? And we assume the answer is yes, otherwise what are we doing here? And if the magic works it might be dangerous - so there's some threat.

I would trim the description heavily and give the description from LoreSeeker's PoV. I would have him reflect on the nature of the magic being attempted and the dangers thereof. That would pose more questions that the reader wants answered and inject a level of tension that would encourage turning the page.

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