A Fine Line

Last Sunday I attended a NJ-SCBWI Mentoring Workshop at which there was a First Page Session. In preparation for this I submitted a first page to my critique group. It was a revised first page of a WIP that has been IP for years. It's a project that, for one reason or another, has been difficult for me. I've stopped and started, abandoned and returned to it many times. In the current return I have decided to pretty much chuck all that I'd written previously and take on a new direction with a new main character, new POV, and essentially new everything.

My critique group trashed it.

Yes, this group of writers who I consider among my best friends literally ripped my first page apart. A first page! Quite honestly, I didn't know one could find so much wrong with a single page. Don't worry, they all did it in a nice way and started and ended their eviscerations with positive comments, but Gale still had to call me the next morning to make sure I wasn't planning on doing a Sylvia Plath. (I wasn't, just so you know).

I went off to the Workshop on Sunday with two first pages. The first from my contemporary YA which has been critiqued in so many First Page Sessions I felt confident it would not be torn to shreds in public - it was safe. The second first page in my writer's bag was the ripped-to-shreds first page of my current WIP with a few minor changes (the ones that could be managed without a complete rewrite). Standing at the desk where I was instructed to leave my first page, I couldn't decide which one to leave. My hand was on the ripped-to-shreds one, but my ego wouldn't let me pull it out. I chickened out and put the safe first page on the pile. My skin was not thick enough to weather a second shredding in less than 48 hours.

Something you should know about me is that I love First Page Sessions, often finding them the most valuable part of a conference. It doesn't matter if the first pages are accomplished pieces of writing simply waiting to find the right editor or a newbie written page that makes you cringe just to listen to it (and admit it, there's always at least one in a first page session that makes your hair stand on end). I learn something from every page that's read.

What I learned on Sunday when the editors read my safe first page was that I had some dialogue that wouldn't really happen, but conveniently allowed me to bring up a point of tension between two characters. That's a valuable criticism and something easily fixed.

But what I REALLY learned on Sunday came from other people's first pages -- To recognize the thin line that exists between starting with action, which is something we always hear, to dropping the reader into a scene without them having the slightest notion of what is going on. A Thin Line. And I understood immediately what my critique group was trying to tell me.

Now one could argue that my beloved critique group could have lightened up a little bit. On the other hand, our group has never been known to blow hot air up anyone's skirt. We all call it as we see it, which is one of the things I value most about the group.

It's another thin line, one we balance on at every meeting.

I'm not sure if I regret playing it safe on Sunday. Given that the rest of the Workshop went so well, maybe I could have weathered a second evisceration if I'd been brave enough to submit my WIP first page. It's a thin line.