Opening Chapters Critique
A developmental read of the first fifty pages of your novel, and a letter telling you what the book is doing.
Fiction only. Speculative fiction is my home ground.
$397
You read your pages aloud and something feels off. So you go back in and fix the sentences, and it still feels off.
Sentences are rarely where that feeling’s coming from. Usually, it’s structural. Sometimes it’s the gap between the story in your head and the story on the page, and sometimes it’s a reader you haven’t admitted you’re writing for. A line edit won’t solve this. You can polish for a season and still come back to the same wrongness… just with better prose.
The opening chapters are where a book decides what it is. They’re also where the performing shows up: over-explaining, setting the table for a reader who had no intention of sitting down, holding back the sentence a scene or chapter was built around. Fifty pages is enough for me to see all of it. And tell you how to fix it.
What you get
A full editorial letter. Narrative, honest, and written to you. It covers structure, story engine, pacing, point of view, voice, and where the draft is working against itself. It tells you what the book is trying to be, which is usually something the writer can’t see from inside it.
Margin comments on the pages themselves. You see exactly where each pattern shows up, in your own text.
A named next move. One specific thing to do next, and the reason it comes before everything else on the list.
One round of follow-up questions by email, within 30 days of delivery.
Scope and terms
Length: First 50 pages, up to 12,500 words
Genre: Fiction. Speculative fiction is my specialty: fantasy, sci-fi, and everything that borders them. I also read crime and thriller, literary, and historical fiction. Novels and short story collections.
Format: Word or Google doc (Note: I make edits in Word only. Sending a Google doc is fine. But understand that I will download your pages in Word and return them to you that way.)
Turnaround: 14 days from the day I receive your pages
Price: $397, paid in full before I open the file
Delivery: Editorial letter as a Word doc, plus your manuscript with margin comments
Payment plans are only available on full manuscript engagements.
Is this the right move for your book?
Yes, if: you have a complete draft or a substantial partial and the opening isn’t landing. You’ve revised it more than twice. You suspect the problem is structural and want clarity before you commit to writing further.
Yes, if: you are preparing to query and want to know what an agent will hit on page nine.
No, if: the draft is finished and clean and what you want is sentence-level work. That’s line editing, and it’s a different service.
No, if: you only want me to tell you it’s good. I’ll tell you what’s good, and I’ll be specific about it, because vague praise is useless to a writer. I’ll also tell you the rest.
No, if: you have fifty pages and no sense of the rest of the book yet. Come back when there’s more. I would rather turn the work away than take your money for an assessment that can’t help you yet.
No, if: the book is memoir or nonfiction. This critique is built for fiction. Email me before you buy and I’ll tell you what I can do.
What happens after you pay
You pay. You get a confirmation with submission instructions and three short questions: what the book is, where you are stuck, and what you want me to look hardest at.
You send your pages.
Fourteen days later you get the letter and the marked-up manuscript.
You sit with it. If questions come up in the next thirty days, email me.
Who’s reading your pages
I am a developmental editor and voice and clarity specialist. Speculative fiction is my home ground, and I read across crime and thriller, literary, and historical fiction. My deepest roots are in the work of Black writers. I fact-check and copyedit for Custom Content from WSJ through The Writing Company, I teach for a variety of ProWritingAid’s community events, including their invite-only Expert Series, and serve as a Novel Summer Camp Counselor and Novel November Ambassador.
What I do in every project, at every altitude, is the same thing: help writers stop writing for approval and start writing from truth. Their truth.
“She didn’t just skim my pages. She dug deep, page by page, and gave me a review that felt both professional and personal. She gave me practical, specific steps to strengthen the manuscript while also reminding me to trust my instincts as a writer.” — Matthew Watchman, fantasy author · Opening chapters critique
“The manuscript assessment gave me clear guidance as to how to get the story on the right track so that I can provide the best version of it for my readers. After being with the manuscript for so long, it was impossible for me to identify what wasn’t working within my story.” — Sharhonda Exantus, crime thriller author
“I handed her a messy manuscript that had the look of a rambling manifesto, and she gave me back a book.” — Elizabeth Eggleston, fiction author
Book the Opening Chapters Critique · $397
Questions first? Email me at info@thestorytemple.com, subject line: Opening Chapters.
If your book is further along and you want the whole draft read, ask me about the full manuscript assessment.
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