Page One Review – Eyeleash by Jess C. Scott

This first page of Jess C. Scott’s Eyeleash falls flat, and here’s why: the use of shortened language (“abt”), the suggestion that I’m about to read a series of random blog entries with no particular movement in any direction (“Rants raves and everything else”), and the immediate introduction to a narrator who believes her blog and herself are interesting enough to warrant warnings about sharing the material, which usually means the entries won’t actually be that interesting – or, not as interesting as the author suspects.

However, at the same time, what does lend some interest to the first page is the warning, the mention of “risk,” the fear that Novan will never want to speak to Jade Ashton again after reading her blog. I do wonder, “Why? What’s in there?” but I’m not curious enough to read more because there’s not even a vague allusion to something specific, a hint of something deeper and darker, like a secret or a confession, that would strengthen the initial page significantly and give me, and other readers, something to hold onto or look forward to, a defined “something” to discover.

Even so. As much as I might have promised to stick to the first page when reviewing these first pages, I can never help sneaking a peek at pages two and three of these books to see what’s happening there.

Scott’s page two doesn’t steal my interest, either. How could it?

I can be as boring and mundane as I like, talk to myself if everyone online has the (Away) or (Busy) sign on, and not worry about stepping on anybody’s Let’s see what I’ll record here over this year.

If there’s already a pretty strong hint the blog entries will be “boring” and “mundane,” as a reader, I don’t want to waste the time.

Skip to page three.

With dicks up their vaginas, aren’t they bound to get pregnant sometime/be crawling with STDs/be stretched loose/get bored of it sometime/have unsightly cracked nipples from having them sucked dry?

Woah, woah, woah! Where’d this come from? Scott’s writing with an in-your-face attitude about sex (the paragraphs following that passage involve Jade engaging in frank self-admiration, self-adoration, and self-stimulation) and she waits until page three to get to it? I don’t know that I’d want to continue reading, regardless (I see several LOLs while skimming), but if a writer wants to grab a reader, it’s best to start where the action is. Reference the request for the blog, the risk involved, the warnings, later – get the readers involved now. Ask yourself, “Where would I, as a reader, start to take a real interest in this story?” and start the story there. Worry less about back story, the setup, the history than you do the scene that will get readers dying to turn the page. The rest – the back story, the setup, the history – can be done later.