The Importance of First Pages, Take 2

How to Catch the Eye of an Editor

I’m having a busy week transitioning from summer to fall (the gardens! The social changes! The world!) so this is an edited repost, because I think it’s an always important topic.

First pages.

I’ve written about this before but a refresher with some new tidbits never hurts!

Most agents and editors say that they will not read past page one. If pages one and two don’t grab them, they’re done.

Writer Unboxed (one of my favorite blogs) runs a regular post on opening pages of novels by previously bestselling authors, and it’s instructive to note how many of those are pretty terrible and are ranked that way by both readers and by the post’s author.

Which means that only the bestselling status of the authors got the editors past page one.

If you are a newbie or unpublished, you’d do well to make sure your first page/two pages are stellar. So. What makes a stellar opening?

First, What Not To Do

• Don’t start with backstory. You need to hook the reader into the here and now of the story you are telling. General rule of thumb – no backstory before page 30.

• Don’t start with heavy description. Atmosphere and setting are fine (see next section) but a long dull description of the location and what’s happening and why we are there, etc. is not.

• Don’t be confusing. Understand the tropes that are indicators of your genre choice. Writing a romcom? Don’t start with a body on the floor. Writing a horror? Don’t start with a languid historical situation. Read the first pages of other great books in your genre to see how good authors set up the reader’s expectations.

What To Make Sure Is On The Opening Page(s)

Or, the first 350-400 words.

• Your main character. We want to have a hint as to their gender and age. We need to be introduced. We need to know whose story this is. And we want to like them, so give them a Save The Cat moment (more on that in a future post).

• Your general setting. Are we in a castle in Spain? On a beach in the south Pacific? In a duplex in California? Give us a hint or two.

• A feeling for your genre, per the above trope statement.

  

• The socioeconomic situation. Meaning, are we in middle class America or a villa by the sea? This goes beyond setting, to a suggestion of the social status/community of your characters.

• Stakes. What is your external story problem? Not in detail but by implication. Suggest what are your death stakes: these mean not necessarily (but could be) actual death. But death stakes may also be death of love, death of dream, death of living condition, death of profession…

• Voice. The number one thing that attracts an editor or agent is voice. So be sure your voice is spot on with respect to all the above factors. Does your child sound like a child? Teen like a teen? If omniscient POV, is the voice compelling and engaging, or confusing?

• Internal story goal. In addition to having a hint of the external story problem, hint at the internal story goal, or emotional arc of change, of your protagonist. Just a hint. You’ll flesh this out more later.

Other Thoughts

You’ll need to layer things in. Create an atmosphere. Slip bits of information into your sentences in a seamless fashion. Use and evoke emotion without telling the reader those emotions.

One trick is to use strong nouns and active verbs that resonate with the story you’re trying to tell. If you use words like castle, storm, darkening, swarms, stumbles, screech, echo, rough, stench, you’re sure to evoke a creepy sensation that forecasts your horror story to come.

I suggest making a list of words that evoke, for you, a sense of the book you are writing. See how many of them can replace the words you already have or rephrase to bring them into your narrative.

One other thing: your first page should echo your last page in some fashion. What this means is that you definitely will go back and rewrite your first page to create or make sure you have written that echo. Echoes can be single word choices, or can create a sense of the final story arc, but either way, the reader will be satisfied that the story arc has been completed.

To really understand great first pages, find a powerhouse book in your genre and using the above list, analyze. (I’m going to suggest the first two pages of Dan Gemeinhart’s THE MIDNIGHT CHILDREN, a fantastic middle grade novel which ticks all the boxes.)

As always, keep writing!!