Trained by reading hundreds of submissions, editors and agents often make their read/not-read decision on the first page. In a customarily formatted book manuscript with chapters starting about 1/3 of the way down the page (double-spaced, 1-inch margins, 12-point type), there are 16 or 17 lines on the first page.
Here’s the question:
Would you pay good money to read the rest of the chapter? With 50 chapters in a book that costs $15, each chapter would be “worth” 30 cents.
So, before you read the excerpt, take 30 cents from your pocket or purse. When you’re done, decide what to do with those three dimes or the quarter and a nickel. It’s not much, but think of paying 30 cents for the rest of the chapter every time you sample a book’s first page. In a sense, time is money for a literary agent working her way through a raft of submissions, and she is spending that resource whenever she turns a page.
Please judge by storytelling quality, not by genre or content—some reject an opening page immediately because of genre, but that’s not a good-enough reason when the point is to analyze for storytelling strength.
How strong is the opening page of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?
The decision to kill herself brought her peace. Everything would be quiet and warm and soft. She could sleep, just sleep forever. Never again would she hide in the dark when the landlord banged on the door for the rent she couldn’t pay.
Or climb out a window again, to take off. Again.
She wouldn’t have to give blow jobs to some sweaty john to buy food. Or the pills, the pills she needed more than food.
The pills that made everything quiet, even the pain.
Maybe she’d even go to heaven, like it looked in the books in Bible study where everything was fluffy white clouds and golden light and everyone smiled.
Maybe she’d go to hell, with all the fire and the screaming and eternal damnation. Taking a life, even your own, was a big sin according to the Reverend Horace Greenspan, the recipient of her first BJ—payment and penance when he’d caught her lip-locked with Wayne Kyle Ribbet, and Wayne Kyle’s hand under her shirt.
The experience had taught her, at age twelve, it was better to receive than give payment for such tedious services.
Still, suicide ranked as a bigger sin than blowing some grunting asshole for traveling money or a handful of Oxy. So maybe she’d go to hell.
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You can turn the page and read more here. Kindle users can request a sample sent to their devices, and I’ve found this to be a great way to evaluate a narrative that is borderline on the first page and see if it’s worth my coin.
This novel was number one on the New York Times hardcover fiction bestseller list for February 27, 2022. Were the opening pages of the first chapter of Abandoned in Death by J.D. Robb compelling?
My vote: Yes.
This book received 4.7 out of 5 stars on Amazon. For me, this was strong stuff. Fine writing and voice. A woman in deep emotional trouble. Suicide is a tough subject to read about, especially if you’ve known someone who has gone that way as I have. This does have a fair amount of backstory in it, and there was something later on that I think would have vastly increased the read-power of this opening.
It turns out that her five-year-old little boy is in a car seat in the back. I’d have traded Wayne Kyle Ribbet’s blowjob for including that little fact in the opening. Then the story questions go from what will happen to this woman to what will happen to an innocent little boy. Your thoughts?
(Poll)
You’re invited to a flogging—your own You see here the insights fresh eyes bring to the performance of bestseller first pages, so why not do the same with the opening of your WIP? Submit your prologue/first chapter to my blog, Flogging the Quill, and I’ll give you my thoughts and even a little line editing if I see a need. And the readers of FtQ are good at offering constructive notes, too. Hope to see you there.
To submit, email your first chapter or prologue (or both) as an attachment to me, and let me know if it’s okay to use your first page and to post the complete chapter.