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.

Prologue versus Chapter Today we’re going to look at a novel’s prologue and first chapter. Prologues sometimes don’t fare well with literary agents (and readers), so I’m interested in how this one serves the goal of engaging a reader. There will be two polls.

How strong is the opening page of this novel—would it, all on its own, hook an agent if it was submitted by an unpublished writer?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 opening page of the prologue:

Perhaps it was a tired thing, all the references the world had already made to the Ptolemaic Royal Library of Alexandria. History had proven the library to be endlessly fascinating as a subject, either because the obsession with what it might have contained was bound only by the imagination or because humanity longs for things most ardently as a collective. All men can love a forbidden thing, generally speaking, and in most cases knowledge is precisely that; lost knowledge even more so. Tired or not, there is something for everyone to long for when it comes to the Library of Alexandria, and we have always been a species highly susceptible to the call of the distant unknown.

Before it was destroyed, the library was said to contain over four hundred thousand papyrus scrolls on history, mathematics, science, engineering, and also magic. Many people incorrectly assume time to be a steady incline, a measured arc of growth and progress, but when history is written by the victors the narrative can often misrepresent that shape. In reality, time as we experience it is merely an ebb and flow, more circular than it is direct. Social trends and stigmas change, and the direction knowledge moves is not always forward. Magic is no different.

The little-known truth of the matter is that the Library of Alexandria burned down to save itself. It died to rise again, its burning less metaphorically phoenix-like and more strategically Sherlockian. When Julius Caesar rose to power, it became obvious to the ancient Caretakers of (snip)

The opening page of chapter one:

The day Libby Rhodes met Nicolás Ferrer de Varona was coincidentally also the day she discovered that “incensed,” a word she had previously had no use for, was now the only conceivable way to describe the sensation of being near him. That had been the day Libby accidentally set fire to the lining of several centuries-old drapes in the office of Professor Breckenridge, dean of students, clinching both Libby’s admission to New York University of Magical Arts and her undying hatred for Nico in a single incident. All the days since that one had been a futile exercise in restraint.

Incandescence aside, this was to be a very different sort of day, as it was finally going to be the last of them. Barring any accidental encounters, which Libby was certain they’d both furiously ignore—Manhattan was a big place, after all, with plenty of people ravenously avoiding each other—she and Nico were finally going their separate ways, and she would never have to work with Nico de Varona again. She’d practically burst into song over it that morning, which her boyfriend, Ezra, presumed to be the consequence of the occasion’s more immediate matters: either graduating top of her class (tied with Nico, but there was no use focusing on that), or delivering the NYUMA valedictory speech. Neither accolade was anything to scoff at, obviously, but the more enticing prospect was the newness of the era approaching.

It was the last day Libby Rhodes would ever set eyes on Nico de Varona, and she (snip)

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

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 three on the New York Times trade paperback fiction bestseller list for March 20, 2022. Were the opening pages of the prologue or the first chapter of The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake compelling?

My votes: No on the prologue. A tentative yes on the first chapter. It’s so nice of Amazon to provide the ability to download a healthy sample to see where a narrative goes. But, I’ve been told, literary agents frequently say no at the first page of a manuscript.

This book received 4.4 out of 5 stars on Amazon. This is probably just me, but a page of fairly dense exposition is like a wall placed before my burgeoning interest, which is ready for a story or, at the least, an appealing character. It turns out that the stuff about the library is key to the story later (I think), but I didn’t want to climb that wall. I’m certain that it will appeal to a number of WU readers. But, still, would this opening of the prologue pass the harried-agent-with-fifty-queries-to -plow-through test?

Then there’s the opening to the first chapter. It does introduce me to a potentially likeable character, and we begin with her in media res of a significant event. And conflict is foreshadowed by her feelings about Nico. Her enmity makes me want to know more about both of them, and to see what comes of their conflict. So a page turn, yes. But I’m only a clump of exposition away from closing the book. Your thoughts?

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.