The Greatest First Page Ever Becomes More Essential

It's always been important to have a great first page, and a great first chapter, but I realise it's become more important than ever. Why? Well, it's been my birthday recently and for my birthday I got a Kindle.

This weekend I downloaded about 300+ books for under £10 - the complete works of Austen, Wharton, Brontes (all of them), Shakespeare, James, Hardy, Dickens. I reckon that'll keep me quiet on the longest train journey. (And does the availability of 31 novels by Edith Wharton for 71 pence explain why ebooks are apparently outselling paper books on Amazon in quantity? I suspect so.)

I also downloaded lots of samples, some for 'How to write' books - my little weakness - and some for contemporary novels. Of the 8 contemporary novel samples I downloaded I actually went ahead and purchased 2. That's 6 books I might have bought in a bookshop where I could only really read the first page and look at the cover, and 6 books which I decided against buying when I'd read the first chapter.

This is the future, a One-Click world where it's very easy to buy books, but equally easy to discard them if the contents don't grab the reader. And over the next couple of days I think I'll be talking about ways to grab the reader - and yes, anticipation is one of them.

The 10 Minute Difference - Why Films Are Not Like Prose

I use films as references a lot, mainly because I think people are more likely to have seen the same films as me, rather than read the same books so the examples will have wider resonance. But there's one area which you shouldn't take films as your 'how to' guide, and that's the beginning.

Think about how you choose to see a film. You look at the cover. You look at the reviews. You may see some carefully chosen clips. And then you decide to watch it. You buy cinema tickets or the DVD.

Compare with a novel. You look at the cover. You look at the reviews. Then, if you're in the bookshop, you look at the first page and start reading. If you like it, you then buy it. In other words, you can test the product before you invest your money in it.

When you get round to watching the film, you're going to give it at least ten minutes before deciding if it's any good or not. So the film maker has about ten minutes to do any story set up before your attention is going to wander. The novel or story, in contrast, has to earn your attention right from the start or you won't be investing in it. The storytelling must begin on page 1.

NEW!!! I've finally got round to organising some course dates....

How to WRITE a Novel: London 3rd May/Birmingham 7th May/

Oxford 8th May/Exeter 21st May/Bath 12th June

How to SELL a Novel: London 24th May/Exeter 4th June/

Bath 3rd July Details are on my website

Too Much Information

Some years ago I was asked to look at a friend of a friend's novel and innocently I accepted the manuscript. A few evenings later I settled down with a glass of chilled pinot grigio and began to read. It was one of the most awful things I've read, the account of a birth that goes wrong. Suffice to say that blood featured frequently, along with various other body parts.

But it wasn't the most awful thing I've read. That was the opening to another unpublished novel where the hero takes a gastric sample from a laboratory beagle. Even typing those words has given me a nauseous flashback moment.

I sympathise. It's hard. We know that the beginning of a novel needs to grab the reader's attention, especially if the novel is unpublished and has to somehow get itself off the slush pile. So we bring out the heavy stuff, the dramatic, the shocking and whoosh it all in front of the reader. Da dah! That'll get 'em!

But it doesn't, or at least, not in the way you intended. It's a bit like settling down for a long plane journey and the friendly person next to you pulls out their wallet to - you think - show you photographs of their grandchildren and instead - da dah! here's my abortion!

It's too much information, much much much too soon.

Later on in the novel, once we've got to know your characters, once we've begun to care, then we'll react as you wish to whatever horribleness you've got in store. But on the first page...? You're asking for someone to fling the manuscript down then bundle it back in the return envelope as soon as possible.

Making First Page Promises

The first page of a novel (or a short story for that matter) should be a promise.  You are going to read this sort of book, with these sort of characters.  The problems they face are going to be about this.  The writing style is this, the tone is that.  If you read the first page, and like it, you'll like the rest of the book.  I promise.

As authors we can't control the cover, nor the blurb on the back (although one hopes to have input into them).  What we can control is the promise we make to the reader on that first page.  So it is absolutely essential that the right promise is on the first page, that if it's a racy thriller, either something racy happens, or we're explicitly promised that it's going to happen pretty soon.  Similarly a relationship novel should ideally start with the relationship problem being clearly stated.  

I must admit I only formulated this idea a few years ago after I'd done classes workshopping first pages with students.  The ones that got the most positive responses were the ones where the author's promise to the reader was clear.  When I went back to my first novel, Adultery for Beginners, I saw that, without realising it, I'd made the promise there.  The opening paragraph starts with the single word: Drat. Isabel and her husband have just made love, but all Isabel can think about is that she's going to have to change the sheets - and she only changed them yesterday. It summed up their stale relationship. 

So when you're writing your opening page, think about what promises you're making to the reader, and know that you're going to be able to keep them.