Three Hot Tips To Make Awesome First Pages
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Hi, welcome to Write Better Now, a podcast of quick, weekly writing tips meant to help you become a better writer. We’re your hosts with NYT bestselling author Carrie Jones and copyeditor extraordinaire Shaun Farrar. Thank you for joining us.
Carrie has been talking to a lot of her authors lately about the beginning of their stories and how to make them awesome. And Carrie has a lot of tips for the writers she works with, but we’re going to be fast here.
Here’s the link to the podcast episode since Medium isn’t allowing it to embed.
Make it Tense AF
You don’t want to make readers in our time wait for the good stuff. Sadly, almost no one is into waiting right now. It’s all instant gratification all the time. This is even true for most books.
Too many details, too much setting or exposition, and too little tension means that readers aren’t going to want to read on. Your first page should make the reader ask a question that they want the answer to.
Show Us What Your Book and Character Are About
This tip really means we want to see the core of your character and what they are yearning for on the very first page. If your book is a mystery, let us see it. If your book is an erotic novel about a hamster and a gerbil, we need to know that, too.
The first thing the reader sees your main character doing? That shows the reader who that character is.
If she’s running to rescue someone because she hears yelling? That tells us something about her.
If she’s running away because she hears yelling? That tells us something about her, too.
Show Us Where They Hell We Are
Nothing is more annoying than a book that has no grounding elements. Let us readers know where the characters are hanging out. Are we in this century? This world? A cold climate? A warm one? What part of the year is it? Let the reader know where your characters are walking, sitting, talking and how it feels to them to be in that space so that we can feel it too as we read.
Bonus Tip: You don’t want a prologue unless you really need it and you probably don’t need it.
