By Allison K Williams
There is a glorious moment in almost every manuscript where the editor realizes, “Aha! THIS is where the story starts!” and breathes a prayer of thanks that the author does indeed have a book. Their labor has paid off, we discover, and we don’t have to send a diplomatically worded editorial letter suggesting they start again from scratch.
This moment is usually somewhere in pages 34-50.
Don’t get me wrong—I see plenty of strong first-page hooks . Intense confrontations, moments of critical action interrupted, or even just a powerful literary or comedic voice inviting the reader onboard to share a journey with the protagonist, lean forward and enjoy the story. But the pattern I’ve seen lately is 3-5 kickass opening pages—most authors, by the time they’re ready for a developmental edit, have carefully workshopped and developed their opening with plenty of feedback—and then…backstory. Family details. Worldbuilding. Relationship-showing. Well-written anecdotes that don’t connect. The destination sounded cool, but now we’re in the observation car learning about the upholstery and wondering when we’re pulling out of the station.
As an editor, I’m still carefully reading every word of the subsequent pages, spotting craft issues and great phrasing and sentences and paragraphs to salvage from the sea of not-bad-writing-just-meh. As a reader, I’m jittering in my seat, yelling (sometimes literally) “But what do you WANT?? What’s HAPPENING?” and startling the heck out of my husband who would just like to process some databases, please, at our coworking table.
I’ve fallen into the hook-‘em-then-meander trap myself.
I wrote a book some years ago, a manuscript I workshopped and friend-read and had professionally edited, and landed an agent. The book was shopped to publishers but nobody yet was buying. Then, as a student at a conference, I participated in a session where first pages were read anonymously to a panel of agents who rang a bell wherever they would have stopped reading. The reader got through my whole page, and after a moment of silence, the room burst into applause. Major ego moment!
So I thought, why not pull a few pages for the student reading? And as I leafed through the manuscript— boring, too much set-up, that’s unclear out of context, boring, porn, backstory, ugh— a revelation came upon me: the book wasn’t selling because the book wasn’t good enough. After the page that hooked the panel, there was an awful lot of explanation and muddling around, trusting my authorial voice and the shock of the concept were carrying the book.
They weren’t.
So how, fellow writers, can we carry out the promise of our glorious first pages?
By focusing on the dramatic arc. First, we must establish what the memoirist or the protagonist is longing for in those 3-5 opening pages—no matter how wild or tense or action-packed the scene, what do they need? Why don’t they have it right now? This can be stated or implied, but it’s something bigger than the immediate scene, a goal or desire that can’t be easily met.
In the next 5-7 pages, show when they are farthest away from meeting that need. This is often, but not always, the “here’s how the whole story started” scene. Meeting-cute for a bad relationship, becoming conscious of their poverty, going to the party where they’ll take that first hit. If we’re still moving forward chronologically, this is where we see the untenable existing situation and why the character needs more. They may already know they have the need, or it may be clear to another character, or maybe only the reader can see it, but it’s there.
Next comes the first turning point scene, where the protagonist begins changing: they gain a skill or a mentor, or face a big obstacle, or start running down the wrong path to reach the goal.
By page 20 (double-spaced, in case you’re counting), the character’s journey is established. After the immediate engagement of the opening scene, their dramatic arc has begun. The reader understands explicitly or implicitly what the character wants, why they don’t have it right now, the outside obstacles, and the inside change that must occur in the character in order to meet that need. The reader has seen the first steps towards the goal, and their curiosity is building about the path to the destination.
Throughout these opening pages, weave in backstory in small doses, where personal history is either a direct cause of the main action, or serves as context/contrast for the scene. The further you are into the book, the more grace the reader has for detail, setting, backstory, etc. But they need that initial pull to get on the journey. Show them the dining car and the observation car after the dramatic train gets going.
Take a look at your own first pages—you probably have a strong hook! Are you also showing what the character needs and why they don’t have it? Try highlighting everything that’s backstory or information in the first 20 pages—is the protagonist (possibly you!) taking actions on a journey that has definitely started?
Let us know in the comments what you discover.
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Allison K Williams is Brevity ’s Social Media Editor. Ready to sell your memoir, or want to be? Join her for Proposal Bootcamp April 12-14, for three days of planning, writing and finishing your memoir or nonfiction book proposal. (Friends of Brevity use code BREVITY50 for a discount!)
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