The Burden of Your First Five Pages

Noah Lukeman, in his book The First Five Pages (published in 2000), says “Over the years I’ve read thousands of manuscripts, all, unbelievably, with the exact same type of mistakes. … Writers are doing the exact same things wrong.” I’ve found this to be spot-on in the hundreds (perhaps thousands) of manuscripts I’ve edited and critiqued too. He goes on to explain that the opening pages are indicative of the rest of a manuscript. Meaning, the weak writing or glaring errors or “bad” writing habits noticed on the first few pages almost always implies the rest of the manuscript will be more of the same.

For that reason, it doesn’t help to have a writer say something like “Wait till you get further in, when the story gets rolling. Then you’ll see how good it is.” No, we’ll probably know “how good it is” by seeing how good that first page is.

I spent months examineing what makes these first pages grab readers and pull them into the novel. I used my first-page checklist to break down the key elements of these effective first pages. Keep in mind, most of what you’ll learn can apply to short stories as well as memoirs and other types of creative nonfiction.

It’s all about telling a story in a way that engages your reader’s brain. To make a brain go into alert mode, some mystery or element of danger, or the incongruous, must cross its path.

Author and former literary agent/publisher Jeff Gerke, interviewed a neuroscientist, Dr. Paul J. Zak to understand what makes readers sit up and take interest. In a post Jeff wrote for my blog, he explained how Zak uses functional imaging devices to study what makes people engaged with narrative. Gerke writes:

[Zak] wants to know what makes people pay attention to stories, in other words.

It turns out that certain things have to happen in the brain to make a reader love a novel and stay with it to the end. There are three main components, especially important at the beginning of the novel.

First, a novel has to catch the reader’s attention.

Like you and me, our readers have a hundred things vying for their attention and discretionary entertainment time. If a story doesn’t capture them right away, they just keep moving.

Happily, you can capitalize on brain chemistry to know you’re going to get her on the hook. The brain is constantly scanning for two things above everything else: danger and surprise. These are the two operative words to remember.

If you are watching TV and a fire breaks out beside you, your brain is going to prioritize the danger over the joy of the TV show and make you pay attention to that fire. This is why the action opening works in fiction. The reader’s brain says, “Uh-oh, danger. Better watch what happens.” (This can be emotional danger too, as Jane Austen illustrates—it doesn’t have to be an exploding car.)

The brain is also scanning for surprise. If you’re back watching TV and a troupe of clowns bursts in and starts performing a circus act, you’re going to turn and watch that instead of your show. The brain works by comparing whatever it’s examining against its bank of stored images and experiences. If something defies classification or seems novel, the brain is intrigued and can’t stop looking at it.

First thing, then, is to get your reader’s attention right away. You can do everything else right in the book, but if you don’t get her brain firing, she’ll miss it all.

Second, you must connect your reader to your protagonist.

Not just in a shallow way, either. “Your job as a writer,” Dr. Zak says, “is to have the reader become the characters.”

You connect with a character in fiction the same way you connect with a stranger you meet on an airplane and find you get along well with. When you come to see that this person is likeable and shares ideas and experiences with you, it’s as if you both reach toward one another and form a bond.

So it is when you come to see that a novel’s protagonist is kind or heroic or loyal—or who stands for the same values you stand for. Because what is a character in a novel but a stranger to you, at first?

The more you show how similar the hero is to the reader, the more the reader engages and wants to stick by that new friend through thick and thin. And if you do your job right, when the character is in danger, the reader’s palms will sweat. When that happens, Dr. Zak says, something called “transportation” has occurred, and the reader is putty in your hands.

Third, you need struggle.

It’s not enough to catch the reader’s attention and then connect her to your hero. You also have to show that this is going to be a difficult thing the hero will be going through. You need stakes and danger and a story of deep struggle. Because even if you have my attention and have connected me to your protagonist, if all he’s going to do is sit around planting petunias, I’m going to get bored double quick.

What is it that makes a novel a best seller? It’s not, I’m sad to say, the proper use of good fiction craftsmanship. Though, I still employ all the techniques of craft I find to be useful in the books I edit and write. Good craft won’t hurt you, for sure.

But what gives a novel the best chance of becoming a best seller is understanding and intentionally using the chemicals and processes going on inside your reader’s brain to keep her engaged from beginning to end. So bring on the danger, the struggle, the compelling character, the unexpected. Then watch your readers beg for more.

Keep in mind those three key elements Gerke mentions that are needed to engage your reader’s brain: catching attention by presenting something that is unexpected, incongruous, or dangerous; connecting your reader to your protagonist; and showing some stakes or struggle (inner and/or outer).

While these are needed in a novel, overall, to draw in and capture your readers, if you can present all three on your first page, then you’re hitting a bull’s-eye!

It Takes Work

Great scenes seem to flow effortlessly from the pages of novels, but that’s far from the truth. To craft a terrific scene, a writer must keep in mind a myriad of principles and objectives.

First pages need to be tight, with concise description, and jump right into dynamic action and hint of conflict. Every word counts, so excess verbiage and unimportant movement and speech must be eliminated.

Readers want to see the scene played out, not be told about it with lengthy narrative and explanation. They don’t want ordinary and predictable. They want their curiosity aroused and their hearts tugged as quickly as possible. They want to latch on to a character who intrigues them and who’s facing challenging circumstances.

Writers are encouraged to open scenes in medias res. That means your character is dropped into the middle of something that’s been developing before the scene starts. It takes careful thought to come up with a strong opening moment in which to showcase your character. That scenario you put her in needs to covey her personality, core need, and immediate goal/objective and problem, as well as establish setting, hint at a bigger conflict (if possible and/or useful to the premise), and perhaps show and describe other characters in the scene.

All that on the first page? It’s a tall order, but great writers can fill it. You’ll note that not every item on the checklist will show up on page one, but great novels will start off with most of them.

Regardless of genre, all novels need to come out the gate with a bang, for readers open to a first page with a sense of anticipation, hoping the author will deliver on the promise of an exciting beginning.

Don’t Expect Readers to Stick Around

Sadly, way too many novels begin slowly, with excessive narrative, summary, backstory, and explanation. While this was a common practice and acceptable decades ago, readers today want to be immediately immersed in the present action. The challenge for novelists is to find ways to bring to life a scene rich with sensory detail and introduce a compelling character (usually the protagonist) that readers will be intrigued by all on the first page.

Remember: you might have the patience to read two or three or ten pages of a novel before it “really gets underway,” but, unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. A whole lot of readers (sorry, including me) will opt to stop reading if the first page doesn’t engage them. Maybe they’ll give a favorite author the benefit of the doubt and read more pages than usual if they’re struggling through a sluggish opening. I’ve even read an entire novel on occasion that I didn’t particularly like just because of my “loyalty” to an author.

I don’t feel like doing that anymore though. My time is too precious to be wasted on reading boring novels.

Whether you’ve never written a novel or you’ve written twenty, that first scene can be tough to write. It’s the start of a ginormous journey, and you can feel a wave of exhaustion and terror at the task before you.

So keep this in mind when crafting your first scene, and particularly your first page. You can always rough it in, come back from time to time and tweak, and then when you’ve finished a strong draft, gulp hard and truly polish that first page. It’s so much easier to infuse that first page with key thematic phrases, motifs, and even lines of dialogue that you know will have powerful impact once you’ve finished writing the entire book.

Learn from the First Pages of Best Sellers

First pages usually make or break a novel. Often whatever weaknesses or flaws are inherent in a novel can be found, already making inroads, on Page 1.

This is why I put together more than twenty first-page analyses I did some years back on Live Write Thrive. So many readers commented to me how helpful they were, so that got me inspired to curate them all and add in more content to help writers learn some very important skills via these first pages. You can study the analysis of these best-seller first pages in my book HERE.

“Having published my first novel, I wish I had this book five years ago. Most inexperienced authors bleed over those first pages; especially the first paragraph, and even the first line. The book really is a ‘must have’ even if they choose to go down a different path in the end. The writer simply cannot go wrong if he or she follows all the excellent advice. There are enough samples using excellent examples to benefit anyone. To repeat myself, this book should be read by any aspiring author, and even the more experienced who might wish to explore the various paths.” –Geneva White

“Over a year ago I gave up writing my book due to feeling stuck and discouraged.  I didn’t know why it wasn’t working until I came across Ms. Lakin’s website, downloaded her resources and read “First Pages of Best Sellers.” Having proven principles inspired me to write again. A friend who is an author, read my new first chapter said it was really good, kept her engaged and a huge improvement over my previous opening. I am grateful I came across such a valuable resource and look forward to purchasing her other books.” –Judi S.

Featured Photo by Nathan McDine on Unsplash