: Re: Is the first page of a novel really that important? I am reading in a few blogs like this that the first page of the novel is really important if it has to get published. Is this true?

@Murray831

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I look at the first sentence as the "airport giftshop hook". If someone's got 5 minutes to kill before their flight, and wants to find an interesting read, how much of a hook is your first sentence (and perhaps then the rest of that first page afterwards)? Does it intrigue the reader, and make them want to read more?

Its perhaps a cheap trick, but its done so much that I've started to keep track of the better ones.

My current personal favorite is Jim Butcher's Ghost Story, which starts with:

Life is hard. Dying's easy.

WTH? 5 more (fairly philosophical) paragraphs pass

I died in the water.

Wait, what? This a huge thick book! What's it about, if the narrator's dead on page one? Well... that's the end of page one, so I have to turn to page two to find out...

Now you see what this diabolical writer has done? Its time to go board my flight now, I want to read page two, so I gotta now put this book back and perhaps never know, or pay for it so I can satisfy my curiosity.

Now you may say (heck you did say) that the chronological start of your story isn't a great section for a hook. Perhaps that can be worked around, but even if it can't, who says you have to open with the chronological beginning of the tale? Since I started keeping track of opening hooks, I've found it quite common for the hook to describe events further on, and then the author will rewind a bit to properly start the story.

Open up 10 or 20 of your favorite fiction works and pay attention to how they start, and you should begin to see how experienced professional writers handle this. Particularly genre fiction writers, who tend to be great at it.

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