Getting the First 50 Pages Right
by: Ronovan
“Include the first 50 pages of your manuscript with your query.”
Does that sound familiar? If you’ve queried your book to an agent or publisher then your answer should be yes. It might be even worse than 50 pages. How about that cringing first 10 pages only one?
You don’t have long to hook an agent or publisher and to be absolutely truthful this is if you get past the query letter. Sometimes if your letter doesn’t speak to them they won’t even bother. But I’ve read of several agents who read regardless because it’s not the letter that they are going to sell to a publisher or the public.
What do you need in those first pages to make the person you have queried say send me more?
You need three things, regardless of genre:
- I want to know what is the important goal in this book that makes me want to read it
- I want to know what will happen if the protagonist doesn’t succeed, what’s on the line
- I need to know there a time limit to the situation
Goal
In a novel the goal might be an internal issue but is usually something outside beyond the control of the protagonist.
One of my novels has a goal of saving someone from being murdered. He knows when it will happen, and he knows a handful of people that it could happen to. So what’s the problem, getting people to believe him. The difficult part of it is, since he knows all of the victims so far things are a bit tough on him to get people to listen.
What if?
Now you have the what if the protagonist doesn’t succeed aspect. For my novel it means someone will die. In this case it will be someone he knows. Here we have two what if’s; 1) someone dies, 2) the protagonist will be one step closer to jail because he knew the person and even told people the person might be murdered.
Time’s Up
If there is no sense of urgency then a reader may get bored. In the case of my novel, if a murder could just happen any time then a reader wouldn’t be looking for it. Each murder happens at a full moon or a new moon. This gives the reader and the protagonist time to sweat it out trying to find the killer before that reminder in the sky goes off.
Can you fit all of that in 50 pages, or even 10? Yes you can. You have to do the tough things though.
- Cut the scenes that don’t advance the story
- Don’t spend a lot of time on a character that won’t be relevant to the story
- Don’t give a lot of character analysis or overly describe a setting, let the story and dialogue SHOW the reader who the people are
These are tried and true tips. But they are also more difficult than you think. If it were easy everyone would get signed. Great stories, great novels are sitting in stacks of paper in desk drawers all over the world. This isn’t a new concept. People like to say that the modern age of ease of instant gratification has changed how readers pick books to read, but the truth is that if a person is looking at a book to read they are knowingly planning on investing time to it.
Goal-What If-Time’s Up
© Copyright-All rights reserved-RonovanWrites.wordpress.com-June 12, 2014.
ronovanwrites 