In a guest post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Tiffany Yates Martin says writers need to focus on captivating first pages, not only first lines. “First lines are greatly overrated,” she says. “Worry less about creating a first sentence that will shock and awe, and worry more about drawing them into the story one link of the chain at a time.”
There’s lots of advice on creating stunning first lines, but most readers and editors are willing to take a slightly slower path into your story. You need to hook them early, but not in the first 15 words. “Even if you manage to nail a killer lead sentence, a great first line or page doesn’t make up for other deficiencies,” Yates Martin notes. In fact, some great opening lines are followed by hundreds of pages of painful prose. “A perfect first line isn’t going to help you appeal to industry pros or readers any more than Cinderella’s rotten stepsisters were able to fool the prince beyond their surface-level beauty.”
Instead, focus on your first paragraphs, which should:
- Introduce a character who interests and attracts the reader
- Create a question or uncertainty readers want addressed
- Create some sense of tension that readers want resolved
- Offer an appealing voice the reader wants to spend more time with
Why reduce the focus on the first line? Because readers don’t care about your story until they care about your characters. In your first pages, you introduce your character and promise your reader that the coming events are meaningful and relevant.
Yates Martin also identifies some mistakes to avoid:
- Too much vagueness. “Uncertainty and questions in a reader’s mind are solid devices for snagging their interest—but you must offer enough detail to plant our feet and give us some idea why it matters,” she writes. “Balance offering enough of the picture to orient readers to the situation and the character while holding back a key puzzle piece or two.”
- Action or conflict without character. You might be tempted to start you novel with an exciting action scene, but if your readers don’t care about your characters, you might not take them far.
- Character info dump. “Readers don’t need the full CV of your character(s) in the opening scene; we just need some reason to want to know more,” Yates Martin says.
- Unclear perspective. Readers need to understand who is telling the story, whether that is your first person character, an omniscient narrator, or uninvolved storyteller.
