The Lure of the First Page
What is it that hooks us into a book?
by Hunter Liguore
One of my favorite activities as both a writer and reader is to go along the bookshelves in a library or bookstore and read the first page. It’s the most intimate way to know the book and the author. It is the promise of the novel and everything rests on it. From a single page, just like a single glance when we meet someone, we can interpret a lot: tone, voice, plot, action/pacing, and ultimately, if there is enough to intrigue us and to turn the page to continue the conversation.
What does it take to grab your attention?
Over time, I’ve realized I don’t need much to continue. There are certainly authors that can hook a reader more immediately than others. But what is it—the secret potion that gets us to turn the page? Is it character, voice, world-building and description? Is it action, a thrill, a mystery you want to see resolved?
In my writing classes, one of my favorite assignments is to bring in a batch of first pages—around fifty—devoid of titles, authors, and credentials. I pool first pages across centuries, countries, genders, genres, and diversities. We read them aloud and I ask them each to jot down a line or two if they would continue reading and why.
Interestingly, just reading the page aloud, you can ‘hear’ which pages are or are not working. It’s usually the ones where the reader speeds up, without missing a beat that are first choices. Clunky pages with difficult words (like in a speculative world), or lots of description, often slow the reading—and if it feels like ‘nothing’s happening,’ they’re usually the ones abandoned. Every once and a while a first page that is beautifully descriptive, presents a mystery, and a character to follow will merge together and raise a lot of hands.
The first page that comes to mind is Elizabeth Kosovo’s
The Historian.
Always a fan favourite.
I’m always intrigued by the first pages that resonate most with my students; it’s a pool of information for the craft of writing. The truth is, what resonates with one reader, doesn’t always with another. That’s the secret. And as a writer, the key is to craft the opening you like, in order to connect with the readers who will most thrive reading your work.
In many ways, the opening page is your elevator pitch to a potential reader. You have one shot at impressing them. Author, Brendan Dyer, explained it this way: “The first page is the evolving hinge of any story on which each following page depends. It's where readers gain their first impression and from which they build context and perception for the rest of the story.”
Take a moment to open a book of a beloved novel and ask the following questions:
1. What do you connect with?
2. How much information are you given and need to read on?
3. Where are you stumbling with—or what’s missing?
4. If you had to pick just one element you liked, to keep going, what is it?
5. Would you read on? Why?
Let’s try this exercise together. I have here L. Frank Baum’s The Life and Adventure of Santa Claus. Opening to page one, I begin to read. The first sentence offers a question and what follows is a wonderful description of the magical world, one that civilization hasn’t touched. My answers to the above questions follows, (write yours in):
1. What do you connect with?
I absolutely connect with the magic and wonder of the natural world—a place that hasn’t been touched by civilization.
2. How much information are you given and need to read on?
We have an unnamed narrator and Nurse, and mostly just the particulars of the woods that entice enough to want to see this place and visit it.
3. Where are you stumbling with—or what’s missing?
I did stumble on ‘Nurse.’ Perhaps just because the meaning has changed. My first inclination was to see this as a ‘medical’ nurse, as opposed to one taking care of small children.
4. If you had to pick just one element you liked, to keep going, what is it?
Wonderment—Baum has created a world in a paragraph and to see it come alive with magic/fantasy is the start of a great adventure.
5. Would you read on? Why?
Yes, to see all the creatures that are in the Forest of Burzee.
First pages can be a writer’s greatest asset or their worst enemy. The key is to be willing to go back and revise the first page often, as your story changes. When we begin a novel, we often feel page one is set in stone, but it can and should change. Test your page—give it to many different types of readers and see if they would continue, why or why not? Then make adjustments.
Whether you like fast starts or slow ones, or those that are filled with dialogue or descriptions, the first page is the beginning step on a new journey!
- What’s your favorite first page from a novel? Share below.
Meet this week’s writer: Hunter Liguore
...is a writer, teacher, and uketamo photographer. Her children’s book, The Whole World in Nan’s Soup,” is available from YeeHoo Press.
& Instagram @happylondonpress
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