How to Hook a Reader on the First Page
By: Holly Lyn Walrath
Tags: Novel, Writer, Writing, Writing Tips, Short Story

A first chapter is a promise between a book and the reader. — Eric Smith, agent, P.S. Literary

When you’re sending your work out to agents and editors, either as a novel or short story, it can feel like a kind of mercurial process. Sometimes it even feels like you’re sending your work into a void. Will they respond? Will they like it? Will they hate it? You’ve put a lot of work into the thing you’re sending out. How can you know how it will be received?

That’s the writer’s perspective. But from the perspective of an agent or editor, the major factor is time. People involved in publishing are always overtaxed, probably underpaid, and generally busy people. One of the reasons I always encourage writers to spend some time volunteering for a magazine or journal as a slush reader is that you get to see what it’s like fielding hundreds of submissions at once. It’s a lot of work. In the latest Interstellar Flight Press call for novellas, we received close to 200 submissions (180 to be exact.) That’s a lot of submissions to read through! I’ve heard of agents who get 100+ queries a day.

Agents and editors are looking for submissions that quickly set themselves apart. The stand-out submissions are fairly easy to locate. While all of slushing is somewhat subjective (as far as taste goes, we all have different loves and hates), I’ve noticed that there are a couple of things that are distinguishable between the stories I loved from a slush pile and the ones I passed over quickly.

So how do you stand out from the crowd as a writer?

The key is in what is commonly called the “First Page Promise.” It’s the idea that you need to tell the reader what to expect from your book on the first page. Yes, the first page, not the second or third or fifteenth.

There are four elements that have to be on the first page, in my humble opinion, in order for the reader to know what kind of adventure they’re about to embark on:

Artwork by Edward Carey

1. Character

Whose story is this? Readers want to know the main character right away. Preferably by name. But how much can you really inject about a character on the first page alone? Well, the answer is a lot. Here’s some examples:

Chapter One: A Universal Bath Plug Beginning the narrative of Clod Iremonger, Forlichingham Park, London How It Started It all really began, all the terrible business that followed, on the day my Aunt Rosamud’s door handle went missing. It was my aunt’s particular door handle, a brass one. It did not help that she had been all over the mansion the day before with it, looking for things to complain about as was her habit. She had stalked through every floor, she had been up and down staircases, opening doors at every opportunity, finding fault. And during all her thorough investigations, she insisted that her door handle was about her, only now it was not. Someone, she screamed, had taken it. (from Heap House by Edward Carey)

In this example, we are literally told on the first page who the main character of the book is, Clod Iremonger. Carey uses a subtitle under the chapter header to establish the name of the character. We also learn that Clod is younger (you can get that vibe from his voice) and that he lives in London. This very short passage on the first page tells us a lot about Clod and his worries.

Once in a kingdom called Delain, there was a King with two sons. Delain was a very old kingdom and it had had hundreds of Kings, perhaps even thousands; when time goes on long enough, not even historians can remember everything. Roland the Good was neither the best nor the worst King to ever rule the land. He tried very hard not to do anyone great evil and mostly succeeded. He also tried very hard to do great works, but unfortunately, he didn’t suceed so well at that. The result was a very mediocre King; he doubted if he would be remembered long after he was dead. And his death might come at any time now, because he had grown old, and his heart was failing. He had perhaps one year left, perhaps three. Everyone who knew him, and everyone who observed his gray face and shaking hands when he held court, agreed that in five years at the very most a new King would be crowned in the great plaza at the foot of the Needle . . . and it would only be five years with God’s grace. So everyone in the Kingdom, from the richest baron and the most foppishly dressed courtier to the poorest serf and his ragged wife, thought and talked about the King in waiting, Roland’s elder son, Peter. And one man thought and planned and brooded on something else: how to make sure that Roland’s younger son, Thomas, should be crowned King instead. This man was Flagg, the King’s magician. (from The Eyes of the Dragon by Stephen King)

This example introduces us to several main characters at once. The story of The Eyes of the Dragon ultimately revolves around Thomas, the reluctant King, but his father Roland, his brother Peter, and Flagg the magician are all also major players in the story. This example also does a great job of telling us that we have a narrator (the third person ‘historian’ voice) and setting up the fairy-tale-like voice of the story. In both Heap House and The Eyes of the Dragon, speculative elements appear on the first page, which leads us to . . .