Fabulous First Page
This satirical psychological thriller captivates from page 1
Hello! Welcome to another Fabulous First Page post.
In my first Fabulous First Page post, I talk about why the first page is perhaps the most important page in your entire book. I also list what a good first page should do.
A first page should:
Hook the reader right away and invite them into the story.
Set the scene and overall tone of the novel.
Introduce a main character (and/or introduce a main setting or theme).
Hint at a conflict, situation, mystery/secret, or question.
This first page I’m about to reveal doesn’t do all of these things (I doubt any first page does). It doesn’t, for example, set us immediately in a scene. I often tell writing students to begin with a character doing something in a scene so the reader has something to picture in their mind. This first page doesn’t do that. We don’t get an actual place setting until the very end (and technically it’s not even on page 1… I included some of page 2 in the excerpt below).
But what we do get is the tone of the novel as well as a hint (well, more than just a hint) at the conflict/situation.
And even though the main character is telling us a lot about a character who is going to die in Chapter 1, the way she describes the soon-to-be-dead character says a lot about her — her priorities and obsessions. And yes, she is telling (not showing), but the way she’s telling — using a direct and intimate tone — is captivating.
The first sentence of this page… it almost feels like cheating to start with such a dramatic and attention-grabbing sentence. But it works, doesn’t it? It hooks us.
As I’ve said before, your top priority is hooking the readers. If you don’t grab the reader’s attention right away, they won’t flip to page 2. This first page hooks us with a shocking first sentence then invites us into the story with its intimate and confessional tone. The narrator is talking directly to us. She is divulging her secret, catty thoughts; she is drawing us into her inner world of young, ambitious writers. She is going to tell us how this other character died, and all the events that happened after.
So, without further ado, let’s read this fabulous first page:
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