4 Mistakes that Doom the First Page of Your Manuscript

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Your novel’s first page is the last chance you get to hook your reader.

Writing your first page might be one of the scariest moments in writing a novel. So much is riding on it, and that’s a lot of pressure to deal with while you’re trying to craft the perfect opening line, or find the right voice for the story.

First off, relax.

Yes, the first page is important, but you don’t have to get it right on a first draft, or any draft until the final draft. You have plenty of time to craft a first page that will wow readers, agents, and editors. Many writers don’t even know what the right first page is until they’re written the end of the book.

But don’t ignore it either, because first pages really are as critical as everyone says. No matter how awesome the idea for a novel sounds, if you read that first page and it’s a total dud—you don’t read on. And if a reader is peeking into your novel to see if it hooks them, and it doesn’t, bye-bye sale.

The first page of your novel often determines if a reader is going to give your book a chance. 

If that page doesn’t give a good impression, you’ve wasted an opportunity to earn a reader. Maybe you’ve confused them, or dumped in too many names to keep track of, maybe it’s all told and not shown, or it’s nothing but backstory. It might even be trying too hard to shove as much action onto the page as possible, leaving the reader behind in the chaos.

Let's look at four common first-page killers. Agent Kristin Nelson said 90% of submissions don't get beyond the first two pages for these reasons.

1. You tell readers all about the cool stuff you worked so hard to create.

If your opening pages are nothing but backstory and explanation, you aren’t giving readers a story—you’re lecturing them from your notes about the novel. Don’t fall prey to the urge to explain and share everything you know about these characters, world, and story on the first page.

Luckily, this is an easy fix—cut out the backstory and explanation. "But the reader needs to know that to get the story!" you say? No, they really don't. Until they care about what's happening, they don't care about the history of the people it's happening to.

(Here’s more on 4 Reasons Over-Explaining Will Kill Your Novel)

2. You pick one direction and go full tilt into it.

Opening pages that only do one thing—such as show action, but no character development or any other components that are essential to strong writing—tend to fall flat, because they don’t show a character with a problem. It’s all about setting a mood, or establishing a setting, or creating drama, but without the story aspect to make readers care. All those elements matter, but don’t make the first page one of those elements and nothing else.

This is why "action" scenes often fail. Action (in the movie-action sense) is pretty much a bunch of description. Stuff is going on, but there's no story yet because there's no character with a goal who's in trouble. If your opening is a lot of this kind of action, add in why the action matters and give readers a character with a clear problem they can care about and connect with. If there's no action, then give your character something to do that could go wrong or cause a problem at any moment.

(Here’s more on Why "Start With the Action" Messes Up So Many Writers)

3. You ignore those pesky “grammar rules.”

Problems with sentence structure, misuse or overuse of description, and basic grammar gaffes on the first page peg you as “not ready for publication” no matter how good the idea might be. Publishing is a business, and your book is a product. Readers, as well as agents and editors, expect you to know how to write.

If you haven't developed your writing skills yet, dig in and learn your craft. You might be a great author in the making, but authors need to know how to write at a professional level to make it in this biz. Don't ruin your chances by trying to publish before you're ready.

(Here’s more on Grammar and You: What You Need to Know to Write)

4. You use a bait and switch on your readers.

In an effort to hook readers, you write a prologue (or chapter one) that sets up a faux conflict that has very little connection to actual novel. The tone is different, the characters change, the plot isn’t at all what that opening promised. The goal was to hook readers by any means necessary, not open the novel with a compelling first page of a great story. Often, this includes a fast forward to an "exciting" scene later in the book.

"What if I start with something cool to hook the reader, then go back to my story?" you say. This isn't as effective as you'd think (usually for reason #2). Readers bought your book because they liked what they saw in the opening pages. If you lie to them, or trick them and change the book on them, there's a good chance you'll just piss them off. They might finish the book because they bought it, but the odds of them picking up another of your books, or recommending you to their friends is low.

Start with the story. Have enough faith in that story to trust it can stand on its own (and if it can't, make it so it can) and hook a reader. It takes just as much effort to fake an "exciting" opening as it does to fix a real opening. And since a fake opening is bound to be flat anyway, and only seem exciting to someone who already knows the story, it's often a wasted effort.

(Here’s more on The Problem With Flash Forwards as an Opening Scene)

Now that I’ve covered the mistakes, let’s look at an opening page that did work, and attracted an agent and sold for six figures to an editor from HarperCollins.

The teen fantasy novel, The Shifter, which was my debut novel back in 2009.

This opening didn't change much from first draft to final published novel. You'll notice there is zero backstory or explanation. More than one thing is going on and it dives right into a problem with no tricks and no prologue to set it up. Something is happening, things are going wrong, but there's no actual "action" until right at the end. Most of this opening is internalization from the protagonist.

What it does most, is give readers a character they can like, connect with, and hopefully care about enough to stick with the story to see what happens next.

Here are the first 250 (okay, 264) words of The Shifter:

Stealing eggs is a lot harder than stealing the whole chicken. With chickens, you just grab a hen, stuff her in a sack and make your escape. But for eggs, you have to stick your hand under a sleeping chicken. Chickens don’t like this. They wake all spooked and start pecking holes in your arm, or your face, if it’s close. And they squawk something terrible. Right away something is happening. A girl is stealing eggs, and there's a risk if the chicken wakes and starts pecking and fussing. This seems like a minor stake, but for someone committing a robbery, anything that calls attention to that can get them in a lot of trouble. Readers also aren't asking for the world to end on page one. Give them a hint of risk, and they're happy to see where it goes. Just provide a sense that the story is going somewhere.

The trick is to wake the chicken first, then go for the eggs. I’m embarrassed to say how long it took me to figure this out. She's self-deprecating here, which hopefully makes her likable. You also might be wondering why she's stealing eggs and not the whole chicken. You might even be curious what happened those other times before she learned this trick. All good things to make you want to read on.

“Good morning little hen,” I sang softly. The chicken blinked awake and cocked her head at me. She didn’t get to squawking, just flapped her wings a bit as I lifted her off the nest, and she’d settle down once I tucked her under my arm. I’d overheard that trick from a couple of boys I’d unloaded fish with last week. Adding in the unloading fish detail gives a sense that the protagonist doesn't always steal, which should increase curiosity about why she's stealing now. It's also something she overheard, not was told, which should give a small insight into her character. She wasn't friends or coworkers with these boys, she was just there with them. How might a girl find herself in that situation? 

Interesting detail: Since this was published as upper middle grade, in the printed version, this is where the first page actually ends—right after wings. So depending on how the book is laid out, your "first page" might be fewer than 250 words.

A voice came from beside me. “Don’t move.” Now things have gone wrong. This is 161 words into the book and already I've thrown Nya into trouble. If I've done my job well, you already like my egg-stealing protagonist and are worried about her getting away. Do you care about where she grew up? Is not knowing her past interfering at all with what's going on in this scene and keeping you from enjoying it? Do you care about her past in any other way than maybe how she came to be stealing eggs this night? Probably not.

Two words I didn’t want to hear with someone else’s chicken under my arm. Again, more humor and a sense of who this girl is. I need you to like her so you want to read about her, and getting to know her a little is a great way to do that.

I froze. The chicken didn’t. Her scaly feet flailed toward the eggs that should have been my breakfast. Now we finally get some motivation, small as it is. She's there to steal eggs for breakfast. But I don't go into why she has to steal. I don't explain how she's an orphan living on the streets, that her parents were killed in a civil war. I don't even mention that she has a magical ability yet, because none of that matters right now. It's all about making readers like her enough to care about a situation that's about to go wrong. 

I looked up at a cute night guard not much older than me, perhaps sixteen. The night was more humid than usual, but a slight breeze blew his sand-pale hair. A soldier’s cut, but a month or two grown out. Here I provide a little description, and you'll notice that aside from a word here and there (like scaly feet and said softly) it's the first time I describe anything. I didn't describe the setting, didn't do any setup. I waited until I (hopefully) had the reader hooked with my protagonist's problem. But this boy is important and she needs to notice him. It's also a way to show more about her by what she notices about this boy.

Stay calm, stay alert. As Grannyma used to say, if you’re caught with the cake, you might as well offer them a piece. Not sure how that applied to chickens though. And here she immediately has a plan (such as it is). She's acting, not being passive and waiting for other characters to do something. The story is moving ahead, even if those moves are small and subtle. There's no "big action" here, but things are happening. You can probably make a few assumptions about Nya and her situation; you feel you know her a little and might even get a sense of the world she's living in. All in 264 words.

Is this opening page perfect? Of course not. But it does its job and establishes an interesting character, facing an interesting problem, in an interesting way, which is all a first page needs to do. We don’t need to pack an entire novel’s worth of story on page one, we just need to provide enough to encourage readers to turn to page two.

Don't waste those 250 chances. Use them to show how good a writer you really are.

Openings are vital to getting someone to read your book. Your job as an author is to give readers a book they can lose themselves in, and that means a great opening that hooks readers right away.

EXERCISE FOR YOU: Take five minutes and examine the first page of your novel. Are you making any of these mistakes? If so, brainstorm ways to rework your opening.

What are some of your favorite opening pages? Why do you like them?

*Originally published September 2010. Last updated February 2021.

For more help on plotting or writing a novel check out my Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure.

Go step-by-step through plotting and writing a novel. Learn how to find and develop ideas, brainstorm stories from that first spark of inspiration, develop the right characters, setting, plots and subplots, as well as teach you how to identify where your novel fits in the market, and if your idea has what it takes to be a series.

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Plotting Your Novel: Ideas and Structure is an easy-to-follow guide to writing your novel or fixing a novel that isn’t quite working. 

Available in paperback and ebook formats.

Janice Hardy is the award-winning author of the teen fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, including The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book.

She also writes the Grace Harper urban fantasy series for adults under the name, J.T. Hardy.

When she's not writing novels, she's teaching other writers how to improve their craft. She's the founder of Fiction University and has written multiple books on writing.

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