Something has really stood out to me over the past week as I’ve read manuscripts sent in by prospective authors. Those first few pages are probably the most important pages of your entire novel.

Don’t get me wrong–every other aspect is also important. You need a strong middle and ending to make a novel a good piece of fiction, but those first few pages are probably the the most vital part of anything you write if you want to get published.

We were told in a meeting this week that if you get through the first ten pages and it’s not promising, move on to the next manuscript. That may seem a little extreme, but I can tell you that, that is incredibly generous. You can tell so much about a story by its first ten pages, especially when reading the work of inexperienced authors.

That said, I have a hard time limiting myself in that way. I usually wait until about one third of a way through a manuscript before shelving it. Even authors that write terrible beginnings can have good ideas, and I like to get an idea of what the plot is and where it is going before I make a decision. But there are others, lots of others, that don’t. And I understand why–99 times out of 100 if the beginning is bad, the rest is bad too.

And so my advice to you. Make those first ten pages just absolutely stunning. Everything else should be good too. But an acquisitions reader or literary agent is going to base a lot of assumptions off the very beginning. Make it count.

With this in mind I’ve turned back to part 1 of Penumbra, rereading sections of it as I work on part 2. And, whoo, let me tell you. I want to start making changes now. But I’m going to wait for my test readers’ feedback. I’ve intentionally front loaded a lot of information, meaning I’ve added far more detail that I want or need in many places. For my second rewrite I’ll go through and take most of that out–this draft is to make sure everything is going the right direction. Think of it like building muscle. It’s much easier to do when trimming fat than it is when trying to just put on weight. Right now part 1 is very flabby and I’m excited about getting to the point where I can make it lean…

I’ve been listening to Without Remorse by Tom Clancy for the past few weeks. Growing up I read a handful of Clancy novels but they’re a lot more fun now that I’m older. It’s interesting comparing them to lots of literature published today, I’m not certain how successful Clancy would have been publishing in today’s environment. He’s definitely got immense talent, but my guess is that many readers today would find his style a little dry. For example, Patriot Games was the first Clancy novel I read in high school–and I really enjoyed it. But there is a very long section in the middle in which the plot progresses very slowly. It ends with a fantastic conclusion so I can forgive the novel for it’s laggy middle… I’m just not sure how it would measure up with modern readers. It’s a slow burn, but Clancy knows how to write a climax so it almost always feels worth it.