Your First Fifteen Pages

What is the difference between a writer who never finds an agent or sells their manuscript to a publisher and an author who becomes a best seller? The first fifteen pages. If you have been sending out queries and wonder why your manuscript hasn't grabbed the interest of an agent, the answer might be in the first fifteen pages you submitted. Why? Because quite simply, most submissions are missing one or more of the crucial elements of storytelling that capture and hold readers attention. The job, the explicit goal, of those critical first fifteen pages, is to hook agents, editors, and ultimately readers. Those first pages need to grab us if not by the collar, at least by the sleeve and say, "I've got you. Keep reading." If your first fifteen pages don't do that, your manuscript won't make it past an agent's slush pile, and your book will never land in the hands of a reader or brighten the screen of their Kindles. As a literary agent, I've read thousands of queries and thousands of beginning pages. I've learned what makes a submission sing, sending me back to the author's query to find an email so I can ask for more. And, I've learned what causes me, more often than not, to push Send on a "passed with love" email. I loathe having to send those "thanks but no thanks" responses to a writer's work. I don't know any agent who looks forward to the opportunity to gleefully kill the dreams of someone who has spent years toiling away on a book. Fifteen pages may seem an unfairly short or arbitrary number of pages to determine if the writing or the story is worth pursuing. But honestly, by reading the first fifteen pages of a manuscript, I know what I need to know, which is: - If the writing is fresh, beautifully wrought, moving, or exceptional. - What drove the story into being - the inciting incident. - Who the main characters are and what makes them interesting and distinct. - When and where the story is set - the time frame, place or historical period. - The genre - is the story a romance set in Tuscany, a WWII revisionist history, a coming of age LGBTQ, a YA dystopian set in the past, or commercial fiction about life after death? - If the point of view feels right for the story. - If the writer is the only person who has read the manuscript (a dead give away is a manuscript riddled with grammatical errors with big holes in the story.) And, most importantly, we know if it is a story we are passionate about or at least excited enough about after fifteen pages to ask for the full manuscript. If we aren't into your story by page fifteen, our attention wanders, and after that, it is very difficult to get the reader back. I can hear many of you groaning, "My story is special. I need more time to develop my characters to give a backstory to build tension to pile on all the things I learned in writing classes " Actually, you don't. All you need to introduce the essential elements - the who, what, where, when and most importantly the why of your story - are the first fifteen pages. In this book, I back up my reasons for concentrating on the first fifteen pages by sharing examples from the bestselling novels in a variety of genres. You don't have to take my word for it. Read the first two chapters of this book and then pick up your favorite book in your favorite genre. Read the first fifteen pages. See for yourself what drew you to the book and why you kept reading. This book is for beginning writers AND for those who have a pile of thanks but no thanks rejections sitting in their inbox. It is for the novice writer with an inkling of a book idea AND for those who've heard crickets from all the queries they've sent out. It is for those who dream of being on a bestseller list or winning a major book award, AND for those who want to write the best book possible and see where it takes them.

George Orwell set out ‘to make political writing into an art’, and to a wide extent this aim shaped the future of English literature – his descriptions of authoritarian regimes helped to form a new vocabulary that is fundamental to understanding totalitarianism. While 1984 and Animal Farm are amongst the most popular classic novels in the English language, this new series of Orwell’s essays seeks to bring a wider selection of his writing on politics and literature to a new readership. In Why I Write, the first in the Orwell’s Essays series, Orwell describes his journey to becoming a writer, and his movement from writing poems to short stories to the essays, fiction and non-fiction we remember him for. He also discusses what he sees as the ‘four great motives for writing’ – ‘sheer egoism’, ‘aesthetic enthusiasm’, ‘historical impulse’ and ‘political purpose’ – and considers the importance of keeping these in balance. Why I Write is a unique opportunity to look into Orwell’s mind, and it grants the reader an entirely different vantage point from which to consider the rest of the great writer’s oeuvre. 'A writer who can – and must – be rediscovered with every age.' — Irish Times

If he had been with me everything would have been different... I wasn't with Finn on that August night. But I should've been. It was raining, of course. And he and Sylvie were arguing as he drove down the slick road. No one ever says what they were arguing about. Other people think it's not important. They do not know there is another story. The story that lurks between the facts. What they do not know—the cause of the argument—is crucial. So let me tell you...

A startling, wonderful novel about the true meaning of being an alien in an equally alien world."We are specks. Pieces of dust in this universe. Big nothings.""I know what I am."Mal lives on the fringes of high school. Angry. Misunderstood. Yet loving the world -- or, at least, an idea of the world. Then he meets Hooper. Who says he's from another planet. And may be going home very soon.

Wildly original, funny and moving, The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August is an extraordinary story of a life lived again and again from World Fantasy Award-winning author Claire North. Harry August is on his deathbed. Again. No matter what he does or the decisions he makes, when death comes, Harry always returns to where he began, a child with all the knowledge of a life he has already lived a dozen times before. Nothing ever changes. Until now. As Harry nears the end of his eleventh life, a little girl appears at his bedside. "I nearly missed you, Doctor August," she says. "I need to send a message." This is the story of what Harry does next, and what he did before, and how he tries to save a past he cannot change and a future he cannot allow.

Set in the heart of sprawling Los Angeles, Shades of Gray is a depressingly intimate, horrifically kaleidoscopic novel about two roommates-one trying desperately to secure a future she desires, as the other dives into a gluttony of excess to avoid the predictable nine-to-five, post-college adult world he's now an unwilling member of-who become entangled in bizarre episodes of sexual oddity, bankrupt morality, and human frailty, each in the vivid backdrop of a city gripped by a serial of a merciless serial killer. Lindsay, a graduate student and aspiring writer, is in love with her friend Kaspar who may or may not be a murderer, and her roommate Shea, a respected up-and-comer at Industrial Insurance Group, who is gay most of the time, drunk most of the time, high most of the time, and on a constant caroming quest to find his own mystery man, each crossing paths with The Murderer, and each experiencing the darkest side of macabre torment. Shades of Gray, Christopher Szatkowski's third novel, is the spectacular downfall of slightly regular people.

The first novel-writing guide from the best-selling Save the Cat! story-structure series, which reveals the 15 essential plot points needed to make any novel a success. Novelist Jessica Brody presents a comprehensive story-structure guide for novelists that applies the famed Save the Cat! screenwriting methodology to the world of novel writing. Revealing the 15 "beats" (plot points) that comprise a successful story--from the opening image to the finale--this book lays out the Ten Story Genres (Monster in the House; Whydunit; Dude with a Problem) alongside quirky, original insights (Save the Cat; Shard of Glass) to help novelists craft a plot that will captivate--and a novel that will sell.

Winner of the Giller Prize 2015 Winner of the Writers' Trust Fiction Prize 2015 It begins in a bar, like so many strange stories. The gods Hermes and Apollo argue about what would happen if animals had human intelligence, so they make a bet that leads them to grant consciousness and language to a group of dogs staying overnight at a veterinary clinic. Suddenly capable of complex thought, the dogs escape and become a pack. They are torn between those who resist the new ways of thinking, preferring the old 'dog' ways, and those who embrace the change. The gods watch from above as the dogs venture into unfamiliar territory, as they become divided among themselves, as each struggles with new thoughts and feelings. Wily Benjy moves from home to home, Prince becomes a poet, and Majnoun forges a relationship with a kind couple that stops even the Fates in their tracks. Engaging and strange, full of unexpected insights into human and canine minds, this contemporary take on the apologue is the most extraordinary book you'll read this year.