The First Five Pages: A Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection…

‘The First Five Pages’ was written for writers and it does a good job of covering every aspect of writing. This book was written by literary agent and former editor Noah Lukeman as a quick guide to the major aspects of a manuscript that needs to be looked at to help avoid being put into the rejection pile. The book covers topics like;

* A weak opening hook
* Overuse of adjectives and adverbs
* Flat or forced metaphors or similes
* Melodramatic, commonplace or confusing dialogue
* Undeveloped characterizations and lifeless settings
* Uneven pacing and lack of progression

The First Five Pages isn’t about being a better writer, its more about understanding bad writing and becoming a better rewriter or a better editor. This is useful for people that have a manuscript of a draft ready for polishing, but for beginners and people still writing I would recommend starting with ‘On Writing’ by Stephen King. When you are ready to edit, get yourself a copy of ‘The First Five Pages’. ( )

This book is probably the only resource out there that spells out (using egregious examples) all the bad habits your editor keeps scribbling all over your manuscripts that you look at and go "WHAT? What does this MEAN?"

None of these bad habits are unique to writing how-to books. Every book out there (and I've read a lot) TELLS you to eliminate these bad habits. Eliminate unnecessary adverbs. Show don't tell. Blah blah blah... But this is the only book out there that teaches you to SPOT these bad habits in your OWN writing when you know something's a little off, but you can't quite put your finger on it. It's as though a lightbulb goes off in your head. You can then go through your OWN manuscript chapter by chapter and see you've used one 'comparison' too many per page, or know how to reword that clunky spot of dialogue that keeps giving you trouble no matter how many times you rewrite it, or spot when your writing is reading more like a police report rather than prose.

The publishing industry has changed. This may be considered 'writing 101', but if you have ANY bad habits at all, you're going to get rejected because publishers no longer have the resources to have somebody edit your manuscript. You'll just get rejected and never know why. Ranting about the unfairness of it all won't change that fact. Using this book, however, and others like it (Editing for Fiction Writers is another 5-star resource) to self-edit your manuscript before submitting it will increase your competitive edge. ( )

When you try to sell a book to a publisher, one of the things you send them is the first few pages of your manuscript. This book promises a discussion of how best to present your work to a publisher, but what it actually delivers is a detailed discussion of how to write good prose at a low level: the use of parts of speech, "show, don't tell", euphony, and so on. It makes only a brief attempt to deal with higher-level issues such as plot and characterisation, though the author has a book on those subjects too.

This sort of book is useful in its way; heaven knows there are many would-be writers who need a remedial English lesson. But the problems it addresses affect the entire manuscript, not only the first five pages, and there is not enough of an attempt made to deal with the actual pitfalls specific to submission, such as writing the first five pages in a way that will sell the rest of the book. I was disappointed. ( )

" This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. "
- Dorothy Parker

Having been doggedly customer reviewing for over a decade, I've received my fair share of solicitations to review terrible self-published novels.

It takes unquestionable intellectual ability and focus to turn out 200 pages of uninterrupted prose (it is certainly beyond me: I've tried on many occasions and always given up, hence I stick to a length - book reviewing - I can cope with), and frequently these books are imaginative in scope. But from the first page, you just know they're no good, purely from the prose style.

This book is one I would commend to all those authors: it addresses the most common categories of prose misjudgement that amateur writers make. Many of them are eminently correctable. Much boils down to "if in doubt, and frequently, even when not in doubt, leave it out". I have heard this expressed in the aphorism "murder your darlings". Amateur novels tend to be colossally over-written. A confident writer will not need to over-woo his audience, and is secure enough to leave the "world-building" to his reader.

Lukeman does the great service of going, systematically and thoroughly, through the ways you might do weed out overwriting. He supposes (correctly) that you'll already have a manuscript, and that the job is thus one of editing rather that prospective composition.

The first part of this book is first rate on why adverbs and adjectives should *generally* be avoided like the plague. First timers tend to ladle them on. (The need for a modifier implies weakness in the selection of a noun or verb. So choose better nouns and verbs).

His discussion of dialogue, characterisation, and setting - and critically, their interaction with the plot - is also enlightening.

The book does tail off in enthusiasm towards the end (despite discussing it Lukeman hasn't any practical advice for how to deal with pacing or tone, although it's hard to think what such advice might be) and his text is blighted by his own use of obviously made-up, exaggerated examples of "bad" writing: presumably Lukeman has waste-takers full of real examples, and these would ring more truly for his target audience and better emphasise his point.

Nevertheless, this quick book really ought to be a compulsory read for an aspiring novelist, ideally before he seals and addresses his A4 envelopes. ( )

Easy to read tips on how to submit your manuscript as attractively as possible. ( )