The First 50 Pages: Engage Agents, Editors and Readers, and Set Your Novel Up For Success

While I sometimes found the tone a little snarky, this book is very useful. It is essentially everything you will need to know about starting a novel in order to give it more potential to spring free of the slush pile. Of course that doesn't mean if you read this book you will write a brilliant novel, you still need to be able to tell a good story, but this will help you structure it. It made me think about my own writing and made clear to me some of the things I was doing poorly. An eye opener that really makes sense.

So this is a book that focuses on the beginning of your novel. I don’t have any hard evidence, but it does seem like that’s a keystone in getting published. I’ve never heard of slushkillers starting at a random point in the manuscript for the yay-or-nay vote.

I’d say this is a useful book. The amount read per item of information learned ratio wasn’t great–lots of writing books talk about beginnings at length–but there are some key things to know. And as usual, grains of salt are recommended as a side dish. Because if you do come up with something that ticks all the boxes of a good first 13,000 words, it’s going to be… pretty boring, I imagine. I’m rather fortunate in that I usually know how a book should begin. show more Whether that’s the way editors/agents want it, whether it’s the best way or most attractive way, not so sure.

It’s not a slog to read at least. It’s enjoyable and not too long. There is padding, like “why you should want the beginning to be great” and “the do nots of beginnings” that don’t help you to actually do. If you condensed it to the actual helpful content, it would be as big as a pamphlet. Of course, that’s true of any book. So yeah, I’d say writers should pick this up. I don’t know if it’ll increase your chances of being published, but it couldn’t hurt. show less

An easy read with great material for novelists whom have either looking to revise a completed draft, or for those whom are starting. I wish I would have read this before I finished my first draft. It would have saved time rewriting. On the other hand, I wouldn't have had as much appreciation for the Jeff Gerke's insights.

A few of the things that set this book apart from other author self-help books is that it:
1. Focuses on crafting your novel for the market, both the reader and the editor/agent.
2. Helps streamline the plot and character introductions early according to most reader's expectations.
3. It is NOT a formula book, although it does give broad suggestions on when readers and editors expect certain things to happen in a show more novel.

THE FIRST 50 PAGES is an easy read, and it's one of my top 10 books to recommend to authors no matter what their genre. show less

Great How to book. To read my full review go to www.virginiagruver.com