No matter what path you take to publishing, there’s nothing more important than your first page. 

If you seek a traditional path, the beginning of the book is the only thing most agents will look at before deciding to read your whole manuscript. If you pursue independent publishing, your first pages can make a big impression on readers who are skeptical of books that don’t come from big-name publishers. 

There’s a lot of advice out there on how to get your first page to shine. A lot of it gets a bad reputation for being overly prescriptive, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true. 

Start at the Beginning

You might think that your story should start with a lot of background about your setting, your characters, and, if you’re a fantasy or science-fiction writer, the world in which your story exists. However, it’s much more compelling for your readers if you simply start at the beginning of the story. 

But where’s the beginning? 

Try asking yourself what your protagonist wants. If you’re writing a story about a human colonist in a far-off galaxy who wishes to leave their desolate planet and see the universe, the first thing they do might be taking a test to gain entrance into the elite military force who embark on space travel. 

You might think your story needs to start before the intergalactic entrance exam, when your character’s mother contracts a rare disease and we learn that the only way to save her is to retrieve the cure from a major space station. But even in that case, your reader is stuck in a holding pattern, waiting for the plot to actually get going. Your “just OK” beginning could be pushed up to “really strong” if your protagonist flashes back to happy memories of her healthy mom to motivate herself. 

Word Economy

The beginning of your book is all about efficiency; you have to introduce everything about your story and convince your reader to invest in it all at once. That’s why it’s OK to have a lengthy flashback scene later on in your novel but not on the first page. 

Consider what the reader absolutely needs to know for that action sequence to make sense. To go back to the example of the science-fiction adventure story, your reader doesn’t necessarily need to know on the first page what color the protagonist’s hair is. They do, however, need to know if your protagonist has always had trouble with her eyesight and is now being asked to complete a complex target shooting test with a laser gun. 

The first page is not the place to get too deep in your world-building, either. It’s important for your reader to know that very few humans are actually able to travel in space, but they don’t yet need to know why. Maybe your protagonist is fascinated by the sight of the military spaceship because she’s never seen one before, or maybe there is an alien species present that she’s never encountered. Those little pieces will communicate to your reader that the stakes of the entrance exam are high; if she doesn’t pass, there’s no way to get off the planet.

Write Like a Reader

It’s normal that your impulse to stuff all kinds of heavy world-building, character description, and background information into your first page comes from being thoughtful of the reader. You don’t want them to be confused, or bored, or, perhaps worst of all, to think that you haven’t put much imagination into your story. When considering your favorite books, you likely think about all the little details you loved, all the bits of lore or character history that made the story so special. 

Instead of just thinking about your favorite books, go find a copy and read the first page. Write down a list of what is communicated to the reader on that first page. You’ll likely only know a few details but a lot about what is going on in that exact moment. That’s what brings in a new reader and convinces them to follow your story into the deeper information—that immediacy of action that makes them feel as if they are part of the story before they know absolutely everything about what’s going on.

In your science-fiction story, the detailed politics of why remote colonies do not have proper medical supplies to cure your protagonist’s sick mother will be just as fascinating as you want, but a reader first needs to be pulled in by the immediacy of making the cut and getting a spot in the space military. 

Take Yourself Seriously 

A harsh, but true, piece of writing advice that is especially relevant to refining your first page is that strangers don’t care about how much of a genius you are; you have to prove to them why they should spend their precious time reading your book, just like everyone else on the shelf. While it’s good to keep your ego in check, that’s not the kind of thought that spurs creativity. 

Instead, think of your first page like leaving a trail of crumbs. What’s a tiny tidbit that will catch the reader’s attention and make them hunt for the next piece? Make each piece a little bigger, then a little bigger, and then you’ll have a reader who is deeply invested in any details about your story they can get. 

Chelsea Ennen is a writer living in Brooklyn with her husband and her dog. When not writing or reading, she is a fiber and textile artist who sews, knits, crochets, weaves, and spins.