You don’t have hundreds of pages to persuade an agent or a publisher that your work is worth publishing.  More like five.  Since agents and publisher’s assistants and editors receive hundreds of proposals every week, time is not on your side.  Your story has to be interesting immediately.  If it feels like the story’s going nowhere, the reader will toss your manuscript and move on to the next.

To help you write sharper and more compelling openings, I’m starting a writing contest that will end on July 31.  Both novelists and comic book writers can participate as many times as they’d like.  If you’re interested, please post the following below…

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Generally, a book has only 5-20 pages (depending on audience age and genre) to establish three critical elements.

1. The status quo of the main character.  What is this character like before everything goes wrong?  In the Lord of the Rings, for example, Frodo celebrates Bilbo’s birthday before being called upon to save the world.  In Superhero Nation, Gary is a workaholic accountant.
2. The inciting event.  What throws the character off his status quo?  Usually, this is the point at which everything starts to go wrong.  For example, in Superhero Nation, Gary narrowly survives a car-bombing very early on.  This forces several changes on him:  first, he is transferred away from his job for his safety.  So he’s completely out of his social comfort zone.  Second, assassins are now trying to kill him.
3. A goal for the main character.  This is usually a response to the inciting event.  This can be as simple as “I want everything to return to normal.”   Gary wants to rebuild his life by getting a job somewhere and he wants to survive the assassins.  This brings him to the superpowered Office of Special Investigations.  Wacky hijinks ensue!  (Buy the book when it finally gets published, heh heh).

A lot of manuscripts get bogged down in details that are typically too far removed from these three goals.

1. Prologues.  They usually lack immediacy and, far too often, they just skip the main character entirely.  Ick.  The main character is almost always the best available way to hook readers into your story.
2. Backstory.  Typically, it doesn’t really matter what your character was doing 5 or 10 years ago.  Readers want to know what’s happening now.  If you are literally unable to start the story without explaining what happened 5 or 10 years ago, you may wish to reevaluate the starting point for your story.  Ahem.  “If your backstory is more interesting than your current era, you’re writing the wrong story.“  If you have to introduce backstory, try to keep it to a bare minimum. Tell us only what we need to understand what is going on now.
   
3. Side-characters.  If the side-characters are the best hook to your story, there’s probably something wrong with the main character and/or the plot.  For example, if a fantasy novel wants to show us the parents of the hero right before he is born, that will trap us in backstory.  Furthermore, will readers care about the hero’s parents?  Probably not.  If they were the most interesting characters in this book, they would be the leads.  Harry Potter #1 was very well-written, but it made a questionable choice to start the book when Harry was an infant.  It was a very slow beginning.
4. Elaborate settings.  Typically, the main character is a better hook into the story than the world is.  A strong character can be relatable and likable, mostly unlike a strong world.  Try to limit the setting at the very beginning to just what we need to understand the main character and the plot.

I originally wrote this article for novelists, but it’s largely true for comic-book writers as well.  The main difference is that a comic-book writer has even fewer pages to establish the status quo.  What is your Peter Parker like before he becomes Spiderman?  If your character has a particularly interesting origin story, I’d recommend giving the status quo no more than half an issue (12 or 16 pages, probably).  But readers tend to appreciate introductions that are much shorter. A good establishing shot is typically sufficient and lets you get to the interesting stuff faster. (I love alternate identities as much as anyone, but usually the superhero identity is more gripping.  Would you want to read a comic called The Amazing Peter Parker or Clark Kent/Bruce Wayne?)

In a comic that probably ranges from 24-32 pages, you really need to get to the inciting event (probably the radioactive spider-bite or however else your hero got his powers) as soon as possible.  In a superhero story, I’d recommend giving the hero his powers early enough in the first issue that you can introduce his goal.  Ideally you can conclude the first issue with a fight.

Please don’t open your novel with any of these.

1. The main character introduces himself to the reader (“Hi, my name is ____, but you can call me ____.”) Isn’t there anything more interesting you can tell us about the character than his name?  If not, you should probably get back to the drawing board.  This type of opening is also annoying because it’s usually the only part of the book that’s addressed to the reader.
2. The main character wakes up and does his morning routine. Instead of showing your character waking up, getting dressed and then having breakfast, why not skip to the interesting part?  Furthermore, virtually everyone eats breakfast and gets dressed.  Please show us something distinct about the character.
3. The main character is immediately plunged into danger. OK, so the hero is getting shot at.  Why should we care?  We aren’t emotionally invested in him.  Please introduce the character before throwing him to the sharks.
4. Something unusual and cryptic happens in the first half-page. For example, a mysterious woman hands the hero a baby and then walks away.  Typically, this type of opening could be improved by spending more time describing what the hero’s life is like before the strangeness starts.  I’d recommend that novelists spend at least half a chapter describing the hero in his element.  Then, when you shake up the status quo, we will have a better feel for the character moving forward.  For example, CS Lewis described his characters for several chapters before bringing them to Narnia.
5. The narrator delivers a geography lesson. I recommend showing us your characters before the world, particularly if your world is similar to Middle-Earth.
6. The opening sentence uses pronouns for “suspense.” “Until it happened, I had no idea how badly they had screwed me.”  This narrator is obviously hiding what “it” and “they” are.  That’s not suspenseful, it’s just annoying.  Make sure you give us enough to understand what’s going on.  For example, we could rewrite that sentence as “until the dragon’s face exploded into a gooey mess, I had no idea how badly Adventurers, Inc. had screwed me.”   Please remember to let readers know everything that the point of view character knows.

“Hello, my name is _____.”  An even worse version is “Hello, my name is ______, but you can call me ______.”  If the most interesting thing about your main character is his name, you should probably get back to the drawing board.  Leading with another detail– any other detail– is likelier to interest readers.