The Opening Page

Flogging the Quill ha an interesting page challenge and an outline of what makes a strong opening page. Flogging the Quill devotes itself to the opening page. This is the outline for an effective opening page:

• It begins to engage the reader with the character
• Something is wrong/goes wrong or challenges the character
• The character desires something.
• The character takes action. Can be internal or external action: thoughts, deeds, emotions. This does NOT include musing about whatever.
• There’s enough of a setting to orient the reader as to where things are happening.
• It happens in the NOW of the story.
• Backstory? What backstory? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• Set-up? What set-up? We’re in the NOW of the story.
• The one thing it must do: raise a story question.

I agree with all of that. When I started working on my writing, I decided the first sentence has to make you want  to read the first paragraph and the first paragraph must make you want to read the first page and the first page needs to lead to the end of the story or the book. How to pull all that off was behind much of my reading these past ten years.