Your Readers Don't Know
So recently I shared the first 30 pages of my WIP with my writing mentor, and she had some pretty brutal feedback. It was too slow, you didn’t get to know the characters very well, and she said my worst nightmare “it was hard to get into, and I didn’t want to keep going.”
Oof.
My first reaction was to think, well that’s because it’s only the first 30 pages. If she only read a little bit more the characters really start to shine in the next bit—and that question she had about the world is answered just a few pages later.
Then I realized I was missing the point. It didn’t matter if I had the most amazing story after page 30 that would have brought her to tears. Because she would never know—she wouldn’t have read past the point that I lost her.
That was the moment I realized I needed to completely rewrite my first 30 pages. The point was—the reader doesn’t know when it’ll get good. They don’t know that your characters are amazing once you get past a certain point, because in all likelihood, they won’t suffer through to get to that point.
It has to be solid from page one all the way through to the end. Most books and authors don’t have the liberty to retain readers through anything less.
We’re going to be talking about the advice she gave me a bit more in the next few posts, so watch out for that :-)
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
1K notes
·
View notes