How to hook readers before they ghost you
If the fate of your entire book were judged by the first thirty seconds, would you still open with your protagonist waking up, staring at the ceiling, and pondering the meaning of life?
Because readers, and agents, are ruthless. They give your story roughly the same level of patience a toddler gives a vegetable. One nibble, and if the flavor isn’t right? Slam. Book closed. Doomscrolling triumphs yet again.
I was hardly guiltless in committing my own crimes in my opening pages. I introduced four characters, two of whom disappeared forever, and one whose name mysteriously changed between paragraphs like some kind of narrative witness protection. A favorite note from one beta reader was simply, “I’m confused,” repeated throughout the margins like a Greek chorus of disappointment.
I ended up re-writing the whole first chapter. Twice.
The simple truth is that writing a good book does not automatically mean writing a good beginning. So, in the interest of sparing you the agony of that realization, let’s talk about the most common opening page mistakes and what to do instead.
The Slow Burn is for Booker Winners
Often those first few paragraphs matter more to the writer themselves than most writers would like to admit. We love the slow build, the gentle simmer, the artful creation of atmosphere. We admire authors like Tolstoy, Dickens, Joyce, Rushdie, and Cormac McCarthy, all of whom could take fourteen pages to describe a cloud and somehow get applause for it. But they have the luxury of being, well … them.
We mortals, on the other hand, haven’t yet accumulated the literary street cred that lets us waste a reader’s time. Our audience is seconds away from abandoning our heartfelt passion project for cute TikTok videos of a chipmunk riding a duck. That’s our competition. No pressure.
Write Through the Mess
Most beginner writers (and this certainly included me when I wrote Half Made Up so you can relax) produce opening pages that feel like administrative paperwork.
Where are we? Who is this? Why should I care? These are questions readers should be asking at the end of your first page, intrigued and hungry for answers, not muttering in frustration after every sentence.
When I finished the first draft, I printed it out with all the confidence of a delusional genius. My opening line? Pure poetry. My scene? Electric. My protagonist? Woke up from a dream. And yes, that shrieking you hear is every literary agent in the world screaming into the void.
Avoid the Cliché Catastrophe
First, let’s address the cliché catastrophe. If your book begins with an alarm clock blaring, a dream sequence, a hospital patient with amnesia, or a brooding reflection on the weather, you may be entitled to compensation.
It’s not that these openings are bad. They are simply exhausted. They’ve worked countless double shifts in millions of manuscripts, and they deserve a retirement package.
I say that as someone who opened with a dream. I worked and re-wrote it as it desperately needed to be (because my character suffered from PTSD. So, let me amend my advice and say: at least make sure the dream isn’t just decorative.
The point is that we want an opening scene that drops us into a moment where something is changing, even if that change is small. A job interview gone wrong before the coffee cools. A package arriving that shouldn’t exist. A Tuesday that has suddenly stopped behaving like a Tuesday. We need disruption. We need movement. We need a reason to stay.
The White-Room Problem
Then there’s the dreaded white-room problem. If the reader can’t tell whether your characters are in Paris, prison, or purgatory, you may have accidentally staged your story in a sensory deprivation chamber.
Readers want context. They’re desperate for a point of reference. They don’t need five paragraphs of architectural history. They just need a clue. A flickering neon sign. The sticky seat of a bus. The aroma of burnt toast that implies someone is already having a bad day. Give them at least one handhold on the climbing wall of your narrative.
The Exposition Avalanche
Let’s talk about the exposition dump. You love your world-building. I know. You spent months constructing the socio-economic ramifications of magical corn. But readers don’t buy novels because they’re seeking encyclopedia entries.
Instead of burying them under information like a poorly organized Wikipedia article, let your world interrupt the character. A government drone flies overhead mid-argument. A magic bracelet misfires during brunch. The werewolf neighbor files a noise complaint. The world shouldn’t sit politely in a corner waiting to be introduced. It should kick open the door.
No Character Parades
Another common pitfall is the character parade. Writers often fear that if they don’t introduce everyone immediately, readers will assume the protagonist is unloved and alone. So dozens of characters arrive at once, flinging their names around like business cards. But when readers can’t remember who is who, they’ll stop caring. They aren’t collecting Pokémon. They just need one central character to invest in, and the others can enter later like guests arriving once the host has opened the wine.
The “I’m So Mysterious” Illusion
Then comes the illusion of mystery. Some writers think obscurity equals intrigue. They withhold everything in the hope that readers will be lured forward by curiosity. Unfortunately, confusion is not a hook. It’s a deterrent.
I’d suggest you offer clarity first. Then introduce a single missing piece that beckons the reader forward. We need to understand where we are and what the character wants before we start caring about what we don’t know.
The Flowery Trap
Ah, purple prose. The glitter explosion of excessive metaphor. Early pages are not the time to show off your most baroque turns of phrase. If your sentence is juggling too many jobs, let it quit one. If it’s juggling too few, make sure the job it does is essential
The opening shouldn’t be a poetic steeplechase. It should be a smooth path with the occasional, strategically placed wow-moment.
Conflict. Your Best Friend
Finally, there is the ultimate dramatic weapon: conflict. Even better when it’s inner conflict Readers don’t turn pages only to learn what happens next. They turn pages to see how a character will handle what happens.
Give us a flaw, a fear, a desire, a piece of emotional dynamite with a burning fuse. It does not need to explode yet. We just need to see that it could.
The Duck-riding Chipmunk is the Bar
If your first page creates a question we must have answered, anchors us in a place we believe in, introduces a character we care about, shows what they want right now, reveals the world through action, hints at what might break them, and does all of that without leaning on clichés or drowning us in adjectives, I say well done. You’ve accomplished what most beginners don’t. Your reader will turn to page two.
If not? Well, that’s what second drafts are for. And third drafts. And the occasional moment of sheer panic.
The opening of your book doesn’t need to be perfect. It just needs to be irresistible. Think of it like speed dating. The reader has a dozen other attractive prospects waiting just a swipe away, and you have twenty seconds to convince them that you’re the one worth sticking around for.
There’ll be time later to reveal your hidden depth, tragic backstory, and comprehensive knowledge of the elven tax system. But if your beginning doesn’t spark, they’ll never see any of it.
So wake your protagonist up if you must. But make sure the reason they open their eyes is something that makes us lean in. And for the love of storytelling, leave the weather report to the news anchor.
This essay is one of a collection of pieces documenting the bedlam involved in writing and self-publishing my ongoing genre fiction series: The Misjudgements of Andy MacKay, available on Amazon.