The First Five Pages

The First Five Pages The First Five Pages The First Five Pages By Maeve Maddox What can an agent tell from the first five pages of your manuscript? According to Noah Lukeman, plenty. The First Five Pages: A Writers Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile analyzes the types of mistakes that appear in 99 percent of the unsolicited manuscripts received by agents and editors. His experience as a literary agent who has read thousands of manuscripts has led Lukeman to this conclusion: From Texas to Oklahoma to California to England to Turkey to Japan, writers are doing the exact same things wrong. The purpose of his book is to show writers how to be their own first readers. The First Five Pages assumes that by scrutinizing a few pages closely enoughparticularly the first fewyou can make a determination for the whole. It assumes that if you find one line of extraneous dialogue on page 1, you will likely find one line of extraneous dialogue on each page to come. Even before he gets to a discussion of such things as dialogue, characterization, and point of view, Lukeman emphasizes the importance of Presentation. By Presentation he means such purely mechanical matters as paper, margins, and enclosing a stamped addressed envelope. No matter how great the artistic merit of a manuscript, careless packaging can keep it from taken seriously. Such inattention to detail, says Lukeman, may signal carelessness, sloppiness, ignorance or defiance of the industrys standards; that the writer doesnt care enough to do the minimum amount of research to make a manuscript industry presentable. Often when a writers presentation is careless, his writing is too. I especially like what Lukeman has to say about the importance of an extensive vocabulary in creating a clear, specific, distinctive style. He notes a dearth of vocabulary in the work of modern writers: It is as if all of todays writers were working from a high school-level vocabularyand writers who do use unusual words more ofen than not misuse them He encourages writers to enrich their vocabulary by learning not just a words current meaning, but its origin and history as wellnot for mere erudition, but in order to fix the word in the writers mind and make it his own. This extra lore is what I call iceberg information, knowledge that floats below the surface of the writing, adding substance without show. Barely 200 pages in length, Lukemans guide puts the writer in the mind of the agent, packing a lot of insight into a small space. The chapters are brief, but to the point, and each one is followed by writing exercises. For the author who has a novel ready to market, The First Five Pages is a valuable tool for the final revision. You can find the book on Amazon.com. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Book Reviews category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:50 Redundant Phrases to Avoid"Gratitude" or "Gratefulness"?When to Spell Out Numbers