Thriller 101

2 Literary Agents & an Author Weigh in on How to Write Your Opening Pages

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Compilation: Opening Pages

David Gwyn: [00:00:00] Hey friends, if you didn't catch yesterday's episode, you're going to want to give that a listen first and foremost. The short version is regular lifestyle. We'll be going through a rebrand and we'll be focusing exclusively on thriller, mystery and crime genres. 

And as part of that, I'm going to be doing an exciting pitch session. to launch the whole thing. If you're querying off there, we're going to get your work in front of agents. I'm so excited about this. So definitely check out yesterday's episode. If you haven't already. Or you can head down to the link in the description to find out more on the website about the pitch session. 

You are not going to want to miss this. If you are querying right now. Today's episode is all about openings. 

I've done more than 40 interviews and I'm compiling three of my favorite pieces of advice from all the interviews I've done that are specific to starting your novel. 

This will come in handy. If you plan on submitting to the thriller one-on-one pitch session, again, link in the description.

If you want to hear more with these guests, I've also linked the full [00:01:00] episodes in the description, so you can check them out there. So without further ado, let's get to it. 

Paula is a senior agent and director of storytelling and content for Talcott Notch Literary she's the USA today, bestselling author of the mercy car series. She's also written three popular books on writing. 

So she knows what she's talking about. Here's what she has to say about your opening pages. 

Paula Munier: I thought to myself, you know, I was seeing these certain patterns among these writers who were this close to getting published this close, but they weren't getting published. And it was usually because they were doing something basic that was unacceptable for a red flag to an editor.

 So often it's it's point of view. I believe that things keep more good writers from getting published than anything else. Point of view. Which you really can't fool around with point of view, you gotta play it safe, and narrative thrust, the story just doesn't move. It. Doesn't pull you along. [00:02:00] Right. And I tell my clients, they get one risk a book. So if their risk is going to be point of view, they're going to take on a risky point of view.

That's it? You can't have that plus present tense, plus, six points of view, plus, you know, all these things, you say one risk of book because it's, it's your first rodeo. .

It's like if you're learning to drive and when you start out driving, you know, everything's conscious, like you consciously have to look in the rear view mirror and then constantly have to look for the turn signals and nothing is automatic. You're driving as a writer You're driving you pass your driver's test . You wrote a novel, but that doesn't mean you're ready for the Indy 500 so my ties, your risks, one big risk and amortize the rest. And then I wrote the last book, the writer's guide to beginnings, because if you querying and you've been querying, there are two, two things about querying one.

If you're querying and nobody bites and nobody asks for your material, your query doesn't work [00:03:00] and you need to start with a better query. Okay. If people are requesting your work and not offering you representation, you're beginning doesn't work because I didn't read any, any further along. And I do all these pages bootcamps, and I can tell you that people really resist starting off strongly they'll say, oh, but on page 50 is too late, too late. It doesn't take us long to say no. And what. And editor and reader is looking for, is that feeling you get, when you buy your favorite writer and hard cover, whoever that writer is, the one shell out hardcover bucks for, and you pour yourself a glass of wine or a glass of whiskey or a glass of tea or whatever it is. And you open that book, your favorite writer, and you read the opening lines and part of you just goes. Because, you know, you're in for a good ride. It's right there in the opening lines. [00:04:00] That's what we're looking for. We're looking for that. We're in good hands. 

David Gwyn: There's so much useful advice here, but if you're going to take one thing away from what Paul is saying about our first pages, it's this narrative thrust, make sure whatever you're doing on those opening. Make sure that whatever you're doing in those opening paragraphs, you're pulling readers into and through your story. 

That doesn't necessarily mean huge action or major plot points. But you do have to find a way to make a reader continue moving. 

This connects really well to tomorrow's episode. I'm going to share maybe my favorite piece of writing advice 

I've ever gotten from a guest. And I'm going to share that tomorrow. So, if you're wondering, what's 

the piece of advice that I go back to over and over as I'm writing. I'm going to share that tomorrow. 

And I think it's going to be surprising. Where that advice came from. 

Okay, let's get to our next guest. Lori Galvin is a literary agent at Aevitas creative. 

She [00:05:00] was such a fun guest to have on so much knowledge. 

And I got to talk to her about opening pages and what she looks for when reading submissions. 

Lori Galvin: Yeah, I really.

think that reading your pages aloud is super helpful. When you're reading them aloud, you know, think about yourself like you're in a bookstore. Are, is this what you wanna , like hook people? You know, is, is this going to capture all of people sitting in this bookstore? , and it kind of goes without saying that you really, really need to have beta readers too.

 You've gotta hook the readers. Sometimes I'll pass on something and sometimes people will respond and say, well, it's a slow burn , and it really gets going in chapter four. And, you know, that's just you, you can't do that. I mean, it's the.

It's, it's funny, I was, I was actually, you had, you had sent me a couple of questions that you thought you might, you might ask, and I was looking at some of the opening pages of some [00:06:00] of my client's books and. They're just all really captivating, , . I mean, it's, you know, sometimes it's voice. You know, I have, I have an author who just reminds me so much of Patricia Highsmith's writing, and I, I remember, you know, I look, I looked at his book today and I was just like, oh yeah, I remember , you know, just, just thinking, oh, wow, you know, Like just blowing me away.

And I had another book, book club fiction slash historical fiction that the, the setting was so evocative. The, you know, the opening describing the setting setting was again, just blew me away. Yeah. 

David Gwyn: Okay. So Lori's advice is all about voice. Find a voice for your character and try to nail it in those opening paragraphs. What are some ways you can sneak in a word or a phrase or have your character do something that tells us as readers who they are. I did a whole episode on voice while close reading, Lisa [00:07:00] Jewell novel. I'll link that in the description. If you're interested in checking that out. I think it's really helpful in dissecting what we mean when we talk about creating voice as writers. 

Okay on to our next and final guest. 

Thomas Mullen is an award-winning author. And I got to talk to him about how he nailed the opening of his novel blind spots, which came out in April of this year. I really love this advice and he talks a little bit about where the advice came from and how he implements it. So I think this is a really useful. 

Tactic that we can use as writers. Let's get to it. 

Thomas Mullen: I remember one of the, the criticisms that my agent had for my first book, which, which was a historical novel. She's like, you have this tick where like you introduce a character and you give us their entire backstory, right away.

Like, don't do that. , that's no, stop. And I was like, oh yeah, you're right. And that kind of learned that like, you know, there can be suspense in character building. You can allude to. The fact that a character, something terrible happened to their father once, or, you know, every time the subject of a father comes up, they get tense or something.

But you don't need to tell [00:08:00] the reader right away, what it is. You can wait till page hundred 50 to have this really, moving reveal where you explain this horrible thing so you can build suspense and, and generate reader interest, not just in the plot, but just in, in who these people are and what they've been through.

So that was, you know, a lesson I kind of learned. But I also think that, it's something one learns as we go that not being as verbose or being more tactical about what, what we write and what we don't and like what we hold back. So I, I think part of that is just experience and not wanting to bog the reader down with a lot of stuff right away, but also, As you mentioned, I, I've done speculative stuff and I've done historical stuff, and those two are very different in a lot of ways.

But what they have in common is that world building is very, very important to both. It's not a contemporary novel set in the world that you and I live in today when you write a book like that, you don't need to spend as much time explaining the, the situation, the world. But in historical novel, you want some amount of, of detail, but you also don't.

Bog reader down with all kinds of extraneous facts and details and how much a ham [00:09:00] sandwich cost and things like that, that really just don't matter. But you wanna hint that or show how worldviews were different, how people interacted with each other in different ways. The fact that just people had different jobs or There were different ways that men and women might have interacted with each other. Things like that, that can go a long way to building the world. And so with a work of speculative fiction like this, where in a lot of ways the world is similar to the one you and I live in, but a lot of ways it really isn't.

And so, you know, it's just kind of. Revealing that in little bits and pieces and knowing that no reader wants to read through like two blocky pages with tons and tons of info. And a lot of it is, you know, copy and pasting. I'm a huge proponent of copy and pasting. I move stuff around a ton when I write, and so there might have been some things that I explained on page 25 and later I moved to the page 60 or, or vice versa sometimes.

You will later realize, you know, hey, this, this exchange of dialogue means that I no longer need these two paragraphs. You know, that came a par a chapter later or a chapter earlier. Like I got that [00:10:00] across in dialogue more efficiently than I did in these big paragraphs. I don't need those big paragraphs anymore.

Which nothing against big paragraphs. I'm not trying to sound like become against words, but like, There are different ways you can convey information, and sometimes it's through a line of dialogue. Sometimes it's through like a brief description and things like that. So just finding, you know, more concise and, you know, more impactful and more like emotionally resonant ways to convey information, I think helps a lot.

David Gwyn: If you're anything like me, you're constantly concerned with giving away too much information or boring readers in your opening, or maybe you're worried about going too far the other way and confusing readers by not providing enough context. So what's, Thomas' advice. Cut. Cut back. Anything you don't need, especially from your opening. 

The opening to his novel is so sleek and streamlined, even though he's introducing us to a speculative world, it's worth checking out his first few pages because it illustrates [00:11:00] exactly what he's talking about here. All right. And that's it. I'll be back tomorrow with my favorite piece of writing advice ever. I'll see if I can surprise you with who it is until then check out the links in the description, and I will see you tomorrow.