First Page Formula: Author and Writing Coach April Davila on What Agents & Readers Want to See in Your Thriller Manuscript Opening

Writing coach April Davila reveals the non-negotiable elements that make first pages irresistible to readers and agents. 

Learn why most manuscripts fail in the opening paragraph, discover the strategic approach to character revelation that transforms boring descriptions into magnetic hooks. 

Then find out which common opening mistakes instantly kill reader interest. 

Plus, April shares her surprising advice about when to actually write your first page (hint: it's not when you think).

What You'll Learn:

• The essential elements every first page needs
• Why dream sequences and flashbacks kill reader interest
• Strategic character reveals through environmental details

Click here to learn more about April Davila. 

Guest Bio: April Davila is an award-winning author, speaker, and writing coach. Publisher's Weekly called her debut novel, 142 Ostriches, a "vivid, uplifting debut" and the book went on to win the WILLA Award for Women Writing the West. Writer's Digest listed her blog (at aprildavila.com) as one of the Best 101 Websites for Writers and she is the creator of the Sit Write Here writing coaching program, which integrates mindfulness meditation techniques to help writers quiet their inner critics, overcome writer's block, and edit more effectively. Her second novel is forthcoming.

Episodes I think you'll love…

1. Literary Agent Amy Nielsen on How to Fix Your Opening Pages (Part 2)
2. How to Write an Opening Chapter that Keeps Readers Reading with Author David McCloskey
3. 3 Keys to Nailing the Opening of Your Novel
4. Agent Carleen Geisler Reads a Submission & Shares How Agents Evaluate Opening Pages
5. Writing Your Opening Scene with Thomas Mullen

Get the list of 125+ Literary Agents who rep Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, and Crime Fiction

Study the Opening Paragraphs of the Top Authors Writing Thrillers Right Now

Transcript

April Davila: 0:00

yeah, we're gonna talk about how to write a really captivating first page. So it's one of my favorite things to talk about because I feel like the first page is really. What sells your book? I mean, the cover gets people to pick it up, but what do you do? The first thing you do is you open it, you read the first page, and then you decide if you're gonna buy that book. Whether you're going traditional or self-publishing, that first page like just really, really matters. So we're gonna take a little bit of time and talk about the things that the first page needs to do, and then we'll talk about a few of the ways that first Pages tend to like go awry and lose the readers. And I wanna just start by saying, like, clarify a little bit about how I talk about story.'cause I generally don't believe in hard and fast rules. I had a teacher who used to say It works. If you can make it work. That's the beauty of a fiction writing. It's an art, right? It works if you can make it work. So just take that as a little caveat to everything that we're about to talk about, which can kind of sound like rules, but they're not really. So these are guidelines, right? For our first pages, and there are five. Main things that I usually talk about that your first page needs to do. And some of these sound like no-brainers, but it's amazing how many manuscripts I've read that like don't do these things. So it's worth kind of checking it off in your mind. Am I doing these things? The first is to introduce your narrator slash main character. Sometimes they're the same person, sometimes not. A lot of times. Writers will spend like the first page kind of introducing setting or setting the tone or reflect, reflecting on something. And that's all important. Yes. But it's not as important to as introducing me to the character that I'm gonna give a shit about for the next 300 pages, like if they let me know who I'm with. All right. You wanna get that information right up front so that I know who is telling me this story. Again, so a great exception to this rule would be like Arthur less if anyone read the book less. The narrator is a little mysterious, like you don't learn who the character is until later in the story, but you still have a strong sense of who he's talking about. He's narrating about this character Arthur Less. And so even if, I don't know who's exactly telling the story yet, I know who I'm paying attention to, the main character. Or less. And then I'm gonna follow him on this journey. And at that point, you don't even know that you're ever gonna find out who the narrator is, but it doesn't matter. You know who to focus on. And that's what's important. So give us someone to kind of latch onto, whether it's the narrator or the main character, or one in the same. All right, number two, you wanna establish us in time in place. So some books, like to cheat this and they'll put a chapter heading like San Francisco 2001. And that's fine. I'm all for it. But even if you do that like you want to, if that's your setting, like I wanna see the fog. I wanna see like some tech bro on his segue on the way to his startup job, I wanna smell the coffee on that first page. Give us a few hints of like where we are, ground us in place, in scene on a specific time and day. I'm big on specific scenes. I think that's the best way to draw people into a story is put them in a specific scene, and that means a specific place at a specific time with a specific number of people. Number three, you wanna set the tone. So if it's a funny book, you wanna make people laugh on that first page. If it's a sweeping epic, you wanna use language that feels like big and sweeping. If it's modern and skeptical, you can like throw in a curse word on the first page. Like you really what you don't wanna do is like, make people laugh on the first page and then kill someone on the second page, right? Unless it is like a funny mystery. But you don't wanna do like a bait and switch if it's like a dark mystery, start dark, give us that like ju some juicy dark details that set the tone for the story that's about to come. And that way you are setting expectations that we will be fulfilled as your reader moves through the story. So that's number. Okay. So number one. Introduce your narrator slash main character. Number two, establish us in time and place. And three, set the tone. Number four is you wanna, you wanna show off your writing chops just a little bit like you. Again, if you think of that first page as kind of like a first date, you wanna like be like, Hey, like you like me, you wanna hang out for 300 pages. So you wanna, you wanna take some real time with the, your first page, and I think here it's actually really important to pause and just say you should never write your first page first. I mean, go ahead and write it, but know that like the first page you write on your first draft, I. Will not be the first page that ends up in your book.'cause you're gonna learn so much about your characters and your story and all the things you wanna kind of hint at and allude to. And you're gonna come back and rewrite. Like I've gotten to the point where when I start a story, I'll like open the document. I put chapter one and I'll just bullet point it like I think it's so and so. I think they're fighting about this and then I think they're in this city. And then I like move on to write the rest of the story because I know. At this point, I know I'm gonna come back and have to rewrite it because you, you want all these things to be in there and you want the writing to be really good. They represent you as a writer. If you want them to be beautiful, make sure they're really beautiful. If they're hard or scathing, this is similar to tone, And then the last thing your first page needs to do is kind of hint it's not so much about foreshadowing as it is kind of posing a question that will be answered at some point in the book. And the a question is what actually really draws people in? You want people to be like, well, I have to know, like, what happens if they're in the middle of a burning house? The question is, will they get out? Will they survive? Right? If they're in the middle of a breakup scene, is this the love of their life? I mean, it's different for every genre. I think most of you're working on murder mysteries and thrillers, and so having a dead body in the first page or two is a great way to pose a question, what happened to that person who did it? Right? That's one of the reasons we love mysteries is, is that, that, that question draws you in. What happened here? Why? So if you are writing a murder mystery, you kind of have that built in because you're gonna wanna throw a body in the first few pages and that is almost guaranteed to raise questions that will draw your reader in. It's one of the reasons genres are great.

David Gwyn: 6:16

I do have a quick question this keeps coming up. And so I do wanna ask and see what you think about this thriller mystery, suspends crime. Like usually we want that, you know, like you mentioned that like kind of dead body pretty early on. Yeah. How do I do both of those things where I need there to be this high intense moment right off the bat because to in terms of tone, I'm trying to set that tone. Yeah. But also I wanna introduce this character. Do you have any suggestions for how people can kind of navigate those two elements?

April Davila: 6:46

Yeah, I think I think the important thing to keep in mind is that everything your character says and does, tells us about them, and every bit of setting tells us about them. So I talk a lot about setting with my clients that were like you, you can tell us a lot about I. People without telling us anything about them. If you consider the details that are about like a, like a teenage boy who runs outta the house and gets in like a beat up 94 Toyota Corolla is a very different teenage boy that runs outta the house and gets a 2025 Tesla. I haven't told you anything about this boy, but you know, those are two very different boys. And so considering like when you're writing those very first scenes, the first pages, you know, not just the first page, but the first page or two, consider. What little details you can put in that will tell us about that character. Just like instinctively what are they wearing? Are they wearing shiny loafers or are they wearing sneakers? Are they and it, and it, you don't wanna overload it, right? You don't wanna put a ton of details in them. But I think if you're just really careful with the details that you do choose to share, you can do a lot of that heavy lifting in a way that will feel effortless and like. The people will just feel like they know this character, but really it's a very strategic strike on your part to come in and be like, okay, you're gonna know this about them because X, y, Z. So I think that can help build out the, like, getting to know someone even as like, I'm pic, I'm picturing like in the mystery right when the detective is called in and it's still kind of there. Regular world in terms of save the cat kind of structure. And those are the details in that bit that you wanna give us that start to tell us about his regular world. Mm-hmm. Even as it's transitioning into the mystery that he's gonna be solving, which will of course change him and his life and his relationships.

David Gwyn: 8:34

Yeah, and I think that goes to pushing back the start of your novel as far as it can go, right? Where you're, you're at that moment, like right at that moment where you are meeting character, but they're also transitioning into that part of the story, and I think that's really important.

April Davila: 8:48

Okay, so just to review introduce you in character, establish us in time and place. Set the tone. If it's funny, make us laugh. Demonstrate your writing chops, you know, if, if you're the kind of writer who puts big words in, put a big word in and then hinting at the story to come, which is mostly about asking a question that will draw the reader in. Okay, so those are, those are the ones you wanna consider getting into the first page. And now we'll talk a little bit about the ways that the first page can go wrong. Number one, and I, it's personal pet peeve as a reader, but I've also heard many, many agents give this advice. Don't open with a dream sequence or a hallucination or anything that isn't real. Because what happens is your reader spends 5, 10, 15 pages becoming invested and then someone wakes up and they have to start over again. And it's just frustrating as a reader to be like, well, is that real? I don't want, and again, these are guidelines, not rules. So if it works, if you can make it work, if you can have your character wake up from a dream and not have your reader at all confused, it could work. But generally speaking, opening with a dream sequence or hallucination is, is, is a good way to turn off your readers. Same for extended prologues, prologues there's prologues are always fun for like debate, right? Is it a chapter one or is it a prologue? But if you're gonna tell me like. 20 pages of something that happened a hundred years ago and then it doesn't matter to the story for another 300 pages. Like you're, that, that's a big ask. My recommendation in that situation is just start the story and then when that information is important, get it in there. you want to avoid being unclear in any way about what's happening because if I can't follow your story on the first page, like I said, stories only get more complicated as they go. So this odds are that the situation is not going to improve. Some of the best opening pages are super simple. You just, you put us in a scene, certain number of people in a certain place at a certain time. Give it some conflict and just let it let it be. You don't have to make it overly complex, you just have to make it engaging. So a lot of times people will be like, they'll give you a sentence or two to get you into the story and then they're into a flashback'cause they wanna make sure you understand that this is a really pivotal moment. But the flashback only serves to confuse me'cause I don't know these people yet. You have to give us some time to like get into the story. And if you consider that your first page is really only about 250 words. That's not that long to hold off for a flashback. Like, get us into scene, let us meet the key players, and then if there really is something that must be early in the story as a flashback, you know, at least give us a page or two to settle into the story and learn who we're dealing with. Another way that first Pages can go wrong is like. 20, 30 names in the first page. I dunno if anyone's ever read a book where you like, feel like you need to pull out like a graph paper and like make a chart of who is related to who. Like on the first page. That's another one where it's like you're gonna lose a lot of readers and most agents right off the bat. I generally. As a rule of thumb, I would strongly advise you to avoid putting more than two or three characters on your first page. And that gives us time to meet them. You know, you're gonna introduce them, they're gonna interact a little bit, we'll learn a little bit about them, and then maybe on page two, bring in another character. But just be aware that like if you stuff a lot of, and, and this goes for place names too. I mean place names like San Francisco. New York, Tokyo, like big names are easy enough, but if you have smaller city names and you have like three different characters and three different cities, it's just a lot to keep track of. So this also is part of just keep it simple. Put us in in a scene and let the scene unfold. And then, much like the flashback thing, the last way that first pages tend to go awry is, is trying to put a lot of backstory into early I think it was Isabella Ende. I think I've heard her say this quote where she says that when she starts writing, she knows she's at page negative a hundred and she pretty much writes a hundred pages to like learn the story herself. And then right around page, she calls it page zero, she feels like she understands the backstory and she can just write it. And then there will be parts where she has to kind of sprinkle in some information that she learned on the backstory. But a lot of times when we are still figuring out our story. The first couple chapters can end up being more backstory than we realize. So when you go back and you're looking at your first page, just consider you wanna sprinkle in backstory throughout the book. You don't have to get it all on the first page. You, you, readers don't have to know everything. You can let things unfold in time. So avoiding a ton of flashback, avoiding a ton of backstory or explanation, again, put us in scene. Give us a question to chew on, and that keeping it simple is really the best way to, to make a super compelling first page.

David Gwyn: 13:49

I do wanna just ask April where, so, you know, people are listening to this they're, they're really loving what you're, what you're saying. I'm sure. Can you talk a little bit about just like where people can find you if they want to hear more?

April Davila: 14:00

I do. Yeah. So I'm very findable. It's just April Davila everywhere. At April Davila on Instagram. April davila.com is my website. And website is home base for everything. I have a course called Structure and Plot. It's an asynchronous prerecorded class It's 45 minutes of talking about plot, like basic plot points of a western traditional western storytelling. And then another 45 minutes section on structure. And this is something I get really excited about too, that like for me, when I came to understand that structure and plot are not the same thing, it made writing so much easier for me. So if you think about plot is what happens in your story and structure as. How you, the author, choose to tell what happens in the story. When you can tease those two things apart, not only can you write more compelling stories, but they're so much easier to write. I'll share one more thing too. I do occasionally teach this class a few times a year where people submit pages and we actually get to like, read them. So if you are interested in doing that, you can find me on my website, april.com and sign up for my newsletter and you'll get the announcement when those are happening. And you can send in pages and like, and we actually do like a group critique on, on a selection of of first pages, which. It can be fun just for like a little bit of feedback. So if that's something people are interested in, you can sign up on my website.

David Gwyn: 15:18

april, thank you so much. I, like I said, I, I'm, I had a bunch of notes that I took. So thank you so much for your time and, and your expertise. This is really, really valuable.

April Davila: 15:28

Thank you. It's been it's been fun. I love talking about first Pages.