the 49 page rule?

This just seems so weird. How do you understand what's going on when you read a page in the middle? You have no idea who the people are, what the conflicts are, or anything.

I can't imagine how reading a middle page could do anything other than confuse you.

Shadow_Ferret said:

This just seems so weird. How do you understand what's going on when you read a page in the middle? You have no idea who the people are, what the conflicts are, or anything.

I can't imagine how reading a middle page could do anything other than confuse you.

Click to expand...

I do it to see what the writing is like... not to get into the story. You're right, that makes no sense. If I just can't stomach the writing, I'm not going to care about the story... so that comes first for me in choosing whether or not to buy a book.

I don't have a specific page to check... that's pretty ridiculous. But I do open to the middle of the book and read a page or two before I buy.

How about p. 49 in your own manuscript

Fascinating!

Never heard about any magic number for checking out whether a book starts to "sag in the middle."

Decided to try it with the book closest at hand: my own. Went to the file on my computer. (No telling, of course, how this will correspond to the page numbers of the finished book, when it comes out in December.)

I went to p. 49. And sure enough, I ended up at what I consider a "good spot." A funny episode, way more "showing" than "telling," in a Cajun music memoir that certainly has some stretches that are more earnest in tone. It would be a good spot for a reader to land. Even I had fun re-reading it--and believe me, after endless hours of proofreading, I don't find that true for lots of the book

Just to test it out, I looked at p. 48, p 50. Even p. 41. Definitely not as engaging!

(On p. 49 my husband and I try to test out our Cajun dance lessons at a place where the stakes are high: at a dance hall in Louisiana, our first time there.)

Anyone else want to check out their manuscripts?

Shadow_Ferret said:

This just seems so weird. How do you understand what's going on when you read a page in the middle? You have no idea who the people are, what the conflicts are, or anything.

I can't imagine how reading a middle page could do anything other than confuse you.

Click to expand...

I don't do the PAGE 40 test in the hopes of understanding what's going on on page 40. I do it to see if it locks me in... if it 'fits' me.

Hmm. I guess I can't do that. To me, if I don't understand the story, then its pretty much just gibberish.

But then the quality of writing has always been secondary to the quality of the story to me. I've never been the sort to go gah-gah over a well-written sentence, only an interesting story line.