Noah Lukeman's First Five Pages has been so highly praised here that I had to have a look. And what a revelation the book was.
No one brings home like this author the urgent need for speed. One passage, for sheer horror, rivals anything written by Stephen King: the picture of an agent 'reading' a 500-page manuscript in about a minute. How? By speed-reading the first page...taking in errors in format/spelling/style...then turning at random to a later page to see if these are repeated. Lukeman portrays a process as grueling, horrific and hilarious as the early auditions for AI. And one as unforgiving of insecurity, unprofessionalism and lack of razzmatazz.
I'd like to know what the rest of you have gotten from this book. For me, the main revelation was this: the advice that a Hook can and should extend from the opening sentence--from sentence to sentence, paragraph to page. A relentless and irresistable progression. The novel itself as the hook.
Lukeman also confirmed something I've suspected for some time: that it's self-defeating to send a large SASE for rejected manuscripts. No matter how carefully they've been handled, they'll still show signs of being read and create an impression of failure in other agents who read them.
Caveats? One, I suppose: I'm not sure of the wisdom of his advice to send queries out by Fed Ex or Special Delivery. I agree with him that expense shouldn't be the main consideration, though sending out a hundred queries at, say, $10 a pop does add up. I've read enough comments by agents who hate this approach to have some grave concerns. What's your take on this?
No one brings home like this author the urgent need for speed. One passage, for sheer horror, rivals anything written by Stephen King: the picture of an agent 'reading' a 500-page manuscript in about a minute. How? By speed-reading the first page...taking in errors in format/spelling/style...then turning at random to a later page to see if these are repeated. Lukeman portrays a process as grueling, horrific and hilarious as the early auditions for AI. And one as unforgiving of insecurity, unprofessionalism and lack of razzmatazz.
I'd like to know what the rest of you have gotten from this book. For me, the main revelation was this: the advice that a Hook can and should extend from the opening sentence--from sentence to sentence, paragraph to page. A relentless and irresistable progression. The novel itself as the hook.
Lukeman also confirmed something I've suspected for some time: that it's self-defeating to send a large SASE for rejected manuscripts. No matter how carefully they've been handled, they'll still show signs of being read and create an impression of failure in other agents who read them.
Caveats? One, I suppose: I'm not sure of the wisdom of his advice to send queries out by Fed Ex or Special Delivery. I agree with him that expense shouldn't be the main consideration, though sending out a hundred queries at, say, $10 a pop does add up. I've read enough comments by agents who hate this approach to have some grave concerns. What's your take on this?
