First Sentence

Does the first sentence of your novel, short story, novella, matter? You bet it does! "You can't judge a book by it's cover," but that is the first thing people see of your book. Make it a good cover and they might be intrigued enough to open the book. What is the first thing they see of your writing? Sentence number one. Is it a good one? Does it pull the reader in? Perhaps some people might then say, you can't judge a book by the first sentence. They would be wrong and probably aren't very good writers. The first sentence is where the reader gets their first real impression of your writing. Check out First Lines: A Sort of Literary Test to read the first sentence of many famous books. Do you remember them? Do they make you want to read more? I'll bet that a lot of them do. Read them and learn!

Don't Yawn

The first three manuscripts I received all started with someone waking up. If that isn't enough to tell you that it is cliched, I can't help you. Don't start a novel with sleeping or waking up. It is almost as bad as "It was a dark and stormy night." It doesn't pull a reader in. Everyone knows what it's like to wake up. Yes, it is a logical starting place, but it is not going to catch the reader's eye. What happens after the protagonist wakes up? Something exciting? Begin with that! Nothing exciting, interesting or mysterious after that? Fast forward until you get there. If you got to the end of your novel, you've got some work to do.