What you shouldn’t do in the first ten pages of your novel

better save this, sounds like good solid advice could be in this post!!!!

Writing as will and representation

Having just read another article about the biggest pitfalls to avoid in the opening pages of a story or a novel, I felt inspired to share my own list which I’ve been putting together during my novel redraft process. Most of these I’ve come across over and over again on agents’ blogs or writers’ communities. Some of them I was explicitly told not to do on my Faber Academy Writing a Novel course, which I completed earlier this year.

My top ten opening ‘no nos’

1. No dream sequences. I did this one, as did a few of my writing course colleagues. We all – very hurriedly – rewrote after one article about agent pet hates went round our online forum
2. No prologues. Yep, did this as well. Also now OUT
3. Insufficient info about the main protagonist(s) (as in how old are they – my beta readers kept saying, ‘hmm…

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