The first few pages in a story are critical to capturing an editor or reader’s attention. Fail to grab them, and you’ve lost your chance for an offer or a sale. Seasoned writers know to avoid flashbacks and description and to dive right into an action scene or dialogue. That would be easy, but my current WIP doesn’t get to the dialogue until page 5, when the real action begins. Why not start the book there? Because that’s when my heroine steps into the extraordinary world. I’m following the hero’s journey, and first we see her in the ordinary world failing to pass muster at her summer job interviews. The reader is tantalized with a mystery about her background, and we learn part of her GMC.

What’s that? Goal, Motivation, Conflict. We learn what she wants in terms of short term goals (i.e. get a summer job, move into her own apt) but she doesn’t understand her own reasons for wanting to attain her long term goal (i.e. to teach comparative mythology). Maybe her failure to find a part-time position has something to do with her unknown heritage.  If she can trace her ancestors, she may discover why she’s obsessed with studying Norse myths, and what the strange symbol on her watch means. The watch was a gift from her birth parents and it remains the only clue to her past. Oh, did I mention she recently learned she’d been adopted?

All this is squeezed into my first three pages and then comes the setup for the wildness that follows. Those three pages have to flow smoothly so the reader breezes past without realizing I’ve slipped in a little backstory. Does it work? I’m relying on my critique partners to judge. Meanwhile, here’s my first line. You tell me if it makes you want to read more:

Nira Larsen took one look at the dead body and keeled over.