The first five pages
One of my favourite books on writing is The First Five Pages: a writer’s guide to staying out of the rejection pile, by Noah Lukeman. It explains why you need to grip the reader (or agent or publisher) in your opening pages, and how to go about it doing it.
In honour of this book, here’s my commentary on the first five pages of my thriller Shiver.
Firstly, a disclaimer. I’m no writing coach. There are way more qualified and experienced people than me out there to give you writing advice. I’m at the start of my career, a debut author who got incredibly lucky in that my novel went to auction. But I love to hear about other people’s writing process, so for what it’s worth, I’m sharing mine.