Writing Excuses 10.16: What Do I Do with All This Blank Space?

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Writing Excuses 10.16: What Do I Do with All This Blank Space?

From http://www.writingexcuses.com/2015/04/19/writing-excuses-10-16-what-do-i-do-with-all-this-blank-space/

Key Points: The first page establishes tone, genre, and makes a couple of big promises. Convince the reader that you're competent and that they want to read the book. You don't need to start with an establishing shot. The key is the order of information that you present to the reader. Imagine a dark theater and a flashlight picking out one thing at a time. You don't have to start by writing the perfect first line, first page, or even first chapter -- start writing, then go back and create the beginning. A hook -- tone, conflict, motion. Don't get stuck on the first line, stress the first page. Sometimes we write upside down -- take the last sentence and move it to the beginning, and see what happens. The first thing the character notices, and the last thing they think about are important. The stuff in the middle is filler. Make sure you don't bury the good stuff in the middle! The first page needs to indicate what's important to the character. What do they want? Also, what kind of conflict is coming? Something cool! Introduce the character, and introduce the problem. The first page builds trust. Raise some questions, and answer them, to show you know what you're doing. Raise another question and don't answer it so that the reader wonders about it (a.k.a. a hook!). In the first page, I'm looking for character voice and cool things!
( Start at the beginning, and go on to the end? )

[Brandon] Let's go ahead and do our homework, then. Mary, you have the homework this week.
[Mary] What I want you to do is, I actually just want you to write the first page. In a standard manuscript format, the first page is only 13 lines. Frequently, honestly and depressingly, an editor will decide on the first 13 lines. So I'm going to ask you to just write your first 13 lines. I want you to see if you can fit in... See how much you can fit into those 13 lines, about your character, what it is that they want, see if you can get the conflict in. Go ahead, give it a try. But when I say fitting in your character, what were looking for is their class, their attitude, their mood. Those... The attitude and the mood is going to be things that really drive how this is going. Then, of course, I also need to know the genre and the tone of the story. So see how much you can fit into those first 13 lines.
[Brandon] Right. If you did your homework last time, you have three different versions of how you could start your story. The idea is now to take one of those and try and just saturate it. Just stick everything you can in there as is possible. All right. This has been Writing Excuses. You're out of excuses. Now go write.