You only get one chance to make a good first impression, so your first page has to be amazing.
But how do you edit your first page to be something that sucks readers in?
Let’s find out by editing the first page of a viewer’s story together!
During the last stream, a subscriber requested that we go over how to edit/rewrite their first page.
You can watch the full video here to or scroll down to for highlights.
The 5 Things Your First Page Needs to Do
0. Don’t worry about page one until you’ve reached the end of your story. No exceptions!
1. Set the scene/tone (Show the who/what/when/where of your story, how we’re supposed to feel, and how the main character feels, ground the reader with specific/vivid details)
2. Show the main character/narrator’s voice (Are they jaded? Quirky? Funny? Awkward? Angry? Show us their personality in how they speak to us, their word choice, their tone, etc.)
3. Have your main character do something (It shouldn’t be big, it shouldn’t be the story’s main conflict, just something small: eating breakfast, driving to work, watching TV, etc. Something you can use to show us what they’re like.)
4. Hook the reader (DON’T hook the reader by having crazy action/mystery, DO hook the reader by having a specific, detailed, vivid opening that the reader can visualize easily)
5. Have a cool opening sentence (It’s the most important sentence of your story so make it good)
If you want to see what the viewer’s story looked like originally, be sure to check out the video. We took what they wrote in the first three sentences and expanded it out into three pages.
Here’s what we came up with:
Prison doesn’t grant absolution, it merely devours time. Sometimes Gabriel wondered what was happening outside the narrow confines of his concrete cell. Most of the time, none of it mattered.
Today wasn’t one of those days. Gabriel sat in the grimy corner of his cell alone, trying his hardest to think of nothing at all. He stared at the yellowed stain on the wall across from him, but not for too long. It’s said that human brains have a tendency to turn anything they look at for long enough into faces, and this particular splotch loved nothing more than transforming into a perfect portrait of him.
The image dissolved with the screeching cell doors of Gabriel’s neighbors. They loved leaning and pushing on their bars, as if they could pass right through them if they tried yelling and praying hard enough. As if leaving this place would change anything. Gabriel ignored them, shut his eyes tightly, and squeezed callused hands over his ears. Blackness and silence was still no escape.
Gabriel almost didn’t notice the clanging of light metal and clopping footsteps marching down the corridor. It clicked to a stop outside his cell, echoing off moldy walls and through dusty air. Meekly letting his hands fall down and eyelids open, jaundiced halogen light splashed against two real human faces standing outside his cell, iron bars overlaying them like a grid. The officers’ teal and blue uniforms were practically sunshine against the muddied grays of the prison.
“Mr. Gabriel Vallejo?” one of them asked, holding a clipboard up to his chest. Gabriel merely noded. “All right. Time for you to go.”
The guard’s words hit him harder than the judge’s sentence had three years ago. Back then, he’d at least had the hope that spending time here would fill the hole of despair in his soul with cigarettes and self-loathing. All he’d actually gotten was more time to wallow in his misery, carving out that hole into an entire jack-o-lantern that left him bleeding and burning within.
Jack-o-lanterns. Gabriel winced in pain. It was crazy the things that triggered it.
Gabriel pressed down against the cold cement ground, rose to his feet, and shuffled toward the cell bars. He presented his hands out to be cuffed until one of the guards raised an arresting hand.
“Don’t forget to grab your crap. We don’t want none of this left behind.”
Gabriel cast a glance behind him, staring at the neatly-organized corner of stacked newspapers, sudoku puzzles completed in prison-approved safety pens, scattered prayer beads, and the faded remains of a well-used Disneyworld brochure.
“Those aren’t mine,” he said.
One of the guards groaned and reached for the handcuffs dangling off his belt.
“Whatever you say, smartass. It’s all gonna be burned anyway. Hands through the hole, let’s go.”
Gabriel pressed his wrists together and pushed them through the rectangular orifice in the center of the bars. A few metal clicks locked him in a new prison, and the bars came sliding open.
“Stay in the middle,” one of the guards said, waving Gabriel out. “And don’t try anything weird. Don’t wanna mess it up now, do ya?”
Gabriel didn’t really have a choice. The guard grabbed his arm hard and pulled him into the corridor. Flanked by an officer on either side, he was marched down the hallway, and greeted by all of his neighbors.
“Don’t trip on your way out, goody two shoes,” one of them cackled, his tongue as dry and cracked as an ashtray. Across from him, a bald beefy man just glared at Gabriel and mumbled “idiot” under his breath.
Aside from a few half-assed pleads for the guards to take them away, the rest of the cells were mercifully quiet. Most just stared at Gabriel or shook their heads in pity. At the very end of the hall, right before the barred door out of the sector, one man as pale and pointed as a wolf spat right on Gabriel’s face, splatting in his eye. His vision blurred as he wiped it away with his cuffed hands, barely even able to see the guard rattling the man’s cell bars with his baton.
It didn’t feel fair. Why should a nice man like that be kept behind bars when a monster like Gabriel was being released?
Did you notice how we did all five things in our opening here? We set the scene/tone with vivid details, showed the main character’s hopeless voice, had him do something (leave jail), hooked the reader with the mystery of why he’s in jail, and had a cool opening sentence. Be sure to check out the video for more!
If you want to join us and help write a story by trolling in chat, or share your own writing for feedback, then we’d love to have you join us on Twitch.
And you missed the stream, you can still watch them on the YouTube channel or watch the full stream reruns.
Hope to see you next time, friend!
Featured image: Pakutaso