The first page

A reader decides in a page whether to trust you. Start when something is already at stake, and make a promise you can keep.

The first page has one job: to make a stranger want the second. It does not have to explain the world, introduce the cast, or prove you can write a description of mist. It has to establish a person in trouble, or on the verge of a choice, and a voice the reader is willing to live inside.

Start late. The interesting moment is rarely the alarm clock. It is the conversation the alarm clock interrupted, or the lie already in progress when we arrive. Backstory can wait until the reader cares who is remembering it.

Make a promise. A mystery promises a question. A romance promises two people and a feeling that might survive them. A thriller promises pressure that will get worse. The first page should be legible as that promise, even if the reader could not yet name the genre. Then keep it. An opening that is a thriller and a page-thirty that is a essay about clouds is a broken contract.

Read your first sentence as if you had paid money and had a bus to catch. If it could be the first sentence of any novel, it is not yet yours.