The opening lines of a book are so important. You really need to somehow charm your reader. If you can't get her attention in the first pages, you may have lost her. There has to be an ambience.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
Writers have to be careful not to confuse personal attention with the attention that's going towards the book.
I have one main reader, Miriam Gomez, my wife. She reads everything I write - I have not finished writing something and she is already reading it.
Even now I try to make each page compelling for the readers to get absorbed in the book.
When you meet someone for the first time, that's not the whole book. That's just the first page.
The first paragraph of my book must get me my reader. The last paragraph of a chapter must compel my reader to turn the page. The last paragraph of my book must ensure that my reader looks out for my next book.
I want to write so well that a person is 30 or 40 pages in a book of mine... before she realizes she's reading.
Each reader has to find her or his own message within a book.
One of the nice things about a second book is that your readers already have so much of the introductions on board, they don't have to put all their attention into figuring out the world and can more easily let that play out as a background to the other things you want to do.
I finally get to the place where the book has matured in my mind and I can hardly wait to start writing it. Then I just sit down and I start. I hit the go button. I have an outline, which is 70 pages, but I don't look at it. I never have to look at it.
The truth is, you have about three paragraphs in a short story, three pages in a novel, to capture that editor's attention enough for her to finish your story.
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