Is your manuscript ready to query? Checkpoint your opening pages.
Do your opening pages deliver what your query letter promises? Let's find out! Plus, an opportunity to workshop your opening pages with me.
Hello and happy Wednesday,
Being ready for submission (whether on the query circuit, prize circuit, residency applications or submission to editors) doesn’t just mean you’ve revised the hell out of the manuscript, read it a thousand times, had other people read it, have worked (and reworked) character development and are pretty sure you have a plot, it also means your opening pages deliver on what your query letter promises.
The story that your query (or other summarizing document) depicts needs to appear from paragraph one on. From the first sentence of the book, the gatekeeper needs to meet the main character(s) they were told about, the world that they were promised, the conflict they were excited to observe. This might seem obvious, but it’s harder than it sounds. Time and time again, I read manuscripts that begin in a setting we haven’t been introduced to in the query letter, or start in the voice of a character we had no idea we’d meet. To me, this is the equivalent of ordering a Niçoise salad and being presented with a can of tuna and no can opener. It’s a disappointment. It’s a letdown. And frankly, it’s annoying.
Today we’re going to learn how to checkpoint ourselves against writing opening pages that don’t deliver what our query letters promise.
To do so, we’ll look at the back jacket descriptive copy of a forthcoming novel called SEDUCTION THEORY by Emily Adrian (publishing August 12th with Little Brown), and then we’re going to look at the first page of this same novel to see if—and how—Emily delivers on what her summary promises.
After that, paid subscribers will have the opportunity to workshop their own manuscript in the same way with me right here on my Substack.
Without further ado, here’s the back jacket descriptive copy from SEDUCTION THEORY by Emily Adrian*:
*I’m going off the descriptive copy from my galley—I think the description will be slightly updated online and on the final cover.
Simone is the star of Edwards University's creative writing department: renowned Woolf scholar, grief memoirist, and campus sex icon. Her less glamorous and ostensibly devoted husband, Ethan, is a forgotten novelist and lecturer in the same department. According to Simone and Ethan, and everyone on campus, their marriage is perfect. That is, until Ethan sleeps with the department administrative assistant, Abigail, and the couple's faith in their flawless relationship is rattled.
Simone, meanwhile, has secrets of her own. While Ethan's away for the summer, she grows inordinately close with her advisee, graduate student Roberta "Robbie" Green. In Robbie, Simone finds a new running partner, confidante, and disciple--or so she believes. Behind Simone's back, Robbie fictionalizes her mentor's marriage in a breathtakingly invasive MFA thesis. Determined to tell her version of the story, Robbie paints a revealing portrait of Simone, Ethan, Abigail, and even herself, scratching at the very surface of what may--or may not--be the truth.
End of summary materials from back jacket of the galley.
Now I’m going to re-share the description with the thoughts I’d have if I were an agent, editor or publicist reading it so you can see the things they’d look forward to reading and (potentially) getting press for.