Title: The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile
Author: Noah Lukeman
Category: Nonfiction
Rating: 3/5
Why I Read It: I read a similar book in January and loved it, and Amazon said I might like this one too.

Summary: A literary agent and former editor shares tips on how to make your first 5 pages shine.

Review: I would recommend Self-Editing for Fiction Writers over this book. However, if you’re looking for another slightly different list of issues to look for in your writing, go ahead and read this book.

The advice in this one was solid, but other elements of it weren’t:

  • Silly, obvious examples—Showing examples of what you’re talking about: Awesome. Showing examples that were obviously constructed just for the purpose of this book and were so ridiculous that only a complete idiot could have written them: Not so awesome. The examples didn’t really help me at all.
  • Exercises for the sake of exercises—A few times, the writing exercises at the end of each chapter seemed arbitrary, like someone just thought them up and stuck them in the book without stopping to test whether they were actually helpful. I’d rather have a couple tried-and-true exercises than a bucket of this-seems-like-it-might-work exercises.

This book took me a couple months to read, whereas I devoured Self-Editing for Fiction Writers in about a week.

Do you typically take a while to get through a writing how-to book? Or does it depend on how good it is?

Borrow: Your local library | Swap
Buy: Your local bookstore | Powell’s | Amazon

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