Great beginnings guru, Laura Drake, offers insight and examples into ways to make your manuscript opening strong.

    Thank you, brave soul, for trusting me with your work. I hope you find this helpful.   I chose this month's submission to help explain a closer POV. This reads like a movie script. It is omniscient POV (mostly), which was great in the 1800's, but today's reader wants an immersive experience...they want […]

Just a note first. I'm ready for more first page submissions!  If you've sent one in and I haven't used yours, there could be three reasons. 1. it's too good - people learn from mistakes!  2. It's not perfect, but there's not enough there to spend a whole blog addressing. 3. I've already addressed the […]

  I chose this month's first page to explain how to get close POV. I think it's due to our visual, reality based, Netflix, 3-D modern world that makes readers want an immersive read. They're used to 'being in' films, which makes it easy to BE the character. Who didn't want to be Katniss? *raises liver-spotted […]

  I chose this entry to crit this month because, at its core, it sounds like an interesting story, and it could be a compelling beginning. But it's buried in adjectives, adverbs and asides. I can tell this author slaved over this. But believe it or not, we can try too hard.  Black = original Red = […]