Welcome back, my fellow creatives!

Yup, I'm back to looking at the first five pages of various stories, for those five pages can make or break the engagement of a reader--or an agent. So, let's scope out the stories of others to see how they hook an audience!

I admit that I wasn't sure what to expect from this one. I knew it to be some sort of suspense thriller, but the blurb on my hardcover from the library says, "Still waters run deadly." I was hoping for some sort of lake monster! Alas, I have no idea if such a monster awaits or not.

Day starts this book with two little, um, blocks of text. They're not prologues per se; one is a newspaper excerpt about a dead body found near the lake, and one is about the lake waking up in spring, and danger lurks there. These two "mini-beginnings" before the actual beginning felt a bit awkward, but I gave the author a pass. They're establishing a sense of menace and foreshadowing, right? They want to make sure the reader catches this important information so they don't miss it in the regular storytelling. Fine.Chapter 1 officially begins with protagonist Julia infuriated because her lifelong friend had the audacity to build a new lake house that obstructs the view of the lake from her lake house. There's extra emphasis on how she and her husband are broke, yet they got a fancy new car and, well, have a lake house on top of wherever else they live. She cannot believe she'll have to take a different kind of walk down to the lake. She cannot believe her friend installed art in the yard. She cannot believe some trees were cleared. And surely their other friend and fellow lake house owner will be just as mad.

I had to stop after three pages of this. Stories need characters readers can connect with. Yes, some stories can star assholes. Plenty of classics contain such characters. Heavens, I've written such characters. But there has to be an ability to connect SOMEWHERE, and listening to someone complain about how their friend changed up their house and ruined their lake view got very tiring very fast. Sure, maybe this pettiness speaks to the protagonist's character and possible character arc. But the first five pages need to compel readers to read on, at least to chapter 2. A writer shouldn't assume that a brief news report of discovered skeletal remains will be enough to keep regular readers engaged while a protagonist complains nonstop about a privileged kind of problem.

Let’s see what next month’s find will teach us, shall we?

Read on, share on, and write on, my friends!