How to Make Your Novel's First 50 Pages Stand Out

Jeff Gerke gives tips to aspiring novelists on how to improve their first fifty pages.
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This is a post by guest blogger, Joe Perry, intern at FinePrint Literary Management.

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Jeff Gerke, author of The First 50 Pages: Engage Agents, Editors and Readers, and Set Your Novel Up for Success, gave tips to aspiring novelists about how to improve their first fifty pages. Below is a quick list of some tips that the first fifty pages should include:

  • Engage the reader
  • Introduce your hero
  • Establish the context of your story
  • Start your hero's inner journey
  • Circularity (refer back to the beginning at the end of the novel)
  • Establish the protagonist's "normal" (what the protagonist's normal life is like)

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