Killer beginnings

Last Friday YA fantasy writer, Alison Goodman, ran a workshop for our master's group on writing killer beginnings. She is a great presenter and teacher and I'm really sorry I missed her earlier workshop on killer endings (but hey, I wasn't leaving New York early for anyone!).

An outstanding first page is a necessity - many publishers/editors don't read beyond the first paragraph, let alone the first page.

To help us create our own killer beginnings, Alison worked through a list of 'must haves' for any work of fiction to get off to a great start, including:

• genre markers
• empathy
• setting
• tone
• dilemma

Alison also said it's vital for the author to show authority, that is, show that you have control over your manuscript. Perfect grammar and spelling is a part of this - you don't want to be making amateurish mistakes on your opening page. No matter how brilliant it is, an error like that is going to plant a seed of doubt in the editor's mind.

Alison's other main piece of advice was to make each word and sentence work harder. With my distaste for slabs of description, this is a particularly important rule for me to follow. And Alison was able to show me how just small changes can have a big impact on your work and make sentences as effective as possible.

So now I have no excuses for not writing a brilliant beginning to my manuscript!