Download PDF The First Five Pages A Writer Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Noah Lukeman Books
Download As PDF : The First Five Pages A Writer Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Noah Lukeman Books
IF YOU'RE TIRED OF REJECTION, THIS IS THE BOOK FOR YOU.
Whether you are a novice writer or a veteran who has already had your work published, rejection is often a frustrating reality. Literary agents and editors receive and reject hundreds of manuscripts each month. While it's the job of these publishing professionals to be discriminating, it's the job of the writer to produce a manuscript that immediately stands out among the vast competition. And those outstanding qualities, says New York literary agent Noah Lukeman, have to be apparent from the first five pages.
The First Five Pages reveals the necessary elements of good writing, whether it be fiction, nonfiction, journalism, or poetry, and points out errors to be avoided, such as
* A weak opening hook
* Overuse of adjectives and adverbs
* Flat or forced metaphors or similes
* Melodramatic, commonplace or confusing dialogue
* Undeveloped characterizations and lifeless settings
* Uneven pacing and lack of progression
With exercises at the end of each chapter, this invaluable reference will allow novelists, journalists, poets and screenwriters alike to improve their technique as they learn to eliminate even the most subtle mistakes that are cause for rejection. The First Five Pages will help writers at every stage take their art to a higher -- and more successful -- level.
Download PDF The First Five Pages A Writer Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Noah Lukeman Books
"While Lukeman's book purports to help the writer avoid the most common errors which cause manuscript rejection, it goes well beyond such advise. In fact, it is a guide to avoiding pitfalls to which all writers are heir. He is markedly realistic and even gives the nod to the thought that not all "experts" possess remarkable insights or guidance. Throughout he notes the fact that there is very little which is forever forbidden. For example, he demonstrates the flaws in both showing and telling. His examination of problem areas is routinely focused, clear and helpful. And he provides useful exercises so we, the writers, can see our problems and work to overcome them. I do hearby promise to diligently work on my use of punctuation.
I approach such advise books with caution but heartily recommend his work."
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The First Five Pages A Writer Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Noah Lukeman Books Reviews :
The First Five Pages A Writer Guide To Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Noah Lukeman Books Reviews
- My writing teacher recommended this book for novelists wishing to improve the very start of their book so it grabs people right away. I immediately put in an order for it and consumed it as soon as it arrived. Disappointing.
The title is misleading. This book, like several others I've read, goes over what you should and should not do in prose writing. Show don't tell. Passive voice. Dialogue tags. Pacing. Yeah, nothing new to see here. None of it is geared specifically for opening your story with a bang. It's all the usual rules you should follow for your entire book.
Yes, toward the back there is a chapter on memorable opening lines, where we get to read "Call me Ishamael." for the millionth time. The author doesn't explain how exactly to approach writing a memorable first line, he mostly warns against using one followed by a story which can't live up to it. If you find yourself in that situation, either tone down this awesome opening line you spent a month crafting, or drive yourself mad dragging the rest of the 300 pages up in quality.
I took issue with the author's highly exaggerated and almost unreadable examples. For the most part he came up with the absolute worst mini scenes to show what you shouldn't do. He seldom rewrote them into something "fixed", which is understandable - there was no fixing them. He did provide a handful of examples to give the reader some idea of what he considered skilled writing. Nearly all of them were from the classics, with only one or two from anything people would read for pleasure. Using Melville to illustrate "good" writing is like shoving a person's hand into a fire to teach them what it's like to get burned. It hurts and makes them want to run away.
He also discusses the art of naming characters. I understand why he brought this up since a name consisting of only consonants or vowels can make it difficult for the average reader to hang onto. Having a bunch of similar names can cause issues too. Names which are too long can cause fatigue and slow down the story (one of my great problems - which I don't know how to fix since everyone is so formal in my stories).
However, there is a limit. I remember reading Shogun over twenty years ago and having trouble keeping all of the Japanese names straight. Does that mean Clavell should have changed everyone's names to suit my ignorance? Of course not. And Noah Lukeman offhandedly suggesting a sci-fi writer should name a space alien Bob because it's easy to remember, and would be an unusual name for a space alien, is wrong-headed too.
Ironically, many of the quotes heading each chapter are more telling than the content of the chapters. They sometimes even seem to contradict Mr. Lukeman's points. For example, all throughout the book, the author clamors about this and that Russian writer and disregards genre fiction. Yet chapter 18 starts with a quote from Mark Twain A classic is something that everybody wants to have read and nobody wants to read. Noah Lukeman's goal appears to be to encourage you to write like people nobody wants to read.
If you haven't already read a goodly number of writing books (I recommend "Wonderbook" by Jeff VanderMeer or just about anything by James Scott Bell), then you'll get more out of this book than I did. If you're like me and read how-to writing books as often as fiction books, then this book is more likely to anger you than inform you. - As a beginning writer I found The First Five Pages quite helpful.
This book is organized by Lukeman in the order he feels are the reasons editors, agents and publishers reject a manuscript, which is great for new writers. Now that I've read the whole book, I plan to work through my manuscript chapter by chapter referring back to this book.
I recommend reading through the entire book before going through your manuscript, because you don't want to fix one problem in your manuscript only to create a new one that's covered in a later chapter. Having the whole picture already in mind will help the writer stay on track easier.
Note Don't assume that the chapters at the end of the book aren't important for writers to pay attention to, but rather that if you must be weak -- and all new writers will be weak in some areas -- make sure you're not weak in the areas covered in the front of this book. The decision makers will never know if you're strong in pacing if your first page is poor. They'll have tossed it by the second page.
The weaknesses in this book, in my humble opinion, are the examples. They're so blatantly obvious that they're not helpful. I would've loved to see two paragraphs compared One that was fine, but exhibiting weaknesses and then that same paragraph made great. Most of Lukeman's examples were so painfully obvious that even the worst of writers would surely know not to write like that.
Nevertheless, I found this a great tool for beginning to intermediate writers. Advanced writers might benefit from this book as a back to basics checklist, but they're not going to learn anything new. - While Lukeman's book purports to help the writer avoid the most common errors which cause manuscript rejection, it goes well beyond such advise. In fact, it is a guide to avoiding pitfalls to which all writers are heir. He is markedly realistic and even gives the nod to the thought that not all "experts" possess remarkable insights or guidance. Throughout he notes the fact that there is very little which is forever forbidden. For example, he demonstrates the flaws in both showing and telling. His examination of problem areas is routinely focused, clear and helpful. And he provides useful exercises so we, the writers, can see our problems and work to overcome them. I do hearby promise to diligently work on my use of punctuation.
I approach such advise books with caution but heartily recommend his work. - I think I liked this book best when I read the title and believed that those in the industry looking for great books only read the first five pages. If you got that right you were in. There's more to it than that of course BUT realizing that a good beginning is where the best are born. If you can write five fantastic pages, you can keep going and write another 295 just as good. This should be in your writing educational collection.
