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To get agents and editors interested in your book your opening needs to work. It needs to have the right stuff. The right opening sentence, the right opening paragraph, the right opening chapter.
What is the right stuff:
- introduce the protagonist
- introduce the protagonist's problem
- established the genre
- establish time and place
- establish the tone - may be the most important
Agents and Editors want to see the above things right away or they will stop reading. Not necessarily in the first sentence, or paragraph, but not far from it.
And you have to convey all this information in an intriguing way. An entertaining way.
It's not just about the right information.
Being intriguing and entertaining is a matter of personal taste. And whether someone likes your work - editor, agent, or reader - is also going to be to an extent a matter of personal test. You need to find a following that likes your writing. Not everyone will. But your writing has to be good, entertaining, intriguing to some people, or enough people.
Then there are things that you should not do. You should not do them because they will turn off agents and editors. Whether they are "bad" things to do in some kind of esoteric "how to create a great piece of literature" way or even if they work with readers or not is not the issue. These are just things that "currently" turn off agents and editors:
- starting with a description of a place, time, culture, etc.
- beginning with the backstory of the main character, nation, culture, etc.
- starting extreme action with characters un-introduced, the problem unknown, the place unknown, basically the reader doesn't know anything about anything yet..
- Too much information to begin with, too many characters, too much going on.
I personally like a beginning with description. Take the opening of The Tale of Two Cities:
"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of
wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it
was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of
despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were
all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way..."
This goes on for a few pages of cultural description which comprise the entire first chapter. It is a famous and highly admired opening. You could not do this today and get published. At least not as a previously unpublished writer. As an established best selling author - maybe.
Alice Hoffman's first chapter of her novel Here on Earth is also a chapter of pure lyrical description. I think it's fabulous. She is also a best selling writer. As an as yet unpublished writer I would caution you to think twice. There are also great books that begin with several chapters of backstory. Arguably the first half of Jane Eyre could be considered backstory.
Too much action with too many characters - too much going on: I can't think of any successful books that do that, but that doesn't mean there are none.
It's so easy for an agent or editor to just stop reading. They have so many other submissions to read and so few slots for new authors to represent or new books to publish that tossing a manuscript into the trash pile is way easy.
So the things you need to have are:
- a good premise for your book; something new, or with a new twist, or interesting in some way to someone(s).
- And then provide all the "right stuff" in your opening so the reader/agent/editor knows right up front what they're getting into.
- And then maybe most important - I think it is - your writing has to be a joy to read. It doesn't have to be ostentatious or flashy. In fact if your writing is too noticeable and distracting that is not a good thing. If a reader is taken out of the story by the wording of sentences this is not good. Don't disrupt the flow. If it is humorous or insightful, maybe edgy or lyrical, that's great as long as it works and entices the reader to read on. Some of the other "right stuff" may even be missing up front if the writing is spellbinding enough.
