Literary Agent Amy Nielsen on How to Fix Your Opening Pages (Part 2)

Your opening page has 30 seconds to hook an agent or it's as good as a rejection.

Literary agent Amy Nielsen reveals the cliché openings that kill manuscripts, the scene structure 90% of authors get wrong, and her "General-Specific-Personal" formula that eliminates info-dumping while building irresistible voice.

What You'll Learn: 

- How to avoid cliché openings that scream "amateur"

- A literary agent's simple test to tell if your opening is actually a scene 

- The inciting incident strategy that finds your perfect entry point 

Episodes to Check Out Next

- 2 Literary Agents & an Author Weigh in on How to Write Your Opening Pages

- Agent C.L. Geisler Reads a Submission & Shares How Agents Evaluate Opening Pages

- Literary Agent Amy Nielsen on How to Write a Query Letter that Gets Attention

- 90% of Writers Make THESE Writing Mistakes Interview with Ex-Literary Agent Karyn Fischer

Get the list of 125+ Literary Agents who rep Thriller, Mystery, Suspense, and Crime Fiction

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Transcript

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David Gwyn 0:00

So let's talk about opening pages here.

Amy Nielsen 0:03

I want to talk about some of the things that I've seen in opening pages that you may want to be on the alert for. And again, you're going to find the books all over your library that have done all of these things. But especially if you're a debut, there's less wiggle room for us to do some of these riskier moves. And you're not on a deadline. You know, some published authors will have a deadline. And so the book will go out when it's really not a hundred percent as polished as it could be because there's their editor knows that they're going to have 60, 000, you know, pre orders the second it goes up. And so why would you spend a year editing? But when you have the time, you want it as polished as possible. And so here's a couple of things. The first thing I'm gonna talk about is cliche openings. And I know we love our cliche openings, but they're cliche for a reason. And here's why they're problematic. Last week, I think it was last week, I read three queries or three opening pages. And all three, the first scene, was the main character driving somewhere by themselves. And so, again, you know, there's three separate books opening exactly the same way. So those are the types of cliches you want to avoid. Especially like, so if your character's driving alone, you know, where's the tension and what's happening and what's, what's happening on the page, you know, they're probably just thinking a lot of stuff and info dumping. So, you know driving isn't the only type of cliche opening and you can do it. If it's the absolute perfect entry point for your story and you're convinced of that, just make it super unique. And all three of these characters driving in this opening scene of these books I was reading, were all driving to a location and just thinking a bunch of stuff. So it wasn't, it's not the most compelling place to start unless you can make it compelling. And I'm going to talk to you a little bit about. scenes and stuff later, but a couple other kind of cliche openings, and you can Google this and find them, and we as agents know them, so we know when we open up. A submission, if it starts with a cliche opening, we're like, okay, we've seen this three times already this week unless you make it super fresh, which you can do, but some other types of cliche openings to think about are weather, you know, it's a dark and stormy night in route, and that's, you know, kind of the driving, but it also could, you know, be in route, planes, trains, and automobiles, you know, if you're going somewhere, there's not really anything happening unless maybe, you know, Something happens while you're going somewhere. Funerals can be filled cliche. Dreams, I just don't start your manuscript with a dream because again, you're kind of tricking the reader and they don't like that. A crowd scene, I do want to see your character with a crowd scene. Other people, not alone, but a huge crowd scene can be super, super confusing entry point into a story into a story, you know, like a big birthday party or a big ball or whatever, there's too many people, you know, we need to intimately slowly get to know who we're supposed to care about, not super slow, but slow enough, you know, I tell for it to consider an entry point, what I tell authors is that we're Whatever your inciting incident is, and of course that's the thing that happens to your main character that they can never go back to the status quo, that's when Katniss volunteered to be tribute, she could never un volunteer to be tribute, in romance that's when the two couple, the two people meet, they can never un meet because they've already met, so wherever your inciting incident is, back up just a bit, That's a great place to start still needs to have tension and all the things that a good scene will have, but, you know, that's a, that's a kind of a good way to say, okay, this is my inciting incident, let me back up a little bit, and I'm using Hunger Games as an example when they opened the scene with her waking up, so, so there you go, you know, it can be done so, you know, Main character musings are another cautionary tale with a character just kind of in their head. Looking in a mirror can sometimes seem like a clever way to show what the character looks like and people look in mirrors all the time. I would caution not in your opening scene. And super impactful action scenes. Now, In thrillers, we're going to have action but I, I would think this is more along the lines of if there isn't a lot of action in your story and you start with a lot of action, then that's kind of misleading reader expectations. So that would kind of be what I, what I would be talking about there. Any other cliche openings you can think of? Mm

David Gwyn 4:31

No, I think that's a really good list. I had a conversation with David McCloskey, about his thriller and he said something that kind of changed the way I think about thrillers. And I think Aaron Philip Clark said something similar to, which is if you start your Thriller, especially because we were talking about thrillers, but any, any story really with a high intensity action scene. As readers, sometimes we don't care enough about that character to care whether they get hurt in that moment or not. And so I thought it was really interesting he was like, He said something along the lines of, he doesn't put them in that life or death situation until he thinks he's done the work to have a reader care about that character. And that to me was like so insightful because I think we are, we're, as writers, especially writers who are trying to get agents, you're battling that like, back and forth of like, keep a reader's attention and keep an agent's attention. How do you do it? Well, throw more action. You know, make it intense, but I think a lot of the work that can be done is more subtle than that. And I, and I think that that really, to your point, is, you know, avoid the cliches and then find an avenue into your story that makes sense for your character, not just, you know, this, it's, it's random, like this is a thing that's just gonna happen

Amy Nielsen 5:47

Well, and that's why if you focus on the inciting incident and back up just a little bit, you'll, you'll meet the character in their natural environment. It doesn't need to be boring. But where they are, we're gonna get a glimpse of to what they can't go back to, you know. And what you've said, I've been given that advice before too. And my original draft years ago, I had an author give me some feedback and he said just that. I, it was a dual, I had dual timeline at the time. I rewrote it before it got published in chronological order because dual timeline was not the correct structure for that story I later found out. And I started it with a pregnant main character screaming and arguing with a boyfriend and they get into a car and he's punching the windshield and the car spins and and that's exactly what that author told me. He said, I, I don't know enough about this character to care that it's the situation that she's in. So that's advice that I give authors all the time. I was just reading a manuscript the other day and a young woman becomes a vic is a victim to a bad guy in the very first scene and I knew zero about her. So I've been given that same advice, and it's really, really good advice. We do need to care a little about the character before something bad happens to them. And

David Gwyn 7:03

Yeah, that's cool.

Amy Nielsen 7:04

and like with the Hunger Games, that's kind of it, you know, you do, Care about her before you find out that now she's gonna have to go into this life or death competition.

David Gwyn 7:14

Yeah, it is so important and something that I think thriller writers are we're guilty of because we want to get to that. We want to get to the high intensity that the thrillers are made for. But it's it's hard sometimes to pull back and be but that's where I think I think and like I mentioned David McCloskey's book that I actually read his opening couple of sentences to him and we got to talk about it, which is really cool because what it did was it was super. It was super tense, but not action filled intense, which is

Amy Nielsen 7:43

Yes I read Lisa Jules. None of this is true this summer and It's been a while. I read a lot of books, but I believe her opening scene if anyone's read that book, it's fantastic. Like, oh, love it. Is this woman having a kind of a tense birthday dinner with her husband. And she's not a very social person. And she sees this other group having a very jovial birthday dinner at the restaurant. You know, she's not in that crowd. So yes, I did say don't start with a big crowd. She's over here in this intimate, you know, dinner with her husband, but she sees this beautiful, confident woman celebrating her birthday. And so you feel the tense, but you're not sure why, of her and her husband. You feel her jealousy of this other woman. But you don't really understand much of what's going on. And then both women end up in the bathroom and find out they have the same birthday. And that's kind of the premise of the whole, the story moving forward. But it was, it was a perfect entry point because you get just enough. You don't even really know who's the protagonist, who's the antagonist at this point. And it didn't really matter. You know, you knew it was going to be someone in that group because that's who was introduced to you. To you, but that was an excellent opening. I really, really enjoyed that.

David Gwyn 8:56

To your point like something that you don't see often starting in a restaurant is not overused as an opening, which I think is another point to

Amy Nielsen 9:04

Yeah. And right. And that, that, that's something that, you know, fit that perfectly because those women needed to meet like randomly. You know, it was a way to place them in a place where they can meet randomly. And what better place to meet randomly than, you know, in the women's restroom?

David Gwyn 9:20

Cool. What else you got for us? This is, this is great.

Amy Nielsen 9:23

The next thing I have written, and we kind of touched on this with a character in Rout, and I wrote main character musings. Show main character interacting with a handful of other characters who matter in the story. Who we meet first will be who the reader thinks they should care about, and it's hard to build tension without characters. So I have seen some openings where you meet a bunch of people that you never see again, and not that that's not going to happen. It could be a random person at the restaurant, but we need to know their name and their backstory, you know? So I would just, a handful of characters, a character alone can be done well. It's done well all the time. I personally don't gravitate toward stories that start with the main character by themselves. And, and you don't have to have it. Obviously, your character is going to have time to reflect and be by themselves later in the story, but I want to start feeling tension, like Lisa Jewel did with that, a woman and her husband. Like, we felt a little bit of tension between them, and we didn't understand it, but it's like, It was there and you could tell. So I really like that. The other thing that I've seen happen is openings that aren't a scene. Again, it's just description. And so I have on my website, A blog post I wrote about what is a scene and like just a formulaic way to look at it, and I'll kind of let you know what that is. So this is kind of in the way I describe what a scene is. A scene, something has to be happening. So if there's a character, a floating head, we don't know what's happening. That's not really a scene, even though we will have some interior thoughts. So, a scene is, well there's two different types, there's like an action scene and a reaction, and action doesn't mean something's exploding. What that means is, the main character has a goal, there's an obstacle in their way, there is an outcome, and they either achieve or they don't achieve their goal. So that's basically kind of in a nutshell what a scene is. The reaction scene would be the next scene, where they react to the previous scene, make a new goal, and then go to pursue it. So you really want to look and see, do I have, am I starting with a scene? Or am I starting with world building and description and paragraphs of that sort of thing? Which, It isn't compelling for us to read. You need to know all that, and we're going to get to how you get it to the reader in a minute with another formula that I absolutely loved. I didn't come up with this one but readers read stories for characters. We, we love the settings and we love the plot and the action, but we fall in love with a character. And so, That's who we want to start with. We want to start with that character and then making decisions, having agency and obstacles in their way, even if the first goal they have is super small. Like in Lisa Jewels, I'll go back to that one, the main character's goal was to, I want this dinner to be over, but I also want to meet that girl because she's intriguing, you know, and so that was kind of like what her, they weren't huge goals, but the main character had goals. And so yes, I think it's really important to start in the scene.

David Gwyn 12:22

no, I think that makes a lot of sense and I feel like too there's so many times and I'm guilty of this as I think pretty much every writer is you write what you think is gonna be the first scene and then you get to the end of the book and you're like Oh, wait, I could cut off the first scene or maybe two Because it's it's stuff that you need to get out You need to know that it's there But it's not something that the reader needs to know right and I think that that's so hard I think it's too I'm a huge fan. I love Save the Cat. I do believe in it. But at the same time, I think it's like one of those things where If you're too rigid to like that, whatever the percentages are and stuff, you miss out on the natural build of the story. And like, if you don't need 10 percent or whatever that number is to get to the inciting incident, then don't, don't use it. Like cut it there and get, get right

Amy Nielsen 13:07

The inciting incident can be in various places. Sometimes it's on the first page, sometimes it's in the second chapter. So it needs to go where it needs to go. You know and I Back to this, this talking about scenes. I was at a writing day workshop conference last, I think last April, going again this year in the Tampa Bay area, and I was on a first pages panel. This was fascinating to me, and I think to the authors in the crowd and that all the authors submitted anonymously the first page of their manuscript, and I was on a panel with about seven or eight agents. And, We, we, there was a narrator there. He was an excellent narrator. He would read. The manuscript and then as agents would stop reading like if this was in their inbox, they would raise their hand when they'd stop and then we would tell why and most often more than not, the repeated answer over and over again was this isn't a scene. This isn't a scene. And so that's why I put that there because it was about 30 different opening pages and that was the number one comment from agents that they would have stopped reading before the end of the first page because it wasn't a scene, there was nothing happening.

David Gwyn 14:22

And it was usually, it was usually a blend of The goal, I'm assuming it's usually the goal setting. Is that the thing that you see most to make something, not a scene? Because I feel like most people have a character, they have a setting. I'm assuming that the thing that they're missing in that piece is the goal. Is that what you find?

Amy Nielsen 14:39

I think for when we, what we saw here and it was all genres and all age ranges, I think what we were seeing there is that there was a lot of world building and telling and description and not really characters interacting with each other on the page. I think you, it's real quickly to tell for me, I can just scan the first few pages of a document of a manuscript and tell if it's going to be too much info dumping and not enough scenes, because if I'm not, if I have dialogue. on page one, then more than likely there's probably not a scene. Again, prologues have a whole different way that they, you know, a prologue, you can be very creative with the structure of a prologue. But once you get to the, to the chapter one, there is an expectation that we're going to have characters interacting with each other, creating goals and obstacles and, and things like that. So that was the number one feedback from that workshop, which was really fascinating to me, which is why I. shared it here. Now, I am going to talk specifically about info dumping, and I am going to give you, I didn't create this, this is by Jane Kales, K A L E S but I found it when I was researching how to world build without Info dumping, because people, the world building that authors do is amazing, and in all stories you need to world build, whether it's contemporary, whether it's fantasy, whether it's thriller, because wherever you're plucking your reader, they've more than likely never been there, and even if they have been there, We're seeing this through your character's eyes, and so this is how what this world building technique is, so, or, or, a way to prevent yourself from info dumping. So, it's called General Specific Personal, and I have an example, and I'm going to tell you what that means, too. So, Between, you know, like your scenes, if there's something that you need to explain, you need to explain a setting or whatever, start with a general statement, then a specific statement, and then personal tie it back to the character. So, I'm going to read you kind of how I did this as an example. Again, it's not from a book, I just made this up, but then I'm going to show you how it works. So, North Lake, Florida sat smack dab in the middle of the state. No majestic palm tree lined beaches here. Instead, sparse palmettos and scrub oaks dotted the interior landscape. And despite our close proximity, I'd never set foot onto Disney property. So, the general statement is, zooming out, think about that wide shot, North Lake Florida sat smack dab in the middle of the state. One statement, wide shot, then getting more specific. No majestic palm tree lined beaches here. Instead, sparse palmettos and scrub oaks dotted the interior landscape. So now I'm getting, you know, zooming in. The wide shot, the medium shot, zooming in on the person's house, and then personal. And despite our close proximity, I'd never step foot onto Disney property. So that is a simplistic way throughout your manuscript. I mean, it's formulaic, but I don't think that repeated use of this technique would read formulaic, and sometimes you're going to have maybe two sentences that are general, and one that's specific, and one that's personal, but she has a YouTube video where she explains this her description, the examples that she uses, and again, they're just examples weren't my favorite because they're a little bit too long, but she does a fantastic job of explaining this general, specific, personal way to prevent paragraphs of lengthy info dumping. So this was four sentences. that I wrote, that you completely see the world building and that it's personal. Obviously, the person that's thinking this isn't real happy about it. You know, you can tell by the tone that there's no majestic palm tree lined beaches, you know, sparse palmettos, and then we're close to Disney, but I never got to go. So, you know, you kind of get the tone and the mood. through the main character, talking about, or thinking about the setting. So I, I really, really like that guideline, and I'm super excited to see if readers find it as intriguing as I do. I actually just gave that feedback to one of my authors today, because her manuscript had a lot of, you know, a beautiful world building, beautiful, beautiful, beautiful, but it went on and on and on to where nothing's happening. And so readers want to see what's happening. We want to be grounded in setting. Grounded in time, but we want to see what's happening. So we want to get that world building out there quick and then move on and then drop a little bit more of it later.

David Gwyn 19:15

And one of the things too, that I would just add to the piece that you wrote and then I think is important to, to what this is doing is it's also, it's doing multiple things. It's setting the scene, but it's also developing your character's voice. Like how does your character feel about the setting? And I think a lot of times when we read setting where it isn't infused with character voice, yeah. It can feel like it's dragging on because you're just telling me about the day or this the trees or this whatever the weather But if you have a character who like looks up at the Sun and squints because they're hungover like okay now I'm now I've got character with setting and I think that that that balance also Could be fun for people to think about like, okay, how can I? Zoom out, maybe the zoom out maybe doesn't have a lot of character voice, like I think of all the places that probably doesn't, but the closer I get to the, you know, the kind of character, the more interiority I should use, and like, I should be selecting words that really develop my character, because that, I think, the longer I, the more I talk to agents, and the longer I read these things, and I'm sure I'm telling you something that you, you know already, you'd scream from the, from the rooftops, but There are so many mistakes that writers can make in a book, but voice is the one that will save a lot of things. Like, if your character voice rocks, but there's, it's like a little bit of slow pacing here. Or if you're, the ending, it just needs a little bit of work. Or, oh, you know, you're not really building up the setting. Like, I feel like agents are going to take a shot on you as a writer and they'll be like, well, the voice is great. I can fix X, Y, and Z. But that voice and that's this is a great way of just like you said getting rid of info dumping Building in voice and making you seem like you have a great handle of your writing craft Yes.

Amy Nielsen 21:07

with the voice of his character and it did need work. We are on submission now and getting great feedback. But I just, I did, I fell in love with the voice. It was snarky and sassy and, you know, there, there was a lot of banter and, and it'd be so nice if we could teach you how to find that voice. But, but that, that's really hard. And that's where when you are zooming in to that character and you're letting the character You're not info dumping the backstory or info dumping the scenic work and telling it all through the character. That really is kind of where their voice comes through. So I, I love that. And then the last thing that I have to share, there's other things, but I thought these were the most important ones, To just simply follow submission guidelines. I think that's really important. And I understand authors want to take a chance and, you know, throw spaghetti to the wall. And yes, this person doesn't rep high fi, high concept sci fi, but my book is good enough. They're going to want it anyway. And that's not really true. I mean, sometimes we sign stuff we didn't expect, but I know I'm not the best fit for epic fantasy or high concept sci fi. You would not want me as your agent. And if your book is over 100, 000 words, it's not for me either. So, and we put these things on our manuscript wish list, and so I think it's professional and courteous to follow those guidelines. You know, it's not. Sometimes it's difficult to find that information, and especially if you're a new author querying and you've made some of those mistakes, don't worry about it. I get queries all the time that have a different agent's name on it, and sometimes when I see that, it just makes me smile because it reminds me there's a human part of this process. So we are all human, but you cannot make mistakes that, that, that can't be fixed. And that, you know, if you get a pass, and I use that term pass all the time. not rejection. That pass means you're in the game. And that pass means maybe you got a pass yesterday, and you heard something today that you think, Oh, I haven't heard that before. Let me go back and swap out one of my comps. And so just continue, continue to just keep educating yourself. I probably subscribe to like, I don't know, 20 to 30 writing podcast. It's a problem. But. I constantly learn from other people. And so when I'm on a walk or whatever, I'm, I'm constantly trying to educate myself to know as much about the writing craft and the publishing industries possible so I can be the best agent as possible and also to just educate other authors. I was a querying author too. I know what it's like. And I have written so many resources all on my website for free for you that I would love to for, for authors to know are out there that kind of tie back to what David and I've been talking about. So, one is called polishing your submission packet before querying, and I break down exa a lot of what I talked about today. But I also go over synopsis in that one as well, which we didn't talk about, but that's fine. It's, you can find some information there about synopsis. That's the one place you get to tell. All you, all you do is tell. I mean, it doesn't need to have voice. If it does, it's fine. And then I have three self editing guides, one on developmental edits, line edits, and copy edits. And if you don't know what all three of those are, you can find out by reading that. And then I think another one that would be helpful to you is called How to Get an Agent's Attention. It's actually four videos that I created for an MFA program. They're only like five to ten minutes each. And so those free resources are available. And I am on social media, mostly on X. I have joined Blue Sky. I'm planning to move over there more predominantly when Manuscript Wishlist moves over. But, you know, if my DMs are open, feel free to ask me a question, you know. Educating for me is just so important because I want to see your publishing dreams come true. And, you know, I I pass on a lot of manuscripts because it's not the right thing for me or for some of these reasons, but I always read your words with honor and humility. I'm honored when someone sends me their query and they trust me to read their words, so I can't always give a personal response, but just know that I, I, That's, it's very vulnerable to send your work out into the world, and most people that I know in publishing are genuinely amazing people, and we just want the best, and that's why we go on podcasts like this to try to educate.

David Gwyn 25:26

Yes. No, and this is great. And just will you tell us what your website is where people can find that resource?

Amy Nielsen 25:31

www. AmyNielsenAuthor. com, and that's A M Y N I E L S E N, and then there's like six boxes in the middle of the website. Just go to Writing Advice, And there's just a ton of resources. So the, my copy editing guide is pretty new. That's something that was kind of new to me when I sent my first novel on submission. And that, that's an important one. You want your, you want your work formatted correctly too, because kind of with submission guidelines, if I open up your document and things are bolded and italics and it's, and there's no sentence, there's no structure, like visually, That can also, you know, kind of be a barrier so that copy edit guides newer and I'm really proud of that one and it's not something sometimes that we think about as authors, you know, the actual formatting of the document itself.

David Gwyn 26:20

That's great. And I'll, I'll link to your website below so people can have quick access. That's really, really helpful. Amy, as always, this is, this is insanely helpful. I feel like. I feel like I learned a lot. I have like a page worth of notes over here. I'm like so this is great. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with

Amy Nielsen 26:37

are very, very welcome. And one last, I wanted to give one last quote to any authors that are listening. And this is a very familiar quote, but I think it really rings true to the message that I want to send, is that you miss 100 percent of the shots you don't take. And that's of course the very famous Wayne Gretzky. And you're doing it, you're doing it. And so. If again, I hope this was helpful to you and you got this. Keep at it.

David Gwyn 27:04

Yeah, no, what a great way to end. So thanks so much

Amy Nielsen 27:06

Thank you.