Edit with me! You're probably starting your novel in the wrong place 🏁

Where I help two clients revamp their opening scenes to hook readers in

There are few things more daunting than beginning a novel. You know you have a story you want to tell, but when you’re staring down a blank page, it can be surprisingly difficult to determine where that story truly begins.

As a developmental book editor, one of the most common missteps I see authors make is starting their novel in the wrong place. Often, the entry point an author initially chooses for their first draft is further back than where the story should actually begin to properly hook a reader.

The problem with starting too early

The result? Pages of “lead-up” material that delay our arrival at the heart of the story, where the juicy stuff starts happening.

I totally understand the impulse behind this. You want to establish the main character’s life and show the reader what their world looks like before the inciting incident flips everything on its head.

While it’s important to introduce the protagonist and showcase their world — their “status quo” — before it all shatters, many drafts spend too much time building up to the actual starting line. This delays the moment when the real story begins — and risks losing the reader’s attention before the plot even gets moving.

This simple mistake can cause a reader to put your book down or lead an agent to pass on your query without reading more. That’s why I recently workshopped this exact issue with two of my editing clients whose opening scenes were falling flat.

Here’s what we discovered…