Use this guide when you have a draft or a clear idea for a book and your opening feels slow, confusing or like a warm-up. Have your current first chapter printed or on screen, plus a one-line summary of what the whole book is about.
Step by step
Name the three things your opening must do
Write down, in one line each: who we follow, what they want or what is wrong, and what question the reader should be asking by the end of page one. For example: 'Nadia, a night-shift nurse; she has found a patient's note that should not exist; who wrote it?'. If you cannot fill in all three, that is why the opening feels flat, and fixing the plan comes before fixing sentences.
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