Welcome to the third annual Novel Boot Camp! I’m so excited to be back for another year of writing tips and workshops!
If you participated last year, welcome back to another year of Boot Camp! If this is your first time participating, thanks for joining us! Novel Boot Camp is a ton of fun and a great opportunity to get free feedback on your novel. If you don’t know what Novel Boot Camp is, you can read more about it here.
Because Monday is Independence Day, we won’t start delving into our first topic until Tuesday. Next week is all about protagonists with four video lessons on how to write stronger, better, and more realistic characters.
Today I’m opening up the submission form for the first workshop. For the next two weeks (starting Tuesday, July 5) I will be posting the results. Make sure to submit your opening in the form below and check back every day to see if your submission was chosen for a critique.
If you’d like to see the full schedule for Novel Boot Camp, you can check it out here.
Workshop #1: “I stopped reading when…”
Hooray for Workshop #1! This was my favorite workshop from the last two years of Novel Boot Camp so I’m very excited to bring it back this year.
Agents, editors, and readers make lightning fast decisions about what they want to read. This workshop is intended to simulate the querying experience for writers who are hoping to traditionally publish. For those planning to self-publish, this workshop helps demonstrate what readers might think of your novel excerpt when deciding if they want to buy your book.
Last year I worked through 100 novel openings during this workshop. This year I’m going to run this workshop for two weeks so that I can get through even more. My hope is that the critiques will help you to avoid mistakes that get submissions deleted by agents and that cause readers to put the book down (or click away from the webpage) without buying.
You will also have the opportunity to help your fellow writers by voting whether you would continue reading after the first page.
The Critiques
I will reveal my feedback on your submissions in multiple blog posts throughout the first two weeks of Novel Boot Camp. Each blog post will include excerpts from the submitted first pages. Your name and the title of the novel will not be included. Novels will be identified by genre only.
My feedback will include the text up to the point that I stopped reading along with a few brief comments about why I didn’t continue.
You can read last year’s critiques here.
Results will be posted every weekday from Tuesday July 5th to Friday July 15.
Because this is a free course, I cannot predict how many writers will participate. This means that unfortunately I cannot guarantee everyone will have a chance to participate in every workshop. I will post submissions until time prohibits me from continuing. Thanks for understanding!
Submit your first page below:
Comment Question: What do you think is the biggest problem with your first page?
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Ellen Brock 
One of the biggest issues for me is how to make the things I need to say flow in a way that is not awkward and that communicates all the ideas that it needs to to further the story without being a novice and just coming out and saying them.
Also, plotting has never been a strong point of mine, but following the advice of her YouTube video on plotting I am making progress correcting this issue.
Similar to Chelsea, I struggle to convert the pictures in my head into smooth prose. I’m trying to avoid over-explaining, but I’m afraid I might have gone too far.
I’m really looking forward to the bootcamp this year. In previous years, I’ve struggled to keep up, but this time I’m ready (I think).
Over explaining is a very common problem in opening pages. It’s a tricky thing to balance! Thanks for participating!
Hehe… I’m definitely more ready than I was last year. 🙂
What do you think is the biggest problem with the first page?
Determining the exact beginning of the story and how much info to give or surroundings to describe. All the big plotlines of my novel are fixed, so I know the full story. But it seems incredibly hard to pick what goes on page one and how.
I sense a pattern here. I am usually concerned that the concepts that I have in my head, and sound fascinating to me, are not being communicated clearly enough to convey the enthusiasm I ‘hear’. I am most concerned about getting lost in telling and not showing.
I don’t start the story knowing how it will end. I have a rough idea of how it will end,but I am not comfortable locking myself into a specific event/action. To me, that will be developed as the story goes along. I am looking forward to this workshop to help me get a better sense of how to develop my stories.
I’ve become 100% convinced of the importance of story structure. Not that books that don’t follow structure can’t be great, but they seem rare exceptions. I also think having a proper structure allows you to set things up in a better way to pay off in the end. You can tie your character’s story arc in with this overall structure. 🙂
Having an outline actually still leaves you tons of freedom while writing. It’s like having a roadmap to Rome. You can get to Rome without a map too, and maybe you even enjoy this better, but most people have easier lives using a map.
I suspect there’s not enough action on my first page.
I read a lot of books and sometimes the big action doesn’t come until the middle. What is in the beginning is a turning point. It could be something small but there is movement happening. Enough to draw the reader in and keep them curious. I’m hoping I have that in my opening.
I’ve found that I overwrite and it takes me several hundred words before I discover the opening scene of a novel. That writing helps me understand my story and my characters, but not all of it ends up in the book. With the one I submitted, I cut 1,800 words from the opening because it was too much backstory. Of course, I wonder if the opening scene will provide the necessary hook combined with enough context of what’s happening.
Getting the hook in the first couple of sentences is really hard, you need the reader to carry on, to want to feed off your story
Yes, that’s very true. Plus you want the opening to be an accurate representation of your novel and not an artificial hook. Very tricky!
I have changed the opening numerous times, but it never seems to be just right. Every time I go over it I make a change. The question to me always becomes, will it be interesting enough to hook the reader.
The biggest problem with my first page is that it doesn’t signal that this novel is a fantasy. I’m not sure how to slip it in without making it look like a force fit.