THE FIRST THIRTY PAGES

Based on my recent submissions and responses, I've learned that the first thirty pages are absolutely critical. I knew that in theory, of course, from three writers conferences, nearly ten years of Writer's Digest subscriptions, a bookcase full of writing books, and Noah Lukeman's book The First Five Pages (okay, so he undercuts me by twenty-five pages, but still. . .). But I underestimated their importance and, as much work as I put into my book and as seriously as I took revision (and I did), I never REALLY did the work necessary to make my first thirty pages as polished as they could be.

Because one of the things that I learned is that it's those first thirty pages that gets a reader hooked and, at least in the case of agents, that investment leads to requests for partials, which leads to requests for fulls, which leads to, among other things, the purchasing of palatial digs just down the street from James Patterson.

But perhaps I get ahead of myself.

In any event, this summer I took those first thirty pages (which, in many cases, will be roughly the length of the requested partial, anyway) and I studied them, disected them, rewrote them, passed them around, incorporated suggestions, rewrote them again, put commas in, took commas out, wrote new scenes, shortened other ones, rearranged still other ones, deepened the characters, broadened the setting, varied the sentence structure, and in every way possible made them sing.

Then I continued on with the rest of the novel.

Page by page.

Now that summer is on the wane, the ultimate goal is to have a brand new version of Godtalk to submit in the Fall when I return to my job as a high school English teacher. I do feel the newest version is markedly improved. But I sacredly refuse to send out any more queries until I have a brand new draft--start to finish--and can proudly say my YA novel is immediately available. My guess is that should be somewhere around October.

If they liked Godtalk before, maybe this time some agent will find it irresistable.

Anyone know James Patterson's zip code?