Kristen Tsetsi

This first page of Jess C. Scott’s Eyeleash falls flat, and here’s why: the use of shortened language (“abt”), the suggestion that I’m about to read a series of random blog entries with no particular movement in any direction (“Rants raves and everything else”), and the immediate introduction to a narrator who believes her blog and herself are interesting enough to warrant warnings about sharing the material, which usually means the entries won’t actually be that interesting – or, not as interesting as the author suspects.

However, at the same time, what does lend some interest to the first page […]

I live in Tennessee, so there’s much in Sara San Angelo’s opening page of Drift that has me thinking, “Oh, yeah. Yep. It’s just like that.” The suffocating heat, the weeds and shrubs and dirt roads. The cow fields and the horses.

I even drive a battered green (-ish/blue) Toyota.

Because of this, the first page manages to hold me. However, if not for all of these familiar things, the first page would, I’m afraid, move too slowly.

Which is not to say I wasn’t interested enough to hop to page two looking for something to happen. That’s exactly what […]

The List by Carmen Shirkey identifies itself fairly quickly as chick-lit (light, upbeat fiction marketed toward young women). I point this out only because I don’t read much (any) chick lit, these days, so I was hesitant, at first, to critique the page. Someone who doesn’t read a particular genre may not necessarily be the best judge of that genre.

However.

Whatever the genre, the author should strive to grab the reader with her or his unique storytelling style, personal (creative) perspective, and grasp on writing.

I’m sorry to say this first page doesn’t really grab me in any of […]