- New this year at SavvyAuthors!
- New!!
- Level
- Mixed
- Basic and Premium Members Prices
- Subscriber Member Pricing: $52.50
- Basic Member Pricing: $60.00
- Category
- Characters
- Description/Setting
- Editing
- Dialogue
- Structure
- POV
- Critique
- Class Length
- 6 Weeks
You might not have a bad story — you might just have a weak beginning.
This five-week intensive focuses on the most decisive real estate in fiction: the first page.
Readers, agents, and editors make a call within a few paragraphs, long before a story has the
chance to prove itself. Through close reading of opening pages by Meg Wolitzer, Jhumpa Lahiri,
Lorrie Moore and others, we will examine how writers create voice, stakes, orientation, and
narrative pull immediately — and then apply those methods to your own openings through
guided exercises and workshop critique.
By the end of the course, you will have rebuilt your opening so that it does what a first page must
do: compel the reader to turn the next one.
This five-week intensive focuses on the most decisive real estate in fiction: the first page.
Readers, agents, and editors make a call within a few paragraphs, long before a story has the
chance to prove itself. Through close reading of opening pages by Meg Wolitzer, Jhumpa Lahiri,
Lorrie Moore and others, we will examine how writers create voice, stakes, orientation, and
narrative pull immediately — and then apply those methods to your own openings through
guided exercises and workshop critique.
By the end of the course, you will have rebuilt your opening so that it does what a first page must
do: compel the reader to turn the next one.
- Outline
- Week 1 — The Job of a First Page
- Why manuscripts live or die on page one
- What agents and editors scan for in seconds
- Diagnosing the most common failures of beginnings
Week 2 — Establishing Voice, Frame, and Orientation
- How openings create trust and authority instantly
- Selecting the right entry point (what not to explain yet)
- Cases: Wolitzer, Lahiri (annotated)
Week 3 — Narrative Tension Without Backstory Dumps
- Generating stakes without exposition
- Implied questions vs. explicit hooks
- Cases: Lorrie Moore + one contemporary debut
Week 4 — Revision Lab: Re-Engineering Your Own Opening
- Structural edits vs. line-level changes
- Cutting, relocating, and delaying information
- Instructor-guided rewrite in session
Week 5 — Workshop & Agent-Ready Polish
- Live workshop of revised first pages
- Criteria for “submit-ready” vs. “still not ready”
- Final checklist + submission preparation
- Class Format
- Savvy Authors' workshops are held on a forum: a bulletin board based system. You will receive a reminder notice one day prior to the start of the workshop that includes instructions on how to access the workshop forum. If you have not received instructions by the day the workshop begins, please check your spam filter.
The forum will be available the morning (EST) of the day the workshop starts and will remain accessible to all participants thereafter.
Please note that you do NOT need to be online at a specific time to access the lectures. This is NOT a live video based class.
