{"id":1370,"date":"2019-02-14T15:00:50","date_gmt":"2019-02-14T22:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2019-01-31T20:11:35","modified_gmt":"2019-02-01T03:11:35","slug":"book-the-first-five-pages-2000","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/14\/book-the-first-five-pages-2000\/","title":{"rendered":"BOOK: The First Five Pages (2000)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><u><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/images.gr-assets.com\/books\/1299122821l\/263255.jpg\" alt=\"The First Five Pages\" width=\"307\" height=\"475\" \/>The First Five Pages: A Writer\u2019s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile<br \/>\n<\/u><\/strong>Year: 2000<br \/>\nAuthor: Noah Lukeman<br \/>\nLength: 208 pages<\/p>\n<p>As a writer who is looking to submit to agents soon, I was hoping\u00a0<em>The First Five Pages<\/em>\u00a0would give me some insight into the hook that could lead to the acceptance of my book. Additionally, as an individual who also creates and publishes short story anthologies, I hoped this book would give some useful advice for writers to keep their stories out of the rejection pile. Unfortunately, while this book is almost 20 years old, much has changed since its initial publication. Everyone has computers. Word processors and other tools are in abundance. Nobody prints out manuscripts anymore.<\/p>\n<p>Split into three sections and a total of 19 topics, this book doesn\u2019t so much tell an author how to avoid rejection from agents and publishers as much as how to write. I will say from personal experience that the one topic on formatting is the most important topic to pay attention to, especially since I\u2019ve rejected tons of submissions that don\u2019t follow the guidelines\u2014albeit for additional reasons besides the formatting ignorance. There might be some tidbits in this book that will help an author create a manuscript worth accepting, but they\u2019re buried in so much basic advice that most beginning authors will probably miss them.<\/p>\n<p>This is the crux of the problem with this book: it\u2019s not meant for authors who are ready to submit. There\u2019s no nuance in the examples contained in this book, which doesn\u2019t help anything when the topics are so rudimentary as to make me wonder why anyone who still has these problems with their manuscript is submitting to agents and publishers in the first place. If these writers hadn\u2019t already heard the advice to \u201cshow, don\u2019t tell,\u201d then there\u2019s no way they\u2019re far enough in their writing career to be able to create a submittable manuscript.<\/p>\n<p>Basic writing advice for authors who probably aren\u2019t ready to submit to agents or publishers anyway, I give\u00a0<em>The First Five Pages<\/em>\u00a02.0 stars out of 5.<\/p>\n<h2><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/>\u00a0<strong><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-647\" src=\"http:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/255px-Five-pointed_star_svg-150x150.png\" alt=\"255px-Five-pointed_star_svg\" width=\"50\" height=\"50\" \/><\/strong><\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The First Five Pages: A Writer\u2019s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile Year: 2000 Author: Noah Lukeman Length: 208 pages As a writer who is looking to submit to agents soon, I was hoping\u00a0The First Five Pages\u00a0would give me some insight into the hook that could lead to the acceptance of my book. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36,54],"tags":[40,1650,1308,55,1651,1648,8,1649,1016],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-0-stars","category-book","tag-40","tag-a-writers-guide-to-staying-out-of-the-rejection-pile","tag-advice","tag-book","tag-dated","tag-noah-lukeman","tag-review","tag-the-first-five-pages","tag-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1375,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benjamin-m-weilert.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}