If you're like most writers, the first few pages are the hardest to write. Noah Lukeman, author of The First Five Pages, a Writer's Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile, agrees: you have at best five pages in which to hook or lose a new reader. As an agent, Lukeman works from a position of rejection. Facing an enormous pile of submissions, he looks for reasons to reject a manuscript, rather than accept it. In this book, Lukeman helps you make sure your manuscript is one he cannot pass up.

Part one of the book addresses the look of the manuscript as well as the use and abuse of adverbs, adjectives, style and comparison. Each chapter ends with a helpful summary and list of exercises. While his own tone can seem critical and even elitist, each chapter opens with an inspiring quote to help you realize that other writers have faced these same problems.

Part two addresses dialogue, which if done poorly, will cause Lukeman to reject a book. Visually, he looks for too many or too little identifiers, as well as dialogue that is commonplace or too sparse. His exercises encourage you to look for the original intent of the scene as a way to elevate the interactions between characters.

Lukeman takes part three of his book to address broader issues that might occur during the first fifty pages, like character development and use of description. This section can be used whether you've got those first five pages nailed or not. Some of his peeves (like using several names for one character) are blessedly easy to fix. Some are fun to contemplate, like coming up with hooks for your opening sentences. But others are much more difficult like questioning whether every sentence supports the tone and focus of the novel. It's not until the end of the book that Lukeman discusses pacing and progression. If the writing is good enough, then he'll take a look at the synopsis and the shape of the story.

This isn't a book to read during the writing process, but afterwards when you want to look at your manuscript as if an agent or editor is seeing it for the first time. Lukeman is that picky, meticulous person who you want to scrutinize your manuscript because you know he will improve your writing, even though you may have to endure a few painful changes along the way. When your novel is sitting pretty in that monstrous stack of submissions, you'll be glad you did.