The Job of the First Eight Pages
Joshua Fields Millburn“The job of the first eight pages is not to have the reader want to throw the book at the wall, during the first eight pages.”
—David Foster Wallace
There’s a lot of truth in the above quote. Whether writing a 1000-page novel or a short essay, the writer must grab the reader’s attention at the beginning, must give her a compelling reason to put in the effort—a reason to keep reading.
In my writing class, I call this technique narrative urgency. The first sentence of any writing has only one job: make the reader want to read the second. Hence, the second sentence must make the reader want to read the third. So forth and so on. If a sentence doesn’t fuel a story’s urgency, it must be cut.
Similarly, an opening paragraph must move the reader forward to the next. The same rings true for the first page of a book or any other piece of writing.
This is especially true in today’s post-MTV, flash-cut, Facebook’d world. Our attention spans are shorter than ever. (Hell, if I make it past page 50, the book is likely a masterpiece.) We all have busy schedules, and no one wants to drudge through writing that doesn’t compel them.
And yet, far too often, I see writers (especially bloggers) start their work with something vapid or ephemeral—a stupid preface, a superfluous editor’s note, a stilted opening gesture—all of which are just ticks of doubt, marks of bad writing that will never honestly grab a reader’s attention. Countless blog posts and books and newspaper articles are littered with this sort of bad writing, usually written by timid, careless writers who don’t consider the reader.
I have one bit of advice for these writers: cut the shit. Stop wasting people’s time.
This bit of advice doesn’t give the writer license to sensationalize, though. The only thing worse than vapidity is sensationalism, which opts to titillate instead of engage the reader. The National Enquirer and various other check-out-line organs come to mind, none of which have ever left a lasting, meaningful impression on any sensible reader.
The key, then, is not to sensationalize, but to draw in the reader, to work tirelessly to cut the fat and make the work interesting, relatable, absorptive. For it is only when writing absorbes the reader—when it drags her into the author’s world for a few moments—that the writer accomplishes what every writer ultimately wants to achieve: to effectively communicate via expression.
You see, for reader and writer, expressive communication is the real payoff, and the written word is still the best medium for communication between author and receiver. It is narrative urgency that makes this possible. Everything else is just background noise.