Okay, I know this site won't be for everyone--he's rather cutthroat and I'm sure will rub people the wrong way, but I personally like this site. I've read more than a dozen of the books he's analyzed (the look insides, to see what I thought of them) and I really enjoyed this study and the article. The 5 Most Common Writing Mistakes That Break Reader Immersion | Creativity Hacker
I know it isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're a newer writer and you want to understand what readers think of book openings, this is a really good place to get some ideas of what not to do. It takes time to read his reports and then find the books and read them, but it's a one-stop-shop if you want to gain deeper understanding of the most common story problems and how to avoid them.
I have to admit, I might be a tougher nut to crack than this even, because I felt (in reading) he may have been a touch generous to some of the books. Now, I don't intend this post as any sort of "look at what these people did." I just want to point new readers to the most common problems with self-publishing before your book is "ready" and this is a place where you can see which books dropped out of the race in three minutes and which went the forty-minute distance. By reading a dozen or so of these books, you might get some ideas how to help your own story shine its brightest. Hope this gives writers looking for some concrete answers something to think about. It's so often hard to provide good examples of the "issues" we deal with in crit and it's even harder for newer writers who either aren't completely comfortable with critique, or who are too emotionally attached to their own stories to enjoy the brutality a crit can sometimes administer.
I know it isn't going to be everyone's cup of tea, but if you're a newer writer and you want to understand what readers think of book openings, this is a really good place to get some ideas of what not to do. It takes time to read his reports and then find the books and read them, but it's a one-stop-shop if you want to gain deeper understanding of the most common story problems and how to avoid them.
I have to admit, I might be a tougher nut to crack than this even, because I felt (in reading) he may have been a touch generous to some of the books. Now, I don't intend this post as any sort of "look at what these people did." I just want to point new readers to the most common problems with self-publishing before your book is "ready" and this is a place where you can see which books dropped out of the race in three minutes and which went the forty-minute distance. By reading a dozen or so of these books, you might get some ideas how to help your own story shine its brightest. Hope this gives writers looking for some concrete answers something to think about. It's so often hard to provide good examples of the "issues" we deal with in crit and it's even harder for newer writers who either aren't completely comfortable with critique, or who are too emotionally attached to their own stories to enjoy the brutality a crit can sometimes administer.