Story Beginnings: Creating the Right First Impression — Guest: Shaila Patel

No matter how much we study and try different approaches, we often struggle with our story’s first pages. We know how important it is to create a good first impression with our readers, yet there are so many elements we have to juggle that the pieces often don’t come together easily.

We might describe nail-biting action, but forget to help readers connect with the character. Or we might spend too much time in our character’s head and fail to anchor readers in the setting to give them somethi...