Winning first pages tips from author-couple Adam McCulloch and Emma Sloley
‘It’s easy to lose the reader’
Adam McCulloch & Emma Sloley
Emma Sloley and Adam McCulloch are a two-author household. As freelance travel writers, they both appear in a dazzling array of magazines and publications. Emma’s work has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and she received a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony, where she wrote her debut novel, Disaster’s Children (Little A, Nov 2019). Adam’s first pages of The Silver Trail won not only the First Pages Prize, but also other writing awards. They can be found at emmasloley.com and adammcculloch.info.
Adam and Emma, thank you for sitting down to chat first pages tips! As an author couple, how do you approach new writing projects: do you work separately and show each other polished pages, or is there discussion from an early stage?
Adam & Emma: Some might consider it a curse to be married to a fellow novelist, but in our house we think of it as free workshop and editing services! While we haven’t ever co-authored a book, our working relationship is very much about collaboration, especially when it comes to discussing ideas and themes. We tend to workshop story ideas for a while before putting anything on the page, using each other as test subjects to gauge which ideas set off the little spark in the brain that’s crucial in hooking the reader. Once we’ve settled on suitably sparky ideas, we discuss the mechanics of how best to tell those stories—POV, setting, characters, even which tense to use. The first pages naturally grow out of that. We’re very different kinds of storytellers, but our approach to story is very compatible. We both spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing structure and craft, and we both believe that you need to listen and be alert to the demands of your novel—each story wants to be told in a specific way.
What are your writing processes? Are you plotters or pantsers?
Adam: It's so easy to lose the reader in the first few pages so I'm always cautious of anything that slows the reader down such as backstory or exposition. Mystery can draw the reader in, but if used too much it can get coy and annoying. Meeting characters is similar to meeting people in real life: they might have the most fascinating life story but if they're not interesting to meet then I won't stick around to hear it.
Often I’ll polish my first page and read it to Emma to gauge her excitement. If she loves it, I won’t read her the rest of the book until I’ve completed a few drafts. This early enthusiasm is crucial for my momentum. Winning the First Pages Prize gave me the same boost and I encourage everyone to give it a go.
Emma: As a committed plotter, the idea of pantsing makes me twitchy. By the time I go to write my first pages I know everything about the structure of my story: the character arc, how my story begins and ends, what the central themes of the novel are going to be. While it’s always tempting to try to dazzle readers with a killer first line—an incongruous image; a shocking mystery; some kind of intriguing premise—first pages don’t exist in a vacuum. They need to work in concert with the story as a whole. As a reader I sometimes feel cheated if a tantalizing first line or paragraph isn’t paid off in a satisfying way by the rest of the book. It can feel like a carnival barker’s trick. I prefer tonally subtle beginnings.
Is this the same approach you took with The Silver Trail / Disaster's Children in particular?
Adam: My focus with The Silver Trail was to create an empathetic character who must soon care for the parent who neglected her. Introducing the backwards-facing seat in the Volvo was emblematic of the protagonist’s grievances. My new novel, Flood Money, follows a redneck coin-collector who gets embroiled in a counterfeit scam. Our protagonist and narrator, Dylan, is an unlikely criminal so the first pages needed to pose the question: how does he pull off such a complicated heist? The first line is, “I’m going to tell you about the time this guy came to town to make us all rich.” I hope readers want to stick around to find out.
Emma: In the first pages of Disaster’s Children my goal was to plant the seeds of the story to come, both thematically and plot-wise. We meet the protagonist, a young woman named Marlo, in an idyllic setting— the utopian ranch on which she was raised—but the scene already feels ominous and our heroine hemmed in by danger. The natural world in peril; the idea of humans containing the seeds of our own destruction; the conflicting siren songs of community and self-preservation—all the themes of the novel are subtly contained within those first few pages.
You both have a gift for luring us in and turning pages. Can you think of a 'forever first page'? An opening of a book that sticks with you?
Adam: I loved the audacity of Joshua Ferris's novel, Then We Came To The End. Great voice and detail and it sets up the ongoing mystery of who “we” are.
Emma: Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News was the first time I remember feeling the electrifying power of authorial voice—I literally hadn’t known you could do with language what she does. In a few short sentences Proulx conjures up an entire, singular world and an unforgettable protagonist, the hapless and heartbreaking Quoyle. By the end of page one you’re caught, hook, line and sinker, and good luck getting anything else done that day. What a gift.
Adam and Emma, thank you for these insights into your writing process(es) and great tips. Readers, find and follow this dynamic duo’s work through the links below. There are only a few days left to enter your first pages by SUNDAY for the First Pages Prize 2021.
emmasloley.com
@Emma_Sloley
https://bookshop.org/books/disaster-s-children/9781542004060