You've Got Five Pages, Verity by Colleen Hoover, To Tell Me You're Good.

The first chapter can make or break a reader's engagement with a story. We as writers must craft brilliant opening pages in order to hook those picky readers, so let's study the stories of others to see how they do it! I have to be honest--the opening pages of Verity by Collleen Hoover did not move me to keep reading. Hoover's prose style cuts like a knife, and her word choices say a lot with a little. But there's something about the intense message about Manhattan's lack of humanity mixed with a protagonist who *desires* to lose her humanity and be "as hard as the concrete" beneath her feet that makes it very difficult for me to relate to this protagonist as a reader, especially when considering the bloody death the protagonist witnesses in the first five pages. The protagonist is determined to *not* connect and *not* empathize. This approach certainly gives the writer opportunity to build layers that can be peeled away as the story progresses, but a reader has to be invested to see that happen first. And what will you, fellow creative, learn in the first five pages? Let's find out!