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I'm heading into my edits on Deadwater and need to figure out what my beginning actually is, and managed to serendipitously come across this post where an editor critiqued a number of openings authors submitted. That link goes to the Adult Fantasy category, but she's got other posts for other genres.
I'm going through it and taking notes for my own use, keeping in mind that each of these critiques is specifically aimed at the entry in question, but quite a lot of it is universal.
But I just hit "I might be a bit jaded because I read so many unpublished novel openings per year, but I feel that starting a novel with a character disoriented and in pain is a trope and probably won’t stand out to agents," and OH LORD YES so many self-published fantasy novels on Amazon start like this! If they don't start with the main character disoriented and in pain, they start with the MC running from pursuit, or sneaking through a location on the way to their job which is about to go hideously wrong.
I'm going through it and taking notes for my own use, keeping in mind that each of these critiques is specifically aimed at the entry in question, but quite a lot of it is universal.
But I just hit "I might be a bit jaded because I read so many unpublished novel openings per year, but I feel that starting a novel with a character disoriented and in pain is a trope and probably won’t stand out to agents," and OH LORD YES so many self-published fantasy novels on Amazon start like this! If they don't start with the main character disoriented and in pain, they start with the MC running from pursuit, or sneaking through a location on the way to their job which is about to go hideously wrong.