Much like Nathan Bransford’s Agent for a Day contest last week, I think events like this are a great way for authors — or anyone interested in what agents do — get a sense of what our days are like, workwise.

In looking at the other authors’ comments on the first pages on Authoress’ blog, the biggest thing I noticed was how often the readers remarked that they were “hooked.” I think many of them confused “hooked” with “curious,” and said as much. I may be curious about what’s going to happen in a story, but am I hooked? Do I NEED to know what happens next? Not all that often.

Out of the 50 first pages I looked at, I expressed further interest in 8 of them. This is a much higher percentage of requests than I normally make on queries, but I only specifically asked for material on two runners-up and one winner.

Want to play Secret Agent? Take a look at the 50 first pages on Authoress’ blog, without looking at the comments or the post with my winners, and see if your favorites match mine! (Start here, and click “newer post” at the bottom of each page after you’ve made your decision.) Let me know how you did in the comments below.

Back? Ok, so what Colleen is saying is that Joss Whedon hooked a network and an audience, many of whom were already primed to love his work, with a high concept idea. And then he took SIX HOURS of television (Colleen says 7, but I think episode 6, Man On The Street, was the turning point) to get to his point. And I may be one of the BIGGEST Whedon fans out there (I have the t-shirt), but even I was getting worried it wasn’t going to get better.

And then it did. Phew!

But Colleen’s point, and mine, is that as aspiring writers, without the guaranteed fan base of a Joss Whedon, or a Nora Roberts or a Stephen King or a Meg Cabot or or or… you guys don’t have 6 hours, or about 288 pages of teleplay. You don’t have 60 pages, or 6 chapters, even. You have to have both the hook and the immediate draw to keep us reading past the first three pages and beyond.

If Dollhouse were a novel from an unknown author, and Stranger Joss sent me a query setting up a brilliant concept and then said, “But look, the first five chapters are just set-up — the real action starts in chapter 6.” Then I would probably reply, “Then start with chapter 6. Make that your opening. Otherwise, no thanks.”

And I might kick myself later, but I could look back in my query file and see that the beginning was slow, and maybe something was going to happen, but not fast enough to keep me from moving on to the next great possibility.

The lesson in all this? Until you’re Joss Whedon (and/or can get Tahmoh Penikett, shirtless, to deliver your manuscript to me himself), make sure those opening pages and chapters are the best they can be. They may be your only shot.

If you’ve missed a few episodes of Dollhouse, you can catch up on Hulu with the five most recent, or download the whole season so far on iTunes. Shill, shill, shill.

The Guide to Literary Agents blog has been posting a great series of Agents Chapter 1 Pet Peeves, and in the latest set, Andrea Brown said most agents hate prologues, which brought up an interesting question. If you do have a prologue, should you include it in the first three or five pages you send to an agent? If the prologue sets up something later in the story, is it best to just send the first three or five pages of the first chapter, or will that look bad later if the agent requests a partial or full manuscript and then sees the prologue (especially if they hate prologues). How do you feel about prologues?

Bearing in mind that this is my personal opinion only, I think yes, if you have decided to start you manuscript with a prologue (knowing as you do that some agents don’t like them) then the first three pages you send to an agent should include that prologue. Bearing in mind that the format for an email submission, for example, doesn’t need to have lots of fancy headers, and you could just start with text without even mentioning the word “prologue.”
Because if you do hook a reader with those pages, and then you get a request for a partial, the agent EXPECTS to read the first pages again. That’s often how they refresh their memory of your book. I always specify that I want the FIRST three pages with a query — if your manuscript starts with a prologue and you don’t send that in your query, well then, you’re not following my submission guidelines, are you? I hate that.
Personally, I don’t have the rabid hate-on for prologues that some of my colleagues do, but I think they’re best taken on a case-by-case basis. Are you just trying to set up drama? Can you find another way to do that? Are you trying to trick the reader? Why would you want to do that? If you’ve considered all your options and you still want to include a prologue, then I’d rather see it than be skipped over.