First Page Checklist

Fiction Craft Essay

First Pages Are Gatekeepers

(and That’s a Good Thing)

Before a reader ever meets your prose, your work runs a gauntlet of gatekeepers: first agents, then acquiring editors and sales, then the brick-and-mortar genre shelf, then the front cover, jacket copy, etc.

And if—after all that—someone turns to your first page, you’ve earned a prized moment of attention. So, that page must quietly answer the following core questions so masterfully it looks like it took no time at all.

Below is a checklist you can use on your opening page(s) before you hit “publish,” or enter a contest, or submit a query. Hit all of these, and your first page becomes a promise the rest of the book keeps.

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A Fill-In-the-Blank First-Page Test

If you can’t answer all of these from your first page, then it might be a good time for a revision. Each component is explained in the text below the test.

1. WHO | POV ____________________

2. HOW | VOICE (adjectives)__________________

3. PLOT | Antagonist/Pressure_______________________

4. WHERE | Setting & place sentences________________

5. WANT | Unique Desire___________________

6. THEME | Hints through images or choices__________________

7. STAKES | Personal/Global cost__________________

8. EMOTION | What emotion(s) are invoked in the reader___________________

9. PREMISE | Logline_____________________________

Tape it to your monitor. Make the answers undeniable on the page, not in your head.

What to deliver: A POV, and a clear center of consciousness.
How to show it: Concrete perception from your M.C. + a bias or belief.
Try: A named protagonist doing or noticing something specific that only they would clock. They must also clearly want—or not want—something. (see ‘Want’)
Avoid: Camera-eye neutrality; floaty omniscience without a human tether.

Strong Voice

What to deliver: Texture, rhythm, diction, and attitude.
How to show it: Diction that couldn’t belong to any other narrator; sentence music and syntax that fits your genre/tone. Dialogue as action.
Try: One opening with a fresh and earned image. Writing like you speak.
Avoid: Thesaurus glitter or generic filler/automatic language. (“It was a day like any other…”)

What to deliver: What is the Story? The Antagonist and/or Central Problem. The pressure your protagonist is under—person, system, force of nature, time.
How to show it: Friction on page one (a refusal, a deadline, a watchful eye, a rule about to be broken). Make sure your M.C. drives the story and isn’t just reacting.
Try: Name the pressure early (“Rent is due in an hour” / “The audit is today”).
Avoid: Vibes without vectors or feelings without stimulus.

What to deliver: Where are we?
How to show it: Specific nouns that carry worldbuilding weight (objects, sounds, prices, signage). What era, what season, but all situated within a brushstroke or two. Unless of course you’re writing literary fiction, then by all means linger in the detail.
Try: Having the character show the season by clothing, action, vs. just noticing. (e.g., She starts the fireplace, or she packs a few bikinis.)
Avoid: Weather reports and getting dressed in the morning, unless they matter.

What to deliver: The Protagonist’s goal. A concrete near-term objective that implies a longer arc. S/he must want (or not want) something.
How to show it: Desire in conflict with something external.
Try: “If she can convince the jury, she keeps her freedom.” (see Stakes)
Avoid: Only internal ruminations; give the want something to push against.

What to deliver: What the story is really about. Glimmers of your deeper question—without preaching or leaning didactic. Themes are best served light-handed, and should be ambient; not acute or blaring.
How to show it: A choice, contradiction, or motif that hints at the argument of the book. Through juxtaposition between characters, between protagonist and antagonist.
Try: Creating symbols and imagery that sets up your theme’s polarity (freedom vs. safety, love vs. lust). And define these before you start your draft, to be kept as backpocket knowledge.
Avoid: Abstract statements of meaning or preachy overt statements.

What to deliver: Or else what? Consequences that scale—uniquely personal first, then larger and global.
How to show it: Against a clock, a cost, a loss that matters uniquely to this person.
Try: Imagining the worst happening, and what your M.C. would do. Continually punishing your characters, to see what they really want, and they ACT to get out of the scenario and closer to their goals.
Avoid: Stakes that only matter to the plot spreadsheet, or stakes without the protagonist’s agency.

Invocation of Emotion

What to deliver: A felt response in the reader (curiosity, dread, ache, delight).
How to show it: Show vs. Tell. Particulars that are relatable. Sensory detail + micro-specificity. Withheld but implied information.
Try: Let the reader do a beat of inference. Then contradict with irony, or let them be right without spoon feeding. Trust your reader.
Avoid: Telling us how to feel.

What to deliver: Answer your logline (One-Line Hook). A crisp “X meets Y” or “When A happens, B must…” engine the page makes believable.
How to show it: Align the first-page moment with the premise logic.
Try: When a drug addicted botanist breeds an illegal cure, the plant starts attracting unwanted attention.
Avoid: Opening on a scene that could belong to any other book.

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First-Page Checklist

1. Who + Name + Lens: Does a distinct POV filter every sentence?

2. Friction + Want: Is something resisted, desired, or about to break?

3. Place & Setting: Could a stranger sketch the scene from your nouns alone?

4. Vector + Pacing: Do we know what the protagonist is trying to do right now?

5. Cost/Stakes: Is there a hinted consequence if they fail?

6. Voice: Can a friend identify you from the voice without your name on it?

If any box is empty, revise the lines, not the outline.

Micro-Edits That Move Mountains

• Replace one summary with one action. (“He worries about money” to “He counts tip bills twice, then pockets the coins.”)

• Trade an adjective cluster for a telling noun. (“Old, cheap car” to “1998 Corolla with a rubber-band window crank.”)

• Install a clock. Doesn’t haven’t to be an actual clock, many things tell time. And add a time-bound phrase to the want.

• Cut your warm-up prose. Start where the blood’s already in sink.

• Give the line a spine. End a paragraph on a verb or image, not a tailing clause.

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A first page is a threshold. Let the reader feel the floor tilt a degree under their feet and they’ll follow you anywhere. Do the best engineering here and the rest of the book inherits a fair momentum.

Thank you for reading,
-NJ

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