Below is the first page of a published novel. Before I reveal the title/author, please read the first page (actually this is a tad over one page) and consider a few questions:
Do you have a sense of what the story will be about?
Do you care about the protagonist?
Are you hooked?
Even if you’re not keen on the subject/genre, that’s okay. Review this page for the craft and technique.
Guido Morris and Vincent Cardworthy were third cousins. No one remembered which Morris had married which Cardworthy, and no one cared except at large family gatherings when this topic was introduced and subjected to the benign opinions of all. Vincent and Guido had been friends since babyhood. They had been strolled together in the same pram and as boys were often brought together, either at the Cardworthy house in Petrie, Connecticut, or at the Morris's in Boston to play marbles, climb trees, and set off cherry bombs in trash cans and mailboxes. As teenagers, they drank beer in hiding and practiced smoking Guido's father's cigars, which did not make them sick, but happy. As adults, they both loved a good cigar.
At college they fooled around, spent money, and wondered what would become of them when they grew up. Guido in tended to write poetry in heroic couplets and Vincent thought he might eventually win the Nobel Prize for physics.
In their late twenties they found themselves together again in Cambridge. Guido had gone to law school, had put in several years at a Wall Street law firm, and had discovered that his heart was not in his work, and so he had come back to graduate school to study Romance languages and literature. He was old for a graduate student, but he had decided to give himself a few years of useless pleasure before the true responsibilities of adulthood set upon him. Eventually, Guido was to go to New York and take over the stewardship of the Morris family trust-the Magna Charta Foundation, which gave money to civic art projects, artists of all sorts, and groups who wished to preserve landmarks and beautify their cities.