That's an interesting quote given that in Slaughterhouse-Five, his most famous novel, he conspicuously avoids doing this. The first chapter of Slaughterhouse-Five is a meta-chapter about the writing of the novel itself, and only in chapter two does the story proper actually begin.
I think there's something effective about the way the book begins, and continually references other parts of itself throughout the entirety of the story; but it's definitely not throwing away the first chapter; or alternatively if there was a "first chapter" to Slaughterhouse-Five that Vonnegut threw away, I wonder what possibly could have been there.
How do you know he did not follow his own advice? Metafiction becomes a cheap trick if you are not upfront about it, you either make it clear from the start or end up in "it was all a dream" territory.
Second chapter becomes the first chapter if you throw away the first chapter, should you also throw that away? I guess Zeno would approve. Vonnegut's advice and most if not all of the common advice given to aspiring writers has truth in it but it tends to be too pithy for its own good. The first chapter needs to lay the groundwork for everything that follows and this applies for everything from genre and essays to the complicated and experimental works of literary fiction. Why should the reader care?
Vonnegut is ultimately pushing back against the old saw of the captivating first sentence, many aspiring writers fall into the trap of trying start their book by trying to captivate the reader at cost of laying that foundation; if I can just word this opening paragraph perfectly, the readers will be hooked. It is a fairly dishonest way to go about things. Everything the reader needs to know about what you are writing needs to be covered in that first chapter or paragraph or chapters or section or whatever metric applies to what you are writing, the trick is that you need to present it in a way that does not spoil everything to come.
If you get fixated on captivating the reader with the opening, tossing the first chapter and reworking the second is decent advice, but it might be better to just rework the first. All of these pithy bits of writing advice have truth in them and have a great deal to teach you but far too many aspiring writers tend to accept them as dogma.
Why would "A blue Ford just parked in front of the door. Jim still hasn't truly fully woken up but he was already making breakfast..." incite me to read the book?
Compare that to The Poppy War which I just discovered:
"Take your clothes off. Rin blinked. What? Cheating prevention protocol."
Unrelated to the idea, but this website strangely blocks `Alt+←` and `Alt+→` to cycle through browser history.
Edit: It seems the website overrides the `←` and `→` arrow keys specifically, and using `event.preventDefault()` causes the problem. I think it's good practice to ignore keys with modifiers in such a situation.
It's not "blocked", the person implementing it just forgo any sort of browser history usage when creating the website/"app", and the entire thing is controlled 100% in their own JS code. I guess author only had their specific mobile use in mind when creating it? Maybe swiping for back/forward works if you view it on the phone?
Would not recommend for fiction - at least not mass market fiction. But Mortimer probably felt those were not reading, and the method would work for him :-)
When I read How To Read a Book, I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category).
For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first 50 pages. If I'm not engaged, move on. Life is short. I believe Stephen King also used that heuristic. It's fine if you miss out on some great books. You're not going to get to read all of them anyway.
> For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first 50 pages. If I'm not engaged, move on. Life is short.
Just encountered myself doing this. I was reading John Birmingham's Axis of Time books. The first three sucked me in and I devoured them in a day or two apiece. Starting the fourth...something was off. The writing felt stilted, like the author was trying to cram in too many pop culture references or something. I put it down and have given it two more tries since with the same result, so now I'm done.
I'm sad, because I was really looking forwards to having several more books in the series.
Decent way to do it. I usually try to read the first 2-10 pages of a fiction book (at most) before I decide I might like it. If it hooks me, I open to two other mostly random pages, and ignore the plot parts to see if the writing style still seems good. If so, I buy or borrow it (depending).
Non-fiction is different (aside from reasons already mentioned) in that there is usually a far more limited number of books on a subject anyway. Sometimes (mostly not textbooks), you are stuck with just one or a few. Lots of great little obscure books about quirky bits of history out there that were great twenty pages in, but started out sorta meh.
Read the Adler book in high school; I kinda felt it was overrated at the time. I probably ought to reread it as an adult (not a 15 year old) at some point.
Ignoring whether this is a good business, I feel like this is a pretty terrible way to judge a book. If it took off it would result in everyone just starting their book with a real hook, which only works for a small number of genres and only if nothing else needs to be setup before "hooking" (simple "nothing is unfamiliar" stories).
I've read plenty of books on recommendation that I think are great, but they were not the kind of books that could start with a hook I think.
But, the counterargument to this is if it helps people start books, then who cares if it is an effective strategy or not.
> But, the counterargument to this is if it helps people start books, [...].
It certainly doesn't. Not that it matters to people who love reading books, for they know judging a whole book by its first page(s), or based on some formula extracted from one of those silly self-improvement tomes, is just ridiculous (especially the latter reminiscent of "Pritchard's graph" from Dead Poets Society).
When I visit a bookstore, I will look for things I recognize/want. But I also will open random books and read the first page to see if anything hooks me. I try to come away from any bookstore visit with one book I've never heard of and may have never been recommended otherwise. This is a nice recreation of that experience (sans the paper smell).
Clicked the link. Selected "Literary". First sample was quite good. Vaguely caught the name of the author. Closed page. Then decided to go back. Could not find the first sample which I decided I might want to read. Got just enough of the author name to get Google to find "Colson Whitehead" when I entered "Colston". The book was "Cool Machine". Went to borrow it from Sno-Isle.org. Placed a hold on the physical book. Number 51 in the hold line (all time record for my holds -- got plenty to read until its likely availability). Glad I found this site, but on my second visit did not find any "Literary" first pages that resonated. Blind luck. Good site idea though. HTH, NSC
And as for Frank Herbert's Dune, I gave it a try. I read the first two books, and was 20% of my way through the third when I realized that "No, this whole story is not going to get good ever."
Should have just stopped after a few pages of the first book :-)
My most recent read of Dune was after Foundation in order (side bit: bailed at Foundation's Edge because it got too "preachy").
One of the things that I had stumbled across was that Dune was an argument against the utopian view of Asimov and Foundation where individuals don't matter in the Seldon Plan and its played out in a galactic scale. Dune in that read is a dystopian view of the future where everything (at the galactic level) hinges upon individuals and the plot is played out on a planetary scale.
Asimov was asking "can reason organize civilization?" and Herbert came back and asked "what are the dangers if you think it can?"
...
So, when I revisit the large scale science fiction from the era... to me, now, it's more of a philosophy paper with a plot founded in future speculative fiction - more akin to reading Plato than Tolkien. Philosophical arguments rather than myth making and story telling that the authors were dueling in serialized pulp magazines rather than letters and treatises.
The button on the homepage is hardcoded to this book, which I find extremely strange. Why not choose a random book, and why pick such a confusing quote?
I think the reveal button is counted as an upvote for the book because it supposedly discovered my taste and it was based on th books I revealed, but not bookmarked.
I think there's something effective about the way the book begins, and continually references other parts of itself throughout the entirety of the story; but it's definitely not throwing away the first chapter; or alternatively if there was a "first chapter" to Slaughterhouse-Five that Vonnegut threw away, I wonder what possibly could have been there.
Vonnegut is ultimately pushing back against the old saw of the captivating first sentence, many aspiring writers fall into the trap of trying start their book by trying to captivate the reader at cost of laying that foundation; if I can just word this opening paragraph perfectly, the readers will be hooked. It is a fairly dishonest way to go about things. Everything the reader needs to know about what you are writing needs to be covered in that first chapter or paragraph or chapters or section or whatever metric applies to what you are writing, the trick is that you need to present it in a way that does not spoil everything to come.
If you get fixated on captivating the reader with the opening, tossing the first chapter and reworking the second is decent advice, but it might be better to just rework the first. All of these pithy bits of writing advice have truth in them and have a great deal to teach you but far too many aspiring writers tend to accept them as dogma.
Why would "A blue Ford just parked in front of the door. Jim still hasn't truly fully woken up but he was already making breakfast..." incite me to read the book?
Compare that to The Poppy War which I just discovered:
"Take your clothes off. Rin blinked. What? Cheating prevention protocol."
Edit: It seems the website overrides the `←` and `→` arrow keys specifically, and using `event.preventDefault()` causes the problem. I think it's good practice to ignore keys with modifiers in such a situation.
When I read How To Read a Book, I was quite impressed. In practice ... it's not very useful for the types of book I read. Likely better for deeper, philosophical books (including fiction of that category).
For a lot of fiction books, my rule is to read the first 50 pages. If I'm not engaged, move on. Life is short. I believe Stephen King also used that heuristic. It's fine if you miss out on some great books. You're not going to get to read all of them anyway.
Just encountered myself doing this. I was reading John Birmingham's Axis of Time books. The first three sucked me in and I devoured them in a day or two apiece. Starting the fourth...something was off. The writing felt stilted, like the author was trying to cram in too many pop culture references or something. I put it down and have given it two more tries since with the same result, so now I'm done.
I'm sad, because I was really looking forwards to having several more books in the series.
I would also use it if I was doing a really deep dive in a fiction work.
For most fiction that I am reading for entertainment, the first 50ish pages will tell me if its worth finishing.
Non-fiction is different (aside from reasons already mentioned) in that there is usually a far more limited number of books on a subject anyway. Sometimes (mostly not textbooks), you are stuck with just one or a few. Lots of great little obscure books about quirky bits of history out there that were great twenty pages in, but started out sorta meh.
Read the Adler book in high school; I kinda felt it was overrated at the time. I probably ought to reread it as an adult (not a 15 year old) at some point.
I've read plenty of books on recommendation that I think are great, but they were not the kind of books that could start with a hook I think.
But, the counterargument to this is if it helps people start books, then who cares if it is an effective strategy or not.
It certainly doesn't. Not that it matters to people who love reading books, for they know judging a whole book by its first page(s), or based on some formula extracted from one of those silly self-improvement tomes, is just ridiculous (especially the latter reminiscent of "Pritchard's graph" from Dead Poets Society).
Also, some of the best tv shows I watched need a couple episodes build up to get a nice payout.
And as for Frank Herbert's Dune, I gave it a try. I read the first two books, and was 20% of my way through the third when I realized that "No, this whole story is not going to get good ever."
Should have just stopped after a few pages of the first book :-)
One of the things that I had stumbled across was that Dune was an argument against the utopian view of Asimov and Foundation where individuals don't matter in the Seldon Plan and its played out in a galactic scale. Dune in that read is a dystopian view of the future where everything (at the galactic level) hinges upon individuals and the plot is played out on a planetary scale.
Asimov was asking "can reason organize civilization?" and Herbert came back and asked "what are the dangers if you think it can?"
...
So, when I revisit the large scale science fiction from the era... to me, now, it's more of a philosophy paper with a plot founded in future speculative fiction - more akin to reading Plato than Tolkien. Philosophical arguments rather than myth making and story telling that the authors were dueling in serialized pulp magazines rather than letters and treatises.
https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781538704448
But click "Reveal". This is in fact a book.