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The Novel Opening

G. MIKI HAYDEN

The Novel Opening

G. MIKI HAYDEN

$399.99

07/24/2025 - 09/04/2025

Enroll Now

While a sharp query goes a long way to inviting in the agent and editor, even that won’t pique their curiosity if they skip ahead to the novel start and the pages don’t deliver. How can you produce an infallible story opening? Action, voice, an immediate interest in the characters, and a hook that pulls in the reader and which is designed around your particular genre. While what works will optimize certain invariable elements, the presentation and emphasis will be completely unique to the work you’re writing.

The class will act as the eyes and the thought process of the agent and/or editor looking at your initial chapter or two. Can readers identify with the characters? Do they feel an immediate draw to the situation—regardless of the genre. Do they have burning questions about what you present? If this is a genre novel we’ve seen before, that can be okay, but something has to click. Everything old can be recycled, but some element has to fully excite. Your instructor knows the sweet spot and she herself has been selling steadily. She knows how you can refresh your pages and magnify the draw.

Come prepared to hear wise advice and to work. The class is personalized with plenty of back and forth regarding the alure of the characters and the promise of the plot, the progression. Miki has spent time as a first reader for agents and has placed three of her own novels plus several short stories in major publications just this year. Work with someone who knows the actual field. You either sell on the first pages of your book or you don’t sell at all.

$399.99

07/24/2025 - 09/04/2025

Enroll Now

While a sharp query goes a long way to inviting in the agent and editor, even that won’t pique their curiosity if they skip ahead to the novel start and the pages don’t deliver. How can you produce an infallible story opening? Action, voice, an immediate interest in the characters, and a hook that pulls in the reader and which is designed around your particular genre. While what works will optimize certain invariable elements, the presentation and emphasis will be completely unique to the work you’re writing.

Course details

Course outline

Each week of this course includes a written lecture, recommended reading, creative exercises, discussion questions, supplemental material, and a writing assignment to be submitted for instructor feedback.

Meet the instructor

G. Miki Hayden

G. Miki Hayden’s latest novel just out is a Florida thriller—Political Alliances. All the boxes are ticked—murder, desperation, an odious cult, a virtuous and savvy protagonist who knows the lay of the land from South Florida to the citrus groves and its impoverished pickers. Oh, yes, this is an election year and money counts. A bit of romance brings contention and attraction. Last spring’s new novel from Hayden was a highly praised police procedural, Dry Bones, set in an exciting and diverse Oklahoma. Also out this past year was novel three of the Rebirth trilogy Rescued,Re-Live, and Respiration, the engaging story of martial arts grandmaster Jay Gardner—all literary fiction with strong plot and character elements and powerful openings. Hayden also recently sold four novels for electronic serialization, while her first novel in print, Pacific Empire (an alternate history), won a rave in the NYTimes and was on that paper’s Summer Reading List. The sequel, New Pacific, was in print in 2004. Other novels of Hayden’s in print are By Reason of Insanity (a mystery), Question Woman & Howling Sky (a post-apocalyptic novel set in the West), Strings (a middle-grade fantasy), and The Heroine’s Journey (a YA fantasy set in the Middle Ages and our own time). Miki has had many short stories published, including in Alfred Hitchcock and Ellery Queen and in three Mystery Writers of America anthologies (winning an Edgar for one). She has further published in science fiction and romance genres. Miki has two writing instructionals in print—Writing the Mystery in its third edition and The Naked Writer, a style guide, also in its third edition. She has taught at Writer’s Digest University online for more than twenty years.