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- I value writing style and pacing way more than any volta. Pride and Prejudice is hardly my genre, yet I remembered it grabbing me immediately. So just now I checked to see if I remembered it correctly, and within the first minute I laughed and I'm hooked again.
Life's too short for novels that might get good halfway through, especially when there's plenty Austen I haven't read yet.
- For me there are novels with such big pay-offs that they are worth 100s of pages of setup to me. I usually only start them when I read online that they are worth it. I had this with Atlas Shrugged (500-600 pages of setup?).
Some are simply such a nice world (and indeed writing style) that they don’t even really need a Volta. I had that with the Commonwealth Saga by Hamilton. I just wanted it to go on and on (and it does for >2400 pages). (I was sadly disappointed by the follow-ups which are much less "sci"). Same with the Bobiverse books, eagerly awaiting part 6, although I still want to be in that world, it also feels like it should come to some beautiful end before dragging on too long...
by teekert - Yes! The opening line of Pride and Prejudice alone is already immediately captivating. And then makes you re-read it again, after you finish the book and it suddenly shines differently.
I feel enormously fortunate for being fluent in Russian, reading Bulgakov and Tolstoy in original is pure joy, any translation removes subtleties - it's like listening to Bach through the car stereo, you still can enjoy it, but it won't make you want to cry, like listening in symphony hall might. If I had no other reason for learning English but to understand the prose of Austen, it'd still be worth it. And I'm just discovering the simple elegance of G.G. Márquez in Spanish. He does a similar trick in the first line of Cien años. "Había de recordar" is a future seen from the past, and Spanish carries it without strain. English has to choose between "was to remember" and "would remember", and both just miss it. The sentence sets up the whole book's time scheme in five words, and the beauty of it has to be contemplated.
Sometimes, reading a single passage from a book, I mean truly, deeply, honestly letting it sink into your subconsciousness makes up for all the insufficiencies in the story.
by iLemming - I appreciate Isherwood in this retrospect. Most of this novels have a sort of placid flow about human existence and the tedium of modern life, until the last few pages retell the moral with such rapidity that feels almost physical.
- I recently read Dungeon Crawler Carl. It’s pretty much interesting from the very beginning.
On the other hand, Blind Assassin was extremely boring to me until the very last page, but that last page blew my mind.
by dimes - The Blind Assassin is possibly one of the best novels of all time.
DCC is, well, not that.
- Yeah, there are plenty of slow burns.
Yet, I wouldn't go so far as to say every novel is one. If you aren't an established author, publishers won't take on your manuscript if it doesn't hook them with the first chapter, better even with the first page.
That doesn't mean that a well written first chapter will hook everyone, though.
by k__ - Not ashamed to say that I love genre fiction and yes even comics with strong complex storylines. Sci-fi, mystery and supernatural (not purely horror) primarily and even middle grade fiction - both of these with little or absent fantasy/magic. That preference probably prejudices these voltas for me. I'm not sure if I'll ever read the so called great classics.
I remember reading the name of the rose by umber to eco, where I skimmed over the elaborate religious bits.
by somadeva - The problem is, sometimes I pick up a novel and it doesn’t have that, it’s just boring through (or I think it will be so I give up).
Is there a way to find out before investing so much time? Mainstream critics have different preferences than mine, my favorite works are all indie, but the people I find who like those also have different preferences. I read lots of plot summaries, but I think that has an opposite effect, ruining a novel that would interest me.
- William Gibson is one of my favorite writers, and it's funny because I think he has the exact opposite problem. Most of his novels open on the action, in some interesting location. But gradually they get weaker, with a few (Mona Lisa Overdrive, in my case) becoming a real slog to finish. I've probably read the first 50 pages of Neuromancer 20 times, but only the entire novel 3-4 times in 20+ years.
There's the famous opening line to Neuromancer, "The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel." But I actually like the openings of Count Zero and Virtual Light more:
CZ: They sent a slamhound on Turner's trail in New Delhi, slotted it to his pheromones and the color of his hair. It caught up with him on a street called Chandni Chauk and came scrambling for his rented BMW through a forest of bare brown legs and pedicab tires. Its core was a kilogram of recrystallized hexogene and flaked TNT. He didn't see it coming.
The last he saw of India was the pink stucco facade of a place called the Khush-Oil Hotel. Because he had a good agent, he had a good contract. Because he had a good contract, he was in Singapore an hour after the explosion. Most of him, anyway The Dutch surgeon liked to joke about that, how an unspecified percentage of Turner hadn't made it out of Palam International on that first flight and had to spend the night there in a shed, in a support vat.
VL: The courier presses his forehead against layers of glass, argon, high-impact plastic. He watches a gunship traverse the city’s middle distance like a hunting wasp, death slung beneath its thorax in a smooth black pod.
IMO some writers are just better as short story writers, not novelists, but are forced into writing longer works by the publishing system.
by keiferski - > short story writers
esp. among sci-fi, as sci-fi is more about concept than execution,
by BoredomIsFun - Gibson is one of those writers who are much better prose stylists than plotters.
I enjoy reading his prose immensely, but he's been stamping out books with the same template for ever: an expert is hired to do something. Turns out there's a man with unlimited cash flow funding everything, but was hiding his true intentions (usually in order to lay a trap), which are revealed, and then some McGuffin is saved or eliminated or whatever; meanwhile, the main character mostly didn't do anything, just a passive spectator to some plot unfolding around them. The one I will forgive most easily here is Count Zero, which I think is much better than its reputation (except for the Haitian voodoo deity stuff, which didn't land for me); while the template is the same, the ruse connects well with Neuromancer, and it's just a fun, action-filled book that is definitely not boring. (The ruse in The Peripheral, by comparison, was deeply unsatisfying. Agency was junk, most of the book describing preparations for a military attack while the main character sleeps. Even the prose was much worse and much sloppier than usual.)
What's interesting is that his early short stories are much more original, I think. Burning Chrome, New Rose Hotel, and Johnny Mnemonic, for example, show flashes of originality that maybe Gibson wasn't able to keep up when plotting out whole novels.
by atombender - One collary I'd add to this is that the opposite is also true. There have been plenty of times that I've trudged through the beginning of a novel, only to reach an "anti-volta" and realize that it isn't for me. It can incredibly frustrating and make the slog feel like a huge waste of time, but I still keep trying books. Maybe I'm just chasing the highs I felt when I first read the novels that got me into reading.by Shuddown
- The problem with school children is most books that are assigned have no volta for them. Part of it is that modern storytelling has a much quicker volta through tv, movies, YouTube and now shorts. It’s hard to justify to a kid a 90 minute buildup to possible payoff vs getting it in five seconds for a 2 minute video.by kenjackson
- The key to enjoying novels is to read them in long enough sittings to get into the flow state. If you only read a couple pages at a time between doomscrolling sessions, it will feel like a chore. Anything would.by tinkelenberg
- > The key to enjoying novels is to read them in long enough sittings to get into the flow state
As a voracious reader, I both agree and disagree with this.
There are some books that simply take too long to come to the point. I'm reading an ARC of a dark academia that's highly rated. I'm 60% in and I haven't yet gotten interested in it. I read entire "Billy Summers" in 2 days by halting the previous book's read. So yeah, the onus is also on the author to make the book interesting
Full disclosure: I am not a tiktok or reel addict. I've read 65 books last year, currently on my 45th book of 2026. I love long books.
- Reading in 5 min bursts in-between longer sessions can remain a valid strategy, but you have to carry the book with you everywhere for it to work out.by jwrallie
- That's one part of it. The author needs to make it engaging as well so you get to flow state easier.
There is a good book "The science of storytelling" (Will Storr) which points out the techniques used by famous stories. Those techniques allow the reader to be more invested in the story.
Dungeon Crawler Carl for example uses some of the techniques (intentional or not).
by EagnaIonat - There was a rule a fourth grade teacher of mine had that she used in her English class to try and get some of the less literate kids up to par. That rule was embodied by the name she gave it, "Thirty minutes thirty pages." She gave them thirty minutes to read thirty pages of a book. A minute a page. Considering most of them were choosing things like Goosebumps that were only a hundred and twenty pages or so it was an easy enough ask. But because she set it as a challenge so many of them went blasting beyond that. Many would finish half the book during that thirty minute reading period. The interesting thing I didn't pick up on until years later as an adult was that it was also slow enough that they could actually understand and remember what they were reading rather than just blasting through it. It left the slower readers with enough time and didn't make them feel like they were falling behind while encouraging them to learn how to read faster.
Many modern adult book series are six hundred pages or more for a single installment with about four hundred words a page versus the maybe hundred and fifty of a children's book like Goosebumps. Since it's three to four times the text that makes thirty pages thirty minutes actually viable as a self challenge even as an adult.
by Tanoc - If you want to tell reading-skeptical kids about "the volta", please don't phrase it as "the volta". Just say that a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows.
But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.
by andrewflnr - It took me more than a week to go through the first chapter in the first Harry Potter book.
It took me 4 days to finish the rest. This is because the pacing was wrong - the first chapter should have been the last.
by tomjen3 - Margaret Mitchell got me to read a thousand pages of Gone With The Wind because she placed a juicy hook in the first chapter (Ashley) which gave me the motivation to read the entire book to see what happens.
Why more novels do not have central hooks I do not know. Hooks are usually what keep me reading, unless the book has some kind of reason for being interesting otherwise.
by 65 - Yep. A lot of thriller and mystery can get you on the first couple of pages. My now (probably all time) favorite book, Anathem by Neal Stephenson, took me three times to really get into. It started with a ton of exposition... and I guess the first few times I read it I didn't care too much for it. It was well worth the read though.by robswc
- Furthermore - there are more than enough novels that grip you immediately, to spend your whole life reading them and avoiding the rest.
"The rest" tend to come in two categories. Books I lack some experience for to be gripped by - which I may come back to in future. And bad books - which I will not. YOLO.
by bertmuir - For years my youngest kid (10yo) showed no interest in reading. He would very sometimes try, but give up after a few pages.
But then he read a book that opened with the sentence “I thought I was being followed.”, and that was his gateway drug.
I fully credit the author, Maren Stoffels, for getting my boy into reading. Every book by her is exciting from the first page. If you’re Dutch and have kids, I warmly recommend “De Wisselaar”.
by skrebbel - I'd argue that the novels the TFA author reads are boring to the TFA author -- until they're not. If you are reading a novel that works for you, it's often not boring from the opening line.
Example: Anna Karenina. Gripping from the opening line (if you like the type of novel that it is; and it's fine if you don't, of course).
Or alternatively, Pride and Prejudice. Again, that opener just sucks you in (if this is a book for you, that is; and again, if it's not -- totally fine).
Example of a modern page-turner: The Hunger Games. If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn't read any further, because it's absolutely, certainly, not for you.
Or, Jeebus, Harry-Freaking-Potter. There is a reason that an entire generation grew up reading those books.
Or: "The Time Traveller's Wife", "The Poisonwood Bible", "The Road", "Interview with the Vampire", "A Room with a View", "Replay", "Of Mice and Men", "Brave New World". The list of books that are gripping from the start, should they appeal to you, can be almost endless.
Basically, if you and your book align (ugh, sorry), then there generally shouldn't be any form of "volta" (really, ugh).
There are many novels that are boring to me. I've never finished those; I discard and move on to the next one, where the author knew how to write something that isn't boring to me. Someone else might love them, and many people clearly do, but they're not for me.
Why do so many people assume that everyone will love the exact same books, and that if you're bored by a book you just have to work at it some more? Life is too short for that nonsense.
by epihelix - btw for people into science fiction and fantasy I highly recommend Ursula Vernon (writing as T Kingfisher) as someone who has me deeply invested almost from the get go. I mention it not just because I'm a fan, but because I consider that specific aspect as one of her greatest skills.by zem
- > “If you are bored with this novel after three pages, you shouldn’t read any further.”
The concept of DNF (“did not finish”) is pretty familiar to people who read regularly, but three pages seems far too early to make that call. The general rule of thumb I’ve encountered is closer to 100 - 150 pages.
Some of the most memorable works of literature I’ve read are books I didn’t particularly enjoy for the first hundred pages or more. I stuck with them mostly because I deliberately give books time to develop before deciding whether they’re for me.
My favorite example is A Tale of Two Cities. I didn’t enjoy it all that much until Book Three, Chapter 12. From there, it was smooth sailing. It’s now one of my favorite stories I’ve ever read, and I still think about it often, especially that entire final book.
That doesn’t mean every book takes that long for me. There are plenty I enjoy from the very beginning, particularly stories retold from a character’s perspective, adventure stories like Watership Down, and pretty much any Sherlock Holmes novel.
I understand the idea of putting a book down after a few pages if you don’t connect with it, and ultimately everyone should read however they want. But I do think that, by doing so, you risk missing out on some genuinely great books simply because they needed more time to become what made them worth reading.
Side note: My actual criteria for dropping a book are a little different. I tend to stop when reading it gives me a kind of vertigo or that strange feeling where your throat tightens and you start to feel sick.
by ssenssei - Not putting any action in the first 10% of my first novel was a big mistake, the reason is a lot of people these days "Read a Sample" and if they are not hooked then they just go to the next. Yes, the book may have ended with civilizations rising and falling but it started with a couple of uni students making a startup.by boznz
- If it isn't one of the greatest books you've ever read, stop reading it.by chistev