Openings and, uh, editors

Over on his blog, Michael Swanwick writes:

I've always regretted I didn't have a video camera with me the time I dropped in on Gardner Dozois at the Asimov's Science Fiction offices and, before going out to lunch, he went through a two-foot-high pile of submissions in fifteen to twenty minutes. While we had a pleasant conversation about other matters.

The video would have shown Gardner pick up the first manuscript, read the first page, turn to the last page, read that, and then put down the story. Then he did exactly the same thing with the next. And the next. All the way down to the bottom. At the end of which he had two piles -- one for people who might someday write something good, who received a polite rejection slip; and one for those who never would, who received a discouraging rejection slip. He set aside exactly one story to actually read.

First page and last page huh? Dozois, of course, is one of the great SF editors and I always buy his years best SFs. Still, the trickster part of me wants to send Dozois (though he no longer edits Asimov's) a story of only a first page and last page. We could then discuss together what could go in between.

There is, I guess, a non-fiction version of this. Though perhaps the "hook" or the opening lines is not so paramount for us at Overland. Still, the first page is critical to interest the editor and to prove that you can structure an argument (presuming you have one). For my part, I always read an essay all the way through, but it's pretty rare that one that starts poorly and then suddenly reveals promise.