Sarah Raughley is a bestselling author of fiction for young adults and an assistant professor of writing at Lakehead University's Orillia, Ont. campus. The fantasy writer has published several books, including The Bones of Ruin, Fate of Flames, Siege of Shadows and Legacy of Light.

This year, Raughley will serve as a judge for CBC's student writing challenge, The First Page. The challenge invites students from grades 7 to 12 to write the first page of a novel set in 2172 in order to imagine how a present-day affair has unfolded in 150 years. Finalists from each category will be selected by a team of middle-grade and YA writers from across Canada.

Students can enter online between Feb. 1 and Feb. 28, 2022. Entries can be 300-400 words in length and exist within any genre. Visit cbc.ca/thefirstpage to learn more.

Raughley spoke with Jill Dempsey on Ontario Morning about her writing process and advice for students.

I think the biggest challenge will be first coming up with the story because you can't write a first page of a novel without having an idea of what your novel is going to be about. So the students are going to have to have a plot in mind, perhaps characters and world-building before they can put their words to paper.

Very critical. And it's so funny how it feels like the tables have turned a little bit. As an author, I put my books out there and I know that if my first page doesn't hook students of that age who I write for, they're going to set it down and say, "Oh, this isn't really for me," or, "I'm not that interested. I'm going to read another book." So you really need to hook your readers from the first page. Just get them interested in the story that you're writing. And it's possible.

You can introduce a character, you can introduce the setting, you can introduce the world. If this is set in a fantasy world, a bit of the conflict. There are all kinds of things that you can do in just a space of 300 or 400 words.

And that's why I would suggest that students start in medias res, which is a writing term that means "in the middle of things," "in the middle of the action." Start in the middle of the conflict so you can get right into the action of the story.

I usually don't write the first page until I know as much as I can about my story, so I'll have a big document that talks about who the characters are, what the story is about, what the themes are and where I see the story heading. Especially if it's a fantasy novel, you want to have a sense of the world. And when I have a good idea of what the central conflict is in the story, who the character is and what the character wants, then I can write my first page.

Well, futuristic writing is always a reflection of where we are now, in the present. So if we are dealing with all kinds of issues — and we are, in society — from the climate crisis to social injustice to the pandemic, you might want to think, "If we continue along this path, are things going to get better? Are things going to get worse?"

That's sort of how you may want to picture and envision writing a story set in the future. Is it going to be a dystopian future like The Hunger Games, where everything is terrible? Or is it going to be a utopian future where everything is great because we took care of this issue and that issue? I really encourage the students to think about one issue that they're really passionate about and try and imagine where we're going to be decades and decades and decades from now. It'll be really interesting to really imagine where Canadian society might be 150 years from now.

Well, I teach writing, and one thing that I always look at is how to use language. Do they write descriptively? Do they have their own distinctive voice? Are they bold with their ideas? Is it creative? Is it original? But also, just as a reader, is this something that excites me? Is it something that gets my blood pumping and I'm so excited and intrigued by this idea, that I want to turn to that second page? If I want to read on to the second page, then that's a surefire way of knowing that you know you've done the right thing.

How quickly do you know?

I think it's just like any other reader that picks up a book at a bookstore, you know right away. You read that first page and it hooks you and you're so excited you want to read on.

Oh yes. The Bones of Ruin is a young adult novel. I'm a young adult writer, so I write for this age group, actually. The Bones of Ruin, I like to call it a 19th-century supernatural Hunger Games.

It's about an African tightrope dancer who gets embroiled in this tournament to the death in 19th-century London with other supernatural folks in the city. So that first page is really important in bringing people into that world.

I start just with building the ideas, the characters. That sort of pre-writing process I find takes a lot longer than the actual writing process. So it's hard to judge, but I think from the pre-writing process to writing that first page, for me, it can take a month when I'm really going for it. But keep in mind that I'm writing, you know, an entire series of books that are 300 to 400 pages long, so it may take a little longer than usual.