The start of your book is a delicate, beautiful thing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It has a joyous quality for sure. Something like cracking open an egg, the peep of new sun, climbing on board a train, feeling the flap of a sail, a rope straining at its mooring. You only get that feeling once per book, and it\u2019s worth relishing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
You can go big, if you want to. You can start in the middle of a bar-room brawl, with bottles flying and chairs thwacking. Or you can start with something apparently small, except that the wriggle of a little story-worm catches the reader\u2019s attention and, dammit, they find they\u2019re hooked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, of course, there\u2019s another issue with beginnings, a bothersome one. Because agents, blast them, start books from the beginning too and they are very unusual readers indeed. Partly, yes, they\u2019re unusual in that they\u2019re professionals looking for work they can sell. But also, they start reading literally thousands<\/em> of novels a year. How many first pages does an average agent read? Maybe two thousand. How many actual books does an average agent read? Well, probably roughly as many as you do \u2013 or a few more, because they\u2019re pros.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Because agents read so many opening pages, they are deeply \u2013 horribly \u2013 familiar with the clich\u00e9s of the genre. That means, they are exquisitely sensitive to badness in openings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What\u2019s worse is this: the opening of your novel may well be the first thing you\u2019ve ever written. It\u2019s where you\u2019re at your least experienced, not your most. That\u2019s true in general, but it\u2019s also true of this<\/em> particular story. Midway through your book, you\u2019ll know your characters better, your story better, your themes better, your voice better \u2013 everything better.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Which means that when an agent picks up your book it\u2019s effectively an encounter between a Story Opening Super-Analyser and a scarily undercooked Story Writer. Not fair, right?<\/p>\n\n\n\n And look: nothing I go on to say in this email is absolute. You could pick some horrible clich\u00e9 to open your novel with but, if you deliver that opening in a confident and well-written way, then any sane agent will read on, with interest. For everything I say below, you should bear in mind that there\u2019s almost certainly a classic of world literature that takes the clich\u00e9 and rebuilds it into something wonderful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the same time, clich\u00e9s feel wrong for a reason. If you can avoid them, you probably should. And with that said \u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n Dreams<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s something horribly schoolchildish about any story that starts with a dream, before, two or three paragraphs later, admitting, \u201cThen I woke up.\u201d It feels cool, but cool in much the same way that my kids think that making pots of green goo out of ordinary kitchen ingredients is cool. Once your age hits double-digits, it\u2019s time to move on a bit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think there are also two more specific reasons for concern. One is that dreams are totally unboundaried. Not rule-governed. And that doesn\u2019t just break the laws of life, but of stories too. Even kids\u2019 fantasy fiction has rules that govern its fictional world. Opening without rules feels disappointing \u2013 the difference between a park kickabout and a World Cup tie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The other is that, once you get two or three paragraphs in, you play that limp trick on the reader: ha, ha, fooled you, it was only a dream. That yields a feeling akin to disappointment. \u201cYou made me read this, on the premise that it mattered, but it didn\u2019t matter. Oh.\u201d I\u2019d gently suggest that this is not a feeling you want anyone \u2013 still less an agent \u2013 to encounter on the first page of your novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Beds<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n More generally, one agent once told me that a stunning proportion of all manuscripts she read \u2013 she reckoned well over ten per cent \u2013 opened with a character in bed. She reckoned she\u2019d almost never, perhaps literally never, offered representation for such a book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There\u2019s nothing obviously wrong with that. You could imagine some Beckettian novel that opens with a character in bed and keeps that character in pyjamas for most of the story. But \u2026 again, I think there are two specific issues here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n One is that you don\u2019t want to bracket yourself with the ten per cent of novels that an agent is most inclined to reject. The other is this: why is it that so many authors start with a character in bed and (usually) waking up?<\/p>\n\n\n\n I think it\u2019s that the writer themselves are warming up. They are aware of embarking on something new. Of introducing a new character to the world. So they start at the beginning: the opening of the day. As they move their character through toilet \/ shower \/ coffee \/ conflakes, they limber up, like your pre-gym warm-up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And: don\u2019t warm up. Or, if you do, don\u2019t do it on page. Don\u2019t do it anywhere that the reader is going to see it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Poetry & prologues<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The fantasy manuscripts we see start with a snatch of poetry by way of prologue. Or if not poetry, then myth, or incantation, or something similar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And again, you\u2019re going to tell me that Tolkein did this all the time, and maybe he did. But poetry (and myth and the rest of it) is, almost by definition, harder to penetrate than prose. An opening needs to gently lift the reader into your story vehicle and get them drifting away from the bank, the train gliding away from the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Forcing the reader to wade through a couple of pages of (often quite dodgy) poetry is the opposite of that gently lifting model. It\u2019s like you\u2019ve built a low wall in between the reader and the railway carriage you want them to get into.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I talked about prologues a couple of weeks back, and they usually generate the same kind of issue. The definition of a prologue is roughly, something detached from the main story<\/em>. That means you are having to gently lift the reader into your prologue and then, in the chapter following, you\u2019re asking them to get out of that first vehicle and into another. You\u2019ve just doubled the obstacles in the way of full reader engagement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Too much, too soon<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Personally, I\u2019d vastly prefer a dream-story, starting in bed, and written in poetry, encased in a prologue, than the beast I\u2019m about to describe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My least-favoured story opener is with highly extreme emotion of any sort. Often some horrible situation (a prisoner under torture), but really any sort of extreme emotion, conveyed with a plethora of emotional superlatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The reason why this doesn\u2019t work is that stories have the quality of new social situations. You\u2019re meeting characters for the first time. If your best friend had a terrible heartbreak sob story, you\u2019d be prepared to listen to the whole thing, dishing out biscuits and tissues as needed. But if you had just for the very first time met a new parent at the school gate and you got the same excessively tearful download, you\u2019d just want to pull away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A reader doesn\u2019t care about an emotional drama for its own sake. They care because they care about a character. And that means learning them, building them, creating the knowledge that will generate sympathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s the \u2018too much\u2019 error, and it\u2019s a particular bogeyman of mine. But there\u2019s a \u2018too soon\u2019 error as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That error is giving away your punchline much too early. You have a world where gravity can be rubbed away via a smartphone app? Or memory works only for twenty-four hours? Or your character, a woman, is working, disguised as a man, on board an old three-master?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then great! I love it! What great ideas!<\/p>\n\n\n\n But don\u2019t tell me about them. Not on the first page, nor even the third, nor anywhere in the first chapter. Yes, of course, you scatter tantalising clues. A coffee machine that has to be pulled down from the ceiling. Reminder post-its on the mirror. Some odd piece of behaviour by a \u2018seaman\u2019 apparently remembering a husband.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The clues are what tantalise. They\u2019re what drag a reader through the story. Once you deliver your punchline (\u201cAn anti-gravity app! 24 hour memory!\u201d), that particular sequence of clues carries no more force. For sure, other things will come along \u2013 you\u2019ll start introducing the full Technicolor complexity of your story \u2013 but we\u2019re talking about openings. If you want to get the reader into your story-vessel and pulling happily away from shore, then those tantalising clues are a brilliant way to maintain engagement. In time, as the reader bonds with your character, you won\u2019t need the clues any more. But during this first chapter, don\u2019t give the game away too early. Use the clues, delay the punchline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n ***<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s it from me. My overcomplicated week last week has floated into the past. The first yellow crocus nosed into the garden this morning. It\u2019s probably regretting its impulsive decision: early February on an Oxfordshire hill is a bit unkind, even for croci. But what the heck, m\u2019deario, and what the heck, my dearies? Where one crocus boldly goes, spring will surely follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Harry<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The start of your book is a delicate, beautiful thing. It has a joyous quality for sure. Something like cracking open an egg, the peep of new sun, climbing on board a train, feeling the flap of a sail, a rope straining at its mooring. You only get that feeling once per book, and it\u2019s<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25728","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n