{"id":854870,"date":"2025-11-28T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-11-28T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=854870"},"modified":"2025-11-27T16:57:04","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T16:57:04","slug":"bland-but-trutful","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/bland-but-trutful\/","title":{"rendered":"Bland but trutful"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In an excellent email earlier this week, and in her full blog post here<\/strong><\/a>, my colleague Laura Starkey wrote about what our team is actually looking for when we read your first 500 words for our current competition. (Competition details here<\/strong><\/a> \u2013 but don\u2019t wait around, entries close at the end of the weekend. Oh, and don’t forget you’ve got until Monday to join us as a Premium Member for 30% off. More on that below…)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To summarise, our readers all highlighted slightly different aspects of what they were after:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verity<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for a character I\u2019m going to want to stay with for the whole story \u2013 and they don\u2019t<\/em> have to be a good person! Show me something of who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tanya<\/strong>: \u201cI love it when a character shows a bit of vulnerability or their slightly messy, less likeable side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Becca<\/strong>: \u201cIt\u2019s essential that your reader roughly understands who they\u2019re following and what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate: <\/strong>\u201cI want to feel what the character is feeling, while still getting a sense of the plot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imogen<\/strong>: \u201cA clear sense of genre is crucial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonny<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m already assuming the sea is stormy, the rain is heavy … I want to dive straight into the action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kat<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for a truly original concept brought to life with exceptional writing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for \u2018sweets\u2019, something intriguing and slightly unexplained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura<\/strong>: \u201cI need to feel like I\u2019m in a safe pair of hands \u2013 that whatever questions an opening provokes are going to be answered, and in an interesting way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sounds like a slightly overwhelming list, but I think it\u2019s doable and doable without the need for huge fireworks. Here\u2019s one of my openings. I think, as it happens, I have a yen for pretty tedious openings, which doesn\u2019t sound like a generally fantastic idea, I know.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the start of the third of my Fiona books \u2013 an opening that revels in its own boringness:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I like the police force. I like its rules, its structures. I like the fact that, most of the time, we are on the side of ordinary people. Sorting out their road accidents and petty thefts. Preventing violence, keeping order. In the words of our bland but truthful corporate slogan, we\u2019re Keeping South Wales Safe. That\u2019s a task worth doing and one I enjoy. Only, Gott im Himmel, the job can be tedious.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Right now, I\u2019m sitting in a cramped little office above the stockroom at a furniture superstore on the Newport Road. I\u2019m here with a DS, Huw Bowen, recently transferred from Swansea. A finance guy from Swindon is shoving spreadsheets at me and looking at me with pained, watery eyes. We have been here forty minutes.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowen takes the topmost spreadsheet and runs a thick finger across it. It comprises a column of names, a row of months, a block of numbers.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018So these are the payments?\u2019 says Bowen.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Correct.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The finance guy from Swindon wears a plastic security pass clipped to his jacket pocket. Kevin Tildesley.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018So all these people have been paid all these amounts?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Correct.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tax deducted, national insurance, everything?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes. Exactly.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The only window in the office looks out over the shop floor itself. We\u2019re up on the top storey, so we\u2019re on a level with the fluorescent lighting and what seems like miles of silver ducting. The superstore version of heaven.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowen still hasn\u2019t got it. He\u2019s a nice guy, but he\u2019s as good with numbers as I am at singing opera.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bite down onto my thumb, hard enough to give myself a little blue ledge of pain. I let my mind rest on that ledge, while the scenario in front of me plays itself out. I\u2019m theoretically here to take notes, but my pad is mostly blank.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018And these are all employees? Contracts in place? Bank accounts in order? Anything else, I don\u2019t know \u2026 pension plans and all that?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Yes. They are all contracted employees. We have their contracts. Their bank details. Their addresses. Everything. But two of the people \u2013 these two,\u2019 he says, circling two names on the spreadsheet, \u2018these two don\u2019t actually exist.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bowen stares at him.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

His mouth says nothing. His eyes say, \u2018So why. The fuck. Were you paying them?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s just shy of 400 words, so in the competition I\u2019d get to have another 100 words involving manila folders and payroll audits and the like. Just to be clear: this opening would never win a competition. That doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s the wrong opening for the book \u2013 I don\u2019t think it is. Just that the Competition Opening genre demands a bit more tarantaraa than this one offers, and some books don\u2019t want to do their tarantaraa upfront.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Character<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, I think that the opening broadly ticks the boxes that wanted ticking. So on character, we said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Verity<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for a character I\u2019m going to want to stay with for the whole story \u2013 and they don\u2019t<\/em> have to be a good person! Show me something of who they are.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tanya<\/strong>: \u201cI love it when a character shows a bit of vulnerability or their slightly messy, less likeable side.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate<\/strong>: \u201cI want to feel what the character is feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We start off with a fairly general paragraph about the police: roughly, \u201cYes, I like the police, but it can be very dull.\u201d That\u2019s OK by way of character intro, except that you might find at least 50% of coppers saying something similar \u2013 perhaps without the Gott im Himmel, perhaps without the “bland but truthful”. But still, this paragraph isn\u2019t one to clinch anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

250 words in, however, and we get this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I bite down onto my thumb, hard enough to give myself a little blue ledge of pain. I let my mind rest on that ledge, while the scenario in front of me plays itself out. I\u2019m theoretically here to take notes, but my pad is mostly blank.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That \u201clittle blue ledge\u201d is unique to Fiona. The fact that she injures herself to cope with the tedium. That way of phrasing it. Tanya wanted something \u201cslightly messy\u201d \u2013 and boof<\/em>! This character\u2019s mess involves totally pointless self-harm on the very first page. We know the character\u2019s feelings immediately and we already know they\u2019re going to be an interesting one to watch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Story<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In relation to story, we also said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kate<\/strong>: \u201cI want to \u2026 [get] a sense of the plot.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Imogen<\/strong>: \u201cA clear sense of genre is crucial.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jonny<\/strong>: \u201cI want to dive straight into the action.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, the clinching bit here is the last bit of dialogue:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[Bowen\u2019s] mouth says nothing. His eyes say, \u2018So why. The fuck. Were you paying them?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And that\u2019s the book, right? \u2013 or at least the first part of the book. An ordinary furniture shop in a Cardiff retail park has been scammed into paying out \u00a338,000 to two non-existent employees. That\u2019s hardly a corpse on page 1 \u2013 it\u2019s a tedious fraud on page 3 \u2013 but we have action (kinda), we have genre, and we have the first indication as to what story lies ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And of course, you can rely on readers here. Absolutely no one is going to think, \u201cMy word, this is going to be a boring novel. Our hero-detective is going to spend 400 pages analysing spreadsheets until she finds the white-collar culprit behind this minor scam.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the contrary, they think, \u201cUh-oh, this is going to lead to some kind of murder and there\u2019s going to be some much bigger crime here and Fiona\u2019s going to get in over her head and there will be Shenanigans. She\u2019ll probably explode something or sink something or throw someone over a cliff.\u201d They think that because they can read the promise of the cover, and the blurb and their knowledge of what a crime novel is. That\u2019s why most of my books don\u2019t actually start with a corpse discovery. They don\u2019t have to. Readers know what\u2019s coming up and they love the tease. A sense of the plot<\/em> (Kate\u2019s phrase) is more important than an opening that has bullets flying. (Which is also perfectly fine, but optional.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sweets and safety<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our readers also demanded:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kat<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for a truly original concept brought to life with exceptional writing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rachel<\/strong>: \u201cI\u2019m looking for \u2018sweets\u2019, something intriguing and slightly unexplained.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Laura<\/strong>: \u201cI need to feel like I\u2019m in a safe pair of hands.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And honestly? I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve delivered for Kat. There is, I think, a properly good idea underlying this book, but it doesn\u2019t show its hand in that opening 500 words. That\u2019s why the First 500 is a bit of an art form in itself. It is a good way to find the best opening; not necessarily a good way to find the best book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the Rachel \/ Laura ideas here are interesting \u2013 safe pair of hands + a couple of sweeties. I especially like that idea of sweets: Raymond Chandler used to type his novels on fairly small bits of paper and he demanded of himself that each page contained one little spill of magic. It\u2019s a good discipline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view, the magic offered can be relatively low key. That \u2018little blue ledge of pain\u2019 counts. I think the final line or two (\u201cWhy \u2026 were you paying them?\u201d) offers just the right amount of bite for this stage of the story. The \u2018pained watery eyes\u2019 \u2013 well, that\u2019s not quite a spill of magic, but it tells us quite a lot about who we\u2019re with and what we\u2019re doing. We know without being directly told that poor old Kevin Tildesley is not very masculine. He\u2019s a man of spreadsheets and watery eyes and plastic badges. Bowen is a man of thick fingers, sweary eyes and limited comprehension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We also understand Fiona\u2019s predicament: she\u2019s understood the numbers (which Bowen hasn\u2019t) and she\u2019s a woman of action who\u2019s not afraid of the fraud (unlike Tildesley, who is.) And she\u2019s been there for 40 minutes. And this is a cramped little office shoved into the roof of a furniture store.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of all, when I reread all this, I think: \u201cYes, I\u2019m confident in this author. I can tell \u2013 from those character details, some word choices, the dialogue \u2013 that this author has confidence in the story they\u2019re about to tell. In fact, they\u2019re confident enough to start with an overtly boring<\/u><\/em> opening: one that talks quite a lot about how unexciting this all is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And for me \u2013 when I\u2019m choosing a book to read, not when I\u2019m judging a first 500 competition \u2013 I look for two things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Confidence is the first. Anything to tell me that I can trust this author with the next few hours of my time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clarity, or something like it, is the second. I want an author who is going to make it easy for me to immerse myself in his or her world. I want that the author to serve me and my needs. I don\u2019t want to read a book where I\u2019m meant to be admiring someone else\u2019s wonderful art. (I mean: I\u2019m happy to admire great writers. But I\u2019ll only admire them if they reward my reading.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An opening is a joyful thing. It\u2019s a table full of objects, concealed by a black velvet cloth. The author catches the reader\u2019s eye, winks, and removes the first of those objects\u2026 or perhaps only reveals an edge, or some dimly lit surface. The game is fun, because what else lies beneath the cloth? That first glimpse is a clue \u2013 a tease \u2013 but we are still far from whisking away the whole cloth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

***<\/p>\n\n\n\n

FEEDBACK FRIDAY \/ Openings<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

OK: bit of a weird one this. We\u2019ve been talking about openings, so I\u2019m going to ask you for an opening. But I don\u2019t want to tread on any first 500 toes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

250 words or so. Let me have it. When you’re ready, log in to Townhouse and share your work in this forum<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Til soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Harry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In an excellent email earlier this week, and in her full blog post here, my colleague Laura Starkey wrote about what our team is actually looking for when we read your first 500 words for our current competition. (Competition details here \u2013 but don\u2019t wait around, entries close at the end of the weekend. Oh,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":36332,"featured_media":815759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[29212],"class_list":["post-854870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-novel-writing","tag-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/bland-but-trutful\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bland but trutful – Jericho Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"In an excellent email earlier this week, and in her full blog post here, my colleague Laura Starkey wrote about what our team is actually looking for when we read your first 500 words for our current competition. 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