Today and for the next few weeks, we\u2019re all about openings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That\u2019s in honour of our new self-paced video course \u2013 free to Premium Members \u2013 called The Ultimate Start<\/a>. The course aims to get your novel off to a bang \u2026 and to introduce you to our ever-fabulous Ultimate Novel Writing Programme<\/a> tutors. Each module of the course is presented by a different Ultimate Novel Writing Programme tutor. If you\u2019re even half-curious about the course, you should definitely take a look. Lesson one is now live with new lessons dropping on Mondays.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n This is also a good moment to mention my webinar next week (29 Jan) on Elevator Pitches, which is free and open for all to attend. (Info here<\/a>.) Most people think about pitches as something you consider long after the text is complete \u2013 a marketing sticker you glue onto an already-finished product.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I don\u2019t think that\u2019s especially helpful, however, because really the marketing concept needs to be baked into the book from the very start. You need to think of the pitch less as a marketing slogan, and more like the condensed essence of the book \u2013 a blueprint. And if you get that right, then everything else flows \u2013 from text to marketing slogans, and from cover design to query letters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Those two themes \u2013 opening pages and novel blueprints \u2013 combine very sweetly in this insight:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Your opening pages need to offer a glimpse of the heart-of-the-heart and the soul-of-the-soul of the book<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s OK (actually, it\u2019s good) if the glimpse is oblique or cryptic. You can trust that readers will smell it anyway, like a truffle buried at the root of a tree. And if you have a perfectly designed blueprint \/ pitch with everything neatly lined up behind it, then that opening page will also cohere with your title and your book cover and the blurb on the back \u2026 and so the scent of that opening page will be reinforced before you start.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now all this sounds a bit woo-woo, I know. (It\u2019ll be a lot less woo-woo if you come to my elevator pitch workshop.) But here are some examples:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiona Griffiths, Book #1, Talking to the Dead<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch<\/strong>: \u201cMurder story, involving a detective who used to think she was dead.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Excerpts from Chapter 1<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cBeyond the window, I can see three kites hanging in the air over Bute Park. One blue, one yellow, one pink. Their shapes are precise, as though stencilled. From this distance, I can\u2019t see the lines that tether them, so when the kites move, it\u2019s as though they\u2019re doing so of their own accord. An all-encompassing sunlight has swallowed depth and shadow\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019m going to be a policewoman. And just five years ago, I was dead.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The last bit there is a direct invocation of pitch: Here\u2019s someone who is clearly alive, but she used to be dead. That, very succinctly, is the paradox at the heart of Fiona\u2019s existence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But the opening paragraph does something similar. The kites move (so they\u2019re \u2018alive\u2019), but there are no lines tethering them and all depth and shadow has vanished, so it\u2019s as though the kites have become stencils \u2013 mere copies of kites, not real ones. Are these kites real or just painted copies? It\u2019s not clear. That\u2019s the same basic paradox, but in oblique form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiona Griffiths, Book #2, Love Story, with Murders<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch (series): \u201c<\/strong>Detective who used to think she was dead\u201d \u2013 as above<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch (book)<\/strong>: \u201cLove story \u2013 with murders (!)\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Excerpt from Chapter 1<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cPenry opens his hands in what\u2019s meant to be a spreading gesture, only they never get more than about eight inches apart. It\u2019s as though the ghosts of his handcuffs are still there.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The \u201calive or dead?\u201d theme is instantly mirrored in the \u201ccaptive or not captive?\u201d image here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The love story with murders bit is perhaps a bit less well captured (my bad), except that this opening scene has two proper friends (=love) discussing a recent prison suicide (=murder), so both things are entangled right there on page 1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Fiona Griffiths, Book #3, Strange Death of Fiona Griffiths<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch (series): \u201c<\/strong>Detective who used to think she was dead\u201d \u2013 as above<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pitch (book)<\/strong>: \u201cDetective (with pre-existing identity confusion) goes undercover.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Excerpt from Chapter 1<\/u><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI 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.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018And these are all employees? Contracts in place? Bank accounts in order? …\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u2018Yes. They are all contracted employees. We have their contracts. Their bank details. 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>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Again, you have the \u2018Does it exist or doesn\u2019t it?\u201d question popping right up in the first chapter. And the thing about biting down onto the thumb is speaking directly about a kind of mental ill-health \u2013 not in a loud, shouty way, but still: an unmissable indicator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Now, if I\u2019m honest, I think that the second and third examples here are missing some central image that tells us what the book is going to be about (as opposed to the series.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n In Book #6 of the series (where the theme was theft and fakery in the world of Dark Age antiquities), I had one of Fiona\u2019s colleagues build a dinosaur out of office stationery, which she then exploded with a crossbow, also made from office stationery. She then says:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAnd that\u2019s how we are <\/em>\u2012<\/em> me, Jon, the bones of the fallen <\/em>\u2012<\/em> when Dennis Jackson [Fiona\u2019s boss] comes in.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n And that\u2019s a perfect image: the fakery, the death, the long-ago past \u2013 the perfect way to tease the reader with what is to follow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n And it\u2019s not just a tease: it\u2019s a promise. You\u2019re effectively saying: \u201cYou smelled something in the furniture of this book \u2013 the cover, the title, the blurb, the slogans \u2013 that hint at a blueprint you simply can\u2019t resist. This first page \/ first chapter promises you that I, the author, understand that blueprint and will deliver it \u2026 and it\u2019ll be every bit as enticing as you expect.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n How could any reader not respond?<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Yes, you have to do other things too (settings, character, a hint of story), but hinting at your themes early on is a key piece of delivering a totally coherent and utterly irresistible package for the reader. Do jump into that course on opening pages \u2013 especially, if you want a little taster of the Ultimate Novel Writing Programme experience. And do come to my workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n FEEDBACK FRIDAY \/ opening pages<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n No normal Feedback Friday this week. Instead, I want you to do Megan Collins\u2019s homework from The Ultimate Start<\/a> course. That homework is this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n