{"id":879676,"date":"2026-02-20T09:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T09:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/?p=879676"},"modified":"2026-03-05T14:49:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T14:49:09","slug":"authority-in-a-pair-of-jeans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/authority-in-a-pair-of-jeans\/","title":{"rendered":"Authority in a pair of jeans"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Last week, I said that I thought that genre-communication<\/strong> and authority<\/strong> were the two essential things to achieve in your opening pages. I thought that you were unlikely to miscommunicate genre, in which case your task now comes down to that communication of authority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A low key opening<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So this week: a worked example. I\u2019ve chosen, for that example, what may be the most boring opening page I\u2019ve ever written. But not bad-boring. Just low-key-boring. Here it is:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bev runs her hands down her hips and gives me a wiggle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well<\/u>?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say, \u2018Great. Really nice.\u2019 I\u2019m not sure what to say.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My jeans. They\u2019re new.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now I know where my attention\u2019s meant to be, I know how to focus. The jeans are a kind of washed-out indigo. Skinny-cut. Low-waisted, but not ridiculous. Slim dark leather belt, discreet scarlet buckle. The jeans are close-fitting enough that Bev\u2019s phone makes a hard, flat shape in her back pocket. When I did a spell in Traffic, during my first two years in the police, and I was just a regular uniformed copper like everyone else, I remember an accident victim with very tight jeans, who suffered multiple fractures to both femurs. We had to cut her out of those jeans to get at the wounds. One of the paramedics did it with a scalpel, handling the blade delicately enough that it made only the finest pink graze down the girl\u2019s thighs. Two parallel tracks pricked out in dots of blood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018New jeans,\u2019 I say. \u2018They look great! Where did you get them?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s not about where I got them,\u2019 she chides me mildly. \u2018I\u2019ve dropped a whole size. These are a ten.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

She gyrates again, and now I know what to say, I say it with enough enthusiasm and repetition that Bev is satisfied. We finish getting changed and troop through to the chirpily upbeat cafe, where we get fruit smoothies and pasta salads<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thoughts on the above<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

So: we have two women, talking about jeans. That\u2019s not interesting to a third-party in any context, but it\u2019s certainly a quiet start to a crime novel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Does this matter? Well, some authors will think it does. That\u2019s why you end up getting those (yukkety-yuk-yuk-yuk) openings where unnamed Bad Guy slowly tortures someone (usually a woman) to death, with the whole thing related in a horribly voyeuristic way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, OK \u2013 there are plenty of readers out there and they all want different things. But you certainly don\u2019t have to take that kind of (slightly desperate) route in your fiction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I said my start was quiet, and it is, but it has a crackle to it all the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here\u2019s the opening dialogue again:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bev runs her hands down her hips and gives me a wiggle.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Well<\/u>?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I say, \u2018Great. Really nice.\u2019 I\u2019m not sure what to say.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018My jeans. They\u2019re new.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Oh.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bev clearly wants a response from Fiona, hence the repeated \u2018Well?\u2019 \u2013 not just a question but, in its second appearance, a slightly annoyed demand.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiona is clearly clueless. This is a standard woman-to-woman interaction, and Fiona has no idea what to say. She ends up saying something inoffensive, but almost devoid of meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bev (who knows Fiona and her general uselessness) then feeds her the prompt that other women might not have needed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiona acknowledges this new information and gets ready to re-analyse. Here\u2019s how that analysis proceeds:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The jeans are a kind of washed-out indigo. Skinny-cut. Low-waisted, but not ridiculous. Slim dark leather belt, discreet scarlet buckle. The jeans are close-fitting enough that Bev\u2019s phone makes a hard, flat shape in her back pocket.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s all accurate enough and sensible enough, of course \u2026 except that (a) this chunk reads like an unnervingly complete police description of an item and (b) completely misses the element that Bev will want to know about: do these jeans look good on me<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiona\u2019s human-radar then goes even further awry:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When I did a spell in Traffic, during my first two years in the police, and I was just a regular uniformed copper like everyone else, I remember an accident victim with very tight jeans, who suffered multiple fractures to both femurs. We had to cut her out of those jeans to get at the wounds. One of the paramedics did it with a scalpel, handling the blade delicately enough that it made only the finest pink graze down the girl\u2019s thighs. Two parallel tracks pricked out in dots of blood.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That tells us two things, I think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first is that Fiona is obsessed by all things police-y and, perhaps more accurately, all things corpse-y or at least near corpse-y.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second is that there\u2019s something about a fashion-related conversation (however unchallenging) which does Fiona\u2019s head in. The mental jump to bloody road accidents is her way of self-soothing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the next bit of dialogue doesn\u2019t allude at all to the mental processes we\u2019ve just witnessed. Instead, we get this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018New jeans,\u2019 I say. \u2018They look great! Where did you get them?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018It\u2019s not about where I got them,\u2019 she chides me mildly. \u2018I\u2019ve dropped a whole size. These are a ten.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is: Fiona is blatantly code-switching. She\u2019s learned to keep the weirdness of her actual thought-processes away from others and she does so here. She doesn\u2019t do it very brilliantly. (Her only fashion comment: \u201cthey look great!\u201d That\u2019s hardly Vogue-level analysis.) But she does just enough to stay on Planet Normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In practice, her attempt is still not good enough. Fiona has failed to notice the thing that Bev has been desperate for her to notice, so Bev has to offer still more guidance in an attempt to get what she needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fiona then has enough data to do what she should have done from the very first and this episode closes with the pair of them going to the \u2018chirpily upbeat caf\u00e9\u2019 in the gym:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She gyrates again, and now I know what to say, I say it with enough enthusiasm and repetition that Bev is satisfied. We finish getting changed and troop through to the chirpily upbeat cafe, where we get fruit smoothies and pasta salads<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Observations<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Things to notice in all this:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    \n
  1. Genre<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    There\u2019s not a massive allusion to genre here, but there\u2019s enough. That allusion to the road accident victim already puts blood on the first page \u2013 and there\u2019s a clear hint here that there\u2019ll be plenty more to come, and not just via a non-crimey road accident. Given that readers already basically know what kind of book they\u2019ll be reading from the title, cover, blurb, etc, the genre indicators here can be really quite low key.<\/p>\n\n\n\n