1.1 Beginning your novel

Obviously these are all just my own, personal opinions. Write your novel your way. Take the advice that works for you. This is what works for me; what 15 years of experience has taught me.

1.1 Beginnings

This is something of a two-birds and single rock for me. On the one hand, it is my first post on a fresh and shiny blog page that promotes me as an author, as a serious writer of genre fiction and, I just started the first precious words of a new novel.

Beginning can be tough. Some of you, pantsers like me, might just rush at the sudden outpour of words onto paper and see where they take you. Others, the planners, need to know where they are starting, who with and why. These questions should still enter a pantsers mind; but I think we say ‘well let’s find out.’ And the novel shapes outward.

But maybe you aren’t sure where to begin, or who with or why. This hits me sometimes. I’ve come up with some characters, a genre, a universe. I know scenes I want to get to, what has to come at the front of it all, and where the characters are going to start emotionally. But what to write?

My oldest fall-back is the line that got me hooked in Steven Brust’s novel Dragon. I will never forget those simple, engaging and alarming words.

They snapped me to attention and illustrated the few rules of beginnings that I follow to this day, perfectly.

No shit, there I was…

When I am stuck, I write those five words.

Magically the novel comes unstuck and images begin to form. A scene creates itself around these magic words.

So, why does this work for me?

It works because I follow some strict regulations about when and where I start my novels. So many authors give similar advice, but it was a podcast of Writing Excuses that probably sums it up most succinctly; start when something changes. Start when the action starts.

By action I mean the beginning of the plot.

A lot of writers like to start with something that introduces the character and illicit sympathy from the reader; they want us to care and know their darling from sentence one. This is probably something bad to focus on; instead I would suggest, make your character interesting, relatable and desirable and we will sympathise with them naturally as the novel progresses.

I cannot count the number of stories I’ve read over the years that starts randomly one day in the character’s childhood, zooms in so we can watch them being raped, bullied, abused, misunderstood, and then jumps forward ten years to the actual start of the novel. Childhood trauma is a weak crutch to illicit easy sympathy- but that is a rant for another day.

Most importantly, it is not the beginning of the character’s story. The story begins when the farmboy’s home town is sacked and he’s sent running off on a cold and stormy night, being hunted by mysterious forces bent on killing him to find the wise old man and get the sword of magicpropheticfaterainbowshine.

Begin there.

We can find out about his traumas through dialog, through his sad angsty moping moments. We can find out his tragic backstory through his actions, deeds, reactions and quirks. And by then, if he’s a good bloke, we’ll feel more love of him.

Begin when the story starts, not with cheap emotional blackmail.

Begin with something interesting, not with info-dump.

I’ve seen a lot of info-dump beginnings. This ranges from three page descriptions of kingdoms that we’ll be leaving as soon as the story actually starts and never return to, to world and creation myth exposition. In epic fantasy, bite sized information is easier to digest, but it’s an established troupe. Some people even like it. I personally don’t think it makes a good beginning. And as a reader, I put books down that start with a three-page paragraph waxing on about politics and backstory.

I started my most recent story with the main character naked and burned, surrounded by twenty people gawking and staring.

This isn’t about throwing a gripping one-liner first then jumping into your info-dumping; it’s about starting where things are happening. Slip the information about the world and characters in slowly. Like folding ingredients into a meringue for baking. The egg whites need to be stiff, the sugar gently, gradually blended in to avoid it just splotching all over itself. Finesse is your friend in beginning a novel.

The first pages are important.

The first few paragraphs even more so.

Even if a book has a dumb sounding blurb, I still sometimes turn it over and open it up. Writing a novel and then expressing it in a format meant to entice people doesn’t always go hand in hand. Plenty of novels I like have awful blurbs. I don’t read the blurb a lot of the time; I just open the book and see what it is about.

You have maybe two paragraphs to try and get me to like a novel before I put it back down. Plenty of readers give you a sentence, some might give you two. Some readers go for about five pages.

Make those first lines, those first paragraphs, those first five pages shine.

I’ve read a lot. I probably always will, but as I’ve grown older, my tolerance for bad beginnings has gone down. If you can’t write a good start, how can I expect you to have a good middle or ending? Some authors will say ‘the beginning is shit, but its fantastic middle and end’. Why is the beginning bad then? If readers don’t get to ‘the good bits’ because they weren’t willing to wade through the bad, we can’t appreciate it.

The whole novel should be good, not just the middle and end.

For my story, The Fool’s Secret, I rewrote the beginning five times. From the ground up three of those times. Rewriting ten pages sucks. It is like cutting the soul out of your baby manuscript. But each time it was better. Each time it was stronger, faster, prettier than before.

A good beginning is a good way to start a novel.

I hope this has been helpful to someone. 

For those of you who would like to put my two-cents in your own mouth…

Writing Prompt: No shit, there I/he/she was…