For an author, there is little more daunting that looking at that empty first page and trying to figure out what to put on it. You’ve got your story, maybe the whole thing, in your head and ready to go. But still, that empty page is staring back at you, daring you to start typing. It’s like the blank page knows, and it taunts you.
The first few lines of your book are easily the most important part of your book. It’s the first thing your editor, prospective publisher, and ultimately you reader sees. And the old saying is true: you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. Once read, those lines won’t be forgotten.
It’s a sad fact, but prospective agents aren’t going to read past the first paragraph of your book. If you haven’t hooked them by then, your manuscript is going into the trash and you’re going to get one of those generic rejection letters. Your book might be War and Peace after page two, but if they don’t get past paragraph one, nobody will ever know that.
There are a lot of fantastic first few lines out there.
It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.
~George Orwell, 1984
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
~Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
All this happened, more or less.
~Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
Ships at a distance have every man’s wish on board.
~Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
It was a pleasure to burn.
~Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451
You better not never tell nobody but God.
~Alice Walker, The Color Purple
Mr. and Mrs. Dursley of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.
~Jk Rowling, Harry Potter and the philosopher’s stone.
Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer’s wife.
~L. Frank Baum
In each example, there’s something in the first line(s) that catch your attention and make you want to read more. That’s what you need to do, too. But it’s not something you need to figure out on your first draft.
When staring down that blank page, don’t let yourself be intimidated. The weight of your whole book doesn’t rest on what you first put down on paper in your first draft. That, your first draft, exists only to get your idea on paper. So don’t have a panic attack trying to come up with an earth-shattering, genre-redefining first line. Not on the first draft, anyway.
With that burden lifted from your shoulders, you still have to figure out where to start your story. You’ve got the plot down pat in your head, maybe the whole thing from start to finish, but where do you start it.
There are more ways to start a story than there are stories that have ever existed. There are lots of tricks and gimmicks you could try, formulas that have gotten the job done for centuries. We’ll take a look at a few of them.
My favorite opening of any book, hands down, comes from Illusions, Adventures of a Reluctant Messiah by Richard Bach. The first few pages are hand written on paper that’s smudged and dirty, the main character’s flight journal. Then the story kicks in, written in first person from the main character, Richard’s, perspective. The story happens, ends, and Richard sits down to write the story in his flight journal, which become the first pages of the book. It’s genius, and I’ve never seen another book more cleverly begun and ended. It’s a wonderful book. If you haven’t read it, I recommend it highly.
The first few pages being handwritten gives the book a unique look. Not just anybody can pull it off, and I don’t suggest that you try starting (and ending) your book that way. But you do need to come up with how you’re going to introduce your story to the publisher and to the world.
One way an author might approach the telling of their story is to start at some point in the book, use that for an introduction, and the write the story until it catches up to that point. Make it something pivotal, the axis upon which your entire story revolves. All caught up, you then tell the rest of the story to wrap it all up.
As loathe as I am to mention such a horribly written book, that’s what Lorelei Shellist did in her dreadful autobiography. She started the book getting on the train to go visit the grave of (late Def Leppard guitarist) Steve Clark, her ex, ex boyfriend. She then goes on to tell the story of how they met and their lives, their break-up, his relationship with the true of of his life (not Lorelei), his death and Lorelei’s subsequent life up until the point where she was getting on the train to go to his grave. Then she wrapped it up with a weak, self-spank ending.
That book is quite possibly the worst book I’ve ever read, with Twilight running a close second, but the staging is a sound premise. Start with an important point, then tell the story up until that point.
If I were going to write about my beloved late cat Stumpy, I might start with the day the neighbor across the street knocked on my door to tell me that she was dead in his back yard. Then I would back it up to the point where a stray tabby cat decided to deliver kittens underneath out back steps, our life with that quirky, wonderful little beast, and then come full circle back to the point where the neighbor knocked on the door. Then I’d wrap it up by telling the story of how other neighbors heard about Stumpy’s passing and stopped by the house to tell stories of how they knew that cat and I learned about Stumpy’s daily adventures. I’d take comfort in knowing that my cat enriched so many lives and express how grateful I was to have her in mine.
It’s a good gimmick, and it’s worked in countless books. But you have to be careful and have a clear delineation between your timelines. Don’t jump back and forth from the past to the present. Very few authors can pull that off, and it’s best left undone. Start in the present moment, then jump clearly into the past and stay there until the story’s caught up to that specific point, and then finish it off with a clever and insightful wrap up. That’ll give you a clear and concise story.
Another approach is to simply start at the beginning. But that can also be tricky. Where do you want your story to start? If you’re giving your life story, you really don’t need to go back to the moment of your conception, or your birth, unless there’s something remarkable about them that contributes to your story somewhere else along the story.
For example, I might go ahead and go back that far, for a couple of reasons. First is that I was born a twin, the second one out of the gate and a complete surprise to everybody in the room. They didn’t know I was there until I arrived.
Second, because I was born ten days after JFK’s assassination. Relating to such an important date in history gives you a point in time that everybody on the planet has heard of, and can reference.
It might bear note that we were born at 6 months gestation, back in a time before there were such sophisticated NICU advances. In those days, they put you in an incubator. If you lived, you lived. We were lucky. We did.
Also, it would be important to go back that far in my life story because my twin only survived for five months. I’ve lived my entire life without her, and that impacts upon me in subtle ways quite often in my life, even 55 years later.
That’s not to say that I’d linger on every birthday, every scraped knee, every mundane minute of every day. I would only point out the important parts that likewise impact upon the story I’m trying to tell about myself. Just the parts that add to the story.
If I didn’t have those interesting points in my life, I wouldn’t bother going back that far. I’d start at a more recent point, one that relates directly to the story. If I broke my leg at six and that’s why I never pursued my dream of playing World Cup soccer, that break is probably where I’d start. If I discovered that I had a penchant for playing chess when I was five, and that began my journey to becoming a grand master, that’s where I’d start.
I never broke my leg, and my chess skills are nonexistent, but you get the point.
If you’re going to pick a beginning and tell the story from there, make it a good one.
When you’ve chosen a starting point, the sole purpose of the first draft is to just get your story on paper. It doesn’t have to be a magnum opus at that point. Don’t try to polish it at this point. Just start writing and keep writing until you’ve got it all down.
Then take a break. You’ve earned it. Grab a treat, put your feet up, and bask in a job well done. You deserve to give yourself a little celebration.
When you go back to your manuscript, this would be a good time to start thinking about your opening lines. If your book is related somehow to the earth and you’re a geologist, you might start with something like: “In my twenty years as a geologist, I’ve never seen readings like this.” It lets the reader know that you’re a geologist, the story is going to be about geology somehow, and it provides a question your reader (and publisher) will want to get the answer for. What readings did you get, and what does that mean for the planet?” There’s your hook.
If you’re telling a story about a flock of seagulls that visit your private beach every day, you might start with something like: “At the beginning, I thought the birds were nothing more than scavengers. I wanted nothing to do with them and tried everything I could think of to get rid of them.” It lets the reader know that birds are involved, but not what kind, or what they’ll come to mean to you. By saying “At first…” you tell your reader that there’s a journey ahead.
You get the idea. Introduce your story, include some hook that makes your reader want to keep going, and launch your story. You don’t have to stay married to those first lines, but it gives you a good place to start as you begin to polish your second draft.
So, give it some thought as you go, but above all, have fun. If you dread writing your book, the readers will dread reading it. Always, always, have fun with your work.
That’s it for today, kids. I’ve got a ton of work still to do, and I’d best get at it.
Have a good one.
Lepplady 