Why we’re doing this

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I’ve decided to post a chapter from my book, Flogging the Quill, Crafting a Novel that Sells., once a week. Partly because maybe writers will buy a book or two, but mostly because, if you’re to believe the reviews left by readers on Amazon, it’s helpful stuff. If you’ve read the book, well, you know that much of it is fun to read, and it never hurts to be reminded of craft techniques.

The opening chapter concerns the evidence regarding the necessity of crafting a compelling first page. Here goes.

It’s harsh out there

Today’s publishing climate is tougher than ever. To get an agent, your work has to stand out from hundreds and hundreds of submissions. For your agent to get you a book contract, your novel has to cut through hundreds more.

Your book has to be polished, diamond-sharp, and a rarity–you not only have to have professional-caliber writing and a great story, your novel needs to kick-start with compelling tension.

You only have seconds in an agent’s hands

Established authors can ease into a story with description and mood (and even they aren’t safe in the bookstore), but unpublished writers face a very different reality—agents suffering through heaps of submissions and looking for reasons to reject while at the same time hoping for a story worth reading.

On her blog, Agent in the Middle, 20-year veteran agent Lori Perkins said this:

“Your novel has to grab me by the first page, which is why we can reject you on one page.”

Dan Conaway, literary agent at Writers House, adds this.

“I know most of what I need to know about a writer’s chops in about a line and half.”

The odds are excellent that an agent will see all the reasons she needs for passing—or for reading more—on your first manuscript page. Just like agents and editors who see rivers of submissions, as a result of seeing hundreds of opening pages for novels, I can tell you that the first page typically foreshadows what’s to come, story-wise and writing-wise. One quick skim usually provides all the reason I need to decide whether I will turn the page or decline the opportunity.

Often I see competent writing that fails to connect because the writer doesn’t get what the novel’s opening must do to hook a reader. Frequently I find a gripping opening pages later—too late. Most often a bog of exposition or backstory—what one writer calls “throat-clearing”—drags the story to a halt.

You still only have seconds on an editor’s desk

Let’s say you do land an agent, and the agent sends your story to an acquisitions editor. The same grim reality opens its maws—an audience of one with sharp, particular tastes who has an agenda that your story may or may not fit, who wants a great story but has a pile of submissions to go through, and for whom quickly finding a reason to pass is a good thing. One slip, and chomp, you’re gone.

You still only have seconds at the bookstore

Okay, so your talent and work and luck pay off and your novel is published. Now it faces the cold, pragmatic reality of the bookstore. Sol Stein, a remarkable publisher/editor/author/playwright, writes in Stein on Writing of his observations in a bookstore.

“In the fiction section, the most common pattern was for the browser to read the front flap of the book’s jacket and then go to page one. No browser went beyond page three before either taking the book to the cashier or putting it down and picking up another to sample.”

What did those readers see in the novels they chose to purchase, and what did they fail to see in the rejects?

You know.

Ask yourself what readers buy novels for. Is it. . .

• Lush descriptions?
• Great dialogue?
• Fascinating characters?
• Deep themes?
  

Nope. Just one thing.

Story

Those bookstore browsers—and the agent and editor before them—either saw signs of a story they wanted to read, or they did not. They either felt compelled to keep reading, or not. That quickly. You do it too, don’t you?

It’s not like when you ask a family member, or a friend, or even a critique group to read your new novel—they have to read your stuff.

No, in the real world, you have a page or two. And if it’s that difficult with a bookstore browser who is on the hunt for a story to read, how tough do you think it is with a jaded, weary agent or a jaded, way-too-swamped acquisitions editor?

As Chuck Adams, Executive Editor of Algonquin Books says,

“You can usually tell after a paragraph—a page, certainly—whether or not you’re going to get hooked.”

To move your book toward the cash register. . .or generate a request by an agent for the full manuscript. . .or make it to an editorial meeting by an acquisitions editor. . .you need to kick-start your story, sentence by sentence, on your opening pages.

To maintain your focus, it wouldn’t hurt to print out the following definition and put it somewhere you will see it when you sit down to write:

com•pel
verb
a: to force
b: to urge irresistibly

For what it’s worth.

Ray

Comments

[Greg]

Ray, I have a question. Is it possible to begin the breakout novel WITHOUT a first page dripping in tension? Let’s face it, not all stories do or should begin with a high-speed chase and shots fired. In other words, can one successfully start the story just drifting down the river rather than going over the falls? And if so, is there a key element to focus on other than tension?

You asked in a recent flogging, “Is voice enough?” Well, is it?

[Norm]

And, thank you for giving us the space to "do it" Ray.

[Ray Rhamey]

Greg, I can give you a definite maybe in answer to your questions. In other words, it all depends. However, if you can raise a story question on the first page, why not do that? The more you do this thing, the more you understand that nothing you've written is sacred. If you can put tension, or create a compelling story question, why on earth would you not do that?

I suggest you submit your opening for a flogging and see what folks think.

Thanks for the question.

[Greg]

Thanks so much for the reply, Ray. Have done so. I’m sure we’ll be talking again in a few weeks.

However, here’s something to think about in the interim: the story of the sinking of the Titanic did not begin with, “Iceberg ahead! Left full rudder!”

In fact it began with, “Tickets, please.”

Not trying to be difficult, just wondering how you start if the iceberg is a long way off and everyone thinks the ship is unsinkable.

[Ray Rhamey]

Greg. The story of the sinking of the Titanic isn't the story of a ship hitting an iceberg, it's the story of the people involved. If the "ticket, please" was spoken to a character who desperately needed to get to America but didn't have the fare, then you'd have a beginning with tension--what's going to happen to the person, how will they get the ticket they need so badly?

[Kelley]

I think voice is enough if you're really, really lucky. Heck, nothing is enough if you're that lucky.

Take Twilight for example. For a book that became such a huge phenomenon, you'd think it was a work of genius. But it's not. I'll admit I read it, and I liked it, and so did my mom, my husband, my sister's boyfriend, my cousins, my aunt. And none of us know why we liked it. Read the first 16 lines of the first chapter on Amazon. Not the prologue, because I doubt that was there in the first manuscript. To me, there is nothing special in those first 16 lines.

But I don't have Stephenie Meyer's luck. The only luck I have is bad luck. So I'm going to work to get my story started the best way I can and hope someday my work will pay off. :)

[David Greer]

Consider the second definition of compel--"to urge irresistibly" in the context of the first sentence of Camus's The Stranger: "Mother died today." Not, "My mother died today," or "My mother passed away today," but just those three stark words, which not only characterize the detached protagonist, Meursault, but also the tenor of the book. How about Orwell's 1984? "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." Or, my favorite (though it's actually three sentences): "It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him. Yossarian was in the hospital with a pain in his liver that fell just short of being jaundice." All of these openers urged me, irresistibly, to continue to read. You can find more first lines here http://www.pubquizhelp.com/art/book_first_lines.html and scattered throughout cyberspace.

[Jami Gold]

Greg,

I'd like to emphasize that conflict and tension don't necessarily mean car chases or big action scenes.

Tension is created by a gap. A gap between what a character wants and what they have. A gap between the direction the action is currently going ("It was a sunny, lazy Sunday.") and where foreshadowing tells us it's going to really go ("But thunderclouds loomed on the horizon."). A gap between what character A wants compared to character B.

Any gap creates story questions: How will the character get what they want, how will the impending thunderstorm affect those picnickers, how will those characters clash? It doesn't have to be a big James Bond movie opening, but it does have to create questions to give the reader a reason to turn the page.

[Greg]

Jami, thanks. Believe me, I understand what you, Ray, and others are saying. And I don’t disagree. I’m simply struggling with a first page that involves a scene that I believe is the right place for the story to begin. Yet, there is no tension to speak of, as the MC, at that point, doesn’t know what’s coming. So, there is no “gap” as you put it, because the gap doesn’t exist yet. And I am resolute in my resistance to artificially creating some manner of tension that has little, if anything, to do with the story just to get somebody to turn the page.

The problem is bedeviling me. Ray will be flogging (I think) a couple of optional openings in a week or two. At this juncture, I’m inclined to just wait and see.

[Jami Gold]

Greg,

Ah... The "real world" dilemma. :) Okay, think about what the MC will be fighting for later on in the story. Think about the general theme of the story and how that relates to the MC's current situation and later situation.

Now, see if you can add some foreshadowing to give a hint of that problem.

For example, say your MC is a happily-married family guy and you want to show that in the first scene. But maybe the story is about various threats to that existence (whether of the Fatal Attraction or attacking aliens variety - or anything in between). Then you could slip in a line about how much it would devastate him to lose his family.

The next key part is to *not* have the character dismiss those worries ("He laughed off the ridiculous thought."). If the character blows something off, so will the reader - undermining your tension.

Does that help?