Today’s lesson could be considered a double – the video is about ten minutes, and it has two exercises. If that’s too much at once, simply read through the first exercise and try that one. Then come back to the video for additional examples and a second exercise when you’re ready. I want to keep these short, but for this first free episode, I thought more content would give you a better idea of what you’ll get with this newsletter.
Video Transcription:
Hi, it's Chris with Write Better Right Now, and our lesson today is on fast starts.
It's important to get your story off to a exciting start because editors and agents will often judge a submission on the first page or two. They're busy, they've got a stack of things to read, they don't have time to wait to see what happens once the story finally gets going several chapters in. Readers as well may browse a book in the bookstore or online and if the first page doesn't hook them, they might turn to something else.
So your goal with a story opening is to grab the reader's attention and hook them in a way that will get them to keep turning pages.
One of the most famous lines in children's literature is from Charlotte's Web, “Where's Papa going with that axe?” This works to grab the reader's attention because it's a literal question, so young readers might be curious to know the answer, and it has some inherent drama in that word axe. It wouldn't be as exciting if it was “Where's Papa going with that rake?” This puts us right into the scene. Fern finds out that Papa is going to kill the runt pig and she races off to save it.
A lot of beginning writers would probably start farther back in the story and show Fern on the farm, get to know her parents, get to know farm life, and then eventually introduce the problem. But this jumps right to the issue of the vulnerability of Wilbur the pig. So beginning writers often take far too long to get going instead of starting with something dramatic.
You really want to start where something is happening, where there's action and drama. That's why in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark, we don't start where the problem really starts, with Indiana Jones finding out about the Lost Ark of the Covenant, and there's a lot of discussion about it in the classroom, which could be a little boring. Instead, it starts farther back where he is trying to retrieve a different artifact and there's lots of danger and excitement and humor. So you want to find a place to start where things are happening and the reader can get to know the character through their actions as they have a problem to solve or a goal they're trying to achieve.
Now, more experienced authors sometimes open too fast. They try so hard to get these dramatic starts that they wind up making it just confusing to the reader. So in the former now-defunct Editorial Ass blog post, this anonymous editorial assistant said, “It's not a question of everything exploding. The trend is to start with something happening, but the thing that is happening shouldn't necessarily be literal action like a fight scene or a car chase. Your goal as an author is to quickly introduce a character and a problem.”
Character and problem—those are your key two things.
“Dropping into the story in the middle of a sword fight usually isn't the best way to do this. When you have action without context, there's nothing at stake and the reader won't engage with it. A good first page could be a character sitting in an exam room at the doctor's office waiting for a test result. A good first page could be the protagonist telling his wife a lie. The goal is to show the reader something about the character and to engage the reader in what is going to happen next.”
Author and former agent Nathan Bransford does a lot of first page critiques on his blog and frequently notes how fast starts can be confusing to the reader. “Often, when trying to be mysterious, authors just end up being vague. It’s really hard to invest in a mystery when we don’t have enough information to understand what’s happening entirely. Instead, it’s often better to let the reader into the mystery in order to build anticipation. Orient the reader around whether a character will succeed or fail.”
So it's a tricky balance, grabbing the reader's attention with a character who is doing something, who has goals, but also giving enough background and setting to orient the reader in the scene.
Exercise:
• Choose a book you like (by someone else)
• Read the opening page. How does it introduce a character and problem?
• How does it ground you in the setting? Is anything confusing?
An exercise that you can do is choose a book that you like from your bookshelf, something written by someone else and published. Read the opening page. How does it introduce a character and a problem? Do you think it does a good job with that? How does it ground you in the setting? And is anything confusing?
Now, we're talking just about a first page here. You'll presumably get additional information further in the chapter, but look at those opening lines and see how well they grab your attention while also helping you to understand what's going on.
And of course, you can do this exercise with more than one book. You can do it every time you start reading a new book. That will help you understand how quickly you can get things going by dropping the reader into a scene where something is happening.
Let's look at some specific examples.
Too Much, My Great Big Native Family by Laurel Goodluck. As a picture book, this has the advantage of illustrations to help establish the character and set the scene. But it opens with this:
Like a star shining, I light up when I get a part in the play.
Mom says, "Hurrah, Russell!"
Then, "Let's go. It's time for our weekly gathering."
I need to rehearse my lines, but ...
[Next page] It's family time!
In just a few sentences, it sets up a character who has this conflict with needing to rehearse lines for the play, but also being expected to spend time with his big family.
Where, When, Who, What, Why
Without knowing what they want and why, we don’t know the stakes.
You want to help the reader understand quickly where the book is set, when, if it's fantasy, historical fiction, science fiction, or anything other than here and now, who is on the page in that opening scene, what is happening, what they are trying to do, and why. We need to know what is going on and we need to know what your character wants and why, because otherwise we don't know the stakes in the story. You might not get all this into the first page of an actual published book, because sometimes that can be only a few sentences, but it should certainly be within the first few hundred words.
Here's an example from a sweet romance, The Billionaire Cowboy's Christmas:
Josh Tomlinson paused on the porch to shake water from his jacket and stomp the mud off his boots. He couldn’t complain about rain in Texas. The grass needed it, and they needed grass to feed the livestock. But rain reminded him that the barn roof needed repairs. They also had to tear up the old cement slab that was rotting, level the ground, and pour a new slab. Even if he and his brothers did the labor themselves, they were looking at ten thousand dollars in materials.
Are you keeping secrets from the reader (usually not good) or introducing mysteries for your character to solve?
Ask, are you keeping secrets from the reader, things that the character knows, but that you're not letting the reader know? That's usually not a good option. Or are you just introducing problems that the character has, goals that they have, or mysteries that your character is trying to solve?
Here's an example from a romantic comedy, Felony Melanie in Pageant Pandemonium:
POP – CRACKLE – BANG!
Melanie jumped so bad she almost smeared her lipstick. It sounded like someone was setting off fireworks out in front of the school…
[And then a few sentences later: She] scrambled out of the girls’ bathroom to see what all of the fuss was about.
This isn't a particularly life-altering mystery, but there is a character who has a question, something that she wants answered. It puts her in a situation where she is doing something, as opposed to just describing her or showing her in more ordinary, everyday life. You're with the character, the character doesn't know more than the reader knows. The reader is right there with her, wondering what this sound is.
That's an example of a mystery the character is trying to solve, not a mystery the author is keeping from the reader.
An interesting character plus a challenging situation = a good hook.
A good opening has an interesting character and a challenging situation. Those things together tend to make a good hook. Here's an example from Something Shady at Sunshine Haven. This is a mystery series for adults. And it opens:
My childhood home had faded in the harsh Arizona sun and now showed its age—rather like me. I’d never dreamed of living here again after thirty years of traveling the world.
This is temporary. You’ll find a way out.
You're in the character's head, in this situation as she returns home, and you're getting these little clues of who she is, her age, the fact that she has traveled the world, and so forth. And then her thoughts, this is temporary, you'll find a way out. That's not the mystery of the novel because she doesn't know about the mystery yet. But it introduces a character and a situation that she's struggling with, and hopefully that helps hook the reader into wanting to know more and wanting to spend time with this character.
Exercise:
• Read the first chapter. How does it further show that character and problem?
• Would you start later or earlier? Why?
• Would you explain more or less? Why?
Another exercise is to read the rest of the first chapter of the book you choose for the first exercise. You've asked how it introduced the character in a problem. How does the rest of the chapter further show that character and problem?
How does it develop it or introduce new questions for the character to pursue? If you were rewriting this book, would you want to start earlier and maybe give some more information, or do you feel like you could skip ahead and start later? Why?
Would you explain more or less of what's going on? Why? Analyzing other books like this, published books, and figuring out what works for you. and what doesn't is a great way to develop your own skills and your own style.
That’s it for this week’s Write Better Right Now. Next week, we’ll look at the promises your first chapter makes.
Chris Eboch is the author of over 100 books for children, including nonfiction and fiction, early reader through teen. Learn more at chriseboch.com. Learn about her developmental editing services and online, on-demand classes at her For Writers page.
Chris writes mystery, romance, and romantic suspense novels for adults as Kris Bock. In the Accidental Detective series, a witty journalist solves mysteries in Arizona and tackles the challenges of turning fifty. Kris’s Furrever Friends Sweet Romance series features the employees and customers at a cat café. In the Accidental Billionaire Cowboys series, a Texas ranching family wins a fortune in the lottery, which causes as many problems as it solves.
Sign up for the Kris Bock Mystery and Romance newsletter and get a free Accidental Detective short story and a free 30-page sweet romance. See all Kris Bock links.
Kris also writes a series with her brother, scriptwriter Douglas J Eboch, who wrote the original screenplay for the movie Sweet Home Alabama. The Felony Melanie series follows the crazy antics of Melanie, Jake, and their friends a decade before the events of the movie. Sign up for the romantic comedy newsletter to get a short story preview, or find the books at All E-book retailers.
Write Better Right Now with Fast Starts