I had a terrific time in poetry school. I heard lectures about odes and elegies and the use of time through verb tenses in a poem and much more. The five poems I submitted ahead of time got careful criticism, and I learned a lot. Thanks to everyone for keeping the blog humming in the meanwhile.
On July 24, 2010, Lauren wrote, I was rereading part of one of the stories I'm writing, and I just realized how forced the writing sounds. How can I change it? Should I completely re-write it, or just change bits and pieces? How can you edit your work without getting totally discouraged and wanting to give up?
I asked for clarification, and Lauren gave it the next day: I mean when the writing sounds fake. Kind of like what you wrote in that one chapter in WRITING MAGIC, where you gave two kinds of dialogue involving a couple of girls and weird smells one of them thought was coming from the science lab, but was actually smoke? One was very formal and didn't sound like two tween/teenaged girls, and the other one did.
Sometimes I want to give up too. Usually this happens to me in the first-draft stage. I love to revise. By the time I get to revision the major plot kinks have been ironed out and all I have to do is to make my prose shine. Truth is, it’s fine and possibly even universal to want to give up but not fine to actually do so. If you stick with your revision, your story is likely to improve. If it doesn’t, you can start a new story, but I hope you won’t stop writing entirely.
I’m glad you’ve read Writing Magic!
Your dialogue problem may have come about because you’re putting information into speech that belongs in narration. Dialogue is likely to feel forced when it passes along facts that both speakers know - simply in order to bring the reader up to speed. If, in the example from Writing Magic, both characters are already aware of the smoke that issued from the science lab, they’ll be unlikely to talk about it.
Dialogue seems to be a lively way to introduce back story, but it’s not, in my opinion. Usually such conversations come off as stiff. Much better to tell the reader directly in narration. If you’re writing in third person, you can merely say that a science experiment has gone bad. If in first, your main character can notice the lingering smell of burnt rubber or whatever.
I can imagine circumstances when it might be appropriate to rehash known events. Suppose your main character Penny suspects something fishy went on in the science lab but she doesn’t have all the facts and she wants to find out. Maybe she’s an amateur sleuth. Then she would have a reason to bring up the accident, and, if she’s not experienced at sleuthing, she might do so awkwardly. As the conversation gets going she might reflect on how stilted she sounds. The reader will be content, because he’ll worry about whether she can pull off her subterfuge and because there may be real danger.
Or maybe Penny wants to establish a relationship with someone, so she brings up the science lab because it’s all she can think of. The reader will be okay with this too and will probably suffer along with Penny as her overtures proceed. Will she be accepted or rejected?
It comes down to why people talk.
Obviously not all talk in real life is fascinating. Much of it isn’t, but the motivation for speech often is, and sometimes the motive is more meaningful than the words. When a character, Warren, say, makes chitchat because he’s nervous, what comes out may be drivel, may even be forced-sounding drivel, but if the reader understands what’s going on, she won’t mind. She’ll be squirming along with him; the worse it is, the more she'll squirm.
Or let’s say Warren is trying to find his sister who’s gone missing. He’s made contact with a woman who may be able to lead him to her. They meet for the first time outside a particular bank branch. She’s said he’ll recognize her, and indeed he thinks he does. There's a woman at the revolving doors wearing a wide-brimmed red hat, a red wool coat tied at the waist, and high black boots. Her face is beautiful, her expression bored. He goes to her, and, scared, spouts the same nonsense as in the example above. The reader can’t turn the pages fast enough.
Not that Warren has to do it this way. He can master his fear and ask the woman straight out if she’s the right person and if she knows where his sister is. That’s fine. It depends on Warren’s character and the tone of the story. The direct dialogue will still engage the reader if she cares about Warren and his sister. One way is no better than another.
There are myriad reasons for characters to speak - anger, fear, warning, affection, love, for fun, to convey news, and more I’m sure - and myriad ways for them to express themselves, as many ways, I guess, as there are characters.
Some people and some characters are more comfortable talking than others; some are more comfortable being quiet. Here’s a prompt: Tomorrow, notice whenever you talk and when you’re silent in company. Pay attention to what prompts your speech and what shuts you up. At night write about what you discovered. Write whatever you remember of actual conversations. On Friday, observe the speech of others. Write about those discoveries too. If you’re feeling inspired, use what you found out in a new story.
Lauren also asked whether she should rewrite only the parts that are problematic or start from scratch. There’s a middle ground. Don’t scrap your entire effort, but do go through all of it. The seeds of the forced writing may start before the trouble begins, and if you fix the earlier part, the rest may fall into place. Revision is a big job. Bette Davis once said that old age isn’t for sissies, and neither is revision (or writing). It’s hard, and we have to push through all our writing frailties. Above all, we need to be thorough. If any place feels off, try other ways to express what you’re getting at, either in notes or in your story itself, but don’t delete your earlier versions.
Occasionally, tragedy strikes and you lose your entire story. If this happens and you start over, sometimes a little miracle occurs. You remember the plot, and it comes out more smoothly. Your subconscious or some good angel has taken over and fixed things, maybe to comfort you for your loss.
Let’s use that angel in a prompt. Think of a part of something you’re working on that you’re not satisfied with. Don’t look at it. Rewrite from memory. Don’t strain to make it better, just write.
Here’s another dialogue prompt: Your main character, Yona, is at her cousin Ivan’s birthday party where she doesn’t want to be. Her mother has threatened dire punishment if she isn’t nice. Ivan is annoying but not evil. This is not Yona’s finest or kindest moment. In dialogue Yona gets revenge on Ivan for existing and having a birthday, but she does it so subtly that he only knows that he feels worse and worse. Yona believes she’s said nothing that will get her in trouble. Write the dialogue.
And another: Your hero, Kyle, needs information that a particular dragon can provide. Unfortunately, the dragon speaks only in riddles. Write Kyle’s attempts to discover what he needs to know.
Have fun and save what you write!
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Wednesday, November 10, 2010
Truth and Mommy and Daddy
Next week I’ll be in poetry school. Honest! I'll be a non-MFA candidate in a poetry MFA program, sort of a guest, but I’ll be doing almost everything everyone else does. I don’t know if I’ll have time to post to the blog. If not, I’ll be back the following week, so please don’t desert me for another writing blog!
I’m going to answer two questions today, because I don’t have enough to say about either for a full post.
First, on May 26, 2010, F wrote, I always assumed most of the things I read in books - about a certain machine, or a process - are true, unless it's obvious they can't be. Do you think books have a duty to be correct in the facts they present?
F’s question followed my post of that day called “Fantastical Research,” and you may want to refer back to that post before or after you read this one.
I certainly think nonfiction has a duty to be accurate. Absolutely. Period. Of course, writers make mistakes, and even fact-checkers make mistakes, and I don’t think a jail sentence is warranted for a mistake. Still, errors in nonfiction are unfortunate. The lay reader is not going to be able to tell and will be left with an incorrect idea of the subject.
But, F, if you’re asking about fiction, I’m not sure. I also tend to believe the technical stuff in books. I used to enjoy Dick Francis’s mysteries more for the horse and racing information than for the mysteries. Same for Tony Hillerman’s mysteries, which offer insights into Native American life. Neither of them may have been strictly accurate, and who am I to know?
For as long as it lasted, I delighted in the television series, Boston Legal (adult content), but I often doubted that real-life lawyers would behave in court the way these crazy attorneys did. I’d say to my husband (also not a lawyer), “Can they do that?” If I asked the question, part of me did believe and part didn’t.
When I wrote my historical novel, Dave at Night, I tried to get my facts right, which involved extensive research, and so far no one has brought any errors to my attention. I used fictional stand-ins for real people and gave these stand-ins names similar to the actual monikers. For example, I changed the name of the heiress A’lelia Walker to Odelia Packer. Then I felt free to make Odelia say the words I gave her, whereas I never would have invented dialogue for A’lelia Walker. Also, I made up the orphanage and called it by a different name from the real orphanage my father grew up in. However, if I’d written a nonfiction history of an orphan living on the outskirts of Harlem in the 1920s, my research would have been more exhaustive.
The heroine of Ever is a talented weaver. Lucky for me, my copy editor knew something about weaving and advised me that I hadn’t gotten the details right. I had to go back and become more informed, because she definitely believed I had a duty to truth. However, I had another alternative: I might have tipped the reader off that this was a different kind of weaving, Hyte weaving, unlike any other sort. Then I could have launched into anything: looms shaped like ice cream cones, Hyte hyena-sheep whose wool is barbed and holds together on contact. The reader would understand that he wouldn't find a rug woven in Hyte fashion in his local carpet store.
One way to clue the reader in that what’s coming is fanciful is to exaggerate, so here’s a prompt: Your main character is a carpenter who is building a cabinet for a king. Whenever His Majesty opens a drawer he will find something useful for his rule. When no one is looking, the shelves will refill themselves with new items relating to his realm. Show the carpenter going about her work. Invent the tools she uses to create the cabinet and to infuse it with magic.
Second question. On July 22, 2010, Rose wrote, What about the portrayal of parents in kids and YA lit today? I've read some about it on other blogs and . . . is it really necessary for the plot to have parents that aren't there or don't care? Just wondering what people think about this.
Dead parents are everywhere in children’s books. To name just a few: Oliver Twist, Anne of Anne of Green Gables, and Harry Potter are all orphans. My Dave in Dave at Night is one. Ella from Ella Enchanted and Addie and Meryl from The Two Princesses of Bamarre all have dead mothers and useless fathers. Aza in Fairest was abandoned by her parents.
In The Wish, Wilma’s parents are divorced. Her mother is fine and caring, but she isn’t there when the trouble happens. Which is the idea. Get the parents out of the way so the children can take center stage.
Remember the deus ex machina (god of the machine) of Greek theater? If you don’t, in Greek tragedy, a crane would lower an actor portraying a god onto the stage to save the characters from an impossible situation. Nowadays, we don’t want parents to be the deus ex machina. In traditional fairy tales the fairy is often the deus ex machina, and in contemporary revamps we don’t let the fairy fix everything either.
Sometimes the parents are the problem or part of it. In Joan Abelove’s Saying It Out Loud (middle school and up), Mindy’s mother has a brain tumor and her father is clueless about how to support his daughter through this crisis. Something similar happens in Karen Hesse’s Newbery winner Out of the Dust after Billie Jo’s mother dies. In The Birthday Room by Kevin Henkes, even though the parents are terrific, they give their son a gift that sets off the book’s major conflict.
A friend wrote a thesis about how mothers have been vilified (vilify, a great word - look it up if you need to) in children’s literature, which made me think guiltily of the stepmother in Dave at Night. When my pal discussed her paper with me I was writing Ever, and I was about to make Kezi’s mother the major villain. After we talked, I decided to go another way. So the parents do not have to be dead or uncaring; they just mustn’t solve the main character’s problems.
In fairy tales the mother is sometimes the chief baddie. Think of the mothers in “Hansel and Gretel” and “Toads and Diamonds” or the evil stepmother in “Cinderella.” (Sisters often don’t fare much better than mothers. Consider the sisters in “Beauty and the Beast” and “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.”) Here's a prompt along these lines: Write a version of a bad-mother fairy tale in which the mother is actually terrific, but the heroine still has to endure the same sort of troubles she goes through in the original tale. A fascinating example of this is Donna Jo Napoli’s take on “Rapunzel” in her novel, Zel.
Have fun, and save what you write!
I’m going to answer two questions today, because I don’t have enough to say about either for a full post.
First, on May 26, 2010, F wrote, I always assumed most of the things I read in books - about a certain machine, or a process - are true, unless it's obvious they can't be. Do you think books have a duty to be correct in the facts they present?
F’s question followed my post of that day called “Fantastical Research,” and you may want to refer back to that post before or after you read this one.
I certainly think nonfiction has a duty to be accurate. Absolutely. Period. Of course, writers make mistakes, and even fact-checkers make mistakes, and I don’t think a jail sentence is warranted for a mistake. Still, errors in nonfiction are unfortunate. The lay reader is not going to be able to tell and will be left with an incorrect idea of the subject.
But, F, if you’re asking about fiction, I’m not sure. I also tend to believe the technical stuff in books. I used to enjoy Dick Francis’s mysteries more for the horse and racing information than for the mysteries. Same for Tony Hillerman’s mysteries, which offer insights into Native American life. Neither of them may have been strictly accurate, and who am I to know?
For as long as it lasted, I delighted in the television series, Boston Legal (adult content), but I often doubted that real-life lawyers would behave in court the way these crazy attorneys did. I’d say to my husband (also not a lawyer), “Can they do that?” If I asked the question, part of me did believe and part didn’t.
When I wrote my historical novel, Dave at Night, I tried to get my facts right, which involved extensive research, and so far no one has brought any errors to my attention. I used fictional stand-ins for real people and gave these stand-ins names similar to the actual monikers. For example, I changed the name of the heiress A’lelia Walker to Odelia Packer. Then I felt free to make Odelia say the words I gave her, whereas I never would have invented dialogue for A’lelia Walker. Also, I made up the orphanage and called it by a different name from the real orphanage my father grew up in. However, if I’d written a nonfiction history of an orphan living on the outskirts of Harlem in the 1920s, my research would have been more exhaustive.
The heroine of Ever is a talented weaver. Lucky for me, my copy editor knew something about weaving and advised me that I hadn’t gotten the details right. I had to go back and become more informed, because she definitely believed I had a duty to truth. However, I had another alternative: I might have tipped the reader off that this was a different kind of weaving, Hyte weaving, unlike any other sort. Then I could have launched into anything: looms shaped like ice cream cones, Hyte hyena-sheep whose wool is barbed and holds together on contact. The reader would understand that he wouldn't find a rug woven in Hyte fashion in his local carpet store.
One way to clue the reader in that what’s coming is fanciful is to exaggerate, so here’s a prompt: Your main character is a carpenter who is building a cabinet for a king. Whenever His Majesty opens a drawer he will find something useful for his rule. When no one is looking, the shelves will refill themselves with new items relating to his realm. Show the carpenter going about her work. Invent the tools she uses to create the cabinet and to infuse it with magic.
Second question. On July 22, 2010, Rose wrote, What about the portrayal of parents in kids and YA lit today? I've read some about it on other blogs and . . . is it really necessary for the plot to have parents that aren't there or don't care? Just wondering what people think about this.
Dead parents are everywhere in children’s books. To name just a few: Oliver Twist, Anne of Anne of Green Gables, and Harry Potter are all orphans. My Dave in Dave at Night is one. Ella from Ella Enchanted and Addie and Meryl from The Two Princesses of Bamarre all have dead mothers and useless fathers. Aza in Fairest was abandoned by her parents.
In The Wish, Wilma’s parents are divorced. Her mother is fine and caring, but she isn’t there when the trouble happens. Which is the idea. Get the parents out of the way so the children can take center stage.
Remember the deus ex machina (god of the machine) of Greek theater? If you don’t, in Greek tragedy, a crane would lower an actor portraying a god onto the stage to save the characters from an impossible situation. Nowadays, we don’t want parents to be the deus ex machina. In traditional fairy tales the fairy is often the deus ex machina, and in contemporary revamps we don’t let the fairy fix everything either.
Sometimes the parents are the problem or part of it. In Joan Abelove’s Saying It Out Loud (middle school and up), Mindy’s mother has a brain tumor and her father is clueless about how to support his daughter through this crisis. Something similar happens in Karen Hesse’s Newbery winner Out of the Dust after Billie Jo’s mother dies. In The Birthday Room by Kevin Henkes, even though the parents are terrific, they give their son a gift that sets off the book’s major conflict.
A friend wrote a thesis about how mothers have been vilified (vilify, a great word - look it up if you need to) in children’s literature, which made me think guiltily of the stepmother in Dave at Night. When my pal discussed her paper with me I was writing Ever, and I was about to make Kezi’s mother the major villain. After we talked, I decided to go another way. So the parents do not have to be dead or uncaring; they just mustn’t solve the main character’s problems.
In fairy tales the mother is sometimes the chief baddie. Think of the mothers in “Hansel and Gretel” and “Toads and Diamonds” or the evil stepmother in “Cinderella.” (Sisters often don’t fare much better than mothers. Consider the sisters in “Beauty and the Beast” and “East of the Sun and West of the Moon.”) Here's a prompt along these lines: Write a version of a bad-mother fairy tale in which the mother is actually terrific, but the heroine still has to endure the same sort of troubles she goes through in the original tale. A fascinating example of this is Donna Jo Napoli’s take on “Rapunzel” in her novel, Zel.
Have fun, and save what you write!
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
Curtain up!
First of all, big news: my very first ever published poems for adults have just come out in the fall issue (#68) of The Louisville Review, two whole entire poems. I’ve never had any interest in writing fiction for adults, but poetry is another matter.
By the way, The Louisville Review has a “Children’s Corner” for poetry by kids from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Follow this link for submissions information: http://www.spalding.edu/louisvillereview/submission.htm#cc.
And a reminder that I’ll be signing on Friday in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Details on the website.
Now here we go!
On July 7, 2010, Silver the Wanderer wrote, I've heard that the first five pages are the most important in a story, since that's the part agents/editors/readers see first. But, of course, that's the part I seem to be having trouble with. I've rewritten my beginning once already, and I think I'm going to have to do it again. My beginning just doesn't seem engaging enough, and I can't think of a good alternative. I need to introduce the setting, characters, and just enough back-story to leave the reader intrigued - but I can't figure out the best way to do it. My writing is fine later on into Chapter 1, but the first five pages are really giving me a hard time.
Do you have any advice for writing beginnings?
First off, I’m hoping this is an apt post for you NaNoWriMo’s out there who are probably all about beginnings right now. Or maybe your beginning is already three chapter behind you. My hat and every other piece of apparel that can be doffed is off to you.
Regarding those “agents/editors/readers,” if the writing slides downhill on page six rather than page five, that’s where they’ll stop, especially the agents and editors. Besides, I don’t think they're the ones to worry about. You can’t predict what they’re looking for - is it historical fiction or graphic novels or werewolves? - and if the person who picks up your manuscript is feeling grouchy or rushed or any other of a thousand things, you may be a modern Jane Austen and he’ll still send you one of those horrible form rejection letters.
But of course you're right about needing to grab the reader fast. Some of you - probably many of you, since you’re book lovers - are forgiving readers. You give a book a chance to hook you. You may stick it out for twenty pages, fifty pages. I suspect some of you never abandon a book. Don’t write your beginnings for readers like you. Write them for reluctant readers who have to be persuaded to hang in.
I included two chapters on the subject of beginnings in Writing Magic, which you may also want to look at.
My worst beginnings nightmare was in The Two Princesses of Bamarre. I needed to start the story and also to introduce an epic poem that runs through the book, but the epic poem has a different story line from the main one. I rewrote the beginning umpteen times. It took me so long to figure out that the book went into bound galleys with a messed-up beginning, which hurt it in reviews.
I just compared the two beginnings. In the bound galleys, I started with a fragment of the poem and gave a little of the poem’s back story before moving into the tale of the novel. In the published edition I also began with the poem but then started the primary tale immediately. The difference is just a few deleted sentences, yet one version is smooth, the other bumpy. And although the change was slight, it took me weeks and quite a few intermediate attempts to get there.
So here are two beginnings suggestions. The first is to trim down to the essentials. Be ruthless with every word, phrase, and sentence.
The second suggestion is to delay the back story. Involve the reader in the front story first. Depending on what you’re writing you may need to introduce the back story quickly, maybe in the first page even, but not in the first couple of paragraphs.
This is formulaic, and if you find another way that works, certainly go for it. But in general, at the beginning, if you can, do only one thing. Think of a hypnotist (which is what an author is, in a way). She's wagging the watch on its chain in front of her subject's eyes, a single watch, never more than one or the trance won't take hold.
The easiest element to start with is probably action. If you throw your characters right into a rush of events, your reader is likely to dive in too. For example, suppose you begin, He shuffled toward me. The reader will instantly want to know who he is and who me is and what the shuffling means - not that you have to explain right away.
But you can start with any facet of storytelling: setting, dialogue, thoughts, feelings, action. This suggests a prompt. (If you’re in NaNoWriMo, don't try it right now. Wait till December.) The prompt comes from a similar prompt in a book I’ve mentioned before, What If (middle school and above), which is full of writing exercises. Write beginnings that feature each of the elements I just listed, a different beginning for each. For example, a setting beginning might start, How bland the house looked with its tan siding, white shutters, worn welcome mat. How little it gave away.
When you do this, don’t concern yourself with the story that might follow. You’re only exploring beginnings, and you’ll be most free to do that if you don’t have to think ahead.
In my example it’s the second sentence that gets the reader interested. If I’d omitted that and continued on to other bland house attributes, the reader might wonder if he’d wandered into a real estate listing. But if I went on to describe the cheery kitchen and remarked that all evidence had been erased of the day when big sister Barbara added talcum powder to the cake batter, the reader would likely sit down at the table ready to be dished more story.
So the third suggestion is to give the reader a tidbit to worry about. Maybe worry is too strong. Engage may be a better word. In Writing Magic I propose that the reader look at the beginnings of her favorite books, and I propose it again. See how quickly you were grabbed. Examine how the author did it.
At one point in flailing about for a beginning to Two Princesses, I jumped in too deep right away. I don’t want to give the story away, but I began the major crisis on the first page. The reader was too seized, too anxious to endure any of the regular stuff of establishing characters, setting, the world of the story. There are additional dangers in launching at the most critical moment: either everything that follows feels like a let-down or the story has to be cranked up to hysterical heights, and too much hysteria leads to sameness and emotion fatigue. So the fourth suggestion is to start small.
It’s nice when you can make the initial predicament be the same sort of trouble that propels the entire book. If your main character’s major problem, for example, is not fitting in, you might start with an instance of his outsider status. Other kinds of trouble can come along later, but it’s cool, in my opinion, to set out with the underlying issue. Not always possible, but cool.
Sometimes the perfect beginning comes to me right off. It did in Ella Enchanted and The Wish, and that was a gift. Usually I have to revise to get it right, which may not occur in my second draft or, as was true for Two Princesses, my twentieth. And you can’t be absolutely certain of your beginning until the first draft is finished - because you may not know what your beginning needs to do or be until you get to the end.
Here’s another prompt: Think of a story you know well, maybe a fairy tale or a myth, but not a book whose written beginning is lodged in your memory. Or you can think of a well-known character, like Sherlock Holmes, or even a historic figure, like Houdini, whom you can fictionalize. Write three beginnings to go with the tale or the character. For example, you might choose “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Write at least two pages for each one. If you like, pick one and keep going.
Have fun, and save what you write!
By the way, The Louisville Review has a “Children’s Corner” for poetry by kids from kindergarten through twelfth grade. Follow this link for submissions information: http://www.spalding.edu/louisvillereview/submission.htm#cc.
And a reminder that I’ll be signing on Friday in Fort Thomas, Kentucky. Details on the website.
Now here we go!
On July 7, 2010, Silver the Wanderer wrote, I've heard that the first five pages are the most important in a story, since that's the part agents/editors/readers see first. But, of course, that's the part I seem to be having trouble with. I've rewritten my beginning once already, and I think I'm going to have to do it again. My beginning just doesn't seem engaging enough, and I can't think of a good alternative. I need to introduce the setting, characters, and just enough back-story to leave the reader intrigued - but I can't figure out the best way to do it. My writing is fine later on into Chapter 1, but the first five pages are really giving me a hard time.
Do you have any advice for writing beginnings?
First off, I’m hoping this is an apt post for you NaNoWriMo’s out there who are probably all about beginnings right now. Or maybe your beginning is already three chapter behind you. My hat and every other piece of apparel that can be doffed is off to you.
Regarding those “agents/editors/readers,” if the writing slides downhill on page six rather than page five, that’s where they’ll stop, especially the agents and editors. Besides, I don’t think they're the ones to worry about. You can’t predict what they’re looking for - is it historical fiction or graphic novels or werewolves? - and if the person who picks up your manuscript is feeling grouchy or rushed or any other of a thousand things, you may be a modern Jane Austen and he’ll still send you one of those horrible form rejection letters.
But of course you're right about needing to grab the reader fast. Some of you - probably many of you, since you’re book lovers - are forgiving readers. You give a book a chance to hook you. You may stick it out for twenty pages, fifty pages. I suspect some of you never abandon a book. Don’t write your beginnings for readers like you. Write them for reluctant readers who have to be persuaded to hang in.
I included two chapters on the subject of beginnings in Writing Magic, which you may also want to look at.
My worst beginnings nightmare was in The Two Princesses of Bamarre. I needed to start the story and also to introduce an epic poem that runs through the book, but the epic poem has a different story line from the main one. I rewrote the beginning umpteen times. It took me so long to figure out that the book went into bound galleys with a messed-up beginning, which hurt it in reviews.
I just compared the two beginnings. In the bound galleys, I started with a fragment of the poem and gave a little of the poem’s back story before moving into the tale of the novel. In the published edition I also began with the poem but then started the primary tale immediately. The difference is just a few deleted sentences, yet one version is smooth, the other bumpy. And although the change was slight, it took me weeks and quite a few intermediate attempts to get there.
So here are two beginnings suggestions. The first is to trim down to the essentials. Be ruthless with every word, phrase, and sentence.
The second suggestion is to delay the back story. Involve the reader in the front story first. Depending on what you’re writing you may need to introduce the back story quickly, maybe in the first page even, but not in the first couple of paragraphs.
This is formulaic, and if you find another way that works, certainly go for it. But in general, at the beginning, if you can, do only one thing. Think of a hypnotist (which is what an author is, in a way). She's wagging the watch on its chain in front of her subject's eyes, a single watch, never more than one or the trance won't take hold.
The easiest element to start with is probably action. If you throw your characters right into a rush of events, your reader is likely to dive in too. For example, suppose you begin, He shuffled toward me. The reader will instantly want to know who he is and who me is and what the shuffling means - not that you have to explain right away.
But you can start with any facet of storytelling: setting, dialogue, thoughts, feelings, action. This suggests a prompt. (If you’re in NaNoWriMo, don't try it right now. Wait till December.) The prompt comes from a similar prompt in a book I’ve mentioned before, What If (middle school and above), which is full of writing exercises. Write beginnings that feature each of the elements I just listed, a different beginning for each. For example, a setting beginning might start, How bland the house looked with its tan siding, white shutters, worn welcome mat. How little it gave away.
When you do this, don’t concern yourself with the story that might follow. You’re only exploring beginnings, and you’ll be most free to do that if you don’t have to think ahead.
In my example it’s the second sentence that gets the reader interested. If I’d omitted that and continued on to other bland house attributes, the reader might wonder if he’d wandered into a real estate listing. But if I went on to describe the cheery kitchen and remarked that all evidence had been erased of the day when big sister Barbara added talcum powder to the cake batter, the reader would likely sit down at the table ready to be dished more story.
So the third suggestion is to give the reader a tidbit to worry about. Maybe worry is too strong. Engage may be a better word. In Writing Magic I propose that the reader look at the beginnings of her favorite books, and I propose it again. See how quickly you were grabbed. Examine how the author did it.
At one point in flailing about for a beginning to Two Princesses, I jumped in too deep right away. I don’t want to give the story away, but I began the major crisis on the first page. The reader was too seized, too anxious to endure any of the regular stuff of establishing characters, setting, the world of the story. There are additional dangers in launching at the most critical moment: either everything that follows feels like a let-down or the story has to be cranked up to hysterical heights, and too much hysteria leads to sameness and emotion fatigue. So the fourth suggestion is to start small.
It’s nice when you can make the initial predicament be the same sort of trouble that propels the entire book. If your main character’s major problem, for example, is not fitting in, you might start with an instance of his outsider status. Other kinds of trouble can come along later, but it’s cool, in my opinion, to set out with the underlying issue. Not always possible, but cool.
Sometimes the perfect beginning comes to me right off. It did in Ella Enchanted and The Wish, and that was a gift. Usually I have to revise to get it right, which may not occur in my second draft or, as was true for Two Princesses, my twentieth. And you can’t be absolutely certain of your beginning until the first draft is finished - because you may not know what your beginning needs to do or be until you get to the end.
Here’s another prompt: Think of a story you know well, maybe a fairy tale or a myth, but not a book whose written beginning is lodged in your memory. Or you can think of a well-known character, like Sherlock Holmes, or even a historic figure, like Houdini, whom you can fictionalize. Write three beginnings to go with the tale or the character. For example, you might choose “Jack and the Beanstalk.” Write at least two pages for each one. If you like, pick one and keep going.
Have fun, and save what you write!
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