Too Much Information

Some years ago I was asked to look at a friend of a friend's novel and innocently I accepted the manuscript. A few evenings later I settled down with a glass of chilled pinot grigio and began to read. It was one of the most awful things I've read, the account of a birth that goes wrong. Suffice to say that blood featured frequently, along with various other body parts.

But it wasn't the most awful thing I've read. That was the opening to another unpublished novel where the hero takes a gastric sample from a laboratory beagle. Even typing those words has given me a nauseous flashback moment.

I sympathise. It's hard. We know that the beginning of a novel needs to grab the reader's attention, especially if the novel is unpublished and has to somehow get itself off the slush pile. So we bring out the heavy stuff, the dramatic, the shocking and whoosh it all in front of the reader. Da dah! That'll get 'em!

But it doesn't, or at least, not in the way you intended. It's a bit like settling down for a long plane journey and the friendly person next to you pulls out their wallet to - you think - show you photographs of their grandchildren and instead - da dah! here's my abortion!

It's too much information, much much much too soon.

Later on in the novel, once we've got to know your characters, once we've begun to care, then we'll react as you wish to whatever horribleness you've got in store. But on the first page...? You're asking for someone to fling the manuscript down then bundle it back in the return envelope as soon as possible.