F is for Funerals

A funeral appears to be a great way to start a novel. You gather all the main characters together at a time of emotional stress so confrontation and conflict are inherently likely. A death is the end of one life, but it's also the start of a new life for those who remain - what could be better for your novel than to explore the repercussions of loss? And then there's drama in the burning question of who inherits the money, and potential for discovering information about the one who has gone. Yes, on the surface, a funeral seems a great way to start.

But it isn't.

A funeral is by its nature a reactive scene. The action - the death - has happened off stage. And because we don't know any of the mourners, we don't really care about their reactions. The grieving widow, the bereft daughter, the relieved son, the grasping nephew...we don't know them so their reactions are a matter of indifference to us.

You can tell us what a great guy the deceased was or what a tyrant, and we're not that interested - they're dead, so we're not going to get to meet them further. Now, it may be that in your careful plan, the deceased IS going to play a major part, but I'm talking about the reader's experience. At the beginning they don't know that because they haven't yet read the rest of your story. They are reacting to what they're reading now without the benefit of being the writer with it all planned out.

Funerals are all about something that has gone. Even the future is framed by the past eg how will I manage without X? The reader wants a promise of what's going to happen in the rest of the novel. They don't want to hang around waiting for the story to start. If you're writing for film or television, you have a small window of opportunity while the viewer decides if they're going to carry on watching (no one walks out of the cinema in the first two minutes, so you've got up to ten minutes to hook them).

But it's different for books. The first thing the reader looks at before parting with their cash and time is the beginning, whether that's in the bookshop or as a downloaded sample. They won't buy if the opening doesn't grab them and funerals, as reactive, not active, scenes don't.

Plus, a lot of people read for entertainment and don't want to read about death and grief. Your novel actually may be a rip roaring romp, but the reader won't know that when they start reading, unless they've been given the book by a friend who gives a quick resume, or have read a lot of positive reviews saying that.

Other bad starts include having the main character waking up or staring at themselves in the mirror thinking about the night before (that's reactive - start with the night before, make it active), and characters setting off on journeys (you're going to have to explain why they go which makes it reactive, so start at the moment when they decide to go, which is active).

There are of course exceptions, and I'm probably going to be deluged with titles of good books that start with funerals. But I'm going to suggest that they work because the funeral itself isn't that important to the characters and the characters aren't reactive, they're active eg they're a gate-crasher or the detective investigating the death. So, Holly Martins turns up at Harry Lime's funeral in The Third Man, because he came to Vienna hoping Harry was going to give him a job. He has to be active, because the job isn't there and then things don't seem to be straight forward about Harry's death and - am I the only one humming the theme tune?

(Cue zither music....)

Why Readers are like Goslings

Reading is a strange business. We start out with high expectations and long for them to be fulfilled - no one reads hoping that they're going to waste their time, surely. So we latch onto whatever we get given in the first paragraph. Aha, we think, that's what this story is going to be about.

And then it isn't.

It's such a disappointment. As a reader, you sort of commit to the first person you see in a story, just like a gosling hatching from the egg. And as you read further, and the story gets further away from the character you started with, half your brain is wondering when we're going to get our real main character back, the one we started out with, the one we bonded with.

I see it in class time and time again. We begin with character X, then mourn X's absence if X doesn't turn out to be the main character. Feedback invariably starts with 'What happened to X?'

In novels this may not be so important - though in published novels, if the story is going to start with a different character, you often see that chapter being called a prologue, or some such, just to alert the reader that they shouldn't commit fully.

But in short stories starting with the character you mean to go on with is vital. Consider this: I see misleading story beginnings in class fairly often, but I can't remember seeing a story that didn't start with the main character when I've been the final judge for short story comps. That implies that the misleading beginnings get weeded out in the initial judging stages.

So, I'd strongly advise anyone to make sure their opening paragraph concentrates on the main character and call me a goose if I'm wrong.

How Not to Start Writing A Novel

Every year there is a marvellous competition for the worst opening to a novel. It's called the Bulwer-Lytton Prize, in honour of Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton who wrote the famous opening:

"It was a dark and stormy night; the rain fell in torrents - except at occasional intervals, when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops, and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness." (from Paul Clifford by Edward Bulwer-Lytton 1830.)

The winning paragraph was written by Molly Ringle (who has written about it on her blog):

"For the first month of Ricardo and Felicity's affair, they greeted one another at every stolen rendezvous with a kiss - a lengthy, ravenous kiss, Ricardo lapping and sucking at Felicity's mouth as if she were a giant cage-mounted water bottle and he were the world's thirstiest gerbil."

The runner up was Tom Wallace with:

"Through the verdant plains of North Umbria walked Waylon Ogglethorpe and, as he walked, the clouds whispered his name, the birds of the air sang his praises, and the beasts of the fields from smallest to greatest said, 'There goes the most noble among men' - in other words, a typical stroll for a schizophrenic ventriloquist with delusions of grandeur."

So, three dire opening paras, one unintentional, two written on purpose. What makes them dreadful? In the Bulwer-Lytton, I think it's the pedantic "except at occasional interval" that makes the heart sink, followed by the "for it is in London" phrase: even in 1830 it was a cliche. If you take the pedantry and the cliche out, it's a vivid piece of writing.

With the prize winning para, it's the whole gerbil thing. The association of a rodent with kissing is always going to be wrong, and the whole water bottle thing - well, it's not a sexy image in any shape or form. Metaphor gone wrong, would sum this one up.

The final one nearly works. It's the self consciousness, the voice that's busy saying "I'm so clever" that makes it a winner here. And who would want to read a book about a character called Waylon Ogglethorpe in the first place? Having said that, I think it would have worked even better if the name hadn't so clearly signalled that the piece was a joke. Ricardo and Felicity are well chosen for the purpose, not completely over the top, but neither entirely normal.

So what makes a good opening para? It's got to have something that hooks the reader - a promise of plot, a promise of style, a promise of interesting characters and it's very hard to do well.

Opening Sentences

Which one of these would make you read on - A or B?

A:

She clung to sleep tenaciously, wrapped in beguiling dreams. It was explained to her afterwards that they weren't dreams at all, only reality breaking through the days of confusion as she rose from deep unconsciousness to full awareness, but she found that difficult to accept.

B:

With her sharp little face set in lines of dissatisfaction, the twelve year old girl sat up and searched for her knickers among the forest leaves. It had finally begun to dawn on her that sex with Bobby Franklyn wasn't all it could be.

I'd have said B. We start right in there, it's shocking, dramatic and I don't know where it's going next but I want to find out. A doesn't tell me anything about 'her', it could be about anyone, and be set anywhere.

They're actually both from the same novel, The Dark Room by Minette Walters. A is the opening sentences of Chapter 1. Did she - or her editor - think it was a bit dull, a bit nothing? I may be completely wrong but my guess is that Walters decided she needed a more gripping start and provided a prologue to supply one. Because B is the opening sentences of the Prologue and after the unnamed twelve year old girl discovers a body on the next page, we never hear about her or Bobby again.

Now, I'm not saying that you need a prologue, but think of your opening sentences. Would they grab a reader in the same way B does?

The Most Important Words You Write

Imagine you're an agent with a stack of unsolicited manuscripts to get through. What do you read first?

Imagine you're a preliminary short story competition judge with a stack of short stories to look through - what do you read first?

Imagine you're in a bookshop choosing a book. You like the look of the cover and open the pages and read...what?

Okay so some perverse people might read the last page or a couple in the middle but the answer for most of those situations will be: the first paragraph. Once you're been successfully published you can risk a less than riveting first paragraph (although I wouldn't recommend it) but to capture the reader's attention when you're unknown, you have to have a good first para.

But what makes a good first paragraph? It's going to be different for every book, but there has to be something, the so-called 'hook', that makes a reader want to keep on reading. Something different, something unusual, something intriguing, something that gets the reader's attention.

"The trial was irretrievably over; everything that could be said had been said, but he had never doubted that he would lose. The written verdict was handed down at 10.00 on Friday morning, and all that remained was a summing-up from the reporters waiting in the corridor outside the district court."

- The opening paragraph from The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Stieg Larsson

1) What's the trial about?

2) The use of the word 'irretrievably' intrigues me in a way that, for example, 'completely' wouldn't have.

3) I expected it to say he never doubted that he would win.

4) Why did he never doubt that he would lose? What's going on here?

I want to read on to find out - as have millions of readers around the world. This is also a great opening paragraph because not only does it make us want to read on in the first sentence through setting up questions and confounding our expectations, but it tells us exactly where and when we are in the second. Go and check out some of the novels on your bookshelf (especially first novels in the same area you hope to write in) and examine what works in the first paragraph. Then see if you can apply the same principles to your own writing.