The Novel Opening

The opening of your novel is an opportunity to seize the interest of the agent, the editor, and/or the reader. Opportunities are to be taken, and this is a particularly meaty one. Here is where you set the hook, often within the first paragraph.

What do you want from the persons reading your initial words? You want them to be curious about “what comes next?” And that’s what you want throughout the novel but the initial words or pages is perhaps the only chance you have to elicit that response. Because if you don’t set the hook, the agent, editor, or civilian reader will pass you by.

A new writer said to me she was going to write a novella instead of a short story so she’d have enough room to introduce the characters and develop the background. Imagine my horror. No, no—first off, few markets want novellas—but also the best advice for starting out is to begin in media res—in the midst of the action. The novel I’m working on now, for instance, begins with a slap, but not just any slap, not a slap between intimates, that is, but the slap of a psychotherapist, diligently applied to the face of a client. An attention-getting act—which is what the therapist intends, and he has a legally signed contract with the client that he might do just that.

As for introducing a slew of characters here, please don’t. Writers who do that are asking for trouble and putting a heavy burden on potential readers. Yes, I had one student embarking on just such an opening, too, recently. He needed all the characters, he said. Aggg. Introduce two or possibly three characters in these first pages if you must, but then after a while add one at a time, coloring each in by notable means, which is to say, make every newcomer stand out.

A crowded party scene is fine—but only if we aren’t supposed to remember those attending. Give us the setting with the people clamoring, but don’t expect readers to recall their names or agendas. You might know each character that you’ve been living with for months, but readers are quickly overwhelmed by the faces, the bodies, their relationships, their intentions.

On the other hand, in writing the opening, we have to set the tone, the idea of the story: Is it a romance or a science fiction oeuvre, or what? Perhaps who the protagonist is belongs here, and what the point of the plot is. Certainly if this is a mystery or a thriller you want the first (or only) dead body to drop quickly—maybe followed later on with other probable victims of the evil known-or-unknown antagonist.

Sure, you want a setting, something with some surprise/originality, and make it a setting your protagonist doesn’t just immediately leave. If he skips out at once, such will usually tell us that the novel has started a bit too early. You don’t want characters being or going someplace, only to turn around and leave—a popular misunderstanding by new writers. If you depict someone coming, firing the gun, and then skedaddling out of Dodge, better to have the killer simply shoot and then leave, but don’t show the bad guy actually arriving.

And if the opening has to be (you think) rather the usual type of thing, make sure the drama is craftily heightened beyond measure. John Grisham’s first big novel (second offering), The Firm, opens with the protagonist looking for a job. Yes, that’s it. But what an opening it is, and today Google tells us the man is worth $400 million… not a bad outcome.

We’re living in a time that gives us the performance of big nightly news and big personalities, and until we’ve exhausted our adrenal glands following everyday life, we demand a mega drama every time we lie on the couch to read a literary piece, a mystery, a romance, or a supernatural saga. Keep up the pace for your readers and produce something the agent or the editors can sell to readers. “Hi-ho, Silver, and away,” as the Lone Ranger used to yell at the end of each episode. If you can do that, readers will, indeed, be yearning for the next one.