Don’t spend too much worrying about getting your opening scene perfect during first draft. You may find, when you get to the end, that the story needs to open in a completely different spot or this particular scene never takes place at all, so don’t get too attached to it until the whole story is written.
At that point, you’ll take a good hard look at your opening scene, especially the first few paragraphs, and ask yourself if it is pulling its weight. Will it hook the reader? Which leads to the question: what must it accomplish?
The job of the paragraphs on the book’s first page is to grab the reader’s attention and force her to turn the page to read the rest of the scene. That means you have no time to waste to rivet her attention and draw her in. Those first paragraphs are only 200-300 words, and they carry a lot of pressure with them.
Here are the guidelines I recommend.
Take time to craft a killer opening line. If you can’t find a killer one, make sure it is solid and interesting. Choose to start with an action, some dialogue, or a single line of internal thought. In every case, it must be compelling.
Choose the point-of-view character carefully and use his or her name first in the story. Who is the right person to be introduced first? Hero or heroine? Good guy or bad guy? Your first-introduced character is normally assumed to be the person the story is about, the character the reader should root for. The only absolute rule for writing fiction is: Don’t confuse the reader.
Put two characters on stage, not one. Why? Because one person alone will almost always want to go introspective on you. They’ll want to share their emotions and, if you can’t get them stopped, their entire family history. But by then, the reader will have closed the book and set it back on the shelf.
Put two characters on stage, not three or more. Why? It’s hard for the reader to keep them straight until they get to know them as individuals. Choose to introduce even a large cast one at a time over a number of pages—or even chapters. If you go to a party and someone introduces you to half a dozen people, you’ll have trouble remembering who’s who. Same with your reader, who doesn’t have the visual clues you do in real life. You can bring in a third character a page or two in.
Give those two characters something to argue about. Give them dialogue that is more attention-getting than what’s for dinner.
Give the characters a compelling problem, whether it’s between the two of them or whether there’s an outside force like a blizzard or a meteor. Don’t let them sit around with a cup of tea and visit. Give them something that requires their full attention at this moment.
Give the absolute bare minimum of thoughts and setting to explain the most pressing issue, and no more. Leave plenty of questions. Questions pull the reader along. Let the full situation and how they got there slowly unfold over the course of several chapters.
Keep the paragraphs short. Save the longer blocks for a few pages in when you’ve earned the right to start filling in how the characters came to this spot. Here, on the first page, you want lots of white space. White space is easier on the eyes and gives the feeling of more movement in the plot.
Tweetables
- How can you hook your reader and make them turn that first page – and then the next one? click to tweet
- Grab your reader’s attention on the first page. Here’s how from @towritestory click to tweet
Command of language
Now look at the actual words. Are they strong and specific, or are they bland and generic? Adjective/noun pairings can sometimes be thinned to a more precise noun. Adverb/verb combos can usually be replaced by a single strong verb. Go for specificity.
Use alliteration and repetition purposefully, not accidentally. Same with sentence fragments. Also, you’ll want to tear out empty words here. Get rid of weasel words.
Now that you have the first 300 words or so pared and tightened, do the same with the remainder of the first scene. Keep your characters to a minimum, give them compelling dialogue, action, and conflict, and make every word the strongest you can.
Let those pages turn!
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This is a common problem for me. It’s been the case for each novel I’ve written, in fact. One thing that really helped me improve in this area was I entered a writing prompt contest. Winner got free registration to a writers’ conference, and man, I wanted that. :) So I wrote my opening scene knowing judges would give a great deal of weight to paragraph one.
Once I wrote it, I read it to my husband. I asked him if he thought i had a shot at winning. He said no. So I tried again, read it to him, asked my same question. He said no. Yep, another try. ;) Eventually, he said, “I think that one has a shot.” I placed second, not high enough to win conference fees, but wow, what a learning experience that was!
Good for your hubby being so honest with you…and good for you for accepting his assessment. It is hard to learn to chop the extraneous out of the beginning. Well, out of the entire story, but especially the first few pages!
:) Cherish that man. Although I have to admit, at first, I wasn’t so receptive. I’d ask his opinion, he’d give it to me, I’d get mad. Until one day I realized, “Hey, he loves you. A lot. He’s got your best in mind.” :)
For sure! As with any crit partner, too. Once we remember they have our best interests in mind, it is easier to take advice.
Valerie, Thanks for the excellent tutorial. I’m currently putting the finishing, finishing touches on my novel. The opening has changed countless times since the rough draft. The scene has remained basically the same, but I keep tightening it up and ratcheting up tension. I like verbs that rough somebody up a little. And, you’re right, varied sentence structure that propels and shows the kind of writing to expect.
However, I disagree that it takes two people on the page to make tension. I’m a psychotherapist, so I tend to write what’s in a character’s head as well as the relationships they experience. Yes, the lone character is in tension with something else: the situation, the past, people, all of the above. I like to keep the opening less cluttered, (so far in my writing). Pull the reader into caring about the protagonist, let them know the dilemma, the need, and then bring in other players. As a reader, I don’t like being manipulated by gratuitous action, especially in the opening.
I worked and worked the opening of my novel. Finally, “The Dovekeepers” by Alice Hoffman gave me inspiration. She started with a “verse” that beautifully set the tone and the dilemma, so I made one up for my opening. Voila! When I read it to a reader friend, she said, with goosebumps, “There! That makes it all make sense.”
Ain’t this writing thing fun! I so enjoy how everyone writes so differently, from their own gifts.
Cris
Hi Cris! Thanks for sharing your journey. These are the guidelines I follow and recommend. They are definitely not rules everyone should follow every time! I’ve found that when I pick the two people who will interact in the first few paragraphs before pulling someone else into the mix, it helps ME to focus my opening scene. If I start with only one character, she BADLY wants to turn introspective on me!
Thankfully, we don’t all write exactly the same way.
Valerie,You’re right. I’m sure I get too introspective—too much head stuff for the protag, not enough action. I should probably push myself on the next WIP and try it with two characters to start. Thanks for the reminder.
This is a fantastic checklist, and it takes the pressure off getting the opening down before getting the story down! That alone could discourage someone from writing. Thanks, Valerie!
Thank you for commenting, Sara, and sharing my post. I can’t count how many times I’ve thrown out my opening scene completely and written the “meeting” a different way entirely. I definitely recommend not getting too attached until the full first draft is done!
Great advice, Valerie! I’ve been tweaking with the opening to this MS for too long! Appreciate new ways to look at it.
Thanks, Connie! I’m glad it helped, but remember (as Cris and I discussed) to tweak my guidelines to work for you!
Great post! I have rewritten my first lines of my WIPs way too often. Guess I need to move on and finish the story, then go back to the beginning and employ those other suggestions you made!
Good plan, Patti! It’s hard to nail down the starting point until you know for sure where you’re going and how you’ll get there. (That may be the half-pantser in me speaking…)