True beginnings

This is the fourth and final installment in a series on beginnings. It’s best to read these in order, starting with the first post. Today’s is all about non-fiction.

In general, the guidelines of fiction apply to non-fiction as well. Aim for context and curiosity. Write with clarity and sharp specifics. Take care with grammar, diction, and syntax. Don’t bore or confuse the reader. Ofcourse, it’s much, much easier to write plodding non-fiction so you have to work harder to find a compelling opening.

Begin with an anecdote, rather than a list of factual statements. Ideally something with high stakes drama as in Patricia B. McConnell’s The Other End of the Leash (more on that below) or biting humour as in Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution, which is a popular science book based on her dissertation.

An anecdotal opening, especially one that paints a clear scene, is especially important in non-fiction that is heavily informational and research-based. But sometimes memoirists need this reminder too. Show the reader that you can tell an engaging story and they will remain invested during the long passages of exposition.

A singular voice comes in handy. Non-fiction is so heavy on the telling that what a storyteller sounds like can make a big difference. See for example, Michael Harris’ dry wit in the opening paragraphs of Rare Ambition: The Crosbies of Newfoundland.

Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, an insightful and meticulously researched tome about racism and caste hierarchy in America, begins with an old pathogen and a medical mystery in Siberia. Beginning with the unexpected is a brilliant move. While the reader is fully invested in the mysterious illness, they are also wondering what it has to do with racism. Curiouser and curiouser….

Another device, often used in non-fiction, is subversion. See, for example, Clarisse Loughrey’s very funny review of Bullet Train which likens the movie to a try-hard child cartwheeling into a wall.

When authors begin strong, with a story, scene, or anecdote, it’s instructive to look at the passage that follows. The Other End of the Leash, a book about dog psychology, opens with a true story. Driving home one night, the author sees two dogs blithely trotting down the highway, oblivious to traffic. Human peril is elementary. If you really want to make a reader anxious, put an animal in harm’s way. Having set the stakes, described the scene, and introduced the canine characters, McConnell describes pulling over and, with infinite care and excruciating patience, using body language to coax the dogs to safety. WHEW.

The passage that follows gets into the nitty gritty of dog cognition and the twinned history of canines and humans etc. etc. It’s fascinating but more so in the context of the scene we’ve just witnessed. In effect, McConnell has shown and then told. Through the book, she employs this strategy of using specific anecdotes and examples to illustrate the facts she describes.

Compare the opening sentences of the first and second passage:

“It was twilight so it was hard to tell exactly what the two dark lumps on the road were.”

vs.

“All dogs are brilliant at perceiving the slightest movement that we make and they assume that each tiny motion has meaning.”

Notice in the twilight opening how she provides some context (time: twilight and place: road) and leaves you with a question (what are those lumps?). And at the end of the brilliant opening scene — after we watch her save the dogs — the reader is left wondering how the hell she did that and how they can learn those skills too. That’s the curiosity that animates the entire book.

So here’s the last lesson about openings (in fiction and non-fiction): It’s not enough to have a catchy one. You must maintain that strength of prose and clarity and court the reader’s inquiry right to the end. But first, start as you mean to go on.

How to lose a reader

This is the third in a series on Openers. In the first post, I harped on about the importance of clarity. The opposite is confusion. If you confuse your reader at the jump, they are likely to close the book, turn off the e-reader, or reject the manuscript. So let’s look at what not to do.

But first, a caveat….

Rule Free Zone

There are no rules for good writing. Here are some old saws you’ve probably heard:

we must kill our darlings
show, don’t tell
don’t begin a story with a nightmare

These are useful guidelines but they will only serve you 75-95% of the time. Here are three more.

How to lose a reader in three moves or less

Open with dialogue

Beginning with dialogue is one of the most difficult ways to open a narrative. Remember: the reader arrives with a blank slate and if all they get is disembodied voices without context, they are liable to get confused and bored.

This is controversial, and I love much of Iris Murdoch’s work, but A Fairly Honourable Defeat has an irritating opening. Some voices (impossible to know who or how many) carry on a vague conversation about some other characters. Confusing. Boring. Next.

So that’s the guideline. But it’s not a rule. If you open with dialogue, make it compelling. Ideally, the speech hooks the reader (perhaps with a provocative question, a la EB White’s Charlotte’s Web) and then the author swiftly provides crucial context that roots the reader firmly in the scene.

Open with too many characters

Imagine going to a new partner’s family reunion and being quickly introduced to a room full of strangers, who all look alike, and then being expected to keep track of their names, peculiarities, convoluted relationships, jealousies, and alliances. Hideous. Don’t put your reader in that nightmare.

If you open with a cast party, be intentional about who you introduce and when. Leave the reader enough sharp specifics to fix one character firmly in mind before introducing the next. A good example comes from the opening pages of Curtis Sittenfeld’s Prep, which takes place at a boarding school that’s busy with students and teachers.

Open with abstractions

This might be a mistake more common to non-fiction. Any passage that is heavy on vague generalities and light on specifics is likely to be poor. But in an opening, it’s almost certainly a bore.

On the other hand, there is Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities which begins with a page of contradictory general statements. It works because it’s funny as hell. The prose and voice alone are compelling. And eventually, he does get around to the point!

The last post in the series comes out on Wednesday and it is devoted to non-fiction.

And then they woke up…

This is the second in a series on opening lines. If you haven’t read it, here’s the first post.

One of the most common things I tell my clients and authors I mentor is this: your opening is a red herring. This guideline applies to fiction and non-fiction equally.

Prologues

It’s very likely your prologue, beautifully written though it might be, is unnecessary. Worse: it’s probably spoiling the story by telegraphing the climax or some other key drama that should be revealed gradually. Or it’s giving away the ending.

If the story is about a young protagonist on a perilous adventure but the prologue reveals him in his 80s, you’re spoiling the plot. Ditto a will they/ won’t they that begins with the couple’s wedding. Any time your story begins in the future of the main narrative’s present, take care.

Which is not to say it can’t or shouldn’t be done. Marquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude begins with the iconic line: “Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, Colonel Aureliano Buendía was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice.” Notice we are starting at a moment of extreme peril and then rewinding to (presumably learn) how this guy got here. The stakes in the future remain (along with the question: will he make it?) even as we return to the past.

Similarly, there are many prologues that serve a strong narrative purpose, offering crucial context about character or beginning on a crisis that grabs the reader’s attention.

Preludes and Prefaces

Are you writing a non-fiction book with a preface or prelude? Interrogate it. Sometimes this is the correct place to begin. More often, in a draft, it’s a list of musings that you as the author need to ponder. I call these “notes to self” and they can be incredibly illuminating, giving you information about the themes or ideas you want to explore in the work.

Sometimes it’s a summary of the journey you as the writer want to take the reader on. Rather than telling them in an information dump, gradually reveal the journey through the book. Nothing you write is a waste of time. Most of the work of drafting is getting things on paper and panning for gold. Sometimes those nuggets are things you keep and expand on in the narrative. Other times, it’s a document you keep close by as a checklist or outline, while you write.

Be wary of opening on too many questions. Remember: context and curiosity. The author provides the context that makes the reader ask questions. Often the questions in your draft preface are the ones you need to answer through research and narrative exploration.

Alarm Clock

It’s natural that so many of us default to a dream/ nightmare/ alarm clock wake up sequence when starting our stories. Afterall, that’s how our days begin. (Remember that old Degrassi theme song?)

Sometimes this morning routine is a narrative limbering up and the true beginning is further down the page. Ask yourself where a reader’s curiosity might be piqued. Or perhaps you can search for the moment where the character’s day becomes one like no other. In other words: the inciting incident, the thing that sets the hero on their journey. Once you find this, you can kill that darling wake up scene. Simple, right? (There comes a point in revisions when — hand-on-heart — deleting is joyful because it’s the only thing that is easy.)

But it might be that key things happen in the character’s morning or those early moments reveal information that provides necessary context for the reader. Perhaps they set stakes or are necessary for the inciting incident. This is when a flashback can come in handy.

Have a look at Janika Oza’s A History of Burning. It begins with a hook and then rewinds back to reveal the first minutes of the day, setting up the stakes for the protagonist, revealing crucial background about his family and home, and then moving to the inciting incident. The trick here is that her flashback is swift (without feeling rushed). In fact, the whole passage is a masterclass in openings. It’s well worth a dissection.

On the other hand, there are some stories that must begin with a dream or nightmare or the character waking up. Cliches have been unfairly maligned. They are a useful tool that, when used judiciously, can be powerful. Like direct dialogue and repetition though, they have been wielded too often without care and intention.

Months before I signed with an agent and sold the manuscript and began working with my brilliant, thoughtful editors, there was an editor at a different publishing house who told me not to open The Boat People with a nightmare. He didn’t explain why, just said don’t do it. In hindsight, I don’t think he’d read much of the manuscript, just had a knee-jerk anti-cliche reaction.

There was no other place for that novel to begin. Mahindan is trapped in one nightmare until he gets caught in the living nightmare that comes next. And by some good fortune I was stubborn about this opening, even before I had the words to articulate why. (Also good fortune: my agent and actual editors never mentioned the opening, though they sure did make plenty of other suggestions!)

It’s important to stay in the driver’s seat when it comes to your stories. Let editors and early readers ride shotgun. Consider their suggestions. But if something feels right to you, stick with it, even if it is a cliche.

Monday’s post is all about what not to do in the opening. Don’t touch that dial.

To begin with…

A few weeks before The Boat People hit shelves, I served as a reader for the CBC’s annual short fiction contest. This meant I was reading hundreds of anonymous submissions while hunch-backed on the couch.

“Every other story begins with a character waking up from a dream,” I grumbled to my husband. To which, he replied: “Your book starts like that too.”

It was not an Oprah ah-hah moment so much as an oh shit, stop the presses moment. Once you know the cliche, you will notice it everywhere. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about openings and how to craft ones that hook and hold.

Context & Curiosity

The strongest openings give readers context that makes them curious. Context means: who (character), what (plot), when (time), where (setting), and why (stakes). As an author, you must decide what, and how much, detail to offer while leaving the reader with questions so they keep turning pages.

Curiosity can be stoked by the usual suspects: drama (meaning high stakes and struggle), tragedy, mystery, romance, lust, and love. It might also be conjured by some intriguing world-building, as in sci-fi, fantasy, and speculative fiction. Beautiful prose that conjures setting combined with a seductive narrative voice can also do the trick. See for example: the opening lines of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar; Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things; or just about anything by Michael Crummey.

The strange, the unusual or idiosyncratic also make good openers. George Saunders is particularly adept at this with his slightly off-kilter fictional worlds. But an idiosyncratic narrative voice can be so disruptive of the norm that it alone hooks. Thomas King’s One Good Story, That One is an excellent example as is Ian McCurdy’s short story Crossroads.

Types of Openers

Lights! Camera! Action!: this is an opening that combines an attention-grabbing first sentence that hooks the reader with a swift set up of character, setting, and stakes combined with an inciting incident that puts the plot in motion and sets the hero and the reader on their journey. The reader is immediately carried away, perhaps gulping the narrative in one sitting. Check out RF Kuang’s Yellowface as an example. Classic thrillers are very good at this too (see: The Retreat by Elisabeth de Mariaffi). So is the slower paced and lyrical, A History of Burning by Janika Oza.

Inciting Incident: A reliable place to begin is on the day when everything changes for the hero. Think about the inciting incident (ie. the thing that puts the plot in motion) and begin as close as possible to that point. Frodo Baggins is minding his own damn business in the Shire when his drunk uncle gives him the world’s most dangerous present. Cinderella is an indentured servant until an invitation arrives from the palace. Better still: Jessica Grant’s brilliant short story My Husband’s Jump.

Aphorism: This is a fun old-timey hook. Altogether now… “All happy families are alike, each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.” Note that in both cases, we have coherent sentences that spark curiosity. You might wonder, for example: how? and does he truly? And both Tolstoy and Austen jump right from abstract aphorism into specific domestic scenes. Anna Karenina begins with the revelation of an affair that throws a family into chaos. And in Pride & Prejudice, an eligible bachelor moves in next door to a family with five unmarried daughters. So we swiftly move from generic truism to specific drama (the day everything changed).

The subtle route: There’s a risk to a flashy beginning: hurtling headlong into cliche or artificiality. Many of the best openings are quieter, subtler, and more artful. In Téa Mutonji’s short story The Photographer’s Wife, two people meet. One is an ardent pursuer and the other is ambivalent but finally agrees to a date. The apparent power imbalance (ie. tension) and the narrator’s reluctance makes the reader wonder why and what will happen next? Just enough information to elicit questions.

In Michael Christie’s The Extra two people are so hard up financially, they rent a space without running water and must urinate into the same jugs they later use to collect drinking water. Christie’s prose is pristine, the details visceral and specific. Right away, we have a picture of characters on the edge (stakes). Naturally the reader wonders will they be okay? Or perhaps the reader stays for the quality of the writing. When done exceptionally well, prose alone can carry the narrative a long way. See: Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss.

A dream: I began this post with dreams. Yes, they are cliche. No, they are not verboten. There’s the cliff. Hang tight till Friday for Part II of this series when I tell you why.

How to revise your novel (part 3)

Originally posted: August 31, 2020

This is the third post in a series about novel revision. Part 1 considered characters and pace. Part two covered conflict, flashbacks, and thought vs. action. This post tackles beginnings, endings, and dialogue.

BEGINNING

If you are new to fiction, if this is your first novel, odds are good the true beginning of your story is lurking somewhere past the first few paragraphs/ scenes/ chapter. It’s very likely your prologue, beautifully written though it might be, is unnecessary. Especially if it spoilers the ending. Go find the real start of the story and then delete all the stuff that comes before.

Does your novel begin with a character waking up? (Mine does!) It might be fine but be warned that characters getting out of bed is a very, very common and cliched beginning. And now that I’ve told you this, you’ll start to notice it everywhere.

ENDING

I’ve blogged about endings before but it bears repeating: Do you need that epilogue? Really? Are you sure? Because 99.9% of the time, epilogues, like prologues, are unnecessary. In fact, the last sentence/ paragraph/ scene/ chapter of an early draft is usually redundant. Resist the urge to tie up all the loose ends. Trust the reader to get the story.

An earlier draft of Butter Tea at Starbucks had this final sentence: everything feels miraculous. Someone in my writing group suggested that last line was too on the nose so I removed it and sure enough, the ending was stronger.

DIALOGUE

A common issue in early drafts is an over-reliance on dialogue. It’s the rare, exceptional author who can successfully use direct dialogue to carry a story. Remember that there are many, many other ways to convey information to a reader including: action, narration, and scenery. And when you’re writing dialogue, don’t neglect summary and indirect dialogue.

Coming up next: show don’t tell.

Red herring

Originally posted: February 24, 2016

The novelist Anne Simpson once gave me some good editing advice. Often the beginning (the first sentence, paragraph, chapter) is not really the beginning.

When we sit down to tell a story, it takes a while to warm up, to ease in. So then, in the edits, we must wade through and find the true beginning, the place where the story really starts, and lop off the rest.

I remember having this experience with an early draft of A Drawer Full of Guggums. Originally the story had an extra 500 words at the top. My main character got on a plane, flew half way around the world. Jet-lagged, she listened to her uncle snore in the next room. Bumbling around London, she struggled to find housing. And that was all great fun to write. It was quality time she and I spent together. But all along, I knew the story was about the main character and her quirky landlady. Which meant everything before their first meeting - all those hundreds of words - had to go.

Preludes and prologues, sometimes they are a red herring. Be brave.

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