Reporters have a concept called the five Ws (who, what, where, when, and why) that they're trained to include in every article. A good news lead incorporates as many as possible. For example: “Yesterday, President Bush broke his collarbone mountain-biking on his ranch in Crawford, Texas.”
The purpose is to let readers know what the story is about so they can decide whether to read further. (And in case you're wondering, Bush mountain-bikes but, as far as I know, has never broken a collarbone.) In fiction, the opening serves a similar purpose: if you're writing experimental mainstream, you really don't want an intro designed to hook fans of action/adventure. That gives us:
Rule 1 of fiction intros: make sure the intro matches the tone of the rest of the story. In other words, if you aspire to crisp conciseness, don't begin with a baroque flourish. Consider the start to Ed McBain's 1955 short, “First Offense":
He sat in the police van with the collar of his leather jacket turned up, the bright silver studs sharp against the otherwise unrelieved black. He was seventeen years old, and he wore his hair in a high black crown. He carried his head high and erect because he knew he had a good profile, and he carried his mouth like a switch knife, ready to spring open at the slightest provocation. His hands were thrust deep into his jacket pockets, and his gray eyes reflected the walls of the van. There was excitement in his eyes, too, an almost holiday excitement. He tried to tell himself he was in trouble, but he couldn't quite believe it.
McBain is advertising a character study of a punk with an attitude, done in stripped-down, detective-novel style. I wanted to know why this kid thinks being arrested is so exciting: enough that I immediately bought the collection, Learning to Kill, in which this was the lead-off tale.
Rule 2: Know when to show and when to tell. If there's one rule that budding science fiction writers have drilled into them, it's show, don't tell. But that's not as hard-and-fast as it sounds. Look again at McBain's intro. Everything comes directly from the author, but note how beautifully he sketches his character. The line about the mouth like a switch knife (a switchblade) is “telling,” but it gives more in one perfect simile than a thousand words of showing.
Classic literature often did the same. “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,” begins A Tale of Two Cities, and what literature student can forget it?
Admittedly, it's easier to get away with this in real-world settings. If a story opens by informing you that every Friday evening, Joe Jetset hops in his Ferrari and lane-weaves down the freeway, sowing road rage behind him like psychic exhaust, it may be overwritten, but at least you know what it's about. In science fiction, the reader would have to be brought up to steam on the futuristic counterparts to Fridays, Ferraris, freeways, lane-weaving, road rage, and exhaust. That's a lot of telling, which is why “telling” intros are often unsuccessful.
But even in science fiction, showing isn't always better. Few readers think Heinlein blew it when he started Stranger in a Strange Land with the line, “Once upon a time there was a Martian named Valentine Michael Smith.”
Rule 3: When it comes to opening sentences, longer isn't better. One of the most famous opening lines of all time is Moby Dick's: “Call me Ishmael.” Three words, that's it. But everything is right: the name recalls a Biblical character who in Christian and Jewish tradition played second fiddle to his half-brother Isaac,[1] and the “call me” bit lets you know that “Ishmael” is deliberately alluding to the Biblical story (although today's readers won't pick that up as readily as those of Melville's time).
[1: In Islamic tradition, Ishmael plays a more central role, but Melville's audience wasn't Islamic.]
Novice writers generally cram introductory sentences with too much information. This is based on the (probably correct) presumption that most readers won't quit in mid-sentence, and the (incorrect) presumption that if you throw out enough hooks, one will catch. Here's an egregious, made-up example:
"Yipes, spiders!” Joe yelled, as he yanked his hand back from the woodpile, remembering every horror story he'd ever heard about the creatures that lived there, trying to recall whether they were called hobo spiders or violin spiders or something else and whether their bite really could cause you to lose a hand to gangrene.
Here it is, written as six sentences, rather than one:
"Yipes, spiders!” Joe yanked his hand back from the woodpile, remembering every horror story he'd ever heard about the creatures that lurked there. What were they called? Hobo spiders? Violin spiders? Could you really lose a hand to gangrene if one bit you?
Still not deathless, but at least you can read it without drowning in subordinate clauses. If you're looking for a corollary to the general rule, it's that after the first few words, “as,” “-ing,” and prepositional phrases aren't your friends.
Rule 4: Hint at good things to come. McBain did this in his intro. Why does his punk protagonist think being arrested is such a holiday? What's his crime?
McBain takes more than a hundred words to start dropping hints that all is not normal, but in science fiction, it's often possible to do so from the opening line. Here are intros from three of my own stories:
On the second-luckiest day of his life, Bill Johnston was on his balcony, tending his vegetable garden.[2]
Albert Barnett was on his thirty-eighth blind date of the week and finally feeling comfortable with the process.[3]
It all began the morning the spammers hit my Hal 9000 alarm clock.[4]
In each, the hook is that something unusual has happened. Why is this Bill's second-luckiest day? What happened on the first? How can Albert schedule that many blind dates in a week? How can an alarm clock get spammed? (And why does anyone own something as cheesy-sounding as a Hal 9000 clock?)
Rule 5: The introduction must advance the story. Remember the five Ws? In fiction, you usually have only three elements to work with: character, setting, and conflict. The Hal 9000 intro hinted at a conflict with spammers. This intro does more than hint:
I'd always wondered what it would be like to be dead. Not that I've been in a big hurry to find out. And certainly not three times in one day.[5]
So does this, for a horror story I sold to a webzine:
Death was piloting a shiny, black Ford Expedition, although Duncan Jones thought he was the one in command.[6]
You can also start with character, setting, or a mix of the two. And since, in science fiction, you're working in the realm of all that is possible, the setting can include time, as well as place. This one, which I wrote during the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, did that very explicitly:
Michael Hood's quest for the 2068 Olympics began when he was six weeks old. Of course, it wasn't 2068 at the time. It was 2041, and Michael's parents were getting a routine assessment of his GeneChievement profile.[7]
[2: “Tomorrow's Strawberries,” May 2005.]
[3: “Brownian Motion,” July/August 2003.]
[4: “Tiny Berries,” September 2003.]
[5: “The Sands of Titan,” June 2007.]
[6: “The Road to Heather Cove,” Abyss & Apex, 2nd quarter 2007.]
[7: “Olympic Talent,” Nature, 5 July 2007.]
Rule 6: Be leery of opening a story with a quote. The problem is that the reader knows nothing about the speaker or the setting, so the quote just hangs in a vacuum. For example:
"Have a nice day,” Bernie said, as he gave the customer her change.
This may not be a no-hoper, but you'd better salvage it quickly, somehow telling me why I should care about this routine-sounding exchange. This might work:
"Have a nice day,” Bernie said, as he gave the customer her change.
The Betelgeusian lobsterette clicked her claws in reply, then deftly snipped the head off a hamster and popped it in her mouth.
Bernie missed the good old days when a pet store sold animals that would be loved for something other than their flavor. “Damn it!” he exploded. “How many times have I got to tell you to do that outside? Can't you read the sign? No blood o
n the counter."
Now, the routine-sounding first line serves as counterpoint to what follows, giving it a reason to be there.
Usually, though, you're better off with a bit of rearrangement to get the quote out of the first line. Consider this one:
"I'm sorry, Mr. Dappelmeyer, but I can't sell you a ticket for that train,” the clerk said.
Now, let's give it a bit more context:
Herbert Dappelmeyer was the first victim.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Dappelmeyer, but I can't sell you a ticket for that train,” the clerk said. Her demeanor was normal but her knees were trembling so much it took two tries to find the toe switch for the silent alarm. Her name was Ginny and in six months on the job, she'd never before been afraid of a customer. But then Herbert was her first Red.[8]
[8: “Weapon of Mass Distraction,” Jan/Feb 2004.]
If I haven't gotten you with that, you're not in my target audience (see rule 1), and it doesn't matter.
Here's another example of what happens when you save the quote for a later sentence:
The dragon at the door had the voice of a sorority girl. Maybe, beneath the latex mask, that's exactly what she was. “ID please,” she chirped, revealing disturbingly realistic fangs. What little of her face wasn't concealed by the mask was dusted with glitter that winked in the moonlight.[9]
[9: “Zero Tolerance,” October 2005.]
I probably could have sold this story if I'd started it with the quote, but it's a lot better this way.
That said, you may be able to get away with a really short quote, especially if it triggers a universal emotion. That's why "Yipes, spiders!" could work. But, "Hello,” George said into the phone. “Hello? Hello?" doesn't have much chance, even if it turns out that the bad connection is because the call's coming from Alpha Centauri.
Rule 7: Beware of single-word introductory sentences. These are seductive because you can make them sound very dramatic, read aloud. But on paper, they're usually the essence of dull. For example:
Geology. To most people it's just rocks, but Amy knew that actually it was everything that goes into rocks, from magma to erosion, from the Earth's core to its crust. Rain and sun and the slow dance of plate tectonics.
Now, let's drop the first “sentence":
To most people, geology is just rocks. But Amy knew it was far more than that: it was everything that went into them, from the Earth's core to sun, rain, and the slow dance of plate tectonics.
The original focused on rocks. This one focuses on Amy. Which would you rather read about?
That said, single-word introductions may not fail if they convey emotion, character, setting, or conflict. But it had better be a universally understandable emotion. To wit: Ants. Stewart hated ants. That (shall we say) has legs. A few too many for Stewart, but that's his problem.
Rule 8: The hook needn't be in the first sentence. There's a tendency to think there are ideal opening lines, just waiting to be discovered. This isn't my experience. You can and should sweat bullets over the flow and meter of your opening, trying to get it to lead into the story, rather than blocking people out of it. But sometimes, the opening line is simply a door.
Look again at McBain's intro. The killer line is the one about the “mouth like a switch knife.” He could have led with it, but he saved it, until he'd established enough of the setting that you're ready for it.
Rule 9: Sometimes you write the story to fit the opening. This is an instance in which the really cool opening line is indeed the hook, but the first person hooked is yourself.
This line came to me after I'd heard a lecture on energy reserves:
The last gallon of gasoline was consumed on May 22 of a year best left to the imagination.
I had no idea where it was going, and it took months to figure it out. It became “Dinosaur Blood” (Jan/Feb 2006).
Similarly, my story “A Deadly Intent,” began with a challenge from my coauthor Mark Niemann-Ross to write a story beginning with the line, “Courtney Brandt's skin was warm to the touch but the position of her body indicated a core temperature of 0 degrees C.” Ultimately, we used a slightly different opening, but the story grew out of that line.
Rule 10: The best introductions gain meaning after the reader has finished the story. Jane Eyre begins simply: “There was no possibility of taking a walk that day.” The reason, the story continues, is because it's raining. It seems incredibly ordinary, but to Jane Eyre fans, it's a perfect reflection of the Jane they will come to know: restless, hemmed in, frequently blocked by external circumstances from doing what she wants.
The same applies to “Call me Ishmael.” Nobody would remember the opening if it weren't for the whale and Captain Ahab.
Rule 11: If the rest of the story is good enough, you can break any of the rules. Sometimes that means you couldn't find the perfect opening and have to settle for something merely serviceable. But on rare occasions, rule breaking is the best way of producing something special. There's no easy way to teach that. And it's only by knowing and understanding the rules that you know how to transcend them.
Copyright (c) 2008 Richard A. Lovett
[Back to Table of Contents]
* * *
Reader's Department: THE ALTERNATE VIEW: ALL ABOUT TELEPORTATION
by John G. Cramer
At the invitation of publicists for 20th Century Fox, I recently spoke to a movie audience about teleportation as it appears in fiction and in real physics. The occasion was a preview of the new science fiction film Jumper, which was being shown several days before the official opening to a group of Microsoft employees in Seattle. Jumper is based on the young adult novels of Steven Gould. Although the film was largely ignored by movie critics, on the following Friday it opened to become the most attended film of the week, chalking up a $32 million gross.
The premise of the film is that some individuals are born with a rare innate talent, the mental ability to create a wormhole and use it to transport themselves (and other people and objects) to elsewhere on the planet—for example, to the flat spot atop the head of the Sphinx in Egypt for a picnic or to the interior of a bank vault to make a quick withdrawal. In the film, the creation of the wormhole is fast and almost seamless, but it leaves behind a “jump scar” that can be reopened by others, if they act quickly, making for tricky interactions between the teleporting “jumpers” and their ancient “paladin” adversaries.
I had the task of connecting this fanciful SF premise to the literature that preceded it and to the real physics that is relevant to teleportation. In this column, I want to explore these connections.
* * * *
The Literature of Teleportation
Teleportation is nothing new in the literature of religion. The New Testament tells us in John 6:16-21 that shortly after Jesus walked on the waters of the Sea of Galilee to join his disciples in a boat on storm-tossed waters, he teleported the lot of them, boat and all, to the safe harbor of Capernaum, at the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. Later, in Acts 8:38-40 we are told thatPhilip the Evangelist, just after converting an Ethiopian eunuch to Christianity, was teleported from his location on the Gaza-to-Jerusalem road to the town on Azotus, about 15 miles away. Not to be outdone, the Quran describesthe phenomenon of Tay al-Ard (folding the Earth), in which you raise your feet and wait while the Earth turns under you until you reach your desired destination.
My own first exposure to the teleportation concept was as a teenager reading the Golden Age science fiction of A. E. Van Vogt in the Null-A series, published in the Astounding Science Fiction magazine of John W. Campbell Jr. Van Vogt described how his protagonist Gilbert Gosseyn used his “double brain” for teleportation, employing a process called “similarization.” Gosseyn's special nervous system was able to memorize the structure of a patch of ground or floor to “twenty-decimal similarity” (whatever that means). After that, as long as the memory of that location remained sharp in his auxiliary memory, Gosseyn could teleport himself to that memorized spo
t whenever he wanted. That made Van Vogt's convoluted plot lines move along very nicely.
In Arthur Bester's classic The Stars My Destination, adepts routinely teleport over distances up to 1,000 miles by a process called “jaunting.” The culture would like to jaunte over interplanetary distances if they could just learn how. The post-humans in Dan Simmons recent novels Illium and Olympos routinely use personal quantum teleportation. In Iain M. Banks’ Culture series, wormhole-based teleportation is widely used. Michael Crichton's 1999 novel and subsequent film Timeline describe an experiment in large-scale quantum teleportation that unexpectedly developed into a time machine connecting to the medieval France of 1357. On the recent fantasy side, Harry Potter and his magical friends have several ways of implementing teleportation: using apparition, floo powder, and port-keys to bypass the bother of normal travel.
* * * *
Teleportation and Extra-Dimensional Physics.
The notion of other dimensions has been a recurrent theme in science fiction, from Wells and Lovecraft to Robert Heinlein's The Number of the Beast (in which two extra time dimensions, tau and teh, give access to alternate universes), and James P. Hogan's The Genesis Machine, in which two extra spatial dimensions (hi-space) are exploited for instant communications, gravity control, etc.
In 1919 the German physicist and mathematician Theodor Kaluza noticed that when he solved Einstein's equations for general relativity using five dimensions instead of four, Maxwell's electromagnetic equations popped right out. The extra dimension added the electromagnetic force to the standard theory of gravity. The question was, how could there be such an extra dimension that had escaped our notice? In 1926, Oskar Klein pointed out that if this dimension was “rolled up,” i.e. connected back on itself on a very small distance scale, it would be invisible, yet could provide electromagnetism. This Klein-Kaluza notion of hidden, rolled-up extra dimensions has more recently been used by string theorists to describe not only the electromagnetic force, but also the strong and weak forces, providing promise of a “theory of everything” that describes all particles, forces, and interactions in the same framework.
Analog SFF, July-August 2008 Page 23