Chapter three: Harper tries to get information on the investigation into his ex-partner’s death, but his old captain isn’t giving any. Tension builds here.
Chapter four:We see Harper’s home life. Then he gets a message from an old FBI friend to come see him about the case.
Chapter five: Addleman, a profiler who is now a drunk and eccentric, says he has a theory. There is a serial bomber out there, targeting celebrities!
Chapter six: Now a scene with the bomber, the villain, getting stuff from a contact in a remote area. The contact is surly. When the deal is finally made, the contact takes the money. But it is laced with napalm, and a trick detonator. The guy burns up.
We are now on page 64, the plot is set up, and the cat and mouse begins.
SOME GREAT OPENINGS
Let’s have a look at some great openings from best-selling novels and see what the writers are doing. We’ll begin, once again, with the master, Dean Koontz, and Sole Survivor:
At two-thirty Saturday morning, in Los Angeles, Joe Carpenter woke, clutching a pillow to his chest, calling his lost wife’s name in the darkness. The anguished and haunted quality of his own voice had shaken him from sleep. Dreams fell from him not all at once but in trembling veils, as attic dust falls off rafters when a house rolls with an earthquake.
Again, notice that Koontz gives us a specific name and a haunting first line. But then he expands upon that line with two others that are almost poetic in their descriptive power and emotional impact. This is one of the greatest opening paragraphs in any thriller you’ll ever read.
From The Stand by Stephen King:
“Sally.”
A mutter.
“Wake up now, Sally.”
A louder mutter: lemme alone.
He shook her harder.
“Wake up. You got to wake up!”
Charlie.
Charlie’s voice. Calling her. For how long?
Sally swam up out of sleep.
King uses the dialogue starter, which always gives the impression of instant motion. Somebody is saying something, so we’ve got action (dialogue is a form of action, a physical act to gain a result or reaction). As the dialogue continues, we know only that Charlie is in some distress, and that Sally, swimming out of sleep, is about to find out what it is.
If you’re writing a comical novel, there is another possibility for a grabber opening: using the look and sound of the text itself to create an oddball impression. From Sacred Monster by Donald E. Westlake:
“This won’t take long, sir.”
Oooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooo oooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooohoooooooooooooooooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooohooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo oooo, wow.
I hurt all over. My bones ache. God’s giant fists are squeezing my internal organs, twisting and grinding. Why do I do it, if it makes me sick?
“Ready for a few questions, sir?”
Westlake makes sure we are sufficiently intrigued, too, by making us wonder just what it is the narrator does to make himself so sick.
Now let’s have a look at some great openings in literary novels. Can we get any more literary than Herman Melville’s Moby Dick?
Call me Ishmael. Some years ago — never mind how long precisely — having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen, and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off — then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can. This is my substitute for pistol and ball.
When writing in the first person, it is the voice that must reach out and grab. Melville’s does.
The famous first line, “Call me Ishmael,” had perhaps a deeper meaning to nineteenth-century American readers, steeped as they would have been in the Bible. Ishmael was the son of Abraham by Hagar, a servant. Thus, he was not the child of God’s covenant, as Isaac, son of Sarah, was. Ishmael was sent away by Sarah so he would not share in Isaac’s inheritance. He was an outcast. That is what Melville establishes immediately.
Then the narrator goes on, in this haunting passage, to say, basically, that he goes to sea to keep from killing himself. But Melville is poetic — damp, drizzly November in my soul.
There’s also a touch of humor to keep things from getting too maudlin — Ishmael says he sometimes wants to methodically knock people’s hats off.
He’s got an attitude. That’s one key for literary novelists. If you’re doing the book in first person, then give us a voice that intrigues us.
Earlier, I warned about not starting with descriptions of setting, weather, and the like. That is not an ironclad rule, but simply a helpful tip. Readers today are impatient, and want to know why they should keep reading.
So if you want to use description to start, make sure it does three things: (1) sets mood; (2) gets a character involved early; (3) gives us a reason to keep reading!
Here is how Janet Fitch’s White Oleander begins:
The Santa Anas blew hot from the desert, shriveling the last of the spring grass into whiskers of pale straw. Only the oleanders thrived, their delicate poisonous blooms, their dagger green leaves.
Already we have a mood. The weather does not just exist; it portends. The first sentence gives us desolation. The second gives us something that thrives, but it is dangerous. Read the rest of the book to find out how this applies!
Now Fitch gives us the narrator, getting the character involved early:
We could not sleep in the hot dry nights, my mother and I. I woke up at midnight to find her bed empty. I climbed to the roof and easily spotted her blond hair like a white flame in the light of the three-quarter moon.
“Oleander time,” she said. “Lovers who kill each other now will blame it on the wind.”
Now this is a character I want to know more about. Who says things like this? We read on to find out.
In The Big Rock Candy Mountain,Wallace Stegner gives us a character who is literally in motion:
The train was rocking through wide open country before Elsa was able to put off the misery of leaving and reach out for the freedom and release that were hers now.
Why wasn’t Elsa free before? What is she going to do with this new freedom? Where is she headed?
She tucked her handkerchief away, leaned her shoulder against the dirty pane and watched the telegraph wires dip, and dip, and dip from pole to pole, watched the trees and scattered farms, endless variations of white house, red barn, tufted cornfield, slide smoothly backward. Every mile meant that she was freer.
The car was hot; opened windows along the coach let in an acrid smell of smoke, and as the wind flawed, the trailing plume swept down past her eyes, fogging the trackside. Two men up ahead rose and took off their coats and came back toward the smoker. One of them wore flaming striped suspenders and stared at her.
A small detail — the man staring. It adds to the sense of vulnerability of this woman, and that, as we have seen, is a subtle form of jeopardy. Our sympathy is beginning to build.
W. Somerset Maugham begins Of Human Bondage with description, but then gets us immediately to that change-disturbance that is so crucial:
The day broke gray and dull. The clouds hung heavily, and there was a rawness in the air that suggested snow. A woman servant came into a room in which a child was sleeping and drew the curtains. She glanced mechanically at the house opposite, a stucco house with a portico, and went to the child’s bed.
“Wake up, Philip,” she said.
Why is Philip being awakened? The m
ood is somber (gray, dull, heavy clouds, raw weather).We want to find out what’s happening:
She pulled down the bed-clothes, took him in her arms, and carried him downstairs. He was only half awake.
“Your mother wants you,” she said.
She opened the door of a room on the floor below and took the child over to a bed in which a woman was lying. It was his mother. She stretched out her arms, and the child nestled by her side. He did not ask why he had been awakened. The woman kissed his eyes, and with thin, small hands felt the warm body through his white flannel nightgown. She pressed him closer to herself.
“Are you sleepy, darling?” she said.
Her voice was so weak that it seemed to come already from a great distance. The child did not answer, but smiled comfortably. He was very happy in the large, warm bed, with those soft arms about him. He tried to make himself smaller still as he cuddled up against his mother, and he kissed her sleepily. In a moment he closed his eyes and was fast asleep. The doctor came forwards and stood by the bed-side.
“Oh, don’t take him away yet,” she moaned.
The doctor, without answering, looked at her gravely. Knowing she would not be allowed to keep the child much longer, the woman kissed him again; and she passed her hand down his body till she came to his feet; she held the right foot in her hand and felt the five small toes; and then slowly passed her hand over the left one. She gave a sob.
A mother being separated from her child. Why? Emotional jeopardy is here in force.
So what have we seen?
Any type of novel can hook a reader, set tone, give a sense of motion, connect us with a character, and set the wheels in motion.
Why would you want your plot to begin any other way? The only alternative is that you start with none of this, hoping the reader will stick with you.
But even if you write with a style that makes angels weep, you’re not going to keep readers interested for too long on style alone.
Why not make angels and readers both happy?
Grab ’em from the start.
EXERCISE 1
Go over the opening chapter of your work in progress (or write one now). What techniques will you use to grab the reader from the very first paragraph? Are you establishing a feeling of motion? If not, rewrite it using the techniques you have learned in this chapter.
EXERCISE 2
What is your story world? How well do you know it? How are you giving the reader a sense of it in detail, without just dumping blocks of description?
EXERCISE 3
How are you introducing your Lead character? What is going to make your Lead memorable?
Brainstorm five possibilities for your Lead in each of the following categories:
Identification. How is the Lead “like us”?
Sympathy. Think about jeopardy (physical or emotional); hardship; underdog status; and vulnerability.
Likability. Witty? Cares about other people?
Inner conflict. What two “voices” are battling inside your Lead?
EXERCISE 4
What is disturbing your Lead’s ordinary world? What change is causing ripples or waves?
EXERCISE 5
Give your opposition character his due. Dean Koontz once wrote:
The best villains are those that evoke pity and sometimes even genuine sympathy as well as terror. Think of the pathetic aspect of the Frankenstein monster. Think of the poor werewolf, hating what he becomes in the light of the full moon, but incapable of resisting the lycanthropic tides in his own cells.
How can you justify, from the opposition’s standpoint, what he’s doing? What is there in his background that explains the way he is? What aspects of his character are charming, attractive, or seductive?
Chapter 5
Middles
There are no second acts in American life.
— F. Scott Fitzgerald
Maybe so, Scott. But as you well knew, there are in novels. And that’s the big, long middle part that you have to fill.
What you do in Act II, the middle, is write scenes — scenes that stretch the tension, raise the stakes, keep readers worried, and build toward Act III in a way that seems inevitable. Chapter seven on scene writing will cover this in greater detail. Here we want to take a look at the big picture.
And for that I’d like to start with death.
DEATH
I am convinced that the most compelling fiction has death hovering over the Lead throughout.
Death you say? As in somebody getting knocked off?
Not exactly. There’s that old song that says, “I die just a little when he plays piano in the dark.” In other words, there are deaths that are not physical. We can die on the inside.
Besides physical death, which is the staple of the action thriller, there is psychological and professional death.
Psychological Death
Why has The Catcher in the Rye had such staying power over the years? Part of the reason has to be that so many of us relate to the adolescent twilight between childhood and adulthood. And in that gray world, many go on a search for a reason to live.
If Holden doesn’t find it, he will die inside. And maybe that will lead to a physical death through suicide.
If someone has the object of his desire close at hand, and not having it will mean everlasting loss, we can understand that there will be some dying inside if the objective is not realized.
That is really what we mean by the objective being absolutely crucial to the happiness of the Lead (see O in the LOCK system in chapter one). Set this up right and you’ll create the intense experience readers crave from great fiction.
Professional Death
Our work world is essential to our lives and happiness. Most of us hope to find meaning in our work, and if there is a professional duty that is a major part of our existence, we are in good territory for fiction.
We can set up a situation where a loss in this duty can mean the end, or at least a massive dilution, of our professional life.
Think of the lawyer, down on his luck, who gets a case that could redeem him. Or the cop who has a chance to stop a killer.
What keeps the reader reading is worrying about what the Lead is going to lose.
THE OPPOSITION
How do you know what obstacles to throw? The first step is to conceive an opposition character. I use this term rather than “villain” because the opposition does not have to be evil. The opposition merely has to have a compelling reason to stop the Lead.
Three keys will help you come up with good opposition:
Make the opposition a person. (A master like Stephen King can make the opposition nonpersonal, as in Tom Gordon, where it’s Trisha against the woods. But don’t try this at home until you’ve had lots of practice.)
If it is a group, like the law firm in The Rainmaker, select one person in that group to take the lead role for the opposition.
Make the opposition stronger than the Lead. If the opposition can be easily matched, why should the reader worry?
Then ask yourself, “Why do I love my opposition character?” Climbing into the opposition’s skin will give you an empathetic view, and a better character as a result.
Adhesive
Your confrontation still needs one more crucial ingredient: adhesive. Because if your Lead can simply walk away from the opponent and still be able to realize her objective, the reader will be asking, “Well, why doesn’t she?”
An adhesive is any strong relationship or circumstance that holds people together.
If the Lead can solve his problem simply by resigning from the action, the reader will wonder why he doesn’t do so. Or if there is not a strong enough reason for the Lead to continue, the reader won’t be all that worried about him.
There needs to be a strong reason for the Lead to stick around, to keep the characters together throughout that long muddle.
If you have carefully selected an objective that is essential to the well-being of the Lead and a
n opposition with an equally valid reason to stop the Lead, your adhesive will usually be self-evident.
You must figure out a reason why the Lead and opposition can’t withdraw from the action.
Writing your novel will then be a matter of recording various scenes of confrontation, most ending with some sort of setback for your Lead, forcing her to analyze her situation anew and take some other action toward her objective.
Think of the long middle of your book as a series of increasingly intense battles. Sometimes your Lead will be out of action to regroup, but most of the time she’ll be fighting toward her ultimate goal.
Back and forth, parry and thrust.
That’s the heart of your novel.
Here are a few tips to make that adhesive strong:
Life and death. If the opposition has a strong enough reason to kill the Lead, that’s an automatic adhesive. Staying alive is essential to one’s well-being.
If there is a professional duty involved, that’s adhesive. The readers understand why a lawyer who takes a case cannot just walk away. Same for a cop assigned a case.
Moral duty is also a strong adhesive. If a mother’s child is kidnapped, for example, we understand why she doesn’t walk away from the action. She will do whatever it takes to get the child back.
Obsession is another strong adhesive. In Rose Madder, the psycho husband is simply not going to stop hunting down his wife. He’s obsessed with seeing her dead.
Sometimes the physical location can operate to keep the opponents bonded. The Shining, by Stephen King, is an example. A husband, wife, and child live and work at a mountain hotel that gets snowed in every winter. They physically can’t walk away. (Casablanca is another such story. No one can get out of Casablanca without permission or “Letters of Transit.”)
Write Great Fiction--Plot & Structure Page 9