The next two openings involve content without context, the content being either people talking or people doing things. Often the “shoot the sheriff on the first page” openings fall into this category. Bullets whizz by, people shout, there’s lots of frenzy but we can’t figure out what’s going on or why we should care. For all we know, the sheriff getting shot is a good thing. Because the writer has not presented what we need in order to care about—or even comprehend—this content, it is impoverished, if not devoid, of meaning.
For all their drawbacks, these two openings have a small advantage, which is that something is going on. The temptation then becomes thinking we can flesh out the setting (all too often with flashbacks that destroy whatever momentum we’ve flailed around establishing in the first place). Because these scenes have the semblance of substance, it then becomes harder to rip them out, although it is almost always just as necessary as it is to delete the white room or mirror scenes.
When I was a fairly new writer, I thought I had to open with frantic action in order to hook the reader. I turned in story after story that were classic examples of “Action With Insufficient Grounding.” Finally, one of my writing buddies, undoubtedly frustrated by my inability to understand what the problem was, asked me to describe an action-packed opening of a book I liked. I’d recently read Barbara Hambly’s Dragonsbane, so I mentioned that. At his suggestion, I then took a look at what was really in the book as opposed to what I remembered. Yep, there’s action (an ambush) but it doesn’t happen until about 10 pages into the story, at which point I knew and cared about the characters and their quest.
I mentioned above the temptation to try to solve the “with insufficient grounding” flaws by adding more contextual material. In my experience, that doesn’t work. What does work is admitting that this is the wrong Point of Entry, and trying coming into the story either before or after that scene. Before sounds logical. Write the set-up, then the action, right? But it isn’t always right. What we’re seeking is the sweet spot of instability that launches the forward momentum of the story. In that sense, the white room false-start gives us more freedom; we’re less apt to be welded to those particular words.
If any of those openings (except the last, the dead guy) get us putting words down, moving into the story, writing stuff we know doesn’t work but leads us to stuff that does, then I say, Go for it. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes in that first draft. Make it rough, flop around, throw up lots of chaff and dust. Turn it into a fermentation vat of ideas, images, characters, dialog, events and non-events. Then you can do the winnowing. You can rewrite the opening from the perspective of having seen the shape of the whole story. Looking back, you’ll be in a better position to see what that opening requires, what is best moved later in the story, and what is unnecessary, distracting, or counterproductive. In other words, give yourself the space and freedom to experiment.
The only draft that matters is the one on your editor’s desk.
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More on Story Beginnings
My usual strategy is to start writing somewhere because otherwise I’ll just dither and fuss and glare at that blank screen. I need to get some traction, some momentum. Half the time, I don’t know what I’m doing until I get the words down. I used to think there was something horribly wrong with me as a writer because this would happen even when I had a detailed outline. The outline would tell me where I was going to end up, but not where I was starting. As the years and stories rolled by, that didn’t change. What did change was my ability to cut and slash and clear away the deadwood and add the stuff I didn’t know I needed when I set out. In other words, the words of one of my workshop buddies, I learned to revise enthusiastically.
After some time, I got better at revising by using “diagnostics,” that is, tools and strategies to help me pinpoint the weaknesses and just plain errors of my story. I don’t do well with checklists, so they were “right out,” as the Brits say. However, I’m strongly visual, so flow charts and diagramming a Three-Act Structure, complete with Plot Points, turned out to be really useful.
The opening should be something that piques our interest, like a literary appetizer. Is this a salad of spring greens with tangy goat cheese and hazelnuts? A crab cake? Deep fried jalapenos? Creamy butternut soup with freshly-grated nutmeg? Roasted garlic and rounds of crusty bread? Bruschetta or buffalo wings?
Does it make you hungry for more? Are you eager to dive into the Entrée section of the menu? Then it’s done the job. On the other hand, if it sits in your stomach like a rock (indigestible exposition) or leaves you queasy (confused, disoriented by too many unexplained and frenzied events), you might want to re-think your presentation.
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Structure, Shape, and Interest
I’ve been beta-reading a manuscript by a local writer. It’s a middle-school novel aimed at boys. The prose is for the most part okay, and there’s some particularly strong dialog. Yet . . . and any of us who have critiqued manuscripts know that yet . . . the story wasn’t working for me. I could point to a number of superficial elements, but something deeper kept nagging at me. I adopted one of my standard techniques, which was to pay attention to when I got bored. Alas, the moments that engaged my interest were all too short. And yet, the story wasn’t inherently tedious. What was going on? Was it simply that I have never been a ten-year-old boy?
It wasn’t until I read Bill Bryson’s hilarious memoir, The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid, that I had an inkling of what was going on. Bryson’s book centers on growing up in Iowa in the 1950s; some of the material is Iowa-nostalgia, some is 50s-nostalgia, but what swamps them both is Boy Stuff. Boogers and worms and vacant-lot baseball and mail-order chemistry kits and B movie matinees and a thousand and one tricks played on friends, each more grossly disgusting than the one before. The things that grabbed me in the friend’s novel were exactly these (for instance, two brothers figuring out how to have water balloon fights through mini-time portals, although why they didn’t shove their baby sister through one just to see what would happen was never clear to me).
This is a long way of saying that a story should have congruence between its structure (three acts, plot, etc.), its shape (rising tension, climax, etc.) and a third element, interest (the cool stuff, the things that make the reader perk up). The scene in which the boys discover how to use the time portals to ambush each other lasted maybe half a manuscript page, yet that was where the money was for this reader. The rest was just a travelogue of the we’re-still-in-Kansas sort.
In general, the more intense the drama, the slower the pace should be. This means drawing the moment out and digging deep. When I began writing, I thought that if the action was fast and furious, it shouldn’t take up much manuscript space. Just the opposite is true. Passages in which nothing exciting happens merit terse summary. Agonizing do-or-die moments, “the fate of the world depends on your next move,” have the emotional strength to carry blow-by-detailed-blow narrative. (Not necessarily long sentences—in fact, short sentences and paragraphs work well.)
To return to the story in question, what the author had done was to skim the stuff that made this story different from all other stories (and in all likelihood, would appeal to the target audience). This created a discrepancy between the tension-shape and the interest-shape of the story. If I were to diagram the two, they would peak at different places and at different heights. The result is that I as a reader was left frustrated by not getting to explore and live out the fiendishly inventive adventures of two brothers, so I wasn’t particularly interested in what was at stake in the climax.
After I’d set the manuscript aside for cogitation, I picked up a recently-published alternative-history novel. The book began with strange and wonderful twists on real history, a heady mixture of actual unsolved mysteries, and plots between villainous aliens and people who were true villains in history. Oh, and William Shakespeare. Twist built upon twist until, about half
-way through, the book devolved into a depressingly conventional action-adventure. I felt as if all the wonder had been sucked out of that world. I’d been hoodwinked, a victim of bait-and-switch. I became so disinterested, I almost set the book aside during the climax. The cool stuff was all window-dressing, scene-setting for a blow-’em-up battle that could as well have happened in Poughkeepsie.
Good fiction of any kind offers us congruence between interest and action, between what grabs our imagination and what grabs our adrenal glands. Great fiction integrates not only our imagination and our hormones but our hearts as well.
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Do You Outline Your Novel? Should You?
It cannot be repeated often enough that there is no single right way to write a novel (or to paint a landscape or design a house). All these artistic endeavors require certain elements (plot, characters, tension rising to a climax, or motif and variations, harmony, contrast, or foundation, walls, plumbing, etc.) They vary in the point in the creative process at which those crucial elements must be in place. Within those parameters, there’s a great deal of flexibility that allows for individual differences. What matters is not when a writer nails down the turning points, but that they are present and in balance with the rest of the book when it lands on the editor’s desk.
Many writers attempt their first novels by the “seat-of-the-pants” method: writing whatever pops into their heads. Sometimes they end up with dead ends (disguised as “writer’s block”) and don’t finish the work. Other times, they do finish, only to discover (either through their own perceptions or feedback from others) that the book has significant problems. So they write another draft and go through the same process until either the story works or they become so frustrated they give up, or they refuse to accept further critiques and then self-publish.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with such a spontaneous approach to the first draft. A good deal of the pleasure of writing is in discovery, in not knowing what will come next as the adventure unfolds. This is how children play. A finished novel usually requires a separate editorial, self-critical phase, at least for most of us. That’s neither good nor bad, it’s just part of the process. If you want to “pants” your first draft, you accept that you’re going to have to revise. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Some writers loathe revision. I happen to love it.
At some point, it occurs to many of us that if we maybe thought about what was going to happen in our novel and how we were going to portray it, that we might save ourselves a bit of revision time. We might even jot down a few notes, reminding ourselves that this is just a tentative sketch and that nothing is carved in granite. We may and most certainly do change our minds when we discover that the actual story has diverged significantly from our strategy. I’ve been known to rework my notes, negotiating the borderlands between spontaneous writing and ill-thought-out plan.
Some writers never go any farther with outlining. They decide it’s not working for them, whereas it is actually not working, period. Outlines help because they are a place where problems with story elements can be worked out in a relatively short time and wordage. They reduce the number of dead ends, plot holes, and inconsistencies in motivation. But in order to realize the benefits of outlining (or planning, if you’re allergic to the word outline), they require concentrated and creative problem-solving.
Outlining—proper, thoughtful outlining—is exhausting. For one thing, it’s concentrated. A typical outline is five to ten single-spaced pages, maybe 2,000-5,000 words, summarizing a work that will be 100,000 words when completed. That’s an immense amount of thought crammed into very few pages. For another thing, the actual writing of a story can generate its own positive-energy loops. You get excited by an idea that pops up, or a character takes on a life of her own and runs away with the story, or some lovely phrase or bit of dialog strikes you as so wonderful, it makes your heart sing. These moments are precious but rare in actual writing. I’d venture that they are non-existent in outlining.
So outlining is energy-draining and tedious. Why then do some writers swear by it? For one thing, as I mentioned above, when done properly it saves time. For a new writer, struggling to learn the craft and working on spec, this may not seem like such a big advantage. For a writer trying to earn a living, it can make the difference between completing one book every three years and managing two or three per year. Most established writers who are able to sell “on proposal” have no choice. Editors (and agents) expect synopses (which are not exactly the same as outlines, but are interchangeable for the purposes of this discussion) and sample chapters.
Outlines, like pitches and queries, are also the occasion of dread in the minds of writers because they require a different skill set than actual story writing. Pitches and queries are marketing tools. Outlines are blueprints, not novels themselves. When I have to write one, I go around muttering, “If I could have told the story in ten pages, I wouldn’t have had to write 500! Growl-growl-growl!” I have to patiently re-remind myself that I wasn’t born knowing how to do this, that I do it infrequently enough to lose whatever facility I gain each time, and that I cannot do it quickly or casually. For every element I write down, I will most likely need to get up, pace, take the dog for a walk, mull it over in a bubble bath, and then come back with a deeper insight into what the story needs.
I think of composing the outline as layering the story, but with filo dough, not bricks and mortar. I start with whatever grabs me—an idea, a character, a situation, some bizarre twist of events, or sometimes even just an emotional tone. Then I play around with Would it work this way? How can I jack up the risks? What terrible thing will result if this other thing does not happen? (And then that’s what I put in, of course.) I almost always realize that this won’t work and that won’t work, or I need another character to put sand in the gears, or the danger just isn’t grave enough to justify all the hoopla.
This leads me to what may be the most valuable gift of careful outlining: it gives me a chance to set the stakes, to “build in” escalating drama, and to plan out how I’m going to parallel the hero’s emotional journey with his outer adventures. In other words, to shape the overall dramatic story arc so I will know where I am and what needs to be going on at every stage. Some writers like to use terms like plot point, midpoint empowerment, climax, etc. I like to draw flow charts and diagrams. It doesn’t matter what jargon describes the strategy; what’s important is that I have one.
For all my enthusiasm for outlines, gained over three decades of exploring all the ways to do it wrong, I also appreciate the importance of spontaneous writing. I don’t approach novels in this way, but I think my creative spirit would be the poorer if I did not have some way of following my own lighthearted inclinations through a story. This is one reason why I continue to write short fiction. For me, it provides a playground where I don’t have to think about structure or rules, I can just flow with whatever wacky notions come to me. Daydreaming is like this, only even less structured. I know many professional authors who (still) write fanfic, and I suspect it fills much the same function. So in the end, the question of whether or not to outline is not either/or, but finding the balance between “pantsing” and “micro-managing” that keeps our inner children joyful and allows us to put forth our best work.
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Dream a Little Dream
Dreams can offer us a wealth of startling images, bizarre encounters, and fantastical situations. At their most memorable, they convey the emotional texture of our deepest longings, our most paralyzing fears, the memories we would as soon forget but must not, and the people we will never see again, for good or ill. The stuff of great stories, right?
Wrong.
Well, maybe. The problem with using dreams as story material is the very illogic nature of them, the juxtaposition of images and actions without regard for the laws of physics, psychology, or anything else. Without delving into the analysis of dreams (neurological or Freudia
n), I can safely say that the same process that make some dreams so powerful also makes them highly personal. The dream-story that unfolded between your ears last night was your individual brain at play, uncaring of the waking conventions of shared experience and assumptions. Simply put, your dreaming mind is a world unto itself. No translator is available.
Throughout ancient times in many different cultures, prophets and sages attempted to interpret dreams, to create an overlay of sense. Often, this required a considerable feat of mental gymnastics. When in doubt, they could call it a prophecy and proclaim that all would be made clear. Eventually. We’re still waiting on quite a few of those.
Yet dreams move us, terrify us, inspire us, and linger in our waking thoughts. As long as we respect their idiosyncratic nature, they can become a treasure trove of idea-seeds. With perspective, discernment, and literary craft, we can turn them into stories that will mean something to a reader, too. The trick is not to transcribe the dream but to transform it.
Jaydium, my first published novel, began with a dream-image: a tunnel, dark and poorly lit. A ghostly figure of a man floats there, his feet not touching the ground, his hands passing through the rock walls. In itself, this is not particularly innovative. I’d seen something like it many times in film. Usually, the figure is adrift in time or some cross-dimensional warp. The hero’s goal is to rescue him, to bring him back into normal space/time.
As I started playing around with the image, I wondered what would happen if such an attempt might have the opposite effect—to bring the rescuer into wherever or whenever the adrift-guy was. Again, this was not terribly original, but had more “story-ness” that the starting image. Notice that what I did was to take a situation and ask, “What if?”
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