Rewrite The Beginning Of Your Novel

Author: Stephen D. Rogers

You've completed your story and rewritten the ending, crafting a structure that satisfies. Where do you go next? Back to the beginning.

You gave the story to a reader who then read the story. The person read the story because you asked, because the person knew you wanted a reaction to what you'd written.

An editor with pile of stories to get through has no such feeling of obligation. A reader with a multitude of other entertainment options, not to mention a life, has no obligation to read your story at all.

You must convince these people to read your story. You must write a beginning that compels them to continue.

One such method is the hook. This is the opening that catches the reader off-guard and proves so intriguing that no one could put down the story after having started.

Another method is suspense. Raise questions early. This doesn't mean keeping the reader in the dark about who is doing what, but introducing the characters, setting, and situation, and then posing a problem. What will the main character do?

The third method is mastering authorial voice.

Hmm.

When we talked about endings, we talked about creating the impression that you knew what you were doing, that you had a handle on the story. This builds trust.

A reader who trusts you doesn't second-guess, doesn't wonder if you shouldn't have made different story decisions. A reader who trusts you feels safe giving you the reins.

While you want to end the story with the reader's trust intact, you want to build that trust as soon as possible.

And how do you earn the reader's trust? You craft an opening that implies you know where you are and where you're going.

The easiest time to do this is after you've polished your ending. At that point, you do know where you're going, even if you didn't when you first started the story.

Write concretely. Who are the characters? Where are they? What's the situation? Introduce the overriding conflict.

If you were new to a city, would you enter a strange vehicle, and then wait for someone you didn't know to show you around?

Add a permanent booth labeled TOURS. Make the vehicle a bus, painted with the same label. A uniformed person sits in the driver's seat. Someone else sits in the booth, taking money. A dozen people are seated on the bus or standing in line.

If you were new to a city, would you enter that bus? Would you actually pay for the privilege?

The booth, bus, and uniforms are details that give the situation weight. The people you see are no less strangers than the driver parked up ahead, but you'd enter the bus a lot quicker than you would that parked car.

What if the bus driver was flipping through a map book? What if the person in the booth seemed uncertain how much to charge people for tickets? What if TOURS was spelled TORS?

These details erode your sense of trust. Maybe you'll take a different tour tomorrow.

Maybe the reader will skip this story and read the next. Or flip on the television. Or vacuum.

Rewrite your opening, sharpening your choices by what you're learned from having completed the story.

Will you touch on several themes? Seed them in your opening, and then when the reader encounters them, the reader's trust deepens.

Include the concrete details you now know. Self-confidence goes a long way towards developing an authorial voice, and you never know so much as when the story is done.

Rewrite The Beginning Of Your Novel

Author: Stephen D. Rogers

This column first appeared on DM in 2008, but we think you'll agree that it still has some good information!