Everyone agrees that the opening to a book is critical. Some say it\u2019s the first five pages, some the first 18 lines (the first page on a typical print book), and some will tell you that you have to grab the reader by the throat within the first sentence, or All is Lost.<\/p>\n
Well, to be honest, if a reader is so flighty that they\u2019re going to toss a book based solely on the first line, I\u2019m not sure I want them anyway. The first page is trickier. I can see the case for putting something there that\u2019s so compelling that a reader absolutely has to turn the page. It\u2019s all very well for George R R Martin to stick a forty page prologue up front, full of characters who promptly die, dialogue that is deeply portentous but unintelligable, and events that will possibly be understandable three books later, if you\u2019re lucky. Most of us won\u2019t be given that much leeway by the reader.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
So, the opening has to be compelling, in some way. But where do you start? The current thinking is that you start at the precise point where events tip the main character out of his normal life. In \u2018The Day of the Triffids\u2019, for instance, you don\u2019t get the backstory of the hero\u2019s life, you don\u2019t get the first appearance of the triffids, you don\u2019t even get the meteor shower that caused world-wide blindness in humans. The book starts when the hero wakes up and realises something is wrong:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen a day that you happen to know is Wednesday starts off by sounding like Sunday, there is something seriously wrong somewhere.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
In \u2018The Plains of Kallanash\u2019, the tipping event (or the inciting incident or the catalyst; it has many names) is that one member of the double marriage dies, starting a chain of odd events that eventually leads to disaster. So that is where chapter 1 now starts, although I have added a small prior scene to weasel in a magic reference. [Edit: Now removed. The opening scene now shows the four members of the double marriage, and some of the tensions below the surface.] It acts, in a sense, like a mini prologue, even though it segues straight into the main action.<\/p>\n
Am I happy with it? No, not really. One problem is that the resulting chapter was too long, so it\u2019s had to be\u00a0 split into two. The effect of that is that an entire long scene has had to switch from Mia\u2019s point of view to Hurst\u2019s. You wouldn\u2019t think it would make much difference, but it\u2019s surprising how much has to change when seen through a different pair of eyes. There were a few lines of Mia\u2019s childhood memories, which obviously Hurst would know nothing about. Some I was able to put into dialogue, although the wording changed so much that it lost a great deal of its impact. There there\u2019s the fact that Mia is very devout, and Hurst is (at best) ambivalent about the religion. They see other characters differently, too. So basically, I\u2019m still tinkering with it.<\/p>\n
However, I\u2019m fairly confident now that I\u2019ve got the right point to start the story. Now I have to edit the remaining early chapters to work in the aspects that disappeared with my original opening chapter, and try to build a sense of who my characters are. This is major editing – more like rewriting – and it\u2019s not what I expected when I pulled \u2018The Plains of Kallanash\u2019 out of cold storage. It\u2019s excellent experience, though. I have to toss scenes that have been there from the start, or rewrite them from top to bottom, or replace them with completely new material. It\u2019s scary, but I think the new version will be much, much better.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone agrees that the opening to a book is critical. Some say it\u2019s the first five pages, some the first 18 lines (the first page on a typical print book), and some will tell you that you have to grab the reader by the throat within the first sentence, or All is Lost. Well, to be honest, if a reader is so flighty that they\u2019re going to toss a book based solely on the first line, I\u2019m not sure I want them anyway. The first page is trickier. I can see the case for putting something there that\u2019s so compelling that a reader absolutely has to turn the page. It\u2019s all very well for George R R Martin to stick a forty page prologue up front, full of characters who promptly die, dialogue that is deeply portentous but unintelligable, and events that will possibly be understandable three books later, if […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7,13,9],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions\/313"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/paulinemross.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}