[Hong Kong - May 14, 2018] Starting a novel is always a daunting task. Sitting there with a blank piece of paper. The age-old adage that, “first drafts don’t have to be perfect, they just have to be written” does still hold true. However, there are a few things to bear in mind before you put pen to paper. As editors who work extensively with manuscripts at all stages of the editorial process – from concept through to final proofreading – we have seen our fair share of what not to do in the opening scenes of a novel. In this article we will explore some of the main pitfalls to avoid as a writer.
Let’s begin with how you start your novel, specifically using a prologue. While you may think it’s a good idea to set the scene, it’s best not to open with a long and rambling prologue. It comes across as lazy if you provide a tonne of backstory in one big chunk. It’s much better to dive right in and put the reader in the middle of a narrative rather than keep them on the outside looking in. Find a way to feed the information in throughout the story, not all at once.
This leads into another problem that writers sometimes run into – exposition. Too much can be a bad thing, and it’s definitely true in this case. When a writer goes beyond what’s required to set the scene it can become cumbersome and tiring to the reader. It’s important to try and strike a balance between exposition and exploration – let the reader discover things along the way. A good writer will work detail into the narrative piece by piece and it won’t feel like a shopping list. As editors, we are always cutting back on authors’ overly detailed descriptions.
Related to exposition, the pace of the start to a story is vital. You don’t want to start off all plodding and boring with nothing happening. Someone waking up and going through the mundane rituals of morning doesn’t get the reader hooked. It’s a lot of description, a lot of doing things, but essentially no action. Something important or noteworthy has to happen at the beginning. And for goodness sake never start with “Once upon a time...”.
What’s worse than a slow beginning? A fake out one. There’s nothing worse than reading a gripping, rip-roaring first chapter only to find out that it’s all been a dream, or the person you think is the main character get’s killed off immediately. As an author, it might seem like an epic twist to throw the reader off-track but most of the time it makes the reader feel short-changed.
The tone of your first chapter is also crucial. We all know the “show don’t tell” rule – you want your reader to be ‘seeing’ things happen, not being told. We don’t need to know at every turn whether the main character is carrying his sword, or if they’ve put it down. And rather than tell us how cruel someone is, show us in a scene. The key is to make your audience intrigued about a character or place, leave them with questions that must be answered. If you do have to describe something, as with exposition and pace, make sure that it’s not overly elaborate for no reason. There’s nothing worse than reading a perfect description of something or someone, only to find out that it’s totally irrelevant to the rest of the story. Over the years, we have come across a lot of this when editing or proofreading.
A lot to do with character development and backstory has already been mentioned: don’t over-do descriptions, show us don’t tell us what someone’s like, etc. It’s also important to remember not to give too much away about the people and places in your opening chapter. As an author, you don’t have to give the reader all the information in one go at the outset. Half the fun in reading a story is that it’s a journey of discovery, you don’t want all the answers all at once. Moreover, make sure your characters are flawed. Give them a vice or a weakness that makes them vulnerable. After all, in real life no one’s perfect, so if your characters are, then there’s immediately a sense of disbelief and detachment for the audience. It’s ultimately rather boring. If your main character is physically perfect then make him emotionally damaged on the inside – give them a few daemons.
Finally, we’ll end this piece with a few genre-specific no-no’s.
With science-fiction, don’t spend pages describing the weird and wonderful landscape, we get it, it’s an alien world.
In a crime novel, there’s nothing worse than opening with the tired old cliché of your private detective waking up with a hangover, or having them drinking whisky at the end of the day, or heaven forbid a femme fatal walks in.
If you’re writing a romance, there seems to always be an urge to have someone wake to find a stranger in their room that they are immediately attracted to. However, in reality, if you found an unknown person in your room you’d be screaming and reaching for a weapon, not falling in love.
You might be writing fantasy. If so, don’t open with a battle scene. You might think that this is exactly what we told you to do earlier on – “don’t start slow, start in the middle of the action”. However, if there’s a battle and everyone’s dying at the outset, you’ll have provided no connection to any of the characters and there will be no sense of why this battle matters. Your reader doesn’t know anyone yet so won’t care what happens. Also, with fantasy novels, don’t open with everything being idyllic and peaceful, picking flowers and living a simple life all before it goes horribly wrong. It’s been done to death and goes back to the whole “don’t start off plodding along with nothing happening”.
Anyway, those are most of the pitfalls that we as editors and proofreaders have come across working on authors’ manuscripts. Now, we’re going to contradict ourselves slightly here. Obviously, it’s important to set the scene, describe something or someone, or have the reader plunged into the deep end and initially have no idea what’s going on. You just need to be careful about not over-doing it, and make sure that what you’re including serves a purpose. Opening with a battle scene can work – “aha”, I hear you cry, “you just told us not to do that” – but as long as the reader quickly gets some emotional attachment to the characters, it can work.
We hope this article has been of some interest and given all you authors some food for though. However, as we said at the very beginning, your first draft doesn’t have to be perfect. Leave it to us to edit your work and point out any areas we think can be improved upon. After all, it’s what we’re here for.