Top of the morning to those who reached out after Tuesday’s Shelf Life to let me know you look forward to reading my short story, “Assistance,” when it comes out in The Quiet Reader magazine later this month. You make my life great not only by planning to read my short story but also by reading Shelf Life even when I don’t harass you to do so. I am over here trying to be a misanthrope and bitter about the state of the world and humanity in general but you all make it very difficult.
Today’s Shelf Life is about starting your story or novel. Not about how to make yourself start, like to sit down and start it, a topic I have addressed before (for instance, in Defeat the Blank-Page Blues) and will surely address again—but about what you should include in the start of your story or novel to propel the reader forward into the middle and then, we hope, the end.
Since I write two of these a week and have done so for what feels like 84 years, some things are going to get repeated and that’s fine. Repetition is key to learning for one thing and, for another, only the very coolest and most attractive people read every essay. I assume that most people do not read every single one and so maybe if I hit on a topic for the second or third or fourth time, it’s the first time for somebody. Plus I have new opinions about old stuff all the time. Words are free. There are always more words.
I’ve written before about the importance of getting your reader invested fast (see Get Your Reader to Pony Up), because people’s attention spans are not what they once were and people have a multitude of other things they can entertain themselves with if your book doesn’t grab their attention fast and rivet them. This is not to say there’s no room in the world for stories that unfold slowly—there’s room in this world for all kinds of stories and all methods of storytelling. But when a new reader picks you up for the first time, you are asking them to invest their time and energy in reading your story and if you don’t show them some kind of collateral early on, there’s every chance they just put you back down and move onto something else.
I know this is true because that is what I do, myself, personally, in my leisure reading. If I get to the end of the first chapter and the reading experience of a particular book has not become self-sustaining, I put it down and start something else. What I mean by “self-sustaining” in this context is important to the rest of the article today so I’ll go into it a bit at length.
When I start reading a new book, I go into it with some level of advance knowledge about what I’m getting into and, beyond that advance knowledge, the book is a mystery to me. It’s like embarking upon a romantic relationship with a new person; I’ve been in plenty of romantic relationships before so I know basically what to expect, but every person is a unique individual so no matter how many relationships I’ve had, there’s always going to be adjustment and learning a new person.
Likewise, every book is unique, so even though I’ve read many books I’m never jaded going into a new one; I always know there will be something new for me to like or not like when I read a new book. Advance knowledge that helps me judge whether I will like a book or not can include things like:
I know I usually like this genre.
I’ve read this author before and I know I like their work.
Someone who has similar taste in books recommended this to me.
I read the back cover blurb and it sounds like something I’d like.
But I never really know, until I start reading, whether a book will grab me or not and how long it will take for that grabbing to happen. I do know that unless I have an obligation to read something (like for book club), every book has about one chapter to grab my attention or not, and after that I will DNF (did-not-finish) it. Is that unfair to the book or its author? Maybe, probably. But life’s too short for me to make myself read something that isn’t doing it for me.
The benchmark for me is whether my reading momentum becomes self-sustaining, as I mentioned above. When I start a book, I have to make myself. There are always dozens of other things competing for my time (Take a nap! Play a video game! Write a story! Walk the dog!) so there’s a conscious effort that goes into starting a new book, even if it’s one I’ve looked forward to with anticipation. Until a story “grabs” me, I have to keep putting conscious effort into moving forward. I have to make myself keep reading. When the story captures my attention, I can lay off the conscious effort because the pleasure of reading it becomes the motivation to keep going. I no longer will have to encourage myself to pick the book up or keep reading. This will now happen by itself and carry me all the way through to the end.
There’s no specific formula, nor any specific criteria, that determine whether a story is going to capture my attention like that. This is unfortunate for me, because it means sometimes I will inevitably start and then DNF a book because it didn’t work for me; it’s also fortunate for me, because it means my reading doesn’t become formulaic—I keep trying all kinds of different books and new authors and things because there’s such a wide variety of books that work for me.
It’s also unfortunate for you, because I can’t give you a specific formula and say, “Here, do these five easy things in chapter 1 and everyone who starts your book will be hooked!” But it’s also fortunate for you, because this means there are infinite ways to capture a reader’s attention and drag them bodily into your text so they have no choice but to finish and look around for your next book. There’s no one way to do this, whereas if it’s just not the way you tell stories you’re just out of luck.
I had to really do some deep analysis of my reading habits for today’s Shelf Life, something I don’t particularly like doing because it reminds me that I don’t read as much as I wish I did, so I hope you appreciate my navel-gazing. (I’m actually ahead of my reading challenge for the year, for once.) While the following text does not form an exhaustive list of techniques or tropes that grab readers when they begin a story, it’s a starting point. And you don’t need all of these things—you don’t need to try to shoehorn all of them into your first few pages. But if you review the start of your manuscript and you think you might not have any of these, then you might need to do some navel gazing of your own.
Voice
Whether this is a character’s voice or the narrative voice (or both) doesn’t matter. What matters is the voice that’s telling me the story has to be appealing. It has to have character in itself—I don’t want the narrative voice of whatever I’m reading to sound like I could be reading an article in The New York Times (unless there’s a very specific reason for the narrative voice to be dispassionate and clinical and that reason is working for me in the context of what the book is about).
Voice is really tough to pin down, and I get that. When someone tells you they want “voicey prose” or that your manuscript doesn’t have a clear and consistent voice, what does that even mean? The reason I put voice at the top of my list is because of how much the writer can convey with just the narrative voice. The style of the book, the way the story is going to be told, the trustworthiness of the narrator (or lack thereof), the tone (is it lighthearted? Dark and serious?), the level of formality or casualness with which the story is told—all of those things come across in the narrative voice, and I feel like that’s why nailing it is so important.
If a narrator has a bland, ordinary voice, I don’t get any of that. I’m just getting an account of things happening, but it leaves me feeling unsatisfied. A story has to be more than a summary of events and actions for me to get invested.
Questions
Dramatic tension is the second most important thing to me when I start a new book and walking the fine line between telling the reader too much and not telling the reader enough is key. If I start a story and I don’t have questions from page one that I want answered, it’s a real bad sign for me continuing this book. Having questions about what’s going on and what’s going to happen next is one of the most basic reasons people consume stories (not just books, but also movies, plays, TV shows, and so on).
I don’t want to have so little information that my discomfort threshold maxes out and I give up because I’m too confused about where I am, who the characters are, or what’s happening (see The Discomfort Gambit), but it is absolutely critical that I have some questions.
One of my favorite examples from all of English literature is the opening line of Charlotte’s Web by EB White:
“Where's Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.
Oh my god. Where is Papa going with that axe? They’re setting the table for breakfast, they haven’t even eaten breakfast yet, and Papa’s got the axe out? And this child is named Fern? Who the heck named a kid Fern? That’s like the most boring kind of plant?? I have so many questions. I am absolutely going to read on to find out why Fern’s dad is stomping around before breakfast with an axe in hand.
That puts me in mind of another good opening-line example from a book I read recently, The Merciful Crow by Margaret Owen:
Pa was taking too long to cut the boys’ throats.
So many questions.
Character
I have to have a sense of who the main character is. Now: I don’t have to like them—but I have to want to invest in them. Again with the questions, but I have to want to know more about them. Something about them has to be interesting, intriguing, or compelling—something inherent to the character, something more than the circumstances in which they find themself.
A character can be an ordinary person and still be interesting, intriguing, and compelling. In fact, most ordinary people are. Most of the people you know are probably ordinary people, but if you are interested enough to spend time with them—if they’re your friends, for example—then something about them is compelling to you. A character can be perfectly ordinary but might be intriguing because of the choices they make, because of their outlook on the world or perspective on life, or because of a standout personality trait that makes them especially suited for the challenges ahead of them.
A friend of mine once told me she went out on a date with a particularly unappealing man because she was bizarrely curious about him and wanted to know more. This is the energy I bring to unlikeable characters. You’re unappealing, but unappealing in an interesting enough way that I want to find out how you tick.
The main character (or main characters) are the way the reader navigates through your story. This character (or characters) take the reader along, we’re standing behind them looking over their shoulder—or sometimes watching through their eyes—as the story unfolds. I’m a particularly fast reader, but most books of normal length take me at least four or six hours to complete. I need to feel, by the end of the very first chapter, that this character is someone interesting enough to spend four to six hours with.
Stakes
I want to know, right from the start of a story, what the stakes are. Stakes can change throughout the story; stakes don’t have to be earth-shattering; but I need to know what they are at the outset. What is going on with this character that the things that are happening to them matter to me (and to them). Every plot has an inciting incident, something that happens and kicks off the action of the story. I want to know: What is stopping this character (or these characters) from walking away from the inciting incident and going back to life as it was before? If I don’t see why the character can’t just shrug it off, roll over, and go back to bed, I’m not going to keep reading.
I recently read Legends & Lattes by Travis Baldree, which is about an orc who quits adventuring to open a coffee shop. For a fantasy novel these are wildly low stakes. The book’s tagline is “a novel of high fantasy and low stakes.” But by the end of the first chapter, Viv the orc has quit her livelihood of adventuring, left her party of compatriots behind, and poured most of her resources into securing the property and equipment she will need to open a coffee shop. That’s it. There’s no more gold coins rolling in from adventuring and she’s cut ties with her party so if she doesn’t make this coffee shop work she’s sunk, but she’s in a medieval-equivalent fantasy setting where nobody likes Orcs and nobody has ever heard of coffee.
This is a great example of “low stakes” that are crystal clear and compelling. This orc is not going to save the world. That’s fine. I’m plenty invested in finding out whether her woman-and-minority-owned small business will pan out. Let’s go.
If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.
For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.
After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.