May 01 2008
Writing a Strong Introduction for a Novel
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This article will help you write an opening for your book that develops the characters, plot and world.
Characters
1) Introduce the characters before throwing the readers into any high-intensity action. As much as you might want to lead with a car-chase or other action sequence, like many movies do, it’s hard to excite readers with an action sequence if they don’t know why they should sympathize with the protagonist.
2) It’s usually best to start the story by showing the main character in his element. For example, The Hobbit begins with Bilbo Baggins enjoying himself at a birthday party. If the story started with him dungeon-crawling with the dwarves, we’d probably be confused about whether he’s an adventurer at heart and what he’s like.
3) Establishing a fresh character voice early is critical. Your readers have already seen 10 books about a young hero called upon to save the world, but they will stick around for an eleventh if the character sounds interesting.
Plotting
1) Ease readers into unusual aspects of your story. An excellent cinematic example of this is the extraordinarily effective start of the original Star Wars movie (“a long time ago…”). The introduction tells us that there’s a civil war between good rebels and an evil empire and that the rebels must protect the plans to a powerful spaceship. The introduction does not ramble about any concepts completely alien to us (Jedi, Darth Vader, The Force, Hutts, etc.)
2) Dramatic stories are usually driven by problems. Showing us a big problem early on will help us grasp where the story is going and feel like we get what’s going on.
3) Good writing makes readers ask questions. Who’s this character? What happens at Fahrenheit 451? The trick is striking a balance between clarity and suspense (giving readers enough information to understand the plot vs. leaving some open threads to propel readers along).
Not clear enough: “Even before I had joined the Guardians, two Lakriamians had successfully managed to reach Si’cxza status.” We don’t understand what any of these buzz-words mean.
Not suspenseful enough: “The Guardians are a guild of assassins that have never failed a mission.”
Better: “Leia had heard the legend of the drunken squeegeemaster in hundreds of taverns, but never from a talking plant.” This gets readers asking questions. Who’s Leia and what’s she doing in hundreds of taverns? Who’s the drunken squeegeemaster? Why is a plant talking, and what’s he doing telling stories in a tavern?
World-Building
1) Don’t spend too long setting the stage. Show us only details that are relevant to the plot or character development.
2) Invented words (like Jedi, The Force, The Matrix, etc.) may be part of your story’s world, but they aren’t familiar to us and will usually make us feel lost. Don’t use them often in the introduction, and never in the first sentence.
Re., Character (1): I seem to remember most writing books I’ve read say to start with action, to grip the reader and pull them along. Describing the character’s morning routine or their house plans is usually just boring.
The point is probably just ‘make the beginning interesting’, but dropping the reader into an action sequence is an easy way to do that (and also helps with Plotting 2 and 3).
-tc7
That’s definitely a good point: making the beginning interesting is crucial. Far too many books start with the character waking up, which will induce many readers (and editors) to close the book right there.
However, I think that a beginning can be exciting without being intense. For example, a reasonably unintense action scene might start a book with a boy getting slapped in the face by a girl he’s never met before. The focus of the slapping scene would be the boy and how he reacts to being slapped by a stranger. In contrast, I suspect that the emphasis of the car scene would be the choreography of who’s driving where and dodging what. I don’t think that’s a problem, but it’s usually hard to develop a character and make us care about him during scenes that are highly choreographed. If you can do all that in a highly choreographed scene, go for it!
For an example of highly choreographed action sometimes being problematic, I’d invite you to look at the chapter “Life, Death and the Manhattan Mangler.” I think that we overemphasized action in the beginning instead of interesting characters.
Thanks for your feedback!
–J.M., Superhero Nation contributor
“Leia had heard the legend of the drunken squeegeemaster in hundreds of taverns, but never from a talking plant.”
That’s genius. Someone somewhere has to write a novel based on that phrase. I’d love to read a book like that.
Anyone that wants to use the phrase is welcome to it. However, I think that it probably work better for a short story than a novel because the ambient strangeness might get tiresome.
This section is right up my alley. Seeing as I’m really ready to get my novel started, I’m going to post this synopsis. It’s the introduction to the character, the world and the story.
The story starts with a person (Aadrello) pushing through a crowd of people. In the crowd there are scenes of fighting, dancing, and overall chaos of the night (which I would describe in detail). The book will point out the many pieces of graffiti on the walls of the buildings as well as the tattered sketchbook (leaving mystery) this person is holding. Around the bottom of the first page or top of the second Aadrello would be introduced by name. The focus is now on him as he rushes through the neon streets and filthy crowds talking frantically to himself.
He enters a hidden location, meeting three Raggz (I’d briefly introduce the illustrious graffiti gang) members who are auditioning him. He wonders why they walk with the same odd stuper (precursor to a later scene) but forgets about it. There is dialogue as the sweaty, nervous Aadrello is harshly judged and pleads his case. The Raggz members relentlessly mock his art and style. Aadrello is then prompted to do a work on the wall. His work is good, but he is still rejected. The Raggz members leave and Aadrello wanders the abandoned building thinking back on his past of failures. He goes to the rooftop and looks at the cityscape where he gets an idea to tag the spot where a Raggz member mention their next target would be. He goes undercover as the stylish and hyper A.Arty (giving more insight into his personality). He goes to the Halos tower and tags over the Raggz tag. It just so happens that the Raggz come back and a chase ensues.
I’m being rushed to get off the computer so I’ll just post this for now. What do you think of this so far?
Oh, and he will become Sketch in the first issue (when I do the comic), so don’t worry about that.
That should be pretty easy to work with. I didn’t notice any glaring flaws or pitfalls.
As you build the scene, it may be helpful to show in-scene why he wants to be a Raggz. That choice might not seem intuitive to your readers. If, say, I were an aspiring artist, I’d think about art school or an art studio rather than a graffiti gang.
There may also be musing concerns as he looks back on his life of failures. Generally, a character that is looking backwards isn’t moving the story forwards. I’d try to have him focus on what’s in his future rather than dwelling too long on the past.
One way you could mention his life of failures without turning it into musing is to bring up his dropping out of college in his audition. That might explain why the Raggz don’t take well to him. It seems kind of plausible that the members of a graffiti gang would take poorly to an applicant who’s probably better off and better-educated, even if he didn’t get a degree. He may lack “street cred.” If you’d like to make Aadrello more complex, you could try justifying the Raggz a bit by making Aadrello a bit pretentious. I wouldn’t blame him if he saw himself as better than the Raggz.
How about I kill two birds with one stone and make him dropout from an art school. Seeing as he has no money he couldn’t afford a studio, and becuase he had previous experience he decides graffiti is the next best thing. At least people would see his art. And the pretentious addition is good it would show he has confidence in his work as well as give the Raggz reason for denial. All of this is good he isn’t renowned enough or educated enough to be a member. Now he has a definite reason for rejection and revenge. Thanks
I like that! It’s a smooth way to distinguish his background from the Raggz’.
You might want to explain that that was some reason for his dropping out from art-school, like the money or whatever. Otherwise readers might get the impression that he dropped out because he couldn’t cut it. On the other hand, it might be more interesting if he dropped out because he couldn’t cut it. The story would start with him trying to get into the Raggz to vindicate how much his artistic talent has grown.