Novel First 10 Pages

Discussion in 'Genre Discussions' started by Steerpike, Apr 25, 2016.

  1. jannert

    jannert Retired Mod Supporter Contributor

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    I don't think it's 'how much.' Rather it's simply 'what/where.'

    Have you ever started reading a book, thinking the characters or the narrator are modern, only to discover a wee while later that they're actually Victorian? Or something similar?

    Stories that begin with a passage of dialogue, for example, run the risk of confusing the reader in that respect. Who are these people? Where are they? What are they doing? And is this happening in modern times? In the future? What?

    My own personal mantra is 'always orient the reader at the start.' By that, I mean the start of a story, the start of a chapter, the start of a scene. I try never to leave the reader in doubt about where and when the scene is taking place and who the characters are. It's okay to let the issue ride for a sentence or two, if establishing something else is of prime importance to the story, but I think it's important not to let the reader become confused. Others may disagree. However, being well oriented to time and place is something which is important to me as a reader, so I try to transfer that to my own writing.

    I hate having to backtrack or skip ahead, just trying to figure out where and when a scene is taking place.

    I suspect what the author in the interview also meant was that creating an absorbing setting is important to the reader. You want the reader to be immersed in your story, so creating 'a sense of time and place' means the reader can picture the setting and actually
    'see' what is happening in it. Also maybe understand what differs from the real life they are used to. A few pertinent details should do the trick. You don't need a history lesson or a travelogue, though. Filter these details through your characters, if possible. Let us know what the character thinks of a certain place or something that's going on. That way, the time and place details are transmitted painlessly to the reader, and become part of the story's reality.
     
    Last edited: Apr 26, 2016
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  2. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    It's a kind-of before/after like in those diet ads. If the beginning shows two people arguing, the end shows them getting along. If it starts on a life turned upside-down, the end shows that same life on stable footing. That kind of thing.
     
  3. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    These things are a mix a of the frustratingly obvious and the weirdly oblique. I mean isn't a printed page like 250 words? Which is not to say that you shouldn't be quickly pulling the reader into the story and it's world, absolutely you should. But that 'cold open' stuff that she's suggesting like a first page needs to jump into a conflict sight unseen is practically a cliche. It's how you get stupid things like having an apparent murder on the first page but turns out they were just practicing a play, you know? Absolutely you want to be starting with something to hold the reader's attention but hurling in a conflict before we know why we should care just to meet the checklist is how you end up with a really generically bland novel.

    Most of what's on the lists is reasonable if basic. Get the reader invested in what is happening. Make them sympathize with the main character. Make sure they understand the stakes and the antagonist. Make sure your characters have space to grow. It's all fine and dandy. But then we get to stupid things like demanding no telling and only showing which is especially stupid when you are working in these very limited space constraints. It takes so much space to show and it's almost always ambiguous which directly goes against all this tight, directed, certainty they want.

    I can show a character wistfully staring at a picture of a woman on the mantelpiece as he drinks scotch and cries. But that takes a lot of words; to describe him, the room, how much he's drinking, what the woman looks like. And even if I do all of that the reader can't tell for sure if the woman left him or died or what. If she died was she murdered? Does he think it's his fault some how? This is all showing and it's great if I'm going to get into a deep examination of this guy and his life and why he's so sad. But this is my first few pages and there's so much other stuff to get in, including action and conflict and antagonists on top of all this actual set up. There's only so many words to go around here. You can have soft interesting emotional story telling or you can have fast paced generic cold intro; asking me for both at the same time is just a hiding to nowhere. If you want it to be fast then let my guy cry out "Why did you kill her!?"

    Oh and maybe it's just me but what the hell is a compelling, beautiful and important sentence anyway? A good first sentence, absolutely. A compelling first sentence that raises questions and makes us want to read on, that's something to aspire to. But we need context to get an emotional reaction to a single sentence. A good first line should make us think 'Oho, where does this fit?' but demanding beauty of a sentence apropos of nothing is ridiculous. Even important to the story is a bit of a jump. Important to the scene, definitely. But important to the book? No, I think not. Also, if anyone could tell me what an objectively beautiful contextless sentence actually is, that'd be great.
     
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  4. NigeTheHat

    NigeTheHat Contributor Contributor

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    Well, yeah, I get what foreshadowing is. It was more how the agent was meant to know the end had been foreshadowed if they only read the first ten pages of the MS. Either those ten pages don't include the end or you're probably not quite in 'novel' territory yet.
     
  5. Sack-a-Doo!

    Sack-a-Doo! Contributor Contributor

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    Ah! Good point. Don't know how I didn't pick up on that.
     
  6. DeadMoon

    DeadMoon The light side of the dark side Contributor

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    Is the talk on you tube? I would like the watch it.
     
  7. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    @LostThePlot I didn't get past your first paragraph, about conflict, because this looks like the type of whinging you engaged in with respect to the conversation on agents and what they're looking for. You seem to have an autonomous reaction to these things. Needless to say, not every book will have these things. But the counter-argument you present doesn't hold up to scrutiny. The idea that having conflict on the first page leads to a generically bland novel doesn't seem to me to have any basis in reality (and, again, I'm of the view that it is quite clear that not every novel needs to open the way this author suggests).

    Taking a look through some classics at random, I have:

    Pride & Prejudice
    To Kill a Mockingbird
    Lolita
    Catcher in the Rye

    All have conflict on the first page. Whether one likes the novels or not, I don't think any qualify as generically bland. Of course, modern novels start with conflict all the time. If authors from contemporaries to classics can pull this off, I'm sure most of us can as well if we want to. Ultimately, if we want to is what is comes down to, since the author should follow her own vision. The idea that putting conflict on the first page leads to a more generically bland novel, even if you're doing it because you're trying to meet some kind of checklist, is nonsense unless you're dealing with an unskilled writer who just can't figure out how to pull it off.
     
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  8. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    It is not. Unfortunately, this was at a meeting I attended and no one was making a recording of it.
     
  9. Aaron Smith

    Aaron Smith Banned Contributor

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    Interesting. Perhaps this is why all of my longer projects have failed.
     
  10. LostThePlot

    LostThePlot Naysmith Contributor

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    My point was that the important thing is to pull the reader in and make them interested. Yes, sometimes that means jumping into conflict. Other times it really doesn't. What matters is being engaging and interesting, not following a checklist. A mystery cold open where we see the crime from the POV of a victim? That's a really effective opening. No conflict though. No main character introduced either. But it's got action and tension and presents the reader with questions and sets up the stakes. It manages to be effective without perfectly following the checklist.

    My issue with all of these things is things being presented as hard rules with no exceptions that writers must adhere to or be terrible. If you want to say 'Here are some possible ways to make your opening more effective' then I won't have a problem with that. Because, yes introducing conflict early is a good way to get people invested. But if a book does something else to get people invested that's good too. Investment is what we want, not box ticking. There's plenty of ways to get people invested, plenty to make a good book generally.

    Books are better served by being good books than by ticking boxes. These kind of 'rules' further the opposite view; therefore I am against it no matter who is saying it. It's actually a principal I hold that is equally applied in all cases.
     
  11. Tenderiser

    Tenderiser Not a man or BayView

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    @LostThePlot I don't think you understand what conflict means. Seeing a crime from the POV of the victim definitely has conflict.
     
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  12. peachalulu

    peachalulu Member Reviewer Contributor

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    You know the idea of conflict doesn't have to be the major conflict it could just be a minor conflict. Something as simple as the mc trying to decide whether to make tacos or steak for dinner. Conflict allows your character to reveal themselves by how they go through making a decision, choice or argument. And it helps with the showing. That dilemma can open up other issues.

    Even in your example Lost the Plot - about a man crying over a photo - if he was struggling not to cry, even in private, that would be a conflict. I agree you don't need to follow a checklist but I think the issue is what conflict really is rather than should we use it.
     
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  13. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I agree with @Tenderiser - opening with crime from the POV of a victim is definite conflict.

    In Pride and Prejudice, the famous first line sets up conflict in and of itself:

    "IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."

    That's of the person v. society nature of conflict, or maybe person v. self (or both, depending on how the author spins it out). The first page of Pride and Prejudice also establishes the conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Bennett, which plays throughout the novel.

    You don't need a dead body on page one to have a conflict. You certainly don't need to cram something in that is unwieldy just to bash your reader over the head with a conflict.

    Here's only part of the first page of To Kill a Mockingbird:

    When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. When it healed, and Jem’s fears of never being able to play football were assuaged, he was seldom self-conscious about his injury. His left arm was somewhat shorter than his right; when he stood or walked, the back of his hand was at right angles to his body, his thumb parallel to his thigh. He couldn’t have cared less, so long as he could pass and punt.

    When enough years had gone by to enable us to look back on them, we sometimes discussed the events leading to his accident. I maintain that the Ewells started it all, but Jem, who was four years my senior, said it started long before that. He said it began the summer Dill came to us, when Dill first gave us the idea of making Boo Radley come out.

    I said if he wanted to take a broad view of the thing, it really began with Andrew Jackson. If General Jackson hadn’t run the Creeks up the creek, Simon Finch would never have paddled up the Alabama, and where would we be if he hadn’t?

    We were far too old to settle an argument with a fist-fight, so we consulted Atticus. Our father said we were both right.


    This goes right into conflict - Jem's accident. It sets up Boo Radley and the Ewells. It establishes the conflict(s) in the relationship between Jem and Scout (though we don't know Scout's name yet), and it tells us what kind of person Atticus is, which already sets up the "man v. society" conflict that he represents. All that is happening here, and Harper Lee isn't bashing the reader over the head with anything.

    I think you're engaging a very simplistic sense of what conflict is, and that may be a reason you have the reaction you do.
     
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