Episode 172 - Our first fifteen pages.

Welcome novel and short story writers to our new episode on writing fiction. This is Jim Thayer. What should the first ten or fifteen pages of our novel do? The most important several words in our novel are probably the title, if it's inviting in some way the reader may try the book. The second most important words are the first sentence, if the first sentence is engaging the reader will read the next sentences and the next most important words are the novels first ten or fifteen pages. What should those pages contain? The beginning of a novel has one job to do and that's to snare the reader, to hook the reader. How can we writers do that? I want to mention elements we should think about regarding our first ten or fifteen pages, some things we should have in those pages and some things we should not have in those pages. That is things that work and things that don't. Our job is to grab the reader and make or want to dive deeper into our story and I'm going to list elements in our story to concentrate on as we write the first ten or fifteen or so pages. This is going to sound like a formula and it is. Do we need to absolutely adhere to it no? But it's worth thinking about each of these elements to put in and leave out of our first pages and most successful stories follow these guidelines. Number one, the first thing to think about as we write our first pages is action. You've heard me say before that in almost all novels in every genre, action is the most interesting element of the story. Watching a character do something is almost always more interesting than any other element. Readers like to watch a character move, action is visual and the reader can see it in his or her mind like a movie. Most novels in all genres should have scenes of intense action, irrespective of the genre. Readers want something to watch. We should front load our story with it. Get the story going with action with something the reader to watch. And we're going to focus on action in the first part of the novel. It means avoiding non-action, things that aren't live and things that aren't acted out in front of the reader. Number two, and so a second element to think about is one to avoid and it's related to action as it is the inverse of action, avoid interior monologue, the character thinking. Action is the most interesting thing in a novel and the character's thoughts are the least interesting. The start of our story is not the time to visit a character's head for thoughts on this and that. Because the writer can enter a character's brain, doing so is tempting for new writers. If we must visit the character's mind, save it for later. And make sure it's important and make it short. The first pages of our novel should have very little or maybe no interior monologue. A third element and this two is related to having action in our first pages. Back story is history, it's not action. It's usually an essay on events that happened before the story's first page, before the stories now. It's a critical mistake to have backstory in our first pages. Readers want to know what happens next, not what happened earlier. Early backstory, telegraphs, amateurism to agents and editors. And backstory is usually more interesting to the writer than the reader. We should avoid backstory early in our novel. The fourth element to think of number four is B-C plotting. That is, start the first scene as late in the day's chronology as possible. A successful scene isn't outlined A, B, C, D. It's outlined B-C. As we write our first scene, we should avoid a setup. And then as we end the scene, we should avoid a wind down. So we should avoid A and D. We write about the heart of event. This is particularly true in the first pages of our novel. A fifth element in the first ten or fifteen pages is that in most stories we should meet the hero and probably get to like him or her in those pages. That might be obvious. But I remember reading The First Deadly Sin by Lawrence Sanders. I'd given it a few pages, but I didn't like the main character, Daniel Blank, who quote, "When climbing or swimming, or simply alone in his apartment, he preferred the shaven paint. He had developed a habit, a nervous tick of caressing it with his fingers, probing the frail cranium, and that perilous stuff that lay beneath. That's Lawrence Sanders describing Daniel Blank. I quit the novel. My brother Joe urged me to keep reading, and he said Daniel Blank isn't the hero. I soon came across Francis X Delaney, the detective. In his first scene, he builds a Dagwood Sandwich, and eats it over the sink so he won't have to clean up later. I liked Delaney from that moment. The First Deadly Sin is a wonderful novel, but it's an exception. Most of the time, the reader should meet and like the hero early in the story. Novels are buddy experiences, the reader and the main character. Our hero should be someone the reader wants to spend time with, and that usually should be made clear in the first pages. Number six, make the story question clear. All novels have a story question. Will the hero escape? Will the cure be found in time? Will he win her love? Will her horse win the Kentucky Derby? The story question is the major source of tension in the novel. It's the biggest thing the reader wants to find out. Literary agent Donald Moss says, "The number one mistake I see in manuscript submissions is a failure to put the main conflict in place quickly enough. In fact, it is the primary reason I reject over 90% of the material I receive. Why do so many writers fail on this point? It's such a simple flaw to fix." That's Donald Moss. So in the early pages, we should make sure the reader knows what our hero wants and how badly she wants it. The novel's stakes should be clear, that is the story question. Number seven in the list, add conflict in the early pages. Janet Burroway says, "In literature, only trouble is interesting." And trouble means conflict. Our story must contain conflict. David Morrell, the novelist, puts it bluntly. Not conflict, no plot can be interesting. Without conflict, you don't have a plot. Conflict in a novel, Albert Zuckerman says, "Must be, quote, the main issue that drives and unites its myriad scenes." That's Albert Zuckerman. It doesn't matter what genre we write in. Trouble should start early, and that means conflict in the first pages. Number eight, take the reader somewhere new, which is to say the setting. Many new writers don't give settings much thought, and so the settings are slighted. It's easy to just place our character in dull places, such as a living room, or park, or classroom, or office, or a coffee shop. Instead, in our early pages, we can put our character in a grain elevator. Or an oil refinery, or a fashion magazine photo shoot, or a plastic surgeon's operating room. These places will add pop to our scenes. All elements of the story should contribute, and that includes the setting in the first 10 or 15 pages. Number nine, and finally, we can make our sentence by sentence writing shine early in our pages. See so much the reader will notice how lovely the writing is. I'll talk more about that in a moment. So here are the things to think about in our first pages of our novel, in a word or two each. One, action, two, little or no interior monologue, three, little or no backstory, four, B, C, plotting, five, meet the hero, and make him the reader's buddy. Six, set out the story question, seven, add conflict, eight, use a fascinating setting, and nine, try for powerful sentence by sentence writing. If you listen to my podcasts and still feel you need a boost, I've made something different. I've created a 20 episode master class on fiction writing, a start to finish course, covering plot, characters, scenes, and sentence level craft. Each episode is focused, and about 30 minutes. The full class, all 20 episodes, is available now for a one time price of $49. If you want structured concise guidance, click the buy the master class link in the show notes to get started. I'd like to focus on sentence by sentence writing for a bit. The most important three words in writing a novel are story, story, story, as Simon and Schuster editor Michael Corda has said, and we should, of course, invent a big and bold plot for our novel and short story. So we can also make our sentences shine. We can make them clear and forceful and lovely. We can make each sentence a pleasure to read. So we'll have a big plot written in strong language. I've recently mentioned showing versus telling and the use of detail, and these are big and important topics, but I want to focus now on what might be thought of as smaller sentence by sentence things. Each one might be small, but if we add them up and use them, we'll get powerful sentences. Here are some ways to make our sentences clear and forceful, even lovely. First, keep the language simple. Usually, not always, but usually, the shorter sentence is stronger than the longer sentence, and the shorter word is stronger than the longer word. Mark Twain said, "I notice that you use plain, simple language, short words and brief sentences. That is the way to write English. It is the modern way and the best way. Stick to it. Don't let fluff and flowers and verbosity creep in." And Beatrix Potter, who created Peter Rabbit agreed, she said, "The shorter and the planer, the better." Some writers are famous for their long and tortured sentences. William Faulkner was recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1983 as having the longest sentence in literature, 1,288 words in his novel, "Absilon, Absilon." That's four typed pages. James Joyce, Marcel Proust, and Thomas Wolf wrote long and intricate sentences. It worked for them. It probably won't work for us. Fashions and literature chains and shorter sentences are in. Plus, shorter sentences are easier to write and easier for the reader to follow. A short sentence has punch. George Orwell said, "If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out." That'll lead to shorter, powerful sentences. Number two, "Avoid qualifiers." A qualifier is a word or a phrase that qualifies another word or phrase, e.b. white, author of Charlotte's web, and co-author of The Elements of Style, called "qualifiers and intensifiers, the leeches that infest the pond of prose." A qualifier reduces the target word. It weakens the target phrase by making it smaller. In the phrase, a little bit worried, a little bit is a qualifier. Here's a partial list of qualifiers, almost as in, almost worried, somewhat worried, sort of, as in, sort of worried, a little, rather, kind of, slightly. I was a bit worried. I was pretty worried. Here are a few sentences in a paragraph leeched of force by qualifiers. Allison thought John was sort of handsome, and he kind of made her laugh when he was a bit goofy. He'd slightly look at her out of the corner of his eye, then hiccup in a sort of stagie way. Mrs. Helm was a rather good teacher, but she never caught on to his pretty funny addicts. Here are all the qualifiers. This coming-of-age interaction between Allison John and John has been made watery by qualifiers. Here's a third idea for strong clear sentences, avoid intensifiers. Intensifiers are the opposite of qualifiers. Here are several intensifiers. Very, really, truly, completely. Here's an example. I was really happy. I was completely happy. I was very happy. I was truly happy. It might seem counterintuitive, but I was happy is a stronger sentence than I was very happy. We can do a global search for our manuscript for these words, both qualifiers and intensifiers and get rid of them, type, control, and F at the same time, and type in the pop-up box, very, V-E-R-Y in the pop-up window. You'll find them and they can be deleted, and it's almost magic. The manuscript will be strengthened, usually without changing anything else in the sentences. Here's number four. Use active rather than passive sentences. The active sentences where the subject of the sentence performs the action, expressed in the verb, the subject acts, dawn through the ball, the subject of the sentence is dawn, and he's acting, dawn is throwing. The passive sentence is where the subject receives the action expressed in the verb. The ball was thrown by dawn. Here the subject of the sentence is ball, and it's being acted upon, it's being thrown. Not all of our sentences need to be active, but most should be. Once in a while we can toss in a passive sentence to mix things up. But active sentences are easier to understand because they are more direct. They have more energy. Number five, keep modifiers to a minimum. This is related to qualifiers and intensifiers mentioned earlier, but the technique can be broadened to all modifiers. A modifier is a word or phrase that limits or qualifies another word or phrase. There adverbs and adjectives. The stately horse walked briskly. Stately is an adjective, modifying horse, and briskly is an adverb, modifying walk. Good writers are wary of adverbs and adjectives. Stephen King says adverbs are not your friend. And Elmore Leonard says, "Never use an adverb to modify the verb said," he admonished gravely, "to use an adverb this way, or almost any way, is a mortal sin." Stephen King and Elmore Leonard's caution applies to adjectives, too. Mark Twain said, "When you catch an adjective, kill it." No, I don't mean utterly, but kill most of them. Then the rest will be valuable. They weaken when they are close together. They give strength when they are far apart. Most modifiers can be avoided if we'll spend a few sentences finding a stronger noun or verb. Instead of the large house, we write the mansion. Instead of the horse quickly ran, we write the horse galloped. So the technique is to limit modifiers these adverbs and adjectives. Number six is to use strong verbs. This is related to reducing modifiers that I just mentioned. Often there are weak verbs and strong verbs for the same action. Instead of ran, we can use sprint, or dash, or raced. Instead of looked, we can use glanced, or gazed, or peaked. Instead of got, as in I got the hammer, we can write, "I grabbed the hammer, or I gripped the hammer." Instead of "I bent over," "try," "I crouched," or "I hunched," or "I stooped," sometimes it's just a matter of thinking an extra couple of seconds to find a stronger verb. A difference exists between "he hit the nail," and "he hammered" the nail. Well, let me add a caution. A "reach" word is one that's just too much. It sounds as if the writer reached for the Thessauras. How do we know when a word is a "reach" word? If the word calls attention to itself, rather than the action or object it's intending to convey, it's probably the wrong word. Chuckled, sneered, smirked, chortled, tittered, ambled, sontered, snickered, gaffod, traipsed, promenaded, pranced, cavorted, clomped, there are many more. If we don't see a verb too often in our reading, such as "traipsed" and "pranced," as synonyms for "walk," there's likely a reason. They are a Thessauras reach. Number seven, avoiding "was" and "wurr" as verbs. Was and were are forms of the verb phrase "to be." They indicate existence. Indicating existence is often not needed. When we can, we should avoid "was" and "wurr," and rather use a more active verb form in our sentence, an example. She ran, if stronger than she was running. She fed the fish, is stronger than he was feeding the fish. She changed her blouse is stronger than she was changing her blouse. When we can, we should use the active form of a verb rather than a verb watered down with "was" or "wurr." This doesn't work all the time. Sometimes, though the use of "was" and "wurr" are the most accurate verb forms, we can't and shouldn't eliminate all the use of "was" and "wurr." But it's often easy to get into the "was" and "wurr" habit, and sentence after sentence uses "was" and "wurr" as the principle verbs. We should always challenge them. See if we can use a stronger verb. Here is number eight, deleting "there." We go from "was" and "wurr," which indicate existence, to a verb that indicates place or position. The verb is there. Often the word "weakens" and "observation" by adding an unneeded level to the sentence. There were three dogs in the kennel. Instead, it's stronger this way. Three dogs were in the kennel, or even better, to avoid "wurr." Three dogs ran around the kennel. There was a young lady eating an ice cream cone. Instead, a young lady ate an ice cream cone. It deletes there. Eliminating "there" makes the observation more immediate by removing a level between the reader and the object being observed. This end of a list on making our sentence by sentence writing more forceful. If we have a strong story written in strong language, we likely will have a big success. I received a nice message from our listener, Wilker. He wrote, "I grew up an avid reader. In elementary school we were allowed to borrow three books a week from the library, but the librarian and I had a secret agreement. As long as I provided her with book reviews, I could borrow as many as I wanted. At that time I imagined myself writing my own stories. As time passed, I had to decide whether to follow my dreams or make a living. I chose the second option and became an attorney. Wilker reports he has a new job that allows him to return to fiction writing and I'm delighted to hear it. The Wall Street Journal had a review of the book titled Enough is Enough, and the second enough is spelled in the title ENUFF. The book was written by Gabe Henry and the review was written by Barbara Spindell. Why are there so many weird ways to spell words in the English language such as the F sound, FFFF sound in the word cuff? Those things at the end of our shirts leads, spelled with two Fs and cough, what we do when our throat tickles, spelled with a G H. Barbara Spindell writes, "Mr. Henry begins his smart lighthearted chronicle of the simplified spelling movement by identifying the heart of our problem." And that's English has 44 sounds, but only 26 letters, and that each sound has, on average, four ways of spelling it. The offers in the book be words cat, kid, chrome, and queen as examples of the letter all with the hard K sound, but spelled differently. Barbara Spindell writes, "Over the centuries reformers have proposed solutions, including adding new letters to the alphabet, removing existing letters from the alphabet, and inventing different alphabets altogether to little avail." That's been the review in the Wall Street Journal, 44 letters and only 26 letters no wonder English is hard to learn. That's it from Seattle today. I hope you can find the time to write 300 words, maybe even more today, in a quiet place. I hope to also. So this is Jim Thayer, in Seattle, please keep tapping those keys.