On Writing Romance_ How to Craft a Novel That Sells - Leigh Michaels [50]
that divided her roof top terrace from the raked perfection of Richard Mallory's Japanese garden. ...
Her boots had left deep impressions in the damp gravel. So much for stealth. She was not cut out for burglary.
Fielding makes it clear that her heroine is no ordinary criminal, so the readers are intrigued into reading more to find out what's really going on.
3. Start with the character's normal routine. Give readers a glimpse of the character's life in the moments before the conflict starts. If you very briefly describe your character's accustomed lifestyle, her normal personality traits, and her usual existence, readers will feel sympathy for her when this pattern is abruptly interrupted.
In her single title Girls Night, Stef Ann Holm shows her heroine trying to take a relaxing bath. Who can't relate to a mother who just wants a few minutes of peace?
All Jillene McDermott wanted was a little breathing room and the only place she could find it was in the bathtub.
Even though she wouldn't be lucky enough to have the tub all to herself before the bubbles went flat and the water cooled, she'd take every minute she could get.
But we also know that Jillene's peaceful bath isn't going to last long, and by telling us that even Jillene realizes that, Holm hints that there are bigger changes coming soon.
4. Start with an attention-getting statement. When the readers are presented with something they don't expect, as in Maureen Child's single title Some Kind of Wonderful, they will read on to find out what the heck's happening:
Baby Jesus moved.
Carol Baker blinked and shook her head. "Okay, Carol. When you start seeing statues move, it's either a miracle or you've got problems." She stared hard at the brightly lit, life-sized Nativity scene that filled one corner of the town square. ... "Okay, Baby Jesus is definitely moving."
Within a few paragraphs, we find out that "Baby Jesus" is actually an abandoned infant, and the heroine finds her life taking a dramatic turn.
Where Not to Start
Just as there are some good ideas for starting your first page, there are some not-so-good ones, too:
1. Do not start with a flashback or include one in the first chapter. Flashbacks are confusing when the readers haven't yet established a connection with the characters and the story.
2. Do not start with a dream or with a character waking up. A dream sequence is usually confusing and hard to explain. Starting with a character waking up is almost always a variation on starting too soon. Instead, begin with the character's first important action.
3. Do not start with a long descriptive passage. Beginning with a sentence or two of description to provide context is often useful, but readers want to get acquainted with the characters, and they're usually interested in the background and the scenery only as it affects the characters.
Prologues
A prologue is a very short scene (one to two pages, in most cases) from a time before the present-day story begins. A good prologue is limited to precisely what the readers need to know to draw them into the story. Most often, it is a brief, intriguing glimpse of a mysterious aspect of the story or the main characters. It can also be a snippet from a time long before the beginning of the story, if that event is extraordinarily important to understanding the later action.
Romantic suspense novels sometimes use prologues to great effect because they allow the author to introduce the mystery and the villain to the readers long before the main characters have any reason to think they're threatened. Romances that involve characters meeting again after a long separation occasionally make good use of a prologue to show a dramatic, defining, long-ago moment between the characters.
But few stories really benefit from a prologue. Prologues often hurt the story by going on too long or by giving away information about the characters' motivations too soon, destroying the suspense. Many so-called