Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [51]
Let’s start with the beginning.
Openings are important. In a more leisurely world—a couple of centuries ago, say—the novelist had things pretty much to himself. There was no competition from radio and television, nor were there very many other novelists around. The form was new. Furthermore, life as a whole moved at a gentler pace. There were no cars, let alone moon rockets. One took one’s time, and one expected others to take their time—in life or in print.
Accordingly, a novel could move off sedately from a standing start. A long first chapter might be given over to a thoroughgoing summary of events which we are told took place before our story gets underway. It is not uncommon to encounter a Georgian or Victorian novel in which the first chapter constitutes little more than an extended family tree; the story’s protagonist doesn’t even land in the cradle until Chapter Two.
Things are different now. Novels, crowded together like subway riders at rush hour, stand on tiptoe shouting “Read me! Read me!” They compete with each other and with the myriad other leisure-time activities clamoring for public favor. The reader, however prepared he may be for a long leisurely perusal, is not of a mind to spend a first chapter pruning a family tree. He expects a book to catch his interest right away; if it doesn’t, it’s the easiest thing in the world for him to reach for another.
“The first chapter sells the book,” Mickey Spillane says. “And the last chapter sells the next book.”
Spillane, I’m told, also claims to write a book’s final chapter first. His entire book is geared to build up to the impact of the finale, he theorizes, so he can best achieve a powerful climax by writing that last scene first, then writing the rest of the book as prelude, I can see the logic in this, but we’ll go with the premise for now that you’re going to write your book more or less in order, beginning with page one. If nothing else, it makes numbering the pages ever so much simpler.
To return to the point, the first chapter does indeed sell the book. If it is to do so successfully, the reader must be caught up in the story as quickly as possible. Things must be going on in which he can become immediately involved. If you can open with action, physical or otherwise, so much the better.
Beginners frequently have trouble managing this. I know I did. My first chapters tended to introduce characters. I would have them arriving in town, or moving into a new apartment, or otherwise embarking on a new chapter in their lives even as I embarked upon the first chapter of a new book. They would meet people and have exploratory conversations. What kind of a way is that to grab the reader’s attention in a grip of steel?
There’s a trick I’m going to share with you. I learned it almost twenty years ago and I’ve never forgotten it, and it’s yours for $9.95. If I were you and that were all I got for the price of this book, I don’t think I’d have cause to complain. So pay attention.
Don’t begin at the beginning.
Let me tell you how I first came to hear those five precious words. I had written a mystery novel, the second to be published under my own name; Gold Medal issued it under the eminently forgettable title of Death Pulls a Doublecross. The book was a reasonably straightforward detective story in the Chandler-Macdonald mode featuring one Ed London, an amiable private eye who drank a lot of brandy and smoked a pipe incessantly and otherwise had no distinguishing traits. I don’t recall that he was hit on the head during the book, nor did he fall down a flight of stairs. Those were the only two clichés I managed to avoid.
My original version of the book opened with London being visited by his rat of a brother-in-law, whose mistress has recently been slain in such a way as to leave the brother-in-law holding the bag, or the baby, or the bathwater, or whatever. In the second chapter London wraps the young lady’s remains in an oriental rug, takes her to Central Park, unrolls the rug and leaves her to heaven. Then he sets about solving the case.
I showed the book