(This was originally written by Sarah in August of 2023 and can be found here: https://madgeniusclub.com/2023/08/16/how-to-start-your-novel-by-sarah-a-hoyt/)
I’m going to do a series of posts on writing a novel. I’ve done a lot of them, ranging from “they download into my head” to “this is the last thing I want to write, but I have to for reasons” (The reasons sometimes being money, sometimes obligation, sometimes more complex.)
Starting a novel is serious business. There’s a lot of work in the very first few paragraphs to the first three pages or so.
It is serious business starting a short story, too, but the weight of responsibility is less, because the story moves faster and is shorter. You can start with a catchy sentence like “I’d just died again.” And it’s enough to carry the reader while you set up a two-paragraph problem, which you’ll resolve in twenty pages or so.
You’re asking the reader to give you maybe an hour or two of his time, not to enter in a relationship that, depending on how fast the reader reads can be days, weeks or months even. You’re not saying “give me your free time every evening for a month.”
That takes some hook.
Of course, before you run screaming into the night, you should be aware that for those of us who are likely to read preferentially, your load of “this will have to be good” is smaller. Unlike the editors of old, faced with a 100 novels to read on a weekend, we’re not looking for a reason to reject (my being one of those readers) but are actually reluctant to reject and will only do it under duress.
Still, you need to pull the reader into your book and keep him there.
Part of this work is what you’d do in a short story:
You must have a character. The character must be in a setting (no heads floating in vacuum. Well, you can, but it’s way harder and it must be the real setting, not just that you don’t know how to write setting.) And the character must have a problem.
Now, about the character: the character must be appealing. Or even fascinating. Also, at least in the beginning, let’s make your character either the main character or one of a group of main characters, if it’s an ensemble novel.
Yes, sure, this rule has exceptions. My Shifter series, for instance, often starts with a “pan of the camera” towards the location and just describing a bunch of events from way off. Technically that’s bad. For those books, it just works. Partly because it’s set in a thriller frame. (We’ll discuss thrillers later, okay?)
However for your average, bog-standard book, you should have a character you’re going to stick with. This is because readers are like ducklings. They see a character, they imprint.
So the character you start with should, optimally, be someone that the readers want to spend time with. Yeah, someone sympathetic. (Or so evil you follow along to see him die horribly, but again, that’s an exception not the rule.)
Beware of making him a sad sack though. Your reader’s relationship with the character is like your reader’s relationship with someone who just rang the doorbell trying to sell her something. If the person at the door says “I just broke up with my girlfriend, lost my job and my dog died,” and dissolves in tears, you’re going to slam the door in his face and go hide under the sofa until he’s gone.
On the other hand, if the character says all that, then squares his chin and says “But I’ve decided to overcome all this. I’m selling Fillie’s Brushes, and when I have enough money, I’m going to get another dog, and work on finding a girlfriend?” Different thing. Completely different thing. Now the character is in trouble, but determined and interesting.
Your character should have a problem and a goal.
The problem must be immediate, the goal must be related to the problem and concrete.
Your character can’t do the Miss Universe thing. “My problem is that I really hate pollution and my goal is world peace.”
Ideally, your problem shouldn’t even be abstract at all. Pollution might be a problem, but unless it’s immediately and directly poisoning the character, it’s not an immediate problem. Unless he’s inhaling metric tons of coal dust, and can solve it by shutting down the coal-dust factory, leave that kind of thing alone. Your character is not Greta Thunberg, parading around the world saying things she was told and acting indignant. Unless it is, and her problem is that her parents are making her terrified and using her for money and notoriety. In which case her goal would be to escape him, and the steps would be concrete, though perhaps insane, such as diving from yacht in the middle of the ocean. (But then you’d have to make that work, somehow. Remember not to kill your character in the first chapter, either. Unless you’re writing about the struggles of the after life.)
-Digression: does this mean you can’t have your novel convey a meaning and a belief? Oh, heck no. No with salt on it. Your novel should and probably will convey what’s important to you.
However, do not make your character, problem and setting hand puppets in the pursuit of your obsessions. Your obsessions are, by definition yours, and unless they’re sex and chocolate — and even then! — will earn you fewer readers than you think.
Your obsessions including political or religious opinions will come through. Now, if you’re not blatant and shouting them in people’s faces, they might miss it. They might even come to different conclusions from you. So? If you manage to make the reader think, you’re doing the best that can be done. – End Digression.
Anyway, your character has to have a problem. It might not be the central problem of the novel. For one, you know, the character might not know what the main problem is yet. (We’ll get to the rolling problem/solution structure here, in a few posts.)
Your character whose village was attacked by what seems like a supernatural foe might not know they were summoned by their king, to put the uppity villagers in their place. But she knows her family and friends are dead, people might be after her, and where will she spend the night that’s fast approaching? And what will she do to have a place in the world again? It’s a harsh world for female orphans.
Finding the reason behind it, etc? that will come as she’s trying to solve those problems.
The character doesn’t need a concrete plan to solve her problem, but she needs a concrete plan for the next step. “If she could only get to the tree, she’d be fine.”
Needless to say there’s opposition, and if you can tie the opposition to the main plot/problem it’s better.
So, the tree is guarded by rabbid wombats works. The tree is guarded by undead rabid wombats is better. But only the king can bespell dead wombats, best. Of course, she can’t believe the king wold do that. But all the same. The seed is there.
Your character doesn’t have this problem in midair. He/she has it in a setting.
And right there, in the first three pages the setting does a lot of your work for you.
First, of course, it is a setting. I mean, really, how many people have you known floating in nothingness?
Second, your character will be congruent with the world building. Which means it will give us clues about your world.
Are your characters in the middle of a forest primeval, or a world tree? That’s a setting. And it signals either pastoral world or fantasy. (Or you’re being tricksy, in which case you must take care to give the reader warning that you’re about to upend this. Like your character is in the world tree, but is carrying a blaster. Or his spaceship is just around the corner. Or– Rule that will keep coming back: readers hate being sucker punched and made to feel stupid. Remember that.)
Call it “rethink a prologue” unless you’re using very specific structures which we’ll discuss later. Try to give us all your world building in how things work, what the setting looks like, and perhaps a sentence or two about “how we got here” maybe in the character’s disjointed thoughts. (Only if it’s needed that early.)
If your characters are in space station, you’ve told us the genre. If they then use magic we readjust it to a subgenre.
So your setting can say what type of novel you’re writing without being obnoxious.
Other things your setting can do is set a mood. Is this a funny sort of novel where a wombat can be undead and bespelled? In which the character might defeat it with a line from Shakespeare?
Or is it a grand, tragic tolkieneske novel where the ghost of your dead grandfather is chasing you thought the darkness of the forest primeval to give you a message from the gods?
(Or in the case of my work, often, schizophrenically, both.)
The setting and the words you choose to describe it and what you emphasize from the setting can do the lifting for you.
While you’re on that, use all your senses. Give us the full setting, not just visual. How does it smell? How does it sound? What taste does it evoke? Is the grass silky underfoot?
Use it all, because all of it will set a mood.
One more thing: on head hopping. This bears on character, problem and setting and definitely on starting a novel.
There are different conventions in different subgenres and genres for how much and what type of head hopping you do.
So, let’s level set. Romance expects you to head-hop, by and large. But it expects you to head-hop between the two main characters, and it’s restricted to paragraph. Don’t head hop in the middle of a paragraph. It confuses the readers.
If I’ve been reading a lot of romance, I find myself head hopping like that. This is a problem, because in science fiction and fantasy you’re not supposed to head-hop. (And there’s reasons for that, which I’ll explain if asked, but this is already the size of a novel.)
There’s some head-hopping allowed and ignored for, for instance, giving you the character’s description in first person, because honestly, you can’t have all of them look in the mirror.
In third person (or in mixed persons. Not explaining right now) you can change heads, but you should do it in a different chapter or sub-section. AND every time you change heads, treat it like a mini-beginning. You don’t need to reestablish the whole world again, but give us “character, setting and problem” again, so we know we shifted, and what we’re doing.
Now, why I bring this up: no unauthorized head-hoping in the beginning, not unless the second head is introduced in the first pov (She finds an unconscious traveler, starts ministering to him. Section break, we’re in his head and he thinks he’s being attacked by rabid wombats.) and you then stay in that one through the next scene.
Look, the main reason I return a book to Amazon with a “phe” of disgust is that I have no clue who I’m reading about, or why. The writer jumped heads from the woman the woman trying to run across the intersection, to the man swerving to avoid her, to the cat jumping out of the way, to the postman thinking it’s crazy, all in a page. I don’t know or care about any of them, and I don’t trust the author to have A point.
(Note from Holly: the original post next asks for volunteers to submit work for critique. Sarah is NOT doing that this winter. Sarah, in fact, is trying to get some things done by deadlines which got pushed due to fall’s disruptions. Which is why you are getting a repeat post. You are, however, welcome to toss a sample opening up in the comments here and critique each other!)
Mad Genius Club 
10 responses to “How To Start Your Novel — a Blast from the Past”
Hi. I’m a writer (law, don’t hate me, I’m not good at anything else). I wrote a poem about heroic love with the queen asking her king what becomes of true love when nobody remains to cherish those stories of demons he slayed, the ones who frightened their land (and then he plundered their gold). As I wrote it, I came up with a movie idea with the poem set to music as the theme song. I’ve got the plot, a few specific scenes, etc. (time travel, medieval demons, epic battles, a sci-fi ending as the prophecy comes true, and whether true love lasts forever is revealed), but otherwise it’s fairly inchoate and not going anywhere anytime soon especially since I’m swamped with trying to improve veterinary malpractice law in California.
I really, really want to read the story that I’m imagining but that’s just not going to happen by myself (and I’m a nonfiction writer anyway). So I’m hoping to find someone who likes the idea (there’s more I haven’t stated) and wants to run with it. Aside from a few things here and there that I care about, “you” (the potential author) go for it; I’m pretty hands-off. I primarily want to consume this as literature and not just a daydream I’ve had for years.
So if anyone has any ideas for finding someone who’ll run with this, I’d love to hear about them. (BTW, my wordpress blog is petvetlaw.com) (Have I mentioned that I excessively use parentheticals? (Or is that obvious?))
Everyone who writes has a million more ideas than time to write. My first suggestion is that you just start by setting aside ten minutes a day to write your story.
Some writers have been playing with AI, and reports are that it isn’t at the level of being able to track plots consistently, but you might have some luck if you have very clear parameters for what happens in each scene and track the plots yourself.
If you have money, you can hire a ghost writer. I’m not sure where one goes to find gigs like that, but I know we have a person here who edits ghost writers for publishing houses, so if she hops on she might be able to tell you where her employers find them. Many of the folks who do this work at more affordable levels are not primary English speakers–the USD goes further where they are so they can work for less, so you would need to edit afterwards for the standard word choice errors.
Like Holly says, this sounds like a good use case for an AI chatbot. Start a free account with Grok, Claude or Gemini (Grok is the most free-wheeling, Claude is almost decent at prose, Gemini is considered strong at outlining. I know people who like what with Chatgpt as well, so if you have that for work, go with that). Share what ideas you have with the chat bot, either with an eye towards pulling a coherent outline together and having the ai write the individual scenes, or writing the scenes you know and figure out the rest later. If the chat gets so long you can only do a couple messages before your usage is throttled, as the chatbot for a summary, save that, and feed it into the next chat (you are hopefully also saving any scenes it writes as you go). The free accounts do tend to throttle you for a time after a day or two of high usage, but it sounds like pursuing this would be more something you did a couple times a week in the evening, so may not matter to you. With AI, it’s important that you be specific in telling it what you want, so your legal background may be helpful there.
Imo current AI doesn’t write fiction worth paying money for, but this kind of personal consumption thing where you just want to read a finished story with a certain idea is something I have used AI for (fanfic), and enjoyed the results.
I actually ran into the imprint thing reading the Wheel of Time books. See, I read it in the chronological order. Which meant I started with the prequel. Which was not about the main characters…
Oops.
(Opening scene of novel, Version 7… from last year)
Chapter One: Volcano
“Hurry, Matt. Get those instruments aboard.”
Dr. Ignasio waved his arms in the direction of a stack of electronics boxes in the back of the jeep. The geologist himself hopped out of the vehicle almost before it came to a full stop on the tarmac of the little local airfield outside of town.
Matt Ross looked up from his preflight checklist for the chopper the expedition had rented. It was a good bird, a little on in years but well-maintained.
The doctor also looked a bit on in years, maybe as old as Matt’s father, but he seemed to be bursting with energy at the moment. A leathery hand stroked through thinning brown hair while the other one gestured towards the smoking mountain.
“What luck that I am here now! This volcano has been dormant for a thousand years. We must get readings of the seismic activity, get pictures of the vents.”
Matt put down the checklist as he stepped out of the helicopter. He towered over the scientist by a good half-a-foot. “Whatever you say, Doc. Just put it all in the back?”
Ignasio turned his head towards the younger man. “You Americans and your informalities! At such a historic moment please address me as Dottore or at least Signore Ignasio.”
Matt repressed a sigh. This had almost become something of a running joke between them over the course of the expedition, but he sensed that maybe this time the geologist meant it.
“Of course, Doctor. But put the gear in the back of the helicopter?”
“Except for the cameras. Put those up front with me. We need to deliver the master unit to the base camp and drop the sensors around the mountain.”
Matt ambled over to the jeep and grabbed a sensor pod in each hand. The little electronic boxes were topped by loops of plastic cord attached to the tiny folded parachute packs.
He walked back to the chopper and rigged them to an overhead rail just inside the door to the back compartment. Ignasio peered around Matt’s bulk as he worked.
“Careful with those! It would not do to have them fall off before we trigger the deployment mechanism.”
“Yes, Dottore,” Matt said with a bit of a sigh. Just because he was big didn’t mean he was clumsy.
After going back for the other pair of sensors, Matt hefted the larger receiver unit under one arm, carried it to the helicopter, and secured it in the back.
Ignasio clambered through the front passenger door, and Matt brought him both the still and video cameras.
Stepping in himself, Matt buckled his straps.
“All right, Doctor. Please secure your belt. We wouldn’t want you to fall out, would we?” Matt chided.
Ignasio may have known a lot about rocks and volcanoes, but the chopper was Matt’s domain. He’d been to civilian flight school back in the US, even if nobody would hire him there after that incident with the news copter. Said he was a bit too reckless for their taste.
After glancing over to make sure that the older man was secured, Matt flipped the switches and the rotors began to turn. He let them build up to a good speed while he verified the gauges.
Then with a roar the chopper lifted off and headed for the geologists’ base camp near the lower slopes of the mountain.
* * *
I do these things by complete accident. Mostly because when the characters are screaming in my head, the words come out and things happen. They want this, they’re scared of that, they can’t get this, that thing doesn’t work right and fixing the thingamabob that makes the drive go SHOOM takes very specific parts that are now ever-so-slightly broken and now you need to kludge them to work with some welds, some pressure clamps, spit, space tape, and crossed fingers (nobody sneeze).
Then you get to why is the drive important? Why do they need to gogogo rightbloodynow? Are they being chased? Chasing? Trying to get somewhere in a hurry to do… what? Of course it’s important, important to who? And what’s the context? Who or what’s the antagonist? IS there an antagonist (you can get away with not, sometimes)? Where are they going? Going from?
Then you get lovely little bits like character and plot development going and it’s off to the space races. Rockets go zoom. Or cats go zoom, space ships go shoom, and bad guys go boom? Something like that.
Must find an excuse to use rabid undead wombats.
From the WIP:
“Uncle Jude, Beth says that she saw a glowing white buck. It had red ears, but not pink eyes.”
How did the birdbath develop a— What? Jude’s attention snapped back from the icicle under the basin. “Huh. Where was Beth when she saw the buck, did she say?”
Claire hesitated, forehead wrinkling, eyes looking to the left. “Ah, I think she said the wildlife area north of the city park, the one on the other side of the fence, sir?”
What had Beth been doing in the park, and when? Jude did not ask. Instead he said, “Thank you for telling me.”
Tension left Claire’s shoulders. “You’re welcome, sir. The boys said she was making it up, but …” Claire hesitated. “Uncle Jude, that doesn’t sound like a made-up story, and Beth’s a Sensitive.”
One bright side is that you can go back and completely redo your opening once you have your first draft in hand. Focus everything correctly, move it back or forward in time, change the setting, change the viewpoint, the characters. . . .
Meanwhile I’m working on a work that does start with the heroine noting she’s in a gray void and enumerating the sense impressions it lacks.
June 4, 1968, San Diego, California
It was late as Captain George Morse’s Ford Thunderbird followed the narrow, twisting Catalina Blvd through the residential area of Pt. Loma. It was dark and lonely enough that it might as well have been a road through the wilds of North County instead in the middle of a large city. There was no chance of getting lost, however. The road bisected the peninsula just under the ridge that hid the Pacific Ocean a scant half mile to the West. It went nowhere else. The T-Bird was his one silly indulgence in a life of strict discipline. When he finally left the houses behind and came to a stop at the kiosk blocking his path, the guard asked for his ID despite him being in uniform. Good for him.
“What brings you out this time of night, Captain,” the younger Marine asked as he used his flashlight on the captain’s base ID that still read Naval Command, Control, and Communications Laboratory Center (NCCLC) despite the recent name change to the much less tongue-twisting Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC). Either name was a joke, considering his current “command” if 3 people (2 now, he corrected himself) could be considered a command, especially for a Marine Captain.
“Damned if I know, Private,” was all he felt up to replying despite the guard’s feeble attempt at starting a conversation. Whatever the guard had done to be saddled with the overnight assignment at a spot where the captain was doubtlessly the only person he’d likely see all week, it was surely more trivial than whatever Morse had done to offend the unnamed bureaucratic gods who had saddled him with his own insane duty.
Still rough and not enough for you to judge yet. Also I have to fix calling the guard Private. Have to research what a Marine Captain would call an MP on guard duty. Still in the middle of researching this one, but I wanted to write something.