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.
So…. this is a big and complex subject. I now want to two things from you: Next week I’ll answer your questions on this section. For that I need to HAVE questions, or the whole thing doesn’t work, and I’ll just make up more stuff about magical rabid wombats, and nobody wants that.
Second: do I have any volunteers who are willing to send me their first three pages for a public critique? Anyone brave enough? If not, I can maybe figure out how to write something making every mistake, but that’s harder, and probably less effective. And for the record, I’m not mean in the critiques. I am however truthful and blunt. Without judgement, of course, because I can promise you that you can’t make or invent a mistake I didn’t make. (Yes, I’d get my early stuff, but most of it got lost in the chage from floppies to small, rigid diskettes, because I’m ANCIENT. Like magical rabid eldritch wombats.)
Okay. The ball is in your court.
Mad Genius Club 
61 responses to “How To Start Your Novel by Sarah A. Hoyt”
OK, I’m your huckleberry. First three pages of the WIP: “Scout Ship Trigger”
What did you do?
Sensors Technician Scout-ships Second Class Marsha Klem pondered the vagaries of life as she sipped her Latte at the coffee stand just inside the “front gate” of Phobos Naval Shipyard. On the one hand, as “day after duty” and after being up for the last twenty-four hours straight, she should be back in the barracks in a rack. On the other hand, The Chief of the Boat had called a field day, so no one was in the rack, and this sure beat the hell out of climbing around in the outboard chasing the dust, dirt, and metal shavings that were a ubiquitous part of an SRA. At least they retrofitted the yard with the grav system after we bought the technology off the Chckpop, so a girl could sip her coffee like an adult, instead of sucking it out of a bulb.
She did understand why this had to be done. PNS was a bastard to find your way around in, even if you were a salty dog, so a wet behind the ears, ex-skimmer Junior Officer would probably find himself wandering into the Max Security Naval Brig or something, instead of finding his way to the Trigger, where he was supposed to report. The “gate” was really a very large airlock between the commercial half of the station that took up all of Mars’ larger moon, and the military half. It still had all the military trappings though, including the Sailor in blues with an M-27 needler instead of the standard M-15 that everyone out of boot carried, on his hip, and a second Sailor a ways back, covering the first one with his M-35 Shotgun. There hadn’t been any attempts against bases in the home district, but Fleet Command wasn’t taking any chances. All the smart money was on the Sarkari reacting to what we had been doing with some sort of Guerilla tactic sooner or later.
As she looked up again, she saw a fairly tall young Lieutenant JG showing his ID to the gate guard. He was pulling a ships-locker behind him on a gravplate, so this could very well be her guy, she thought.
*****************************************************************************
Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith put his CAC card back in the pouch hanging around his neck, returned the Gate Guard’s salute, and pulled his locker on past the “Blue line” demarking the separation between Phobos Interstellar Space Port, and Phobos Naval Shipyard with a “come along R2″. There had recently been a resurgence in old movies, stuff from back in the twentieth century, and with it had come a return of some catch-phrases. He smiled as he remembered one sailor on the Blyskawica that had actually painted his locker to look like the fictitious ‘Droid that was the hero of the fifteen Star Wars movies.
When he looked up there was a redheaded second-class Sensor Tech with a Scout ship Qualification pin on her chest sipping a coffee and smirking at him… Dick figured she had to be his escort to the Trigger. Sure enough, as soon as the gate guard finished verifying his Common Access card and the orders that were stored in it with the base data net, she slammed the last of her coffee down and walked over.
She popped a salute, and gave him a “Good Morning Sir, Lieutenant Bradford-Smith?”
“Yes, are you my escort to the Trigger, P.O.?”
“That I am. Sensors Tech, Scouts, Marsha Klem sir.”
“P.O. Klem, is an escort really necessary? I did manage to find my way to the bathroom this morning all by myself…Figured out how to seal my suit too.”
“LT, I’ve been on the Trigger for two years, I got my comets before we pulled in for SRA. I still get turned around in this warren every once in a while. To add insult to injury, our implants don’t have full data for the layout. Well, that’s not quite right, you could find your way following the carrot from your implant, but you’ll get there tomorrow sometime.
“The implants don’t have the interior of any shops, and they don’t have the layout of the secure areas either until you become Ships Company and get the download. Even then, they don’t have some places on their access, because we don’t have the need to know. Oh, and they vector you way wide of some of the places, like Data Reduction, the Marine barracks, the Refueling section, the High-Security Brig, and the Special Weapons Armories. Trust me, sir, you want a guide.”
With that comment made, she started leading the lieutenant down the main thoroughfare of the yard, a tunnel big enough to hall the main engines of a Parche class down, with room to spare. About fifty meters down, she ducked into a machine shop on the left, went down the middle of it for a hundred meters or so, and then up a stairway and out, headed back in the direction they came in on. Dick was trying to follow and track the path on his implant’s HUD, but soon admitted to himself that either he was hopelessly confused, the P.O. was doing some sort of four-dimension navigation shit without benefit of a nav system, his implant had intentional blanks in it, or maybe all of the above.
About an hour later they got to the dock that Trigger was berthed in. As Dick looked at his new home, he thought that she wasn’t much to look at:
According to the implant she was 110.3 meters long, with a 15-meter beam not counting the propulsor pods sticking out to port and starboard, and the dimensional rotation gear sticking down forward looking like an ancient Greek ram. All the turrets were out, the two main guns fore and aft, and the anti-torpedo turrets above and below. They had the micro meteor dome, (really nothing more than a thick dome of ten-layer chobum armor over the sanitary tanks at the front of the boat) removed, and parts of the sensor net were being worked on. The torpedo tubes were open, and there were yard birds crawling all over her doing various things that he couldn’t identify at this range.
Before they got to the brow, Klem looked back at him and asked, “Hey, LT, did you ever do anything really bad? You know, like have sex with the admiral’s teenage daughter, run over the captain’s cat? Piss in a senator’s coffee?”
“No… Why would you ask me a question like that?”
“Just trying to figure out why you got sent HERE.”
“Well, PO, that’s a story that maybe I’ll tell you over beer one day in a foreign port. For now, let’s just say I’m here to learn. And like everyone else, I’m a volunteer.”
At the brow to the boat, Dick walked up and saluted the Petty Officer of the Deck: “Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith reporting aboard. My orders are imprinted.” With that, he handed the young Machinists Mate on watch his CAC and waited while the man on watch took his card, placed it against his own, and read the result, then returned his salute.
“XO’s on-board sir, Captain’s ashore at a briefing.”
As Dick walked onto the brow, Marsha followed him, with a quick salute to the POOD and a muttered “permissiontocomeaboard?” The POOD saluted back, already turning back to look at the entrance to the graving dock.
“LT, if you’ll hold on a second, I’ve been told which stateroom is yours, so you can drop off your gear before seeing the XO.”
After transiting the airlock into the boat, Dick followed her to one of the staterooms in officer country, as he expected, he had the second smallest stateroom and was sharing it with an Ensign who apparently already had moved to the top rack. While Dick was locking his ship’s locker into the receiver on the deck, and doing a quick once-over of his uniform, Marsha headed off to check in with her division.
Well, best get this over with, Dick thought to himself after giving his kakis a last look in the tiny mirror of his new home. It was only a fifteen-step walk to the Executive Officer’s stateroom and office.
Knocking on the open-door frame, Dick announced himself: “Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith reporting aboard sir.”
The XO, Lieutenant Commander William Safford according to the plaque on the door, looked up from the screen he was working on. “You’ve been on board for fifteen minutes Lieutenant. I assume your gear is stowed then?”
“Locked down and pinned in place, sir. Petty Officer Klem directed me to my Stateroom.”
“What do you think of her?”
“She seems competent, Sir.”
“Glad you think so, she’s yours.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“You’re the new Sensors officer.”
Oh boy, Dick thought to himself, he hasn’t seen the report yet… This is going to suck.
Definitely need to run it through a good spell check program, then have 2-3 beta readers catch the slip-through mistakes. For example, Khakis instead of Kakis, latte need not be capitalized unless it is the name of a particular brew, and abbreviations such as SRA should be avoided until defined, and concentrate on the tenses and viewpoints. I’m available.
Thanks. The trouble is spell check says those are fine. When I finish I’ll be looking for beta readers, and will keep you in mind.
SRA is described a little later (like a half page later) and No, I’m not doing away with it, it and some other TLAs (most explained in the text) are fundamental to the setting. Guess what, even some military professionals don’t really know what some of the TLAs mean, they have to pick it up out of context.
Spell checking is the definition of “necessary but not sufficient”. Yes, you spell the word right…. but is it the right word?
Okay, guys? writing is not copy editing. Copy edits are LAST PASS
THANK YOU. I appreciate the feedback but I didn’t post it so that people could pick apart my spelling. That’s why I have editors. This exercise is more mechanics of writing, not grammar 101.
Precisely. This is not grammar/spelling.
My apologies. Wasn’t trying to start trouble or incur wrath. I’ve met Bill and enjoyed his stories; I was just trying to add to the issue of what’s needed when writing a story
Sent it to me on email. First two initials, last name at hot mail
compliance
How about a YA novel? I’ve got The Young Knight, the Fey Maiden, and the Bridge Troll well underway (at my normal glacial writing pace) that I’ve been posting one chapter at a time to get feedback. Came directly out of a discussion I had with Max Florschutz about Axtara: Banking and Finance not having elves in it. It poked my inner muse, I suppose. I like elves 🙂
Well, now you’ve done it. I’m going to actually have to start the story I’m brainstorming instead of just toying with the idea, the better to develop questions. I hope you’re happy x-p
I would like to know everything I’ve done wrong here:
On that pleasant spring evening it was not enough for Kaede to simply sit through the ceremonies for the King of the Gods. She had to behave properly as well, as was expected of the eldest daughter of the world’s richest man. She sat with her legs folded formally beneath her and watched the Shogun’s humorless daughter wave her sword around before them in invisible battle against an excrutiatingly slow enemy. Kaede began losing her own battle against the horrible boredom the event inflicted upon her. She managed to suppress a yawn but could not prevent her hand from reaching up to scratch an itch under the black hair piled up on her head.
“Kaede, don’t fidget.”
Kaede shot a look of annoyance at her maid Yura, sitting just behind her and her mother. Despite her stern words there was not a cross line on her face, just a small smile on her lips that Kaede liked to mimic. She did not mirror the expression this time, turning her glower back to the Shogun’s daughter and her shiny sword and the slow, boring dance even she knew by heart at this point. She had certainly seen it enough times, and closing her eyes for a too-brief moment she could feel it, too. She did not need them to see what Adachi was doing with that blade. All she needed was to concentrate a little and her talents would tell her everything there was to know about the strip of sharpened metal and its movements. A swift, strong stroke popped her eyes back open. There was no denying the other girl’s skill. Then that small smile appeared on her face.
It would be hilarious to turn that thing into a giant phallus, she thought. It took every last ounce of restraint she had to stop herself from using her magnetic abilities on that sword. This ruled out being able to prevent a mischievous expression from spreading across her face. She felt a hand on her shoulder and ignored it. Yura had nothing new to say to her. She had promised to stay out of trouble for at least Adachi’s little sword-dance in the King Of The Gods’ honor and she meant to keep her promise. She had drinks to look forward to at the dinner portion of the King’s celebration, and she would find plenty of trouble to get into then. She had friends in the Shogun’s guards and they were always fun to drink with.
Adachi’s sword dipped over her head and as she brought it down it twisted in her hands and swiped by her face. She jerked her head away and fell out of her stance. The Shogun’s daughter’s fierce expression remained unchanged and she stepped forward to push through the steps once more, but the sword again looped oddly through the air, twisting her wrists and again pulling her from her stance. A murmur passed through the crowd and although her mother did not look at her Kaede felt the bonfire of the (comparatively) old woman’s rage light up beside her. Her maid poked her, hard, several times, and she looked over her shoulder with a baffled expression.
“Wasn’t me!” she hissed.
Her mother’s bony fingers gripped her chin and forced her face back to Adachi who had wrestled the sword back under control. Kaede focused on the blade. She could feel it slicing through the air, feel that there was something else there—
Who did that? Who could have wielded her sword away from her like that? Kaede summoned the meager remains of her willpower and kept her head straight. Her eyes would not stay on Adachi, they strained left and right to pick out anyone she knew was a fellow wielder. I’m gonna get in trouble for this, and that is a stinky pile of horse excrement…
Adachi swiped the sword through the air one last time and earned a smattering of polite applause. She turned to the Shogun behind her and bowed deeply to him, turned to her right and bowed to her master, and then finally turned towards Kaede and bowed to the audience. Her eyes lingered on Kaede’s as she came out of her bow and Kaede knew that her reputation had unfortunately preceded her.
“Let us take a moment to freshen up and gather ourselves before the Peace Celebration feast, shall we?” Kaede’s mother stood stood and smiled sickly-sweet down at Kaede and her maid.
“Of course, Kuriko-sama,” the maid said, bowing her head to the floor before rising to her feet.
Kaede kept her mouth shut and followed the two women. She glanced back at the demonstration ground. Adachi was on her hands and knees in front of the Shogun, forehead and fingertips pressed to the ground as he growled at her. Before they turned the corner Kaede noticed the Shogun’s daughter’s sword master was there with his forehead planted to the ground as well.
I hope mother-sama doesn’t expect that horse excrement from me…
Kaede’s mother found a nice, empty room in which to freshen up. This empty room was not near the Tenka Palace’s Main Hall, and instead of sliding paper panels that could all open to allow a summer breeze to blow through, the walls were heavy wood, lacquered to shine even without the benefit of outside sunlight, and it was warm and stuffy inside. She stopped in the middle of it and turned to face Kaede.
“You promised.”
“I did promise.”
Her mother took a deep breath, readying her next accusation.
“It wasn’t me.” She knew it would make infuriate the old woman to cut her off like that, but Kaede could never resist.
Her mother’s cold, dark eyes narrowed, her anger drawing creases across her severe face. Kaede snorted at her, amused as ever at the look.
“Really, if it was me, I’d definitely tell you. I don’t care if I get in trouble. But I promised and I kept my—”
Her mother swatted her across her face.
“I didn’t do it!”
Her mother slapped her again, harder, the crisp smack turning the warm spring air frigid.
“Don’t you lie to me,” she said. “Don’t you dare stand there and lie to my face. We all saw what happened, and you’re the only one who could do that. You’re the only one with that kind of ability. Don’t lie. You’re going to call the wrath of the King Of The Gods down upon our family and you will be punished if you keep acting like this, on a day in His honor, no less.”
Kaede felt her anger rise at the tear rolling down her stinging cheek. She glared at the old woman but kept her mouth shut.
*************************
As for questions…
How do I know if I’m being too self-indulgent in certain passages? Are there any tricks or tips to titling your novel (I’m terrible at coming up with titles)?
Send to hotmail.
Understood. Thank you.
I mine poems. One poem per series. I’ve got three titles taken from A.E. Housman’s Epitaph to an Army of Mercenaries; eight from Kipling’s Sons of Martha. Those poets talk real purty.
I do this too. Kipling. Tennyson. Random poem books.
SOMETIMES THOUGH, YOU CAN’T GET THE RIGHT TITLE FOR A LONG TIME.
Darkship Thieves went through 4 titles. Finally got this title at the suggestion of a beta reader.
For the record, in retrospect, A Few Good Men was the WRONG TITLE.
I slapped A Diabolical Bargain on that book I think a week before I published.
At the other extreme, Jewel of the Tiger was the product of a random generator of cliche fantasy titles, and then I wrote the story.
What’s really annoying is when you write the story to a title, and it doesn’t fit. Crow Curse was not originally Crow Curse.
And The Maze, the Manor, and the Unicorn was originally “Lady-In-Waiting” when I hoped to sell it to a magazine, but as a stand-alone, the punning title doesn’t work.
It was a dark and stormy night ….
What do you mean, no to-be verbs? Awwwwww.
Every once in a while I sit down to start something new and I have to struggle desperately to avoid using “It was a dark and stormy night…” One day, though, I will fail and I will use it and I will not feel shame, but perhaps relief at getting it out of my system!
Lackey has my favorite take on that. It’s very ‘These people!’
“It was a dark and stormy night.”
“Must you even THINK in cliches, woman?”
“Well, it IS damn it!”
And more conventional opening information proceeds from there.
Musically, even.
That’s another good one. I was talking about the opening scene from Oathbreakers.
bah. use all the to be verbs you want. Make it interesting.
Nope, just Snoopy typing on his dog house 🙂
I would never begin “It was a dark and stormy night.”
I would begin
“Rain hammered on the roof. Wind howled about the roof. Isabella lay on the couch and futilely wished that Jack had arrived earlier. She knew better than to wish he had not set out and been caught in this.”
Or even
“Trees bent over in the wind, barely visible in his lantern’s light. Rain hammered on his head, and his hood did not shield his face. He could only keep the lantern safe from the downpour.”
I’ll send one if you want more.
How many do you need?
well, I wanted one, but I’ll take up to five. The last time I asked for this, I got ONE. So many brave people.
I am also willing to send something in.
fine. Ten. I’ll do two a week. BRAVE PEOPLE.
Sent. Not brave. Just I want to learn.
“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.”
WHY MUST YOU REMIND ME OF THINGS I HAVE WRITTEN ELSEWHERE?! For the hero to be concerned about world-ending events, you need them to be worried about *their* slice of the world PERIOD. Otherwise, it doesn’t work. See article here for more: https://carolinefurlong.wordpress.com/2023/07/31/writerly-sound-bites-number-14-saving-the-world-what-does-that-actually-mean/
I’m game. Do you want it in-thread, or as an email?
At the time I went to post the question, WP said we’re only four comments, and none of them addressed the question.
But now that I hit send…
Bugger.
email. But be aware I have three already. I think I’ll cut off at 5, because time, and also this will take a month of posts.
For point-of-view, what you have to figure out is what the central point of the story is. If it’s the heroic journey of a single person, you should mostly keep to their POV, whether it’s first or third. If it’s a relationship, use the POV of each of the principals. If it’s an event, multiple POVs around the event are perfectly fine.
If you lose the focus from what your central point is, that’s when the reader gets confused. And a confused reader is an unhappy reader, and an unhappy reader stops reading.
Yeah. Of course. You go where the pain is greater, and the action greater.
And for those of us who like hopeful stories, the greater the pain, the more satisfying the triumph.
There was a writer whose book was getting complicated, and I wondered how she was going to pull off the success, when she ended with “nukes fall, everybody dies” (aside from the protagonist and protagonist’s love interest.) Sorry, NO. You got me invested in a bunch of side characters and then killed them all off? Never again.
Especially since it was seeming to telegraph a potential happy ending.
Have you gotten 5 yet? I’m up for a brutally honest critique.
I have that, but I decided to go to ten, and I might put them up on the weekends afternoons.
I’d like to try!
“Steam, lads! Give me steam!”
Angus had a way of bellowing orders that could be heard over the cacophony of a steam locomotive. He was an engineer—both kinds—but had started his career as a locomotive operator. He reached up for the whistle cord and blew a quick double blast—highball—and opened the throttle valve. I stuck my pick into the tender and forked a kilo of moxcoal into the firebox as the locomotive began to move.
“How’re we doing, Angus?” I asked.
He looked at the status display, backhanding the touch-sensitive LCD with a corner of his glove. He was a burly man, powerfully built, and his head was clean-shaven but for his eyebrows and mustache. “Ach,” he said. “Let’s get her up to speed, lad, before we stoke her any more.” He bumped the throttle another notch and made a minute adjustment to the Johnson bar.
My other compatriot, Tan Ingram, took his foot off the discover and the firebox closed.
“This whole exercise is for naught if we burst the boiler,” Tan said.
“Teach your grandmother to knit,” Angus said; Tan shrugged.
I kept an eye on the pressure display. The boiler was running slightly over 1,500 kilopascals of pressure—smack in the middle of old 441’s yellow arc. We were already going faster than trains usually went—almost 50 kilometers per hour—but Angus inched the throttle valve open further and the unburdened locomotive responded instantly.
441 was one of Angus’ favorites. She’d been the first locomotive he’d driven. She was one of the early MacInnes prototypes, built in the Berkshire configuration (2-8-4). They’d experimented with an extra set of cylinders, and she used rotary valves in her steam chests; the extra cylinders were for secondary expansion and gave her a better top end than even modern locomotives. But her riveted boiler restricted her to lower working pressures, and that had doomed her to freight service a mere decade after she’d first been built. Angus had bought her after the railroad had used her up, some twenty years ago, and refurbished her himself. The government had bought her from him, though, because she was perfect for what lay ahead of us.
There was still the problem of her riveted boiler but Angus, Tan, and I had fixed that: we’d welded straps around the seams. She was tight. Ugly, but tight.
I stepped to the back of the cab and took a breather while Angus fiddled with the controls. It was hot in the cab (which is not surprising) and outside a cool drizzle was falling. It had dawned wet, and cloudy, and cool, and the weather had showed no sign of improving, but now the dankness was welcome to me. The track here was rough, and the unusually high speed we moved at made the cab floor rattle and buck uncertainly as our speed crept ever higher.
Angus finally threw the Johnson bar hard over, putting the steam cylinders into full expansion; there was a brief surge of acceleration. He chewed at the corner of his mustache for a moment, then turned to me. “Lads…let’s get a wiggle on.”
“Aye,” I agreed, and stepped back into the cab. As I said, Angus was an engineer; it was hard for him to do what he now had to do: open the throttle valve wide open, and leave it there.
“Let’s go,” I said to Tan, and he stepped on the discover. I forked a kilo of moxcoal in, and then he did, and we continued to alternate for at least a minute before Angus had us stop again.
Even the best moxcoal tends to be sticky; my arms were aching, and Tan rubbed his biceps. The status displays were alternating between yellow and red, and the boiler pressure stood at 1,650 kilopascals—right on the edge of the red zone. Of course, those gauges were calibrated for a riveted boiler….
Tan noticed the speed display and looked sick—we were steaming at nearly a hundred and thirty kilometers per hour. The locomotive was now shimmying and shaking like a living thing, the draught air roaring into the firebox, the smokestack pouring out thick, acrid, sooty smoke.
Angus clapped him on the back. “Wot’re ye looking so pale about? This’s just a wee ride in the country!”
“How far is it?” I asked. I almost had to shout to hear myself over the noise.
“Not very. C’mon, lads; stoke her.”
“Aye,” I said, and we started stoking the boiler again. Stepping on the discover gave a peek into Hell, and the cover itself was beginning to glow a dull red.
“How’s our water?” Tan asked.
“Let me worry about that,” Angus said.
“Angus, if we uncover the crownsheet—”
“Ach, I told ye to teach your grandmother to knit, lad!”
That acrid, sooty smoke began to seep around the edges of the firebox cover. I knew what that meant; the smoke box at the front of the boiler couldn’t empty itself fast enough, despite (or, perhaps, because of) the exhaust steam that acted to produce draught. The exhaust steam emptied under the smokestack, which forced smoke out and drew air into the firebox. But if too much steam was being vented, there wasn’t enough room for the smoke.
No. first two initial last name, at hot mail, please.
Yes, reading comprehension is always a good thing. I apologize and have sent email.
Oh no, I don’t know hotmail addy.
see previous comment for answer
I took you up on your generous offer, and my draft has been sent. Thank you for this opportunity!
My opening chapter is four pages, in (approximate) Shunn format. So I am sending all four.
c4c
Didn’t see this until today. Is the offer still available? Afraid my opening is absolutely schizophrenic, unfortunately.
Sure. I have eight or nine. Might be the longest post on this blog ever. 😀
But at least the embarrassment will be spread out, right?
Thank you. It should be heading for your inbox, working title: Meeting Place.
Sorry about the delay. Things are kind of nuts around here.
I think they’re nuts everywhere. And I’m laughing because I thought you were older than I. LOL
Heh. Well, I do work in a field were most of the people I work with are that age range. One is bound to pick up the mannerisms, if nothing else.
I have a question: If you introduce characters in the Protag’s Ordinary World setting that have a working relationship with your main character but then in a chapter or so, your main character completely leaves that “Ordinary World”, is it a necessity to eventually bring those characters back into the story? Because the idea I have for my Protag is that she is leaving all that behind and never returning to the same. I want to demonstrate a kind of “working/personal” life for my protag before her entire world is upended and removed but I hesitate over whether or not I will be setting up an expectation that they will come back into the story. I mean, right now, Its not really on my radar to do so, but I dont imagine I might decide later on that I could loop one or more of them back in. I just dont want to have to think about it at least for this first book.
No. I meant the opposite. Unless the characters continue, do not take a lot of time introducing them, etc.
PARTICULARLY for SF and fantasy, consider abbreviating your “normal world”.
What does the reader need to know: the normal world exists; the character has problem x in it; the character leaves it.
That’s it. Unless the problems are people…. you don’t need them.
Look at the first of book of Phillip Jose Farmer, the world of Tiers. He’s shopping for a retirement hope. Wife (whom he’s disenchanted with) is upstairs with realtor. He is in basement, sees a trumpet (don’t remember if buried in all?) blows it. Portal opens, he crosses. Half the front page. Genre firmly established.
Excellent thank you! I should listen to my first instinct (and instruction from others) more.
Actually the expectation you’ll set is that you’re writing contemporary, urban fantasy or even “slice of life.
Can you do it by giving character leaving somewhere where the people annoy her (or whatever) and thinking how she wants to leave all this behind?
Then jump into the story.
That was actually how I was trying to structure it and I had the impetus for the “Leaving the Ordinary World” happen much sooner by the end of the first chapter but have been waffling over just how much I would need to show of my protag before that happens. Thank you – feel much better now 🙂
more like the end of the first page, or you risk people thinking they’re reading one thing, then getting suckerpunched when it changes.
Those are hard to juggle. It may be wise to use ways that downplay their significance to avoid that expectation.