Yes, I know, I am remiss in not having done critiques last night. I also didn’t post chapters in chapter house. The only excuse I have is that around nine I was yawning hard enough to crack my jaw, so I went to bed and slept twelve hours. Yes, there are reasons for this. No, it’s not illness. Anyway, the problem is something in the environment disturbing my sleep, and should be fixed tonight (just got the replacement in the mail). I’ll try to write critiques before going to bed. (I think I have four to go.)

Anyway, so far the biggest issue I’ve run into, with some of the samples sent in, and particularly the one people have argued with me about in email is the Campbellian concept of “The real world.”

Before we start, I’ll point out that the entire Hero’s Journey is a sort of protean thing. I was first introduced to it, not as an aid to writing, but in my first year in analysis of literature, in college, as a tool to analyze Western myths and fairytales.

While it is true that it fits all Western (As in Western civ, not the old west, though those too) storytelling, something that becomes glaringly obvious if you consume some of it, and then some Eastern story telling that hasn’t been adapted in quick succession, it is important to realize it’s not a precise beat count. It’s more of a shape that you can fit the story over. As such, honestly, it is a better tool for figuring out what went wrong with the story than for writing.

If you read the actual book, you see him moving bits of the Hero’s journey around, so the “normal world” might be after the acceptance of the call. Or the acceptance of the call might take most of the book.

All this to say, there should be a “real world” in there somewhere, even if only in the hero’s mind. You should know the state that he wishes to return to (and can’t, no, not even in the end, because he’ll be transformed) throughout the story.

But it doesn’t have to be the first page, or the first chapter, or even the first paragraph. It can be. But if your “real world” is the gentleman sleeping by the hearth with a purring cat in his lap, and your story is intergalactic adventure, if you dwell on it too long you risk giving us the idea this is a story about cats, or about lonely gentlemen or perhaps about narcolepsia. When your story is all about spaceships and space colonization.

If you must start with that kind of very disparate “normal world” (and sometimes you do) you should start with the gentleman waking up with a ping of the hologram-letter from his brother, inviting him to go adventuring in Alpha Centauri. And then the cat jumps off, and while our hero is packing, he arranges for someone to look after Whiskers, and tells Whiskers he’ll be back for her. And then we’re off. We know what his real world is, without either confusing the reader or boring her to death.

Sometimes the entire sequence of the real world and the call to adventure is super-compressed, and sometimes the real world doesn’t show at all, or it’s just a hint at what the real world is.

For your assignment I encourage you to read Phillip Jose Farmer’s Maker of Worlds, the first of the World of Tiers and then Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber.

Okay, so if you write science fiction/fantasy you should read those anyway, like you should read a lot of what came before. (I’ll be glad to give lists of what I think you should read, though, please be aware that my deeper lists will be SF and mystery, as I didn’t read fantasy until I was in my mid twenties, which means, I too miss a lot of the classics. Though i made up for it, here and there. Oh, and yeah, Nine Prince’s CAN be considered fantasy, but not really. It’s more of psychological cosmogony sci fi, which is sort of the equivalent of psychadelic rock, but still science fiction in touch-feel, with fantasy dress up.)

Mind you I’m describing the beginning of MOW from memory, because I lost my copies somewhere along the line of moves (Just rebought them on kindle, but obviously haven’t re-read) but what I remember is a man of retiring age, looking at a house his wife wants to buy. There is disenchantment with his life, and with his relationship with his wife. He ends up — if I remember — in the basement of a house still under construction. And he’s thinking of an Amerindian tribe that used to be in the region, and which disappeared into nothing, apparently. And then he finds a trumpet embedded in the dirt wall of the basement, blows it and crosses over the portal that forms to a completely different world. I think that’s all in the first 1k words or so. Might be longer, but look, his thinking of the tribe and people disappearing is a foreshadowing device already. And it might be less than 500 words. I’ve never counted, and it’s been a while.

Note we don’t see him driving around, arguing with his wife, thinking how ugly she’s become, or any of that. It’s all condensed. But we know what the real world is that — in his case — he’s running away from.

Nine Princes in Amber is kind of guilty of making you think it’s a different genre, by design, though on re-read there are indications that it is not quite right for a real world.

But the thing is, it’s never “the real world” for the character, because the real world for the character would be incomprehensible to us.

So, you start with the feeling you’re reading a mystery. A hard boiled mystery to be exact. The character is bed bound in a hospital. What happened is occluded and they won’t tell you precisely what it was. It’s riveting enough you don’t question it, but definitely the first three pages I’d think I was reading detective fiction. Still works. And there is enough to the mystery to make it weird, that it hooks you hard. So, in that case I’ll forgive the “wrong genre signaling.”

However note the “normal world” doesn’t show up till halfway through the book when (spoiler) they make it to Amber. We’re brought in to the middle of the call to adventure and the character embraces the call pretty quickly.

Or if you want something more recent which most of you have probably read, take Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia (btw, you should be able to see the beginning of all these by opening the “sample this book” on Amazon.) Sure you start with the character in the office and working late, and it takes him like half a page to realize what’s going on. BUT that magnificent first line, which I’m probably going to misquote, because again, I don’t have it right here: On an otherwise normal Tuesday evening, I got to live the American dream. I got to throw my incompetent jackass of a boss out of a fourteenth-story window.

Yes, he then goes on for most of a page about how annoying his job is, but it has dental and benefits, etc. However I invite you to go look at that sample. Remove what I just quoted and the next transition section, about how he didn’t wake up in the morning deciding to kill his boss, and such.

Go read starting with “The Finance Department” — so, yeah, I don’t have eidetic memory (anymore) but I’m looking at the sample, since I told you you should look at it, and realized I could (Duh!) — and read till “the lights were off.” If Larry had started with that without teasing out the very graphic violence (look it is), exciting action, and just plain weirdness to come, you’d think you were reading your average “sad sack in a dead end job” book. At most you might think it was a mystery, and he was going to find his boss dead. If you got to that part. You might not. And the people the beginning would turn off are exactly the type of person who’d otherwise love it. So Larry — who is a savvy and accomplished story teller — hooks you with a tease. Instead of doing the “normal world” of his character, which is frankly at most slightly humorous but not very exciting. So, you know? Keep that kind of beginning in mind too.

And then there’s Friday by Robert A. Heinlein.

Again, there is no reason in the universe you should take a character who is adventurous or has a offbeat profession, or one that we’d consider exciting even if it is the normal world to her — say space colonist, or secretary to the evil overlord, or something — and start with her being bored and blah about life.

Now, Friday is special, because (am I giving anything away these many years after publication?) she’s a bio-engineered assassin. She does other things. I suspect what would be considered the real world or the normal world to her would be the time with her multiple-marriage family in New Zealand. But that’s not where Heinlein begins. He begins with her mid-job.

Note that the beginning is not the main problem of the story. It’s A problem in her job at the moment, and probably she’s resolved a hundred times. Go look at the Amazon sample.

Start with “As I left the Kenya Beanstalk capsule he was right on my heels.” To “He simply watched as they took me.”

Note that the guy following her at the beginning is not the main adversary. In fact, what happens is “normal world” to her. She doesn’t drop out of the normal world till the end of the chapter. So, you know until the that point it’s all real world. It’s just that her normal world is very interesting to us. (Probably not to her. She’s dreaming of vacation with her family.)

It’s also a good introduction to the character. We get her competencies and what she’s capable of. We don’t get a hint of the worm gnawing at her personality till the beginning of the next chapter with “my own stupid fault.” But we feel we know her, and we want to follow her.

Oh, and for the love of Bob, if your character is a bit of an ass, or a puddle of insecurities, or whatever, don’t lead with that. Yes, it might be the “normal world” self and one he/she grows out of, but don’t confront the reader who just opened the door to the character with either a puddle of crying goo, or a character wearing a clown nose. The reader don’t know how noble, resolute and admirable the character will be by the end. They also don’t know he’ll get the clown nose slapped off his face by the challenge.

What your reader will know is that “Dear Lord, I don’t want to spend time with this person.” And you have a good chance of losing him/her.

Yes, tolerance is different, by genre, for boredom or tears at the beginning. But you also need to remember that older samples might no longer apply. People reading Jane Austen — or even the incomparable Georgette Heyer — any time from the nineteenth century to the eighties didn’t have at their fingertips the variety of entertainment we have. I mean, I should know, being a word-narrative addict and having been very broke in the late eighties to early nineties. Even with a good local library, if you consumed (and I did) a minimum of 6 books a day, you would tolerate a lot of boring beginning for the chance at a new story. Now? returning a book is one click away. Downloading the next one is another click. And people might tolerate some boredom if it comes from someone they know and enjoyed already, but they will return that book in a New York minute, if you don’t know the writer and suspect this will be boring.

For the record, even I who DO have a public, don’t have the sort of public I could have and don’t want to turn people off in the beginning, if I can help it.

And people have different levels of tolerance. For instance, both Dan and I read regencies. But he was raised with TV, while I was raised reading often very old books. My tastes were formed by Dumas and Sir Walter Scott before I ever discovered Science Fiction. And a part of that stays with you. I suspect most of your readers will be more like Dan, or the kids raised on social media, who need the dopamine hit fast.

One example of a book I love, and which Dan hasn’t managed to READ through, even with my recommendation is Cotillion by Georgette Heyer.

If you read the first chapter you’ll see why. The character and her problem aren’t even there. They’re discussed, but that’s not the same. And while all her choices are presented, and the problem with those, and the other characters introduced, and I was tallying all the narrative points like tokens…. Dan has bounced hard several times.

I mean, you can have that type of beginning. It can’t be “wrong” because Heyer is an icon of the field. But be aware it might turn off a large — large, perhaps the majority — number of potential readers.

Consider if that beginning is really needed other than “these are the rules I was taught.” If most of your book is something else, why turn readers off from that. Or on to something completely different, meaning they’ll hate the bulk of your book and you’ll get horrendous reviews?

It’s your choice. And I know rules give you comfort. But honestly? So does sleeping on a metaphorical mattress of money.

The way to hook readers fast is to start fast.

So, to go back to the beginning:

YOUR WHOLE POINT IS TO HOOK YOUR READER:

Character – Make sure you have a character. Make sure you present the character in his/her best light. Show us the heroic profile. You can always showcase the pimple later.

Setting – Make sure you have one. If it’s utterly mundane (some are) give us the five sense exploration of the setting (Yes, I can give examples and have you give me samples to critique, if you wish. Next week.) Preferably have the setting feed into the mood, the problem, the character’s strengths, the genre or simply be very interesting.

Problem – Give your character an immediate and concrete problem. Not world peace, but the pebble in her shoe. Not the assassins trying to kill her — unless you want to — but this guy, on her left, acting weird. Not what her dear old granny always said about romance, but the guy next to her who is helluv attractive.

The rest, the high falluting extrapolations of the Hero’s Journey are needed, kind of, to give your book resonance and depth, but they can be changed around more than you think, can be abbreviated, can appear out of order.

And none of it is enough — not vaguely — of an excuse to bore your reader right off the bat.

There is only one cardinal rule to writing for others’ entertainment: Though shalt not bore.

Write it on something and hang it over your desk if needed.

Now go write. I’ll try to do critiques tonight.