(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!)