Nailing Your Opening

After publishing eleven books, I've belatedly come to the conclusion that you should tackle your opening last.

Think about it: Even if you're an outliner, which I most definitely am not, inevitably your plans will change, or at least diverge from your carefully crafted blueprint. How do you know how to write your opening when you aren't even sure where the story will go?

I had absolutely no destination in mind when I began Running From Herself. My only goal was to write a lengthy narrative. That might sound cuckoo, but I'd been burned by reviews of a couple of my novellas that either hinted at or outright declared that the story wasn't fully fleshed out. I always feel a need to interject, "It's a novella!" but I took those criticisms to heart and set out to prove that, after I published my last full novel in 2021, I was capable, thank you, of doing it again.

Some might call it a cheat; I call it "smart", but I took a novella that kind of died on the vine and used it as the basis for my new fat novel. But obviously, my original opening stunk, because the story eventually changed and grew. Boy, did it grow! And I still didn't know what its theme would be or even if it would have one.

I'm definitely a linear writer. My impulse is to start a story at the beginning and let it unfold. Unfortunately, the opening I originally penned, while right for the novella, didn't work for the novel, once it was finished. The original story began with long anecdotes showing Leah's disillusionment with her band. These anecdotes were entertaining, and dare I say, funny, but they read as an unnecessary prologue when all was said and done. The "kill your darlings" saying is annoying in its triteness, but nevertheless it's often true. I really liked those scenes, but they didn't fit, so I killed them. Or at least wounded them. They'd pop up again from time to time, but only when circumstances were right and only when Leah's recall of them helped to explain her current actions. And those long, long scenes turned into only a sentence or two each.

When I hit the editing phase, I knew I had three big weak spots, and the opening was one of them. I saved that for last, but when it came time to nail it down, I had probably ten false starts. My big question with all of them was, "Is this interesting?"  I've personally never given up on reading a book if the opening is boring; I'll give it more of a chance than that. But reading habits have changed. Readers are impatient. They want to know the hook, and they aren't prepared to wait pages to find out what it is. Was my hook really going to be, Leah's band is dysfunctional? That idea can be fun, but it would hardly reflect the actual story that was to come. "Oh, am I going to read a whole story about all the F'd-up things the band members do?"

In frustration, I finally asked myself if I was starting the story in the wrong place. Leah's hometown wasn't that interesting, and her day-to-day life was a drudge. I now knew that the novel's theme was "a journey" ~ both literally and figuratively. Thus (hello?), why not start with the journey? So, right upfront, I put her on the road. That created some intrigue, at least. She's stopping in a strange town in the middle of the night. What's going to happen? Will it be scary? 

I needed to get that journey rolling and rolling quickly. Was my new opening perfect? No, but what's ever perfect? I did accomplish my main goal, though, which was to turn a dreary opening into a compelling one. 

I approached the openings to my novellas differently than I did my novels. No, a novella isn't just a "short book", but it does have loosely-defined parameters; certainly no subplots; and the story isn't a winding one; it takes few, if any detours. Generally, I kept my opening lines short (like the books themselves) and tried to make them intriguing (no, I didn't always succeed):

George Washington keeps staring at me.

It was so ugly, I had to have it.

"What kind of hick town is this?"

Occasionally, one would consist of more than six-to-eight words:

When I saw the archway with "Buffalo Cemetery" welded in wrought iron, I had two immediate thoughts: There are buffalo here? And they bury them?

I don't think those would work for a novel; they're too abrupt. But the stories had to get moving. Instead of 100,000 words to play with, I might have had only 20,000.

Of course, genre plays a big role in openings. My genre, which is--??--adapts well to introspection. My main characters definitely say a lot inside their heads. That probably wouldn't work for a crime novel or sci fi.

AI tells me: 

...different genres have specific expectations and conventions that can influence how a story begins. For example, a thriller might start with an action scene, while a romance may focus on character introductions or emotional moments. 

Here's a nice article that expands on that. And here is another that addresses openings in general.

You've got about two seconds to lock in the reader. (Okay, three seconds.) So, the number one rule is: DON'T BE BORING.

And remember, we know what happens after the opening; how great the rest of our story is, but the reader doesn't. 

It's our job to let them know from the start.