Book Openings and Second Scene Syndrome

(Note: Be sure to check out the “sample pages” poll results, below!)

Julie Leto wrote in an earlier post

This business is too competitive to have a weak opening.

How true that is! This topic dovetails nicely with a discussion that’s been going on on another list about what kind of book oepnings people prefer.

I’ve recently been struggling with something I’d like to call Second Scene Syndrome. I work very hard to start my book in the right place, with the perfect mix of characterization, action, hints at backstory… but when you are writing something with a complicated history, it’s difficult to get it across without getting your story seriously off track. You work really hard ot make that first scene perfect, to resist putting in anything that would weaken the first scene, and then the minute you let your guard down, the minute you think you’re past that first scene hurdle, all the crap sneaks in again. And the second chapter sucks.

I recently received the following notes from my brilliant CP:

First of all, the first chapter is magnificent. Totally rocks. [snip, snip, spoilers] You ended with an incredibly good hook.

But then, this is where I have comments… the roaring start you got in the first chapter lost a lot of momentum from the second chapterand I think I know why.

The first chapter is active, has dialogue, moves at a fast pace with [hints of the villain.] I can see where you think you need to do a tad more world-building.

Something that stopped me a little (and maybe it’s a personal preference) is that you told what happened [at the end of the first chapter] in a retrospective way instead of “real time.” After such an exciting, moving opening full of action and dialogue, the recap was told in the past which made me feel a bit distanced from it. I think, considering your crisp writing and flare for dialogue, it might make more sense to let the reader “see” that as it’s unfolding.

From page 15 and moving forward, it’s told mainly in introspection with very little dialogue until [snip, snip, spoilers] while it’s important to explain how [snip, snip, more spoilers] is there a way to work in more action than narrative? It picks back up around page 19…

(Addendum: My CP is worried that she sounds like a bitch here. On the contrary, I think she sounds brilliant and insightful and don’t know if I approve of any other label being applied. I know some CPs who are bitches ::raises hand::. They are the ones that say, “chapter three is dull. Cut it” whereas this CP managed to get that feeling across with her “bits” and her “personal preferences” and her other very polite ways of saying, “chapter three is dull. Cut it.” See, it’s all a matter of perspective. ::vbg::)

And so forth. So, see what I did there? I too out all the boring crap, the “story doesn’t start in the right place” crap, the “this is a weak opening” crap, and I shoved it all into chapter two! The temptation to put in a hwole bunch of stuff that the reader reallyd oesn’t care about is overwhelming, isn’t it? Even after you’ve memorized all those handy-dandy craft bits, learned all the rules and how to break them properly, figured out how to write a slam bang (don’t break your arm patting yourself on the back, Di) opening, you can still come up with plenty of ways to write bad fiction.

And that’s what we have CPs for, to draw huge red Xs through pages of our deathless prose and tell us that no one cares. We can do all the historical researc we want, amass sheafs of notes, but unless we’re trying to get a PhD in the subject, the reader doesn’t want to know about it. They just want to know that we know.

I have a new little Post-It note on my screen. It says:

The reader is on a need-to-know basis.

It says it in purple, too, because that’s the pen I had at the time.

Sailor Boy said to me the other day that I should really read Dan Brown (God bless the man and everything he’s done for publishing), because he really knows how to get a heck of a lot of very complex and in-depth religious history etc. into his text without disrupting the breakneck thriller pace.

Good plan. Julie’s right — this business is too competitive to have a weak opening, but we can’t let that be our excuse for cheating subsequent scenes, either. We can’t put all the good stuff in the proposal we sell on and then make chapter four onward plodding dreck. It’s got to all be good. Even if it means we have to cut soem of that really cool research.

Because, some day, if we eat all our lima beans and kill all our darlings and are very, very good little writers, we will grow up to be Dan Brown, and a whole industry wil sprout up publishing books about the stuff we didn’t put in our novels. 😉

Meanwhile: a poll. What do you want to see in your book openings?