Character & Voice in your Opening Pages
It’s safe to say I’ve seen more than my fair share of novel beginnings. Over several years ofhandling submissions for Nelson Literary Agency, I’ve read something like 3,000 partial manuscripts. And though we ask for 30 pages, the truth is I usually have a good idea of whether a story is going to work after just one or two. So what makes a beginning great? It takes a lot of ingredients—and a little alchemy—but if I had to boil it down to the two most important, I’d say character and voice. Let’s look at a couple of examples of how these two components work together to draw readers in.
The first example caught my eye in the slush pile and became Jennifer Shaw Wolf’s debut BREAKING BEAUTIFUL, about young love, physical abuse, and forgiveness. Here’s the opening:
The clock says 6:45, even though it’s really 6:25. If everything were normal, the alarm would ring in five minutes. I’d hit the snooze button, wrap Grandma’s quilt around me, and go back to sleep until Mom came in and forced me to get up. I used to stay in bed until the last possible minute and then dash around getting ready for school—looking for my shoes or a clean T-shirt, and finally running out the door to the sound of my boyfriend, Trip, laying on the horn of his black 1967 Chevy pickup.
Nothing is normal, and no one makes me go to school.
Mom comes in and stands at the door to see if I’m awake. I’m always awake.
These emotionally charged opening lines give a hint of back story and introduce the mystery on which the entire story is based: what changed Allie’s “normal” life into the nightmare she is now living? That’s a feat in itself, but what really seals the deal is that in less than half a page I already know this girl. She sets her clock ahead twenty minutes to guard against habitual lateness but still ends up in a mad scramble (ahem, I can identify with that!). She’s close to her family (wrapped in her grandmother’s quilt) but we already sense a pulling away—this, too, has changed. She’s going through something very difficult (to the point of constant insomnia), but she’s not trying to make us feel sorry for her.
It’s the combination of a strong, unflinching voice and the information she chooses to give us that make this character instantly likeable and deserving of our concern. I had to know what happened to her and how she would overcome it. I had to read the rest of the novel.
Here’s another example, from Sherman Alexie’s THE ABSOLUTELY TRUE DIARY OF A PART-TIME INDIAN (obviously, not from our slush pile):
I was born with water on the brain.
Okay, so that’s not exactly true. I was actually born with too much cerebral spinal fluid inside my skull. But cerebral spinal fluid is just the doctors’ fancy way of saying brain grease. And brain grease works inside the lobes like car grease works inside an engine. It keeps things running smooth and fast. But weirdo me, I was born with too much grease inside my skull, and it got all thick and muddy and disgusting, and it only mucked up the works. My thinking and breathing and living engine slowed down and flooded.
My brain was drowning in grease.
But that makes the whole thing sound weirdo and funny, like my brain was a giant French fry, so it seems more serious and poetic and accurate to say, “I was born with water on the brain.”
What do we know about this character, Junior, in less than half a page? That he’s smart and quirky, even when he’s trying to tell us about his brain being messed up. That he’s down to earth (brain=car engine) but he feels out of place—a first taste of one of the themes of the novel. We suspect he’s prone to exaggeration, but it’s good-natured, and what teenage boy doesn’t like to embellish a little now and then? These are the elements that create a unique voice and an unforgettable character—the foundation for the novel’s great success.
So what can you do to make readers fall for your characters from the very first page? Here are some ideas:
• Give your characters a quirk or two. Does he avoid wearing white because he heard it’s a funeral color in Asia? Does she decide, for their own good, that her pet fish are vegans? By weaving in little eccentricities, you create a character that is both memorable and real. None of us have exactly the same quirks, but we all have ‘em. (I always pick the middle car on the light rail. It ought to be the safest, eh?)
• Let them see the world a bit differently than the rest of us. Had you ever heard someone compare his brain to a giant French fry? Could you possibly get bored with a guy like that? Without using heavy dialect, give a taste of speech patterns and vocabulary that let us glimpse your character’s identity. “Water on the brain,” “weirdo me.”
• Make us worry about your characters. Jennifer Shaw Wolf infuses her very first paragraph with tension: we like this girl (good), but something happened to her (bad) and we can’t sleep tonight if we don’t find out what it is. Sherman Alexie does it, too—there’s more humor, but we’re still concerned. How did this guy survive such an alarming birth defect? Were there lasting consequences? Can he fit in at school? Will he get a girlfriend?
Whether you’re looking to hook an agent, an editor, or a large audience of readers, the same rule applies: you have to do it from the first page. Teens have little patience for wordy stage-setting. Jump right into the story by showing them who your characters are, what makes them tick, and what they’re up against.
Best wishes for your writing!
About Anita Mumm
No comments:
Post a Comment