Therese busting in for a sec to officially welcome Keith Cronin to Writer Unboxed! This is his first post with us as one of our new monthly contributors.
Several years ago I attended a literary conference featuring a “two pages/two minutes” workshop. A conference staffer read aloud the opening pages of various unnamed attendees’ manuscripts, while a pair of prominent literary agents listened until they’d heard enough to determine whether they were interested.
It was freaking brutal.
The agents were so abrupt, so dismissive. Many excerpts never made it past the first three or four paragraphs before one of the agents would cut the reader off, in a literary equivalent of The Gong Show.
But a funny thing happened. By about the fourth or fifth excerpt, I began forming my own snap judgments about the work I was listening to. And in each case, I found myself agreeing with the agents that no, this one didn’t really cut it, or yeah, that one was kind of cool.
That’s when I saw The Point of this workshop, and realized dang, you really CAN tell within a page or two whether or not a piece of writing is working.
The openings the agents rejected seemed to fall into two primary categories. In some cases the writing was simply awkward or weak (something that reading aloud has an amazing ability to highlight, not unlike the way a black light makes the lint on your clothing glow in the dark). But in many cases, there was simply nothing in the first few paragraphs to make us care about what came next.
I came away from that workshop a changed man, with a newfound sense of how important it is to try to grab the reader immediately. So I thought it would be interesting to examine how a variety of authors accomplish this.
Jane Austen and the Convict’s Penis
As Therese pointed out in her excellent post last week, some authors manage to grab the reader with a single sentence. For example:
It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.
– Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice
Three men at McAlester State Penitentiary had larger penises than Lamar Pye, but all were black and therefore, by Lamar’s own figuring, hardly human at all.
– Stephen Hunter: Dirty White Boys
As radically as they differ, these two sentences actually have much in common. They both grab our attention. They both set our expectations for the overall tone of the book. And they both capture the world view of a primary character – in Austen’s case, her witty but cynical protagonist; in Hunter’s, his brutish antagonist, a convict driven by racism and hate.
I’m a big fan of grabby opening lines – they offer a surefire way to get your first page read. But to me an even more important goal is to get the reader to turn to page 2. So how do we pull that off?
One obvious approach is to fill your first page with action. But many authors abuse this tactic, using it simply as a Bright Shiny Object (BSO) meant to attract the reader’s attention. Warning: if the rest of your book doesn’t live up to that action-packed opening, your reader will ultimately feel cheated.
Other authors set the hook a little more slowly, without any BSOs. Consider these two quiet but compelling openings:
I am in a car park in Leeds when I tell my husband I don’t want to be married to him anymore. David isn’t even in the car park with me. He’s at home, looking after the kids, and I have only called him to remind him that he should write a note for Molly’s class teacher. The other bit just sort of . . . slips out. This is a mistake, obviously. Even though I am, apparently, and to my immense surprise, the kind of person who tells her husband that she doesn’t want to be married to him anymore, I really didn’t think that I was the kind of person to say so in a car park, on a mobile phone. That particular self-assessment will now have to be revised, clearly.
– Nick Hornby: How to Be Good
This exemplifies why Hornby is one of my favorites, as he simultaneously captures his protagonist’s thought processes and sets the reader’s expectations for the novel’s quirky and conversational tone.
Here is an account of a few years in the life of Quoyle, born in Brooklyn and raised in a shuffle of dreary upstate towns.
Hive-spangled, gut roaring with gas and cramp, he survived childhood; at the state university, hand clapped over his chin, he camouflaged torment with smiles and silence. Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing. He ate prodigiously, liked a ham knuckle, buttered spuds.
– Annie Proulx: The Shipping News
In four sentences, Proulx sums up her protagonist’s lot in life, at the same time making it clear that this is a book in which the use of language and rhythm will be something to savor. A shuffle of towns. Skin that is hive-spangled. Nice.
But there’s more than one way to skin a cat – or grab a reader. (When you think about it, why would you want even one way to skin a cat? That’s just gross. But I digress…) While the previous examples appealed primarily to our wit and intellect, another extremely effective approach is to play on our emotions, as in these next two examples:
My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from the seventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This was before kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in the daily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn’t happen.
– Alice Sebold: The Lovely Bones
Yikes – that got my attention. Between the oddly matter-of-fact tone and the young narrator apparently addressing us from the grave, it’s immediately clear that this will be a powerful read, told from a very unusual perspective.
Mae Mobley was born on a early Sunday morning in August, 1960. A church baby we like to call it. Taking care a white babies, that’s what I do, along with all the cooking and the cleaning. I done raised seventeen kids in my lifetime. I know how to get them babies to sleep, stop crying, and go in the toilet bowl before they mamas even get out a bed in the morning.
But I ain’t never seen a baby yell like Mae Mobley Leefolt. First day I walk in the door, there she be, red-hot and hollering with the colic, fighting that bottle like it’s a rotten turnip. Miss Leefolt, she look terrified a her own child. “What am I doing wrong? Why can’t I stop it?”
It? That was my first hint: something is wrong with this situation.
– Kathryn Stockett: The Help
These three paragraphs take us on quite a journey. The first one raises our hackles, as we see that the author – a white woman – has adopted the phonetic dialect of an uneducated African American narrator. Already the needles on our Political Correctness meters are starting to quiver and twitch. And this narrator seems to treat childcare as a menial task, no more challenging or important than cooking or cleaning. Hmmmm, we’re thinking, I’m not so sure about this book… But in the third paragraph we see a wisdom and a morality that lets us know we’re in good hands with this character. When a novel can give us a ride like that in just 140 words – with nothing more dramatic happening than a baby crying – it’s no wonder the book is flying off the shelves.
A Dangerous Way to Think
We all know we’re competing for the reader’s attention, whether it’s an agent, an editor, or a bookstore browser. At least we all claim to know this. But I suspect that deep down, many of us think, “Yeah, but with MY book, it’s different. Once they understand the genius of my Really Big Idea, or connect with my Incredibly Awesome Protagonist, there’s simply no way they could put MY book down – even though the first scene is mostly a detailed description of how my protagonist folds her laundry.”
That’s a dangerous way to think. My own first novel had what I thought was a pretty cool opening scene, but the first really powerful moment in the book didn’t occur until the 10th page. The book never sold, even though it was repped by a major agent. And now I realize it’s likely some of the editors who looked at my manuscript never made it to page 10. Live and learn…
Your Own Private Gong Show
Plato said, “The beginning is the most important part of the work,” and I’m inclined to agree. In the excerpts above, I’ve tried to show a range of successful approaches for grabbing a reader’s interest.
But now it’s time for your own private gong show. Try this:
Print the first two pages of your manuscript – no matter where that cuts off your story – and step away from your computer to read them. Now imagine those two pages are the ONLY portion of your novel a potential reader will see, and ask yourself these questions:
- Do those two pages capture the tone and spirit of your novel?
- Are they the best part of your opening chapter, or do they end before getting to “the good stuff?”
- Have you given the reader a clear reason to turn the page?
Okay, let’s hear from you: did your two pages pass the test? Or did you get gonged?
Thanks for reading!
Photo courtesy deviantArt’s maxattivo
About Keith Cronin
Author of the novels ME AGAIN, published by Five Star/Gale; and TONY PARTLY CLOUDY (published under his pen name Nick Rollins), Keith Cronin is a corporate speechwriter and professional rock drummer who has performed and recorded with artists including Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, and Pat Travers. Keith's fiction has appeared in Carve Magazine, Amarillo Bay, The Scruffy Dog Review, Zinos, and a University of Phoenix management course. A native of South Florida, Keith spends his free time serenading local ducks and squirrels with his ukulele.
Keith, this is a fantastic post. I’m heading back to the opening to make sure I don’t get gonged.
Keith, Great post. It not only makes me re-examine the first couple of pages of my current work-in-progress, but wonder how some novels (mine and those of a number of my favorite authors) made it out of the editor’s slush pile. I’ll be more careful from this point forward.
I always hated The Gong Show – but this is a great idea. You just read my first pages — and I made some revisions based on your feedback. The revamped mss is back in the hands of my agent — I guess he’s the next one with that big mallet. We shall see what happens.
Sometimes we’re not the best judges of our own first pages – I know that was the case with me!
Thanks, Keith, as always!
What a great idea! I will definitely try this on my current WIP. For me, the challenge isn’t just realizing that a piece is gong-worthy, but figuring out how to improve it. I’d love to hear some tips on how writers improve pieces that get gonged!
Thanks for a fantastic post.
Gabriela, one of the most common problems I’ve seen is choosing/finding where your beginning should be. Many of us tend to start out with some literary “throat clearing,” and may not realize that a much more powerful opening is hidden somewhere in our story, perhaps several paragraphs (or pages) past the beginning.
That was the case with my own novel – somebody else had to point out to me that a paragraph on page three made a much better opening passage. I took her advice, and later found a home for most of the stuff that had previously been on my first page – it ended up several chapters later in the book!
Keith,
Great point! I will definitely have to check my beginning and see if I’m starting in the best place. Thanks for a great post!
First of all WELCOME, KEITH!
Great first post. It’s made me think and rethink the opening line of my current project. I need to schuuz it up, otherwise . . . . B’ONG.
“…you really CAN tell within a page or two whether or not a piece of writing is working.”
Yeah, it’s an absolute truth.
You don’t have to eat the whole cake to know if it’s good.
Thanks for the great post.
Welcome, Keith! Excellent first post and a great reminder of how little word count we have to truly hook a reader.
My experience has been the same as yours, my real opener happens around 4 pages in from the first draft. Sometimes further in o_O
I’ve found asking ‘what’s MUST readers know’ helps…do you use other questions to get to this place?
Keith-
Welcome and well done. No doubt many openings by WU followers will sharpen up. As one who has been the unhappy gong ringer at several conferences, thanks.
Now, what about the rest of the manuscript? Truth is, there are a lot of snappy openings in the slush pile. Chapter 14…mmm, usually not as clever.
Thanks, Donald – you raise a great point. And it’s something Therese touched on in her post last week, which applies not only to your opening sentence, but your opening pages:
A grabby opening makes a promise. But the rest of your book needs to deliver on that promise!
Great to see you sharing your writing wisdom here, Keith. I love your examples and am especially looking forward to reading your debut novel in September.
Keith, this in not just a great post, its an IMPORTANT post. I suspect it will send all readers back to review their works. I know it has sent me.
“Jane Austen and the Convict’s Penis” LOL! Sorry — there’s something to be said for a grabber subheading, as well!
Excellent post. I rely on beta readers to be my “gong” when I can’t quite trust my own.
Thanks, Cathy. This is what I was wondering about.
Thanks for a great post, Keith. Timely for me, too. There’s been a bit of a debate among my Beta readers as to how my novel should start, and there are two obvious choices. Do my current opening pages set the stage for the entire book? The answer will decide which choice I make.
Thanks, Keith. As always your words resonate!
Wow. I’m definitely going to do this. I hadn’t thought about reading just the first two pages aloud but I’ll see if they pass the test. Thank you!
Great post. As you point out, it doesn’t matter if WE think page 8 is brilliant, if agents/editors never read that far.
Love your first post. It will sure make a lot of writers rethink opening lines and to come back to Writers Unboxed for more of your writing gems.
Side-effect is you will start getting emails from unknowns asking if you like their opening. I should know. I´m emailing you right now. :-)
Hey Keith,
I think of the “literary throat clearing” as the warm up before the real run happens. Watching athletes warm up is pretty boring. Watching them streak across a track or a city pavement is pretty damn cool.
You create a great visual here. I’ll likely not be able to read my WIP without picture agents standing ready at gongs. Great motivation. Thanks.
I’ve been through the 2 Minutes 2 Pages drill too, and I have to agree, it is brutal. And useful. In just about equal measure.
And while there are lots of wonderful books that don’t have a gripping first 2 pages, it’s one of those advantages that will serve you well when it’s your book vs. all the other books on the shelf at the bookstore. You’re competing for reader eyeballs, and a lot of people will pick it up and scan the first couple of pages. Do you want laundry-folding on the first two pages? Not unless it’s a book about laundry-folders.
Great post, Keith!
You are soooo right! If you don’t catch that reader in your first few lines. Your hook failed!
Good luck and great blog!
Suddenly I feel like twitter’s 140 words are honing my writing skills. Thanks for the post.
My take away from all the reading I’ve done:
1) Yes to cathy opening, but they have NOTHING to do with the story’s quality.
2) Ch. 4 – Most important, (we should see plot point 1 at this point). Hre I’ll know if the book is going in the trash or staying on the shelf for finishing. Authors can’t keep a farce going longer than ch 4.
Interesting you mention The Help. This is one that unraveled but had a fantastic opening, which was unfortunate. I look forward to seeing this on the big screen, though.
Thanks for all the examples and analyses; they were really helpful!
I’m in the middle of revisions right now, and I like my first two pages now. I did have to cut a few little things to make them stronger, but I think my issue has more been letting things calm down a little too long after a cool opening. You’ve got to get past those two pages; you don’t want to be gonged on page 5 or 15 or 237 either.
Keith,
Thank you for writing this post — it’s fantastic. Especially the image of the Gong, because that’s really what it is, isn’t it? After reading a few words or paragraphs or a couple pages, we decide if we want to read a book, or not.
Thanks for reminding us to refocus on the first hurdle for a novel, the opening hook.
Hi Keith, Missed this yesterday. Great job! Just wanted to stop by and say I’m glad you’re now a regular contributor. I’ve gonged myself and rewrote (and re-gonged) several times on my first manuscript. I think it has to do with your point in the comments, about starting at the correct place. It’s a toughy for that particular work. Thanks for the pep talk!
Honestly? I couldn’t even get through that Proulx. The rest of the examples were fantastic, though, particularly Hornby and Stockett! Thanks for sharing this, and for the “2 page test.” I’m going to try that for sure, and suggest that my crit partners do too!
I like anything with a Gong Show metaphor.
Seriously, though, I saw a similar panel at Grub Street a few years back, and I thought it was a great idea. Sadly, none of the featured panelists represented commercial fiction, which accounted for a significant percentage of the submissions that day, so it felt like a lot of panelist guesswork going on.
Keith, thanks for the great post! Time to see if my first chapter would survive the gong.
Excellent post, Keith! You’re a perfect addition here.
Great first post, Keith, and so true. There are plenty of manuscripts and books from which to choose, and you’ve done an excellent job of showing why an agent (or reader) will put down one that doesn’t open well and just move on to the next one in the pile or on the shelf.
I’m looking forward to your future posts!
Having been on the receiving end of the “gong.” My opening scene was a covert ops mission in Panama. Although the book is set in Montana, the editor gonged as soon as the setting wasn’t either England, Scotland or the US. I spoke to her at another event and she said, “The workshop was about entertainment, and we were more brutal than we’d normally be.”
However, it does make one think about whether submitting what my daughter calls the “McGyver Gambit” openings to my books was a good way to go.
Fortunately, the publisher did read beyond the opener, and bought the book. But as a reader, yes, I want to be grabbed from the get go.
Terry
What a helpful post. Thank you for breaking it down. I’ve learned so much. I’m going to go and read my opening pages out loud.
Thanks for this excellent post. It struck me in your examples how much voice matters. There are voices that I’d follow anywhere as a reader and others I can’t wait to get out of my head….
Great post!
Books that fail to start with a bang do get published, but I’d say it’s despite of their dull openings rather than because of them.
Thanks for sharing :)
Late to the party, Keith. Nonetheless I wanted to chime in with a welcome and kudos for the first of what I’m sure will be many good posts.