Novel First Page Essentials

I have rewritten the first page 10 times - so far. Sound familiar? Good. Then you already understand the importance of a novel’s first page, and you could not be more right. Readers, editors, and agents alike are moved to the next page by the first one.

The first line should get the ball rolling with a mighty shove. You don’t get a second chance to make a first impression. The first few lines should render a promise, pose a question, introduce conflict, or use some other such literary mechanism (the hook) that will inspire the reader to want to keep reading.

You cannot write for every individual on the planet, but to give your first page it's best chance at keeping your reader interested, you might want to employ these elements and techniques:

• provide an image or feeling of setting (context within the action) 
• introduce your main character
• capture the reader’s attention with a narrative hook

Context within the action provides the reader with a sense of setting - where and when the story is taking place. Providing context for the action by identifying the setting establishes reader orientation and perspective. A reader who has to reread to get their bearing may lose enthusiasm for your story.

Generally your protagonist should make an appearance on the first page, and as with any character introduction, you should reveal their core characteristics. Introduce your characters with action. Describing what a character is doing or how they are reacting to a situation reveals aspects of their personality. Engaging characterization invokes reader feelings for the main character. Stated simply, we love to love our protagonist and loathe the antagonist. Characteristics such as clothing style, or an unusual physical condition are good characterization builders. The reader doesn't need to know details such as hair/eye color, height, and weight from page one (unless such details are critical to the current action).

A narrative hook is a literary technique used to engage or escalate reader interest. Common forms of a narrative hook are dramatic action, mysterious settings, interesting characterization, an engaging thematic statement, or a combination thereof.  A narrative style known as in medias res, (“into the middle”) in which story-telling begins at a midpoint, rather than the beginning, can be used to hook the reader. Of these techniques, dramatic action or a combination of dramatic action and interesting characterization, are almost ubiquitous in fiction novel writing. Dramatic action invokes reader curiosity about what the consequences of the action will be.

The narrative hook may consist of several paragraphs, or several pages, but ideally, hooking elements will be included in first sentence.  Hooking content is most effective if it is the focus of something important, particularly if it involves a major (or very interesting) life event: relationship, separation, employment, dismissal, sex or the refusal of sexual favors, survival, physical danger, death, and so on.

Using these essential story-telling techniques, you will have provided the reader with an interest in seeing what happens next. As readers reach the bottom of the page, hopefully they will be eager to turn to the next one.

Here is an example first page that fits on A5 size (from the first draft of my first novel) in its own 11th draft form. Decide for yourself whether if satisfies the qualities I have described, and leave a comment to let me know if by the time you finished reading, you wanted to read more.


Chapter 1

       My usual morning begins with smacking the snooze-button of my alarm clock-radio some number of times until being awake doesn't feel so utterly hateful. The antics of the morning talk-show filters past my resistance to waking and reels me into a groggy giggle; not a wholly unpleasant way to start a morning actually. The anticipation of my first cup of coffee motivates me to move my feet from under warm covers to the cold hardwood floor. But this morning, the last of my nocturnal adventures dissolved peacefully with the onset of consciousness and the dawning perception of traffic noise from the street below my window. The air in my room reeked of old coffee that sat too long on the burner – not the pot of joy it would have been two hours before. The clock-radio was silently flashing its bright red digits. Kicking and throwing covers in the air, I scrambled to my feet and hit the cluttered bedroom floor running. I skipped over boots, books, and what-not as I headed for the bedroom door that opened to the hallway. 

     There was no sight or sounds of roommates downstairs, and the bathroom door at the end of the hall was open. I gathered up my jeans, sniffed out the cleanest shirt, and quickly skip-walked in my T-shirt and boy’s briefs across the creaky hallway floor.  I had no idea what time it was, but judging by the volume of traffic noise outside, I made the logical presumption  that I would be late.

* * *

Here are some links to articles discussing first line, first page, and first chapters  …

How To Write The First Sentence
Grab The Reader From Page One
Introducing Your Protagonist
Storyville: Narative Hooks
The 3 C’s of Writing The First Page of Your Novel
The First Chapter of Your Novel

Cheers, and happy writing!

Fast Breaking

I do love early mornings. I wake hours before the sun begins its daily run across the sky; don the seasonally appropriate exercise apparel, climb high to nowhere on the Stairmaster, or jog down the long country road from my cabin to the state highway some 6 miles there and back. I start the coffee brewing on my return from the run (or stepping down from nowhere), then shower. All this is leading to the oracle event of all mornings - breakfast. On work-week days I typically break my nocturnal fast with a few hundred calories in the form of hot oatmeal, orange juice, and toast. But it is the weekend days that receive my homage and devotion to the morning meal.

On these fine weekend days, breakfast will include the delicious animal calories and fat that I avoid polluting my arteries with during the week. I can think of no way better to start the weekend morning with brisk exercise, a refreshing shower and subsequent hot cup of coffee, followed by an enormous caloric intake of animal proteins and lipids: scrambled eggs, sausage, bacon, hash-brown potatoes made in bacon grease, and biscuits with real butter, marmalade or real maple syrup. And nothing gives a house the smell of home like the aroma of sizzling bacon.

Happy fast breaking!

Plot Development

A plot is a series of linked events concerning a character who wants to acquire or achieve a goal that will be challenging to obtain. Each event should make a difference, or significantly relate to a subsequent event. If a particular significant event has no effect on the story line the event should probably not be part of the story.  For example: Jane and John are in love, but John cheats on Jane. Jane finds out and dumps John. John stalks Jane. Jane gets restraining order on John… and so on. Optimally, the events should reach a satisfactory conclusion (John is arrested for violating the restraining order).Also, events should escalate in ‘interest factor’ from one to the next, up to climactic point or resolution.

The story revolves around a protagonist. Other characters are antagonists at best, or collateral players. If the story is told from multiple viewpoints (switching viewpoint between Jane and John) then there are two plots.  Plot one is represented from Jane’s viewpoint – wanting a monogamous love relationship. Plot two is represented from John’s viewpoint - wanting Jane as his main squeeze, but free to play the field as well. If the story were told from the single viewpoint of Jane, the story would have only one plot.

So essentially a plot is about a character who wants something (to win the heart of his/her affection, to be an astronaut, earn back a lost reputation, or evade the law). The goal should not be an abstract concept. If the protagonist wants to “get rich fast”, the goal should be building the next great dot-com website or robbing a bank. The goal shouldn't be something simple or without opposition. Opposition can be an antagonist who wants to stop the protagonist for whatever reason, or some physical obstacle, or some internal – emotional strife, or  mental/behavioral disorder to overcome.

The plot should have a beginning, a middle, and an ending. The beginning presents the protagonist’s goal, the middle describes the effort toward achieving the goal, and the end reveals whether the goal is achieved or not and reveals how the goal has changed the protagonist or his/her circumstance. If nothing has changed about the protagonist’s life or circumstance, the story may have been a theme that demonstrates the futility of whatever the goal may have been, but such an ending be very difficult to portray to the reader. A novel may have a series of such plots or subplots.  If it does, each new protagonist goal should be more engaging than the previous goal, or at least as interesting, and generally the most engaging and interesting goal should be the last one.

The Lighter Side of Apathy

I had to Google "the royal baby" to see why this phrase had crossed my computer screen more than a few times over the last couple of days. On finding information on the "royal" nativity, the breadth of my general apathy grew. The litany of "news" items for which I lament having wasted time on just reading the headline is enormous - but not normally, only today as I verified the justification of and for my apathy. Just to name a few...

• Mayor Anthony Weiner acknowledged messages between himself and a woman not his wife...
• VA Gov. Robert McDonnell announced repayment to Star Scientific...
• Pope Francis' push to bring the papacy to the streets...
• Europe's decision to blacklist Hezbollah...
• Starbucks teams with French-based Danone to create a Greek yogurt...
• Netflix aims to craft 'House of Cards' into 'Harry Potter' hit...

These were "top stories"! 

Apathy, according to Wikipedia is "a state of indifference, or the suppression of emotions such as concern, excitement, motivation and passion". This sounds pretty serious, but still, I find that the proposition does not motivate any measure of concern in me. My absence of interest in emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, and political matters is not what my apathy is about. I am apathetic about your emotional, social, spiritual, philosophical, and political concerns - unless your concerns somehow directly affect me. And I am apathetic about the inconsequential personal activities of politicians, celebrities, my neighbors, my neighbors kids and pets. I am a lot more concerned about dog poop in the park than I am about anything the Prince, the Pope, Presidents, and Pop-stars may or may not be doing in their personal lives, and very very little about what they are doing publicly.

According to "positive psychology", my apathy may be a result of feeling that I do not possess the level of skill required to confront a challenge, but in fact I am probably over-optimistic about my abilities. The truth is that I really just don't care about those aspects of other people's lives. And there are more things for which a fuck I do not give.

By definition, I may lack a sense of purpose or meaning in my life, to wit I respond; So what? Some may feel that I exhibit insensibility and/or insensitivity, and their observations would be accurate on many levels, but still, I continuously and consistently could not care less.

My Truth About Television

It has been 20 years since I unsubscribed my cable television. Truth: If I still subscribed I would probably be a couch potato like so many of you. I love documentaries on history, science, nature, technology... and on and on. The "Cosmos" by Carl Sagan is an all-time favorite. I love movies - all kinds, and particularly romantic comedies, science fiction, historical fiction, and movies  based on true stories. I am an avid Equal Rights (activist) and global science news junkie. I like and have enjoyed many television shows such as Star Trek, Cheers, Seinfeld, All In The Family (did I just date myself?), Futurama, The Simpsons, and a few others.

So what keeps me from subscribing to my local cable company? There are two sustaining reasons: For one, the information and entertainment value does not justify the health risk; yes health risk. According to a research report (JAMA, 2011) by Frank Hu and Andres Grontved , for every two hours of TV viewing, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased 20 percent. The risk of cardiovascular disease rose 15 percent and the risk of early death rose 13 percent. Of course the health factor is about sedentary behavior and not the television itself.

So I could easily argue that my rigorous fitness routine would nullify, or at least offset the harmful effects of sedentary time in front of the television, and the argument would be valid. However, the critical term in the previous sentence is 'time'.

I already spend eight to ten hours daily in sitting in front of a computer, working, writing, and surfing the Internet. If I were to incorporate or replace some of that time with watching television there would be little time left over for living. And by 'living' I mean seeing the world in person; participating instead of watching. Life is too short as it is to spend any more time looking at pictures of it. I would rather be in the picture.

Summertime Writing

Summertime, and the living is easy - but staying indoors to write/work is becoming increasingly horrible. I want to be outside playing in the hills, gardening, on a road trip to the beach..... anything that doesn't include being indoors.

You Owe It To Yourself

Being alive means exercising conscious awareness – not waiting to die, but living life for the sake of the journey – being in the moment to learn, love, and pursue happiness as a reason for being here. And by 'happiness' I am referring to the quality of a whole human life including well-being, joy, and yes, the lessons learned from pain, without which there would be little appreciation of the good.

The Greek word for happiness is eudaimonia, but not in the "joy" sense as it is normally meant in modern times. Eudaimonia more accurately translates as flourishing or thriving; as suggested in Aristotle's description of happiness as "living well". Not that joy has no place in the scheme of happiness, hopefully there would be many instances of joy in a life lived in the pursuit of happiness.

Conversely, a doctrine that supports self-immolation (self-sacrifice) for the "greater good" is an immoral proponent of self-loathing, fear, and hatred. Anything purporting the renunciation of your own happiness as a an ethical value is a negation of real morality.

Happiness is the foundation on which joy, without penalty, or guilt may be achieved. "A joy that does not clash with any of your values and does not work for your own destruction, not the joy of escaping from your mind, but of using your mind’s fullest power, not the joy of faking reality, but of achieving values that are real." ~ Ayn Rand.

The pursuit of happiness is something that you owe yourself, indeed, it is your highest moral purpose, because your ultimate and final responsibility on this planet is to your own life.