When ‘In Media Res’ Overshoots the Mark
I wrote the opening chapter of my novel two years ago. I wrote a completely new beginning over the last ten days. The original wasn’t bad — it’s now being modified to become Chapter 2 — but in effort to start in media res, I started too in the midst of things.
Tailwinds Past Florence is, at its core, a relationship story with a magical twist set against the backdrop of an around-the-world bicycle tour.
Where should it begin?
Back where Kara and Edward first met? When the tour gets proposed? During the event that triggers the decision to actually take the trip? Maybe while packing? Or perhaps five hundred miles down the road, outside the town of Whitefish, Montana?
If that last option seems too oddly specific to be mere suggestion, it is. It’s what I went with. And it wasn’t until I compiled 793 in-line comments from my beta readers and two full-page rejection letters from helpful agents* that I realized I needed to back that train up. To be clear, not a single comment prescribed the fix I chose. Nor did more than one or two even suggest that I opened the story too far down the tracks. But while distilling the feedback I received, and infusing it with my own sneaking suspicions, the fix became clear.
Don’t Throw Out all the Rules
Writers, particularly first-time novelists like myself, can’t escape the litany of rules and bromides that get repeated from all corners. Show don’t tell. Don’t use semicolons. No adverbs! Only three exclamation points!!! Dialogue should be like a tennis match. Conflict, conflict, conflict.
Much of it is terrific advice and worth remembering. Some… shrug.
One rule, nay commandment, is that a story should start with a hook and make the reader ask questions. There should be an inciting incident within the first few pages.
The original opening to TPF had a hook, but no barb. The inciting incident — the true inciting incident — happened 40 days earlier. It was revealed through dialogue in Chapter 4.
I knew exactly what I was doing when I structured the story this way. I seldom read genre fiction — TPF is either ‘upmarket mainstream’ or ‘downmarket literary,’ take your pick — and I’m not averse to slow openings (I’m currently reading Norwegian Wood by Haruki Marukami, need I say more). Nor do I mind a story that smolders rather than erupts in a bonfire, so long as the writing is good. So I tried it this way, hoping enough hints, flashbacks, and simmering internal tension would keep things interesting.
It was worth a shot.
Set the Right Expectations
There were other things wrong with TPF.
I began to suspect one problem upon receiving my tenth rejection letter, a “Dear Author” form response. It was confirmed by a beta reader. Of the 352 pages that comprised the novel, the opening scenes were the most focused on bicycle touring. I even used the word derailleur. While certainly catnip for the sizable population of bicycle tourists (among the fastest growing forms of recreation in the world), I shudder to think how many agents I alienated, giving them the false impression that the book was a thinly-masqueraded travelogue.
Facepalm.
More problems existed. There was no concrete evidence of the magical elements until Chapter 3. There were no scenes from Kara’s point-of-view until Chapter 5 — most agents only request three chapters when querying. A touch of conflict I wrote into the opening chapters for the sake of the 2017 PNWA Literary Contest (it worked, I placed third in Mainstream) wasn’t discussed throughout the rest of the book. What was supposed to be a magical geographical/proximity issue confused beta readers and left them wondering about “the toe thing” throughout the entirety of the novel. Oops.
Do the Work
Fortunately, I know my story well enough (including the lives of my characters before the novel even begins) to know what the solution was. That doesn’t mean it was easy to write.
In the parlance of my critique group, I vomit-drafted an entirely new opening scene last Monday. Yes, I thought, this will work. Tuesday came and I spent three hours crafting the first two sentences. Wednesday arrived and I spent three hours struggling to link those two opening sentences with freshly written third and fourth paragraphs. I took the dog for a walk, ate lunch, played some Nintendo, then went back at it. An hour later, I was physically ill from my inability to bridge that gap.
A change of scenery, a pending critique session, and a twenty-ounce Americano, black, helped me produce something worth sharing later that night. It was a good start. Better ideas came during a ten-mile run on Sunday. More days were spent writing. Then, last night, I read again: a completely new Chapter 1.
The inciting incident is on the page. Kara got four-hundred words from her POV. We see them as a couple before the trip. And the magical element comes rushing in at the end of the chapter, a big fat barb on the end of a shark-sized gaff. Not gonna lie, I think it’s some of the best writing I’ve done.
As it should be. It’s the first thing anyone will read, after all.
*I must admit that it was foolish of me to have begun querying agents when I did — before getting feedback from beta-readers — but I’m indebted to the two agents who took the time to offer equal parts praise and constructive criticism. Their comments helped me see the way out of the bind I had written myself into. Though my book wasn’t right for them, I truly enjoyed corresponding with Eric Myers and Chad Luibl and appreciate the time they took in providing feedback.
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