5 Ways NOT to Start your Novel… Plus Some Exceptions

One: With the daily routine.

You’ve seen this before. The hero or heroine wakes with the alarm clock, thinks about what they’re going to wear; then shower, dress, etc., and by page 20, they finally close their front door behind them. This always smacks of ‘throat clearing’. The writer doesn’t really know what’s happening in the story, but they figure some idea will present itself as they keep on writing. Plus, they can tell their friends they’ve written 5,000 words, or whatever. There are, however, a couple of problems with this. In the first place, no reader is going to stay for long with a story where nothing happens. And, secondly, the writer is eventually going to have to come up with something that smacks of a plot. Some threat or action to start the story for real.

The exception: The only time you should consider giving us a small glimpse (accent on small, my friends) is when something significant has changed. A Twilight Zone sort of thing where the hero discovers he’s been captured by aliens and they’re watching his every move. Enjoy that shower, mate! On perhaps the woman has had a mastectomy and has to get used to the change in her self-image. Now her clothing choices take on a new significance. Even here, though, don’t take it too far. A page or two at most.

Two; With dull exposition.

Give us a dozen or more pages on the history of the American Civil War, its cost both in terms of lives and of finances. Then go on to tell us who designed the buildings of a particular town. The impact he had on the agriculture of the area, and then skep ahead a few generations to tell us about his descendant who is, at last, the hero of the story.

The exception:

Only go this route if it’s a) pertinent to the plot and b) unusual enough to warrant mention. For instance, Davy comes from a long line of wizards. He was (accidentally) blowing things up as an infant, even before they gave him his first wand. A brief review of how his ancestors all came to a bad end because of their wizardry may work if you can make it witty enough.

Three: With the weather

Yes, Dickens got away with it — see the opening of Bleak House — but that was a few hundred years ago. A more patient time where readers were not distracted by computers, TV, or any of the other trinkets of modern life. Telling us in tedious detail about global warming and various meteorological trends is well, dull. It tells us nothing about the characters or the challenges they’re facing.

The exception:

If some aspect of the weather is the crux of the conflict, then a small snippet of information may be interesting, as long as it hints at the chaos to come. Imagine you were writing a story about a volcano that suddenly erupts in a small town in Nebraska. You could open with a paragraph about

Little Plow, Nebraska, population 1608, boasts one of the most ignored dormant volcano in the midwest. Of course, everyone knows that one day Holy Smoke, as it’s affectionately called, will someday erupt.

What they don’t know is that day is today.

With this example, I would we be inclined to put this in the first person and have the narrator talk about the population of the town and add that he, his wife and children, his parents and his grandmother, make up the eight of that 1608. And then go on to talk about the volcano. This might be particularly powerful if you use the number eight in the title, And Only Eight were Saved, or something.

Four: With a character or incident who is never heard from again.

Listen, it happens. Sometimes we think of a character who seems really interesting and we start off gung-ho about him. But five pages later, we realise he has no legs (metaphorically) and we move on to someone more interesting. You might get away with it if the character dies and that impacts your hero in some way, but you really shouldn’t spend time describing some character in detail and then just forget about him. No one wants to come to the end of a book saying, “But, what about…?”

The exception:

You can keep this character’s secrets until the end, if you like, but you still have to make him relevant to the story. Perhaps he was a criminal who changed his name and is now the judge or even the hero. Perhaps he died in a mine and his body is found surrounded by gold. Perhaps he is symbolic of the evil or even the virtue to one of the main characters. One thing you can’t do is forget about him.

Five: With a description

Listen, it doesn’t have to begin with ‘it was a dark and stormy night’ to be bad. Description has its place, sure, but not at the beginning, not before there’s a story established. Yes, we want to know the setting of the story, and have some idea how various characters are perceived, but here’s something to remember:

Description is static. Plot is movement.

Several pages of flat description are not only boring, but add nothing to the plot. One of the worst examples of this is the hero who is studying himself in the mirror. This one is such a cliche, it’s laughable. The man examines himself in the mirror. Notes his strong jaw, his glossy black hair, his excellent posture, style, etc., etc. Please don’t do that.

The exception:

The best way to describe a character is to show them in action. This way you are un-static-ing the description. Think, for instance, a description of a flirtatious blonde. Yes, she’s beautiful, but we know nothing about her. Now think of the same blonde pulling off her bikini top and tossing it aside before she jumps off a cliff into the sea below. That got your interest, didn’t it?

Show us the character through the eyes of other people, preferably doing something very ‘him’. Perhaps he’s conning old people out of their money. Maybe he’s bullying a kid half his age and size. Maybe the heroine is being absolutely adorable. Now the story has a pulse.

Final Caveat:

You can break almost all the rules if your writing is witty, Few writers could match the late Douglas Adams for wit. Here’s his opening to The Restaurant at the end of the Universe:

The story so far: in the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Or you could deliver a punch of a different kind as Sylvia Plath did in The Bell Jar:

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn’t know what I was doing in New York.

There are many other examples. Some thought provoking, some fear-inducing, some puzzling, but the idea of the opening is to keep us reading. Do that,

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