Among the graduate-level courses I teach at Harvard University’s Extension School is one called “Fact to Fiction.” The course emphasizes how the skills required of a journalist can prove invaluable when crafting novels and short stories. I encourage my students to think like news reporters, crafting clean, succinct copy while exercising a keen eye for real-world details that can make their prose more believable. A key lesson is learning how to start a story with a bang.
In my opinion, a good opening–what journalists call a “lede” (and, yes, that’s how it’s spelled)—is little different from an avalanche that starts out as a snowslide and quickly builds power as it rolls downhill. Powerful fiction as far as I’m concerned is no different. To be effective, it must be engaging from the get-go.
Forget opening with some long bit of exposition, trying to explain what happened before the story begins. No pussyfooting around. No easing into it. I call that “throat-clearing.” Think about when you go to a concert. Do you really want to listen to the band or orchestra tune up while the lead singer or soloist run through their scales before they launch into the music? I’m guessing not. The same is true with fiction. Immediacy and impact are what we want. Give the reader the impression straight away that they’ve stumbled into something exciting. Be brief. Be original. And think cinematically.
Kurt Vonnegut believed in starting his stories “with an event that will create a reaction” on the reader’s part. Gabriel Garcia Marquez envisioned his openings as a “kind of invitation to a journey.” Likewise, Margaret Atwood has compared the beginnings of her stories to “the opening of a door” the reader must step through. I couldn’t agree more with any of them. But as a writer of murder mystery novels, I’d go one step further: A good beginning must also implicitly pose a question: Who got killed, why did they get killed, and who killed them? Along with that question comes an implicit promise to the reader that says, in effect, “Read to the end, and you’ll find out.”
Consider Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn. The novel opens with a question about what happened to Amy. Stick with me, dear reader, Flynn implies, and you’ll find out.
Or Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It opens with the unresolved disappearance of Harriet Vanger. This prompts readers to wonder about her fate. Stick with me, dear reader, Larsson implies, and you’ll find out.
Or the opening of The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena, which hints at the mysterious circumstances of a missing baby, casting suspicion on her parents. Stick with me, dear reader, Lapena implies, and you’ll find out.
Most authors, this one included, will tell you that first few paragraphs are the most important ones. They’re designed to set the hook, to get readers so interested in your story that they won’t be able to put down the rest of it. Getting those lede paragraphs just right isn’t easy. I’ve been known to rewrite mine dozens of times before finally surrendering to exhaustion and submitting them for publication. Here’s what I finally settled on with Flat Spin, my first Cordell Logan mystery:
Arlo Echevarria opened his door in flip-flops and a foul mood. “You got the wrong address, dude. I didn’t order any pizza.”
The Domino’s guy stood there mutely on the front step, cap pulled low, face obscured in the dim buttery glow of Echevarria’s jelly jar porch light, cradling a pizza hot pouch in both arms like it was baby Jesus.
“What are you, deaf? I said you got the wrong address.” Echevarria went to push the door closed, but the Domino’s guy blocked it with his foot, drawing a blue steel semi-auto from the red vinyl pouch.
Echevarria yelled, “Wait a—”
Boom.
The .40-caliber hollow point splintered rib bone and mushroomed through Echevarria’s left lung, blowing a kebab-size chunk of flesh out his back and dropping him like 164 pounds of wet laundry.
Boom. Boom.
Slugs two and three made pulp of Echevarria’s liver and spleen. The coroner would deem all three wounds potentially fatal. Any cynical street cop, which is to say, any cop, would deem them all sweet, sweet shooting: three rounds, center mass, square in the 10-ring.
The Domino’s guy tucked the pistol up under his shirt, then calmly gathered his spent brass, depositing each casing in the hot pouch before disappearing into a pleasantly temperate San Fernando Valley evening. The tang of cordite lingered on the breeze with the perfume of night-blooming jasmine.
And here’s what I came up with for Deep Fury, my newest Logan mystery, which debuts December 17th:
Long after the naked man plummeted from the night sky and exploded like a bomb through the roof of Walt and Lena Rizzo’s double-wide mobile home in the Sun Country RV and Trailer Park, Walt couldn’t decide if it was the dog or divine providence that had saved his wife’s life.
It was after supper. The elderly couple were watching Dancing with the Stars with the sound turned way up when their miniature schnauzer, Rambo, who also answered to “Rambie” and “RamRam,” began pawing at the door so he could go do his business outside. Walt’s knees were acting up again—all those years laying tile for all those rich snobs up in Knob Hill and Pacific Heights— but he willed himself out of his recliner anyway to let the dog out because he didn’t want Lena missing a minute of her favorite show. Sixty-one years together, and she was the most beautiful woman Walt had ever seen.
“Sit,” she said loudly.
“What?”
“I said sit. I’ll take him out.”
They were both about as hard of hearing as one might expect
of two people in their late eighties. Lena pointed animatedly to herself, then to the dog, then to Walt, then to Walt’s chair.
“You sure, doll? I don’t mind.”
“It’s a rerun, honey. We’ve seen it before. Relax.”
Walt eased himself back down into his chair as Lena slid her feet into her fuzzy slippers and took her time getting off the couch gingerly on her one good hip. She’d taken no more than three steps toward the door when the trailer seemed to go sideways with a violent, deafening crash.
Windows shattered. Photos of the grandkids flew off the walls. The Rizzos toppled like bowling pins.
They thought at first it was The Big One, the long-dreaded giant earthquake that would finally send California floating off toward Japan. Only after they scraped themselves off the floor with hearts pounding did they notice the gaping hole in the roof of the living room and the mangled body of the man who’d fallen through it.
Did they achieve my objective by grabbing your interest? Did they persuade you to want to read more? I certainly hope so!