Novel writers, you face an array of difficult
tasks. Yet of all the words you write few are more vital or more challenging
than those in the first sentence. It is a reader’s initial blush with who you
are. Covers and summaries and introductions are all well and good, but the
sentence that begins chapter one is like a director’s call to action. Fail to
command attention and you lose the reader.
In a few words, you must pluck Average Joe from
a bookstore in modern day America and place both his feet on the ground you
imagined. In a world of smartphones chirping and media whiplash, how does an
author steal away Joe’s mind from the troubles of his day and his plans for the
night? With a lot of work.
As you get started here are some things to remember:
1) Try and try again. You
will need to type out sentence after sentence after sentence until you find
what feels right. This is most often not accomplished in one sitting. In fact,
you may not finalize it until you have finished your novel.
2) Walk away. When you fail to
start your book, do not immediately feel shame. If the first sentence is the
hardest and most significant thing in your novel, then it is logical for it to
remain unfinished until the book as a whole is complete. It shows wisdom and
experience for you to walk away from the first sentence and come back to it
later with enthusiasm.
3) Ask for help. Despite
the self-reliant tendencies of most authors, there is great merit in asking for
help. Find a good idea, then changed it to fit who you are as an author. You
should also test your first sentence on a variety of readers. If it does not
capture them, scrap it and start over.
4) Seize inspiration when it comes. Your
inspiration for the first sentence may come years before you ever know the
characters or write the book. Profound phrases fall into the minds of writes
before bed or on the top of a roller coaster or while sitting in a movie
theater. Write these outbursts of creativity in a specific place. Later you
have a database to drawn from.
That list is all well-and-good, but the best
writing instructors are writers themselves.
Next week, we will delve into what the masters and some modern authors
can teach us.
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