How to write a book part three: First lines and jumping in

This is the third entry in my series on navigating the writing process. To see my first post in the series, click here.

Alright, you—the aspiring author—have an elevator pitch and maybe an outline. You’ve done the necessary research, gotten a few ideas of where the story needs to go, and gotten into the heads of your main characters. Yet, you’re still looking at a blank page without a word of your actual manuscript written. Now what?

First things first, take a deep breath. Even the Mona Lisa was a blank piece of canvas at one point.

Some writers like to start at the beginning and work sequentially, never skipping ahead and completing a story in order, from beginning to end. The first step in this method is obviously coming up with a good opening line. An opening line should be engaging, interesting, and able to draw the reader in without being showy or melodramatic. The goal of the opening line is to get the reader to continue on and want to read what comes next. Think of some of the best opening lines from literary classics or your favorite books:

• “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold.” The opening to “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” by Hunter S. Thompson immediately draws the reader in like they are witnessing the first inklings of a bad trip (in every sense of the word “trip”). More importantly, this engages the reader because they want to know why they are at the edge of the desert, why they are taking drugs, and how what sounds like a precarious situation will play out.

• “You better not never tell nobody but God.” The opening to “The Color Purple” by Alice Walker immediately lets the reader know they are about to hear a secret, and everybody wants to know a secret. The reader almost leans in closer to their book, as though Walker is about to whisper something private and important just to them. It also helps establish the setting and the characters by framing the text in terms of a poor Black woman in the early twentieth century. The reader, in just the first line, starts to get a feeling for who is telling the story and when they are telling it.

• “It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.” The first sentence of George Orwell’s “1984” opens with something mundane sounding then subverts it with something strange and unknown. “It was a bright cold day in April” is something everyone knows; “… and the clocks were striking thirteen” then turns it on its head because, obviously, clocks don’t have thirteen digits. It is something curious that the reader instinctively wants an explanation for. It also subtly sets the tone that something is wrong and unnatural if something as fundamental as how we tell time is suddenly different or out of sorts.

A good bit of advice I’ve found is never mistaking something shocking for something engaging, especially in your opening line. Describing a murder from the perspective of the killer as a book’s opening might draw people in by immediately causing them to want to know what is going on and why this person is being murdered, but it could backfire by causing some readers to be too disturbed or shocked to want to continue.

I once was a beta reader for a book that opened with a graphic depiction of a sexual assault. I have pretty thick skin all things considered, but even I wanted to stop reading less than one paragraph in. On the opposite end of the spectrum, I beta read a book that opened with a couple sitting on a porch talking about whether they should get married or not. There was little—if any—indication of where and when it was set, nothing made me curious about who these people were, and it just dropped readers into the middle of a conversation they had no stake or particular interest in. I advised the author to cut that first chapter entirely—of two people just talking on a front porch—and jump right to the second chapter in which it was the morning of their extravagant, bustling southern wedding with family and friends rushing around trying to make their final preparations.

If you want to work in this sequential manner, go back to your elevator pitch and outline. Remember what you need to establish at the beginning of your story. This includes who your protagonist or protagonists are, what the status quo is, establishing the time and setting and so forth. While this can be done mechanically, including a bit of preface text stating something like “Edo, Japan, 1621,” it also can be done more organically. Describe the peasants working in the fields as their samurai lord rides by, include dialogue about how they only recently came into contact with European sailors, and so forth. If the story is from the perspective of the samurai lord, establish his air of nobility and perceived superiority as he looks out upon the workers he has dominion over and describe the crafted armor he wears and finely bred horse he rides. If it is from the perspective of the peasants, establish their hard life by describing their aching back, worn clothes, and their inability to look that passing lord in the eye.

Other writers, like me, will hop around and tackle the parts they have most clearly formed inside their heads first. This becomes a process like solving a jigsaw puzzle. Start with the obvious parts, the corner pieces, and move on from there. I discussed by “Sudoku method” in my previous post (found here).

Sometimes it can be good to just skip over parts that you don’t know yet. If you are writing and find yourself on a roll, but then come to a point in the story where you don’t know how to proceed, skip over it, and come back to it later. If you know your character has to do something clever to escape a trap but you can’t think of anything clever yet, just write “character does something clever to escape” in parenthesis, highlight it or add a note so you don’t forget about it, then continue on with whatever comes next, so you don’t lose your momentum.

The other main challenge for authors, especially new authors—besides figuring out how to start—is actually sitting down and writing. If this is something you are having difficulty with, don’t feel bad. Even the most experienced and accomplished authors sometimes don’t want to sit down in front of the keyboard. Everyone sometimes feels uninspired, tired, overwhelmed, or just plain clueless about what to do next.

The trick is learning how to do it anyway. The most important facet of becoming a good writer is momentum. You want to put some time aside to write or work on your project every day, or nearly every day. This doesn’t have to be a lot of time and it doesn’t have to result in a huge contribution to your story. Even a half-hour can be enough, so long as you are still moving forward. Nor does it have to be writing. Work on your author website, do a profile for your main character, research literary agents. It doesn’t matter what you do or how much you do, so long as something is getting done.

My method is trying to get at least 500 words done at every sitting. If you can write more than that, it’s great; but no matter how tired or uninspired you feel, get those 500 words on the page. If they turn out to be crap, you can always delete it and rewrite it later.

Make no mistake, burnout is real and can be a genuine issue for writers if they are pushing themselves too hard. If you do need a break, set a firm limit. If you tell yourself you’ll take a week off and then will start writing again, make sure you start writing again when the week is over. Set an alarm or calendar notice on your phone if you need a reminder. Care for your mental health but learn to recognize when you genuinely need a break and when you are just making excuses. These limitations are different for every author, so my advice can only be so precise on this topic. Just try to get a firm understanding of what you are capable of—and then do your best.