CWA Bulletin - Beginnings

Stirling

The way you open your story is as important as the plot and the characterisation. After all if you don’t hook them on the first page, they’ll never find out about your brilliant plotting or meet the wonderful characters you’ve created. And if you’re wondering why I’ve left it eight weeks to point that out to you, there are a couple of reasons. Firstly I didn’t want you sitting there working and re-working your opening line and never getting on with the story. Since I assume you’re well into it by now, we might as well address that all important opening. A good crime story opening should immediately trigger a question in your reader’s mind – How is that possible? Why did he say that? Who is she waiting for? Could that really have happened? Will they survive? Why isn’t someone trying to stop him? Why? Well we’ve all done it haven’t we – read everything by our favourite authors and wandered into the bookshop hoping to find something else that might be half as good. Let’s be honest; book jackets aren’t terribly helpful since they all claim the author is the Better Than……! So you start taking books off the shelves and reading the blurb on the back until you find one that sounds like it might be quite good. You open it up and start reading … At this point three things can happen. Number one: you fall in love with it instantly. Possible, but why should you? You don’t know these characters, you have no emotional connection with them yet. Why would you care what happens to them? Number two: you realise it’s not for you and put it back on the shelf. Number Three: you realise it’s not for you, but there’s that question niggling at you now, isn’t there? So you read on a little further – just to find the answer before you close the book. And you keep on reading, further and further into the chapter. Until you reach the end of Chapter One. You may not have found out the answer to the question (in fact you may not find that out until the end of the book), but hopefully you’ve now started to care about one or more of the characters and something so interesting has happened at the end of Chapter One, that you just have to turn over to Chapter Two. At which point, unless you have nerves of steel, you can no longer ignore the assistant’s Are you going to buy that book glare, so you buy the thing, take it home, and find a new favourite author. You may think it doesn’t matter for the purpose of this competition. And to some extent you’re right – everything you send in will be read. But look at it this way; suppose you’ve reached the short-list and the judges are debating which story will be the overall winner. A good strong opening stays in the mind. It’s a reason for them to remember you when they’re reading and re-reading the final entries. This brings me to the second reason I didn’t mention openings at the start of these bulletins. I used to write a lot of short stories and almost invariably the last thing I would write, would be the opening sentence. Sometimes you create an opening line that is so great you know you’ll never improve on it; but mostly it’s mundane. You generally have to write the answer before you can go back and write the question. So before you send in your entry, re-read your opening and ask yourself honestly – if you picked it off that book-shelf, would you go on reading? Remember those sentences at the beginning of this bulletin? They’re opening lines picked by their respective authors as their favourite from all the books they’ve written. Which one is still in your head and makes you want to find out what happened next? The novels they came from are listed at the end of this bulletin. I suggest you check out the one that made the most impression on you and then try to get hold of the book. Don’t try to copy their style, that never works. You should have your own voice. Just see what the author did to keep you reading until the end of Chapter One and persuade you to turn over to Chapter Two.

dorothyd

good sense there, Stirling, thanks for that.

Stirling

It's something that is really niggling me at the moment.

Carol

I read somewhere that some writers go back at the end then write their opening.

Stirling

I find I keep re-writing my ending! It never feels right.

Kangaroo

Thankyou Stirling, I've decided to get back into writing crime fiction. This is what I wanted to hear.

Carol

Stirling, step away from the ending for a week- if possible, leave it and get on with your rewrites.
I do believe that if something isn't right elsewhere it will interfere with the rest and therefore you won't feel your ending is right. Your sub-conscious knows it, so you just need to identify that sticking point.
It's quite possible that one of the endings you've written is right, it just doesn't seem so at the moment. :)

Stirling

Thanks

I'm working on a new draft, so hopefully the subconcious may have worked it out by then!

(Was getting a little concerned about money - but I've just had some news that has put a big smile on my face!)

dorothyd

that's good!

Sometimes we are afraid of endings. Twice now, as the book has progressed, HM has decided to go back and do a revision ... whereas with the duke, we wrote straight through, no stopping, six months tops and the book was done. Somehow with Henry it feels very different, as if he is afraid of getting to the end. I don't think he accepted death gracefully as the duke did.

Talking of endings, can anyone advise where I can get a very strong box of tissues or something against the day I get to the end of Charles I book? I mean, that walk to the scaffold ... is going to kill me.

Carol

Indusrial strength kitchen towel- tissues won't be thick enough!

Stirling, when you have other worries it does make writing difficult (that was why I didn't do any in December- too many other things bothering me).