It’s the dream: nail that opening and you’ve scored a book contract and millions of dollars. Well, no, not with that cliché, hun. Sorry.

Let’s start with one of my favourites. it’s the opening from Beautiful Malice by

Beautiful Malice book cover

Rebecca James.

“I didn’t go to Alice’s funeral. I was pregnant at the time, crazy and wild with grief. But it wasn’t Alice I grieved for. No, I hated Alice by then and was glad that she was dead. It was Alice who had ruined my life, taken the best thing I’d ever had and smashed it into a million unfixable pieces. I wasn’t crying for Alice but because of her.”

Analysis of the intro:

• It starts with a hook. The protagonist, Katherine, didn’t go to Alice’s funeral? Oh my. Why would you not go to a funeral if you knew the deceased? So. You’re hooked. You need to find out why? This leads to the second point…
• Tension. Besides the obvious first question, Rebecca has created the need for resolution. Why does Katherine hate Alice? How did she ruin her life? The second paragraph is filled with tension and conflict that makes you read on.
• Where are those adjectives and adverbs? Adjectives are only used consciously, and so they aren’t clouding the story. Overuse of adjectives and adverbs form weak writing. This is because it’s all too easy to say a tall man but it’s longer to describe an action that shows how tall he is. Did you notice how well the phrase “a million unfixable pieces” worked, though?
• The active voice. Every sentence in this intro sample is written with the “doer” first and the produced action second. “I” (the doer) “didn’t go” (the action). When the subject acts — opposed to being acted upon — you can produce a more evocative sentence.
• Trust that the reader will understand. How daunting is it trying to figure out if you’ve written a bunch of illusive jibberish? Rebecca is confident and doesn’t over explain anything. Rebecca writes: “But it wasn’t Alice that I grieved for.” However, notice how she doesn’t follow this up with: “I grieved for someone else. I hurt so much I thought I’d explode. I could barely wake up each morning.” Rev, rev, rev. Right? Too much of going nowhere and not enough action. Rebecca moves right along.
• Choppy, realistic, voice. Rebecca falls right into the Katherine’s voice. As a reader, you don’t feel like this is Rebecca talking. You feel — rather, you know — this is absolutely Katherine. And it’s very conversational. Commas replace a lot of formal constructions: “… ruined my life, taken the best thing”. Here, the comma replaces words that drag down the sentence such as “ruined my life [and she had] taken…”.
• Evokes emotion by selective words (verbs/doing words). Think about what images come to your mind and what effect they bring to the story as you read: crazy, wild, grieve, smash. This is one of Rebecca’s strengths. She chooses arresting verbs. It makes you want to read the sentence over again.

Some closing tips:

Write your character’s story. Use their voice and welcome surprises when the character does unexpected things — they are becoming 3D.

Dive into action. Back story has its place but when you are trying to hook your reader, a history lesson for three straight pages isn’t the best place.

Tension! Conflict! Add more and more. Don’t resolve things too quickly. Your reader needs a reason to go on. Give them something so compelling that they’ll want to read the 80,000 words you’ve written. In Beautiful Malice, the reader doesn’t find out exactly why Alice died or why Katherine hates her until it is the end.

Sentence structure. Vary it. Generally, shorter sentences increase readability but longer and more complex sentences vary your style so the writing doesn’t read like a recipe book. Use fragments. I have.

I hope these points I’ve drawn from this opening of Beautiful Malice provide clarity and helpful hints for your novel. Do you find yourself doing all the above things? Maybe it’s only in later drafts of your novel and that’s your writing evolving.

P.S. If you click on the picture of the novel, it’ll take you to Fishpond where you can buy it.