Where to begin? by Brenda Janowitz

I love beginnings.  There’s just something wonderful about starting a new novel.  New characters, new ideas, a totally new chance to make something special.

I always find starting a new novel so easy.  There’s that level of excitement you have—you’re armed with your idea and you’re rearing to go.  I can sit down at the computer and churn out a first chapter in no time flat.

But that’s when things get a bit more difficult.  Once that opener is done, once you’re done with that initial burst of adrenaline, you find yourself alone again with the blank page.  You’ve begun something, you’ve introduced your characters, your setting, and now you’ve made the reader a promise.  And you’ve got to deliver on that promise.

Your characters need to be fully fleshed out, the situations you put them into reasonable, or at least feasible.  You’ve got to keep your voice consistent throughout the novel, and you’ve got to make sure your tone remains steady.  There’s nothing readers hate more than starting out a novel that they think is one thing, only to end up with another thing entirely.

Your novel needs to have a good beginning—most people won’t read more than your first chapter unless they are immediately engaged (or first line, if you’re like me), but your novel also needs to live up to the promise that you make the reader in that first chapter.

Lots of people can start a novel or have an idea for a novel—just ask anyone I’ve ever met at a cocktail party—but most people won’t actually finish writing a novel.

Beginnings are really important, but finishing is the hard part. 

What’s your favorite part of a novel?  Is it the beginning?  And for you writers out there, what part is your favorite part to write—the beginning, middle or end?

I’m the author of Scot on the Rocks and Jack with a Twist.  My work’s also appeared in the New York Post and Publisher’s Weekly.  You can find me at brendajanowitz.com.

Beginnings: Opening Lines

by Lauren Baratz-Logsted

(Please note: That picture has absolutely *nothing* to do with what I'm about to write, but why *not* add a handsome man's picture to my post if I've got one lying around the old computer? If you find him handsome enough, you won't care if what follows fails to entertain or makes no sense!)

"Have you become a fuckwit, Jane?"

Pretty acerbic, I know, but that's the line that launched my career as a novelist, the first line of my debut novel, The Thin Pink Line. And it does suit the story that follows. How else to begin a contemporary novel about a sociopathic Londoner who decides to fake an entire pregnancy?

When people ask me about my - I can't believe I'm going to use this pretentious word that I hate, but OK, here goes - process, I say that I typically begin a new book with three things: 1) an idea (e.g. woman fakes entire pregnancy); 2) a character (e.g. sociopathic Londoner Jane Taylor, who stitches together her own crazy story; 3) an opening line (e.g. "Have you become a fuckwit, Jane?") I often also know the final line as well, even though I rarely know how I'm going to get from first to last, but there's no point in giving away last lines just in case you were all going to immediately rush out and buy all my books - I don't want to spoil the endings for you!

But first lines...ah, first lines...I can talk about them all day. First lines set the tone for everything that follows.

Take the opening from Vertigo, a book which is about as far from The Thin Pink Line as it's possible for a book to be. Actually, it's the first two lines, which encompass the entire prologue, Vertigo being a dark novel set in Victorian England involving murder. "For nearly seventeen years, I was a good, some might say exemplary, wife. As I put pen to paper for the first time to record my tale, it is important you know this about me from the start." You know what this line says to me? It says, "Uh-oh. Things are not going to go well for this woman, are they?"

Writing for young adults, as I also do, presents its own set of challenges. The YA market is so exciting to write for these days, the story possibilities endless because the audience is so intensely imaginative, but due to the competing-for-attention items such as advanced technology, that same audience has pretty much the shortest attention span in recorded history. So you have to grab that attention fast. Here's Lucius, opening his part of the two-voice he-said/she-said novel Crazy Beautiful: "My arm rises toward my face and the pincer touch of cold steel rubs against my jaw. I chose hooks because they were cheaper. I chose hooks because I wouldn't outgrow them so quickly. I chose hooks so that everyone would know I was different, so I would scare even myself."

And then there's the challenge of writing for even younger kids, like the nine-book The Sisters 8 series for kids approximately six to ten years old. Chapter One of Book 1 opens: "It was New Year's Eve 2007, approximately ten o'clock, and we were just getting ready to celebrate Christmas." There are a few important things in that first sentence: 1) why are they celebrating Christmas on New Year's Eve?; 2) the line sounds so innocent and yet before the 12-page chapter is through, the octuplet stars of the series will realize their parents have disappeared and it's up to them to solve the mystery of those twin disappearances while keeping the rest of the world from realizing they're home alone; 3) the most important thing of all, we - "we were just getting ready to celebrate Christmas. The entire series, with the exception of the prologues, is written in the rare first person plural. It sets the quirky tone for all the quirkiness to follow.

Anyway, that's just a sampling from the 19 openings I've had published in my career thus far. This coming November, I'll have a new YA novel out, Little Women and Me, the prologue of which begins: " 'There's no such thing as a perfect book,' Mr. Ochocinco says." Not long after that, my teen heroine gets sucked out of her contemporary world and into the world of the classic novel Little Women, where she must choose to right one of that novel's chief wrongs: the death of Beth or the fact that Laurie winds up with Amy instead of Jo. I hope it will turn out that my first line serves the novel well.

So how about you? What are some of your favorite opening lines from your own writing? Come on - don't be shy!

Be well. Don't forget to write.

Cover me

We all know that in life, one is not supposed to judge a book by its cover.  But those of us who write novels know all too well that people do, in fact, judge books by their covers.  In fact, the cover your book gets could translate into major (or really, really bad) sales.

But not me.  I don’t judge books by their covers (in life or in the bookstore).  For me it’s all about the first line of a book.  Ever since I can remember, I’d just pick up a book and read the first line.  If the first line didn’t do it for me, chances are I’d put the book back on the shelf. 

I think it all started in the eighth grade when I read Rebecca by Daphne duMaurier.  “Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again.”  I can’t think of a better first line for a book.  I was immediately engaged.

I was later entranced by Elinor Lipman in her book, The Inn at Lake Devine. “It was not complicated, and, as my mother pointed out, not even personal:  They had a hotel; they didn’t want Jews; we were Jews.”  Isn’t that a story you want to hear more about?!

And then, there is Jay McInerney’s second person Bright Lights, Big City: “You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.”  I immediately thought to myself:  I’m not?  Well, then, who am I?  I couldn’t read the rest of the book fast enough.

Or Emily Giffin’s powerful opener for Something Blue:  “I was born beautiful.”  That one always knocks me out.  Immediately sets the voice for the entire book with that tiny little sentence.

And of course, the mother of all first lines, Jane’s Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” 

Covers are great, don’t get me wrong, but it’s the first lines that suck me in.  I remember them; they stay with me long after I’ve finished the book.  I often go back to my favorites and re-read them to figure out just what made them so magical for me.

What draws you into a book?  Is it the cover?  The first line?  The first page?



I'm the author of Scot on the Rocks and Jack with a Twist.  My work has also appeared in Publisher's Weekly and the New York Post.  Please visit me online at http://www.brendajanowitz.com/.