While journalism and novel writing are two different animals, both need to hook the reader and impart important information from the get-go.
Journalism (news articles, magazines, broadcast news scripts) stories are told in inverted pyramid style with the who, what, when, where, and why in what’s called the lede–the first sentence or graph. The story is then elaborated on and expanded, but essentially everything you need to know is in that first sentence/graph.
Novels have lots more space for a story to develop. You don’t want to give the story away in your opening graph.
Except you do.
Sort of.
Your opening page, similar to a news article, needs to introduce the reader to the protagonist (WHO), a conflict (WHAT), timeline (WHEN), setting (WHERE), and motivation (WHY).
While you may not be giving away your complete story conflict or plot yet, there should be a hint of the story and ending to come in your opening.
In most classical music (I’m about to botch the music theory I learned in college, so my apologies to all my music educators friends), a piece ends with the same root note as the piece began. It’s called the resolution or cadence. As the piece progresses, it incorporates related chords that lead to the inevitable conclusion of the piece with that recognizable resolution note/chord that started the piece. Your ear is expecting it. If it ended differently, you’d notice. Something would just sound off.
The same in a novel. If your ending is completely unrelated to your start or something happens in the end that isn’t inevitable based on the cause and effect trajectory you’ve established from the beginning, something would feel off to your reader. This might look like feedback that the ending doesn’t feel earned or wasn’t satisfying or isn’t believable.
Your opening pages set that stage for the satisfying ending.
How? How does your opening, your introduction to your story world and characters possibly reflect the ending you’re hoping to achieve in 80,000+ words?
Your opening does this in a few ways by establishing:
- the voice of your story
- your character’s motivations (at least their initial motivations, these may change throughout the story) that drive their story decision making
- a hint of the conflict to come through an opening conflict/tension
- a milestone to measure your ending against (how will your character change by the end? It must be clear who she is in beginning)
- as well as a host of story-telling logistics in terms of timeline, pacing, writing style, etc…
Openings are best perfected, in my opinion, after your endings are written. When you’re drafting, just get it down to the best of your knowledge. No matter how much planning you do, there will be things you learn about your character along the way and new ideas that create new surprises in your manuscript. Once you’ve established what you have on the page, you can use that information to layer your openings with deeper meaning, hint at conflict, hide secret emotional need, then make sure your ending delivers on those promises so readers are left feeling satisfied.
Let’s think back to that inverted pyramid used by journalists. Those stories tend to taper off at the end. A novel can’t.
Consider a novel more of an hour glass figure than pyramid. You start a bit information heavy describing your characters, revealing their wants and needs, establishing setting and voice, introducing conflict and an inciting incident early on.
As you move through the middle, there is less new information to introduce. That doesn’t mean obstacles aren’t popping up or new characters aren’t entering the story, but you aren’t, as the writer, having to do the heavy lifting of making something out of nothing. Your characters are churning along their trajectories of change based on their motivations, actions, and consequences you’ve already set-up in the beginning.
At the ends of your stories, the shape widens again as there is a lot of processing and growth happening for your protagonist. The reader is reminded of how far the character has come as the protagonist reaches the inevitable climax of their story and final. The reader is then gently released into the resolution of the story, those final chords washing over them echoing the beginning you so beautifully introduced.
Bottom line: focus on your beginnings but not in a vacuum. Try to avoid the trap of polishing that first chapter to a high definition shine without also giving your middles and ends the same attention. Use them as a tool to set your entire story up for success.
Featured Image by Fathromi Ramdlon from Pixabay
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For more tips on what agents are looking for in your opens and how to analyze your own opening pages, get my download Opening Pages: How to Grab and Keep Your Reader from the Start.