119
36
Speed is the essence
of the opening.
Sun Tzu wrote: “Speed is the essence of war: take ad-
vantage of the enemy’s unreadiness, make your way by
unexpected routes, and attack unguarded spots.”
Steven Wright wrote: “My house is on the median
strip of a highway. You don’t really notice, except I have
to leave the driveway doing sixty miles an hour.”
This collective wisdom applies to the opening of your
novel, for you are in a battle for attention. You must use
all haste to surprise and capture the reader.
And I mean take him by the lapels and drag him into
the story world with no time wasted.
Because everyone, with the possible exception of your
mother (if she reads your work), has a little voice in his
head ready to shout, “Life’s too short. I don’t have time
to go on with this.”
You must do all you can to attack and mute that
voice, which is as anxious to spring as a mongoose out-
side the snake exhibit.
So how do you do it?
By understanding why people read.
They read to worry.
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120
They read because they want to have their emotions
wrenched by the plight of a character to whom they feel
emotionally connected.
You do the connecting. You start connecting from
paragraph one.
If you want to sell your fi ction, you must grab the
emotions of the reader by putting a character in some
kind of discomfort or danger or the possibility thereof.
Immediately.
Big danger, little danger. Big challenge, little chal-
lenge. Anything that is a disturbance, or potential dis-
turbance, to their ordinary world.
Because we naturally side with people who are in
some sort of trouble.
Do you remember the opening shot of The Wizard of
Oz? When I ask this question in writing classes, I usually
get an immediate response that it’s a shot of Miss Gulch
on her bicycle. Or the barnyard in Kansas.
Actually, the fi rst shot is Dorothy and Toto running
down the road toward the farm. Dorothy is looking over
her shoulder, and we fi nd out later that Miss Gulch has
threatened to take Toto in to be destroyed.
There is an immediate disturbance in Dorothy’s or-
dinary world.
In chapter one of Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight, teenage
Bella moves to a small town and is immediately thrust
into a new school. This is always disturbing. No friends,
no history. We naturally identify.
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121
The fi rst line is:
My mother drove me to the airport with the
windows rolled down.
By the end of the paragraph, we know this is a fare-
well. That’s change. That’s disturbance.
You can also allude to danger yet to come, as Dean
Koontz does in Fear Nothing:
On the desk in my candlelit study, the telephone
rang, and I knew that a terrible change was coming.
Or to a disturbance that’s already happened, and
will be explained, as in Lawrence Block’s Ariel:
Was there a noise that woke her? Roberta was
never sure.
A few more examples:
I feel compelled to report that at the moment
of death, my entire life did not pass before my
eyes in a fl ash.
—“I” Is for Innocent by Sue Grafton
When the sixth fl oor of the Las Palmas Ho-
tel caught fi re Robbie Brownlaw was in the diner
across the street about to have lunch.
—The Fallen by T. Jefferson Parker
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122
The fi rst time my husband hit me I was nine-
teen years old.
—Black and Blue by Anna Quindlen
“Do your neighbors burn one another alive?”
was how Fraa Orolo began his conversation with
Artisan Flec.
—Anathem, by Neal Stephenson
You can also place the disturbance at the end of your
fi rst paragraph. Here is the opening of The Day After To-
morrow by Allan Folsom:
Paul Osborn sat alone among the smoky bus-
tle of the after-work crowd, staring into a glass of
red wine. He was tired and hurt and confused. For
no particular reason he looked up. When he did,
his breath left him with a jolt. Across the room sat
the man who murdered his father.
Harlan Coben does the delayed disturbance in Prom-
ise Me:
The missing girl—there had been unceasing
news reports, always fl ashing to that achingly ordi-
nary school portrait of the vanished teen, you know
the one, with the rainbow-swirl background, the
girl’s hair too straight, her smile too self-conscious,
then a quick cut to the worried parents on the front
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123
lawn, microphones surrounding them, Mom silent-
ly tearful, Dad reading a statement with quivering
lip—that girl, that missing girl, had just walked past
Edna Skylar.
The fi rst line is intriguing (a good thing) but isn’t
connected to a character until the last line. So there’s a
hook, a build, and then boom.
Remember, speed in the opening is a matter of dis-
turbance, not high levels of action. And it is applicable
to both literary and commercial fi ction. The faster we
worry about a character, the quicker the bond. And the
greater our desire to turn the page.
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