Writers in the Storm

Tina Ann Forkner

There is a lot of buzz around town about a new business that recently opened in my community. From what I hear, it’s already booming just a few weeks in. This new business is a cocktail lounge, and while I’m not familiar with what it takes to open a lounge, I couldn’t help but notice that the owners spent a great deal of time preparing for the grand opening. Every time I passed by, they were working on making it look good. They knew that if they wanted customers to return, they would need to plan a fabulous opening that would make customers want more.

The same can be applied to the opening of a novel. If you want a reader to continue reading, then your opening must be grand.

When I say grand, I don’t mean complicated. I just mean the opening needs to succinctly give the reader a taste of what’s to come and make them want more. I have had the pleasure of being a judge in several writing contests, and I have noticed that most openings of unpublished manuscripts are lackluster and do very little to set the tone or hook you in. In fact, if I were not a judge, I would not read past any of those openings. That’s not good news since in the publishing field, writers must grab an editor from the first page, if not the first paragraph – even the first sentence – or your time is up.

If your beginning is not grand enough, it doesn’t matter how well you’ve written the rest of the story. The editor will never know. So how can you make sure that your opening is grand? Here are five steps to help guide you.

Establish a Sense of Place

Just like the grand opening of the cocktail lounge, one of the things you need to give your readers is a sense of place. Some people would call it ambiance. If you walked into the cocktail lounge on opening night, you would have felt the vibe based on the setting around you. It has a slightly historical downtown feel that is upscale while instantly making you feel welcome.

This is what you want to do in your novel, as well. Give us details that make us feel like we are there, but not too many. Use a few key words and sentences to set the tone, hinting at what is to come. You can start wide with a setting and focus in on where the character is. Perhaps you will show us the expanse of the city and immediately focus in on the barstool where your character is drinking a martini and staring at himself in the mirror. Or maybe we are at the kitchen table and there are two place settings, but only one person. Wherever you start, you want the reader to be there too.

Introduce an Interesting Character

Another thing the cocktail lounge did was hire good employees to represent them. When you go there, not only do you get a sense of ambiance as soon as you walk in, but the employees are engaging and friendly, dressed in a way that evokes the personality of the cocktail lounge itself. You instantly want to talk to them, for them to make your drink, perhaps especially that one server with the playful look who seems to be in charge.

It’s the same for your story. Make sure that your main character does or says something that makes you want to know more about them. You don’t have time to describe your character in detail during the opening, but you can make them ask a question or do something interesting, or even recall the hint of a memory that makes the reader want to get to know the character(s) better. Perhaps she has a bad case of bedhead, bad breath, and can’t remember her own name, but she knows she needs a skinny soy vanilla latte with two shots of espresso. What the author wants is to present a snapshot of the character that is intriguing or engaging, but not a detailed description.

Entice the Reader with Action

If you walk into the cocktail lounge on opening night, stuff is happening all around you. It’s bustling, you are catching snippets of conversations all around, and that guy in the corner looks like he might propose to the woman sitting across from him even though the way she’s staring so hard at her plate that she looks like she wants to run.

In a novel’s grand opening, you need some action, as well. It can be big, but it doesn’t have to be. Something just needs to be happening. Is your character slamming down the phone? Are the wheels of the toppled bicycle spinning? Is someone drumming their fingers loud enough to annoy the woman across the room? You want the reader to wonder why someone slammed the phone down, why the wheels are spinning, and what is really annoying the woman across the room. Whatever action is happening in the opening scene, you want it to entice the reader to wonder about what has just happened and what is going to continue happening in the story. Bring the reader into the action early and make her feel it enough to want to keep reading.  

Organize the Beginning

This is probably the most important aspect of a story opening. If I walk into the new cocktail lounge on opening night and can’t tell if I’m in a bar, a doctor’s office, or a nail salon, I’m not going to stay. Even if the energy is buzzing, things are happening that intrigue me, and the people around are interesting, I’m gone.

If an editor or agent can’t figure out what is happening, they aren’t going to keep reading your novel, either. Readers need to know where they are at and have a hint of where they are going. I think that many writers inadvertently create a confusing story opening because they are afraid of giving up too much information too fast, but in my experience as an author, we usually have the opposite problem. We don’t have to tell the whole story in the beginning, but as an editor once told me, giving enough information to orient the reader is like giving them a flashlight to show them the way without illuminating everything around them.

Hook the Reader

The hook is paramount. I can’t say it enough. If I leave the cocktail lounge and nothing has happened that I want to come back to, the business has lost me, but if there is a chalkboard announcing an upcoming happy hour and a secret grand prize, I would want to go back to see what the prize is.

That’s exactly how you want your readers to feel after the opening.

A great hook is like the attractive man or woman in the corner of the cocktail lounge waving a one-hundred-dollar bill at the reader. What is it about them? Are they going to give that money away? That’s when they crook their finger at the reader to follow, just before they slip out the backdoor. In your novel’s beginning, what morsel can you give that makes the reader want to follow you through that door? Maybe you don’t tell the secret, but you let the reader know there is one. This is where you spill the breadcrumbs that make them want to read the whole thing.

What are examples of some of the best openings you've read?

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 About Tina Ann Forkner

Tina Ann Forkner wrangles words on the pages of her novels and kids in the classroom as a substitute teacher. She lives in Wyoming with her husband, who knows when to wear a cowboy hat, and three teenagers who never do (even if she thinks they should). She is the author of five novels including Rose House, Waking Up Joy, and The Real Thing.

Learn more about Tina at her website: www.tinaannforkner.com

Kimberly Brock

I think I have ghosts. This is what I said to a friend this week after I had to get up and leave my desk and take a walk to clear my head. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good ghost story! And to be honest, I like a cool shiver up my back when I’m writing. I think it’s why I continue to write at all – because I’m haunted.

This isn’t the first time a bit of writing research made all the hair on my head stand up or caused me to look over my shoulder or turn off my monitor. It happens all the time, in fact. I’ve come to expect it as part of my writing process from beginning to end and truly, if it weren’t there, I’d know I was wasting my time on a story. That feeling someone just nudged me or the voice I swear I heard when no one else is around, they’re affirmations that come from my subconscious. They are signs from my psyche that the characters, themes, and settings I’m wrestling with have something more than story format to bring them alive. It’s the difference between the bones and the breath. I think these experiences that give me the chills, do so because I’ve brushed up against the spirit of the thing I’m trying to bring to light in the world.

By now, you are rolling your eyes. That’s fine. Me, too. Because it sounds like hooey. But I swear to you that no part of my creative process is as imperative as the spirit test.

Here’s how you run the spirit test: um, you don’t.

I know, I know. You think I’m being ridiculous. But it’s not part of the literal process. It IS the process. I mean, I could tell you that you stand in front of the mirror at midnight and whisper Story Spirit three times, open your eyes and you’ll see the bloody thing reflected back at you. I could tell you the secret to levitation (or publication) lies solely in your fingertips. Light as a feather, stiff as a board. I wish. If I knew the trick to giving life to a story, I’d write a how-to book under the pen name Kimmie Lou Frankenstein and make a bazillion dollars. But like most writers, I can’t call my story spirits up on cue. They’re more like film.

Remember film? Four thousand years ago, before digital, when you had to use actual film in your camera, let in the light, and then it had to be run through some mysterious dark room process to develop the images captured on a negative? Calling up story spirits is more or less like that. It takes time. And a certain amount of faith. It’s revelatory. It’s when you see the image captured by the camera, and notice all the amazing stuff your naked eye totally missed. And you are struck in that moment with the wonder of perspective. Like any good ghost hunter, I can appreciate this. I know that my part of the work is to focus the camera, and my subconscious will act as the negative, and it doesn’t lie. It will expose me every time. All my ghosts in orbs and flashes. So maybe the spirit test isn’t something you call up from the outside, but the inside.

When I said to my friend that I think I have ghosts, it was because I’m at a point in my work-in-progress when I’m comparing the fictional history and timeline I have created to that of actual events, places and people who may have been living lives during the time when my story takes place. Maybe I’m wacky, but I do this backwards. I like to make my world up as I go and then see what fits from reality. And when I do that, I often find strange coincidences like obscure names that coincide with characters or places I’ve been making up for months with no prior knowledge of historical fact. I can’t explain this. I don’t want to. If I could define it, fiction would lose the wonder that keeps me coming back to the blank page. I love the discovery. I love the mad laboratory. I love the rustling sound in the dark that keeps me up nights and that instant I throw on the lights and there’s the real thing staring back at me.

Maybe the only truth about writers is that we’re all haunted. And we like it that way.

Do you have ghosts? How do they make their appearances in your work? Do you embrace them or fear them?

About Kimberly

Kimberly Brock is the award winning author of the #1 Amazon bestseller, THE RIVER WITCH (Bell Bridge Books, 2012). A former actor and special needs educator, Kimberly is the recipient of the Georgia Author of the Year 2013 Award. A literary work reminiscent of celebrated southern author Carson McCullers, THE RIVER WITCH has been chosen by two national book clubs.

Kimberly’s writing has appeared in anthologies, blogs and magazines, including Writer Unboxed and Psychology Today. Kimberly served as the Blog Network Coordinator for She Reads, a national online book club from 2012 to 2014, actively spearheading several women’s literacy efforts. She lectures and leads workshops on the inherent power in telling our stories and is founder of  Tinderbox Writer’s Workshop. She is also owner of Kimberly Brock Pilates.

She lives in the foothills of north Atlanta with her husband and three children, where she is at work on her next novel. Visit her website at kimberlybrockbooks.com for more information and to find her blog.

Kathryn Craft

Turning Whine Into Gold

You chose to pursue a career as a novelist because of your passion for the written story. But what is your long-range goal? Mine was specific—as a writer interested in legacy, I wanted to leave behind a “body of work,” which to me meant eight novels. Maybe your interest in creative range, and you want to be published in three genres. Or maybe financial gain is most important and you hope to support your family.

“Human desire is a sticky thing,” says Jon Kabat-Zinn in Wherever You Go, There You Are. Desire is sticky enough to pull you toward your goal, but can also be sticky enough to blind you to unexpected opportunity along the way.

I wonder how many of us have written off opportunities as obstacles? I could imagine someone who tried to make it in TV and is now writing novels, saying, Oh great, I’m trying to write a novel and now someone offers me a job hosting an arts show on a local cable channel. I’ll never finish my novel! 

Who’s to say this is the best year to seek publication? We live in politically (and therefore economically) unsettled times and publishers are twitchy. What if getting published three years from now might get you to your goal quicker—and in the meantime, you could put those years to good use fleshing out new novels while building a valuable platform? Let me tell you how many publishers would like to see “cable TV host” in your query letter. Even delivering mail could introduce you to countless potential readers.

I love the old joke about the man praying that God will save him from the floodwaters threatening his home. A neighbor knocks on his door and says, “We must leave now. There’s room in my car—come on!” But the man says no. He too heard the warning, and is certain God will save him. When the floodwaters cover his stoop, the man retreats to the second floor. A stranger in a boat comes past his window and says, “Get into my boat and we’ll paddle to safety.” The man says, “No thank you. God will save me.” Then, from a hovering helicopter, a rescue worker shouts, “Grab hold of the ladder and climb up.” The man shouts back, “No thank you, God will save me.”

The man drowns. When he gets to heaven, he rails against God. “I was praying to you the whole time. Why didn’t you save me?” God answers, “What do you mean? I sent a warning, a car, a boat, a helicopter…what more did you want?”

Tunnel vision may appear to offer the shortest route between two points, but it may not be the quickest or the most satisfying. While focused on your all-consuming author goal, could you be missing the warning, the car, the boat, and the helicopter?

A softer focus on your goal could help you see these opportunities for what they are.

Aspiring novelists are told all manner of things that tighten their white-knuckle grip on our goal. Perseverance is key. Write every day. The only failure is quitting. Getting agented is a numbers game. Type “x” number of words a day. It takes a million words to make a novelist. These old saws can help us reach a destination that seems too far away. But think about it: should the same advice apply to all authors, when no two careers are ever the same? Who’s to say that an unforeseen opportunity might not increase your visibility, stoke your creativity, and lead to connections on which you can capitalize?

The quandary interests me, but I’ll be the first to admit I don’t have the answers. While I’m happy to play God in my novels, I am overjoyed I wasn’t cast as the master of the universe. I would have bungled the job by giving myself an easy path rather than challenging myself to explore the deep, lasting rewards of prevailing over rockier terrain, which ultimately gave me so much to write about.

I have seen writers hold onto their goal until it has shredded them apart. I’m just saying, this might not be the best use of your time on earth.

Think carefully before declaring something an obstacle or an opportunity. Saying “yes” might just take you one step further on the path of your unpredictable, creative life.

Maybe those opportunities could open more doors for your writing career.

Maybe they could make you happy.

As a fun exercise in career imagination, pick one of the following “obstacles” and show how it might lead to novel success. In addition, please share stories of success that arrived in an unexpected—or perhaps even unwanted—package!

• Your talented daughter wants you to move to Nashville to support her singing dream.
• Your mother, in hospice, asks your help in writing her life story.
• Your boss wants you to move to Thailand for a year.

About Kathryn

Kathryn Craft  is the award-winning author of two novels from Sourcebooks, The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy, and a developmental editor at Writing-Partner.com, specializing in storytelling structure and writing craft. Her chapter “A Drop of Imitation: Learn from the Masters” was included in the writing guide Author in Progress, from Writers Digest Books. Janice Gable Bashman’s interview with her, “How Structure Supports Meaning,” originally published in the 2017 Novel & Short Story Writer’s Market, has been reprinted in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing, both from Writer’s Digest Books.