I've heard from multiple sources that whenever you write a novel, you should make the first few pages so gripping that the reader will not want to put the book down. Those first few pages should grab you like an eagle snatching a snake, then it should sink its claws deep into your shoulder, paralyze you, then plunge its fangs into your neck and suck out all your blood ...
Or something like that, I dunno.
It's pretty easy to do. Once you imagine your main characters, you drop them headfirst into a survival situation. Maybe they're fighting a bunch of monsters who can pick up big pieces of furniture and toss them like dodgeballs, or maybe they're in the middle of a swamp and one of them falls into a sinkhole and has only seconds to be saved. The reader may not know what in the world's going on, but it's okay, he or she knows that the explanation is on the way. Perhaps the next chapter will be all about exposition (meaning the characters sit around and simply talk about what's going on in case anyone is a slow learner and needs a refresher), or perhaps the next chapter will start out with, "Three Days Ago" (meaning earlier events will be explained organically, as they happen).
I certainly understand the importance of having a gripping beginning. It's not hard to imagine prospective customers in a bookstore picking up a title, skimming the first page, and letting its contents determine their decision to buy it or not. Still, it somehow feels cheap to me. It feels as though I'm pandering to the kind of people who always want instant gratification. They don't want to take in a story as a whole; they just want to get to "the good part" and let the rest hang to rot. (Maybe I'm being unfair about this since not all readers are that way, but that's still how I feel about "gripping" beginnings.) It almost feels like I'm dropping a few mice into a cage full of ravenous snakes; I'd feel guilty about it, but I've started such a spectacle that those around me would be unable to look away.
Some of the aforementioned "sources" are web sites and magazines that give tips to new authors who are trying to sell themselves to agents and publishers. A new, fresh-faced author needs to be marketable of course, and a gripping beginning is essentially a sales tactic to prospective buyers. Nonetheless, it's a tactic that rarely seems to be used by more well-established authors, as if they have no need of it anymore now that their very names are marketable enough to sell books. For example, if you were to pick up Stephen King's "The Shining," the first line isn't something like, "Jack Torrance swung his cute little croquet mallet on the cook's back, and his son Danny screamed because he has awesome mind powers." It would certainly make the beginning more gripping than how it currently is, but King didn't need to resort to this marketing tactic by the time he wrote "The Shining." If I were to suggest to him that he change the beginning, I'd expect him to say, "What, you mean cut to the good part right away? Whatever you're smoking, you need to stop it, like yesterday!"
Now, having said all that, I'm going to sound a little hypocritical from now on. You see, the book that I've primarily been trying to sell to prospective agents is "The Taming of Adam" (which is part one of a trilogy--because trilogies rock!). I finished it back in 2006, and it's changed very little since then. But there was one thing about it that nagged me--a weakness that always seemed to set the book back from its full marketing potential.
If you guessed "the beginning chapter," you win the prize! Maybe I'll mail it to you some day.
The beginning chapter was my way of setting up the evolution of the main character, Adam Taylor. In it, Adam is about six or seven and in a first grade class. The POV is actually that of the substitute teacher who is just coming in. He attempts to read a picture book to the class. At one point, a kid in the back cries out, "This sucks!" The teacher ignores it, but once he hears it again, he singles out the boy, who is, of course, Adam Taylor. It doesn't take long before Adam starts mouthing off obscenities and is sent to the principal's office. The next chapter then takes us about ten years later when Adam is in the middle of a college class. (And no, that's not a typo, I meant only ten years.) At this point in Adam's life, he is a morose young man who shuns human contact and thus doesn't see the point in running his mouth to garner attention.
As you might be able to tell, that first chapter was hardly gripping. A little funny, perhaps, but it might give a reader the wrong impression about the story. Instead of an exciting, adventurous fantasy story with strong characterization, the book might come across as something like an after-school special (i.e. an tremendously boring and preachy bit of storytelling).
After seeing the Winner Twins' panel at the Amazing Comic Convention in Las Vegas (maybe I'll write about it later), I felt inspired to finally do something about that damn first chapter. Starting on a blank page, I wrote a brand new piece about one of the book's antagonists, Gene London. London returns to his apartment, lights up candles around his bathroom mirror, recites a chant that performs a magic spell, and thus causes a beautiful woman to appear in the mirror where she is able to talk to him. Typical male fantasy? Well, maybe it starts out that way, but instead of making sweet, sweet love (or similar), they end up having a mysterious but intriguing conversation. They exchange some playful banter, and more importantly, they drop vague details that will have relevance later on in the book. The lady also clearly shows to the reader who wears the pants in the relationship.
This event is something London would have later done anyway, and it happens right out of the blue just as it does in this new first chapter. Thing is, when I was first writing the book, I had only a vague idea of what the ultimate conflict would be. But now that I no longer have that problem, I had the chance to allude to that conflict earlier in the story. It's too bad I never seized on that chance until eight years (!) after finishing the book.
I knew from the start that swapping the old first chapter for the new one would mean making additional changes throughout the book. Now that the "lady in the mirror" is known to the reader right off the bat, there was no reason not to reference her in some of London's early chapters. It was a little tricky, but I know this book inside and out, and I knew the exact places where changes had to be made. The result is a more cohesive narrative that complements the new first chapter rather well.
I only hope the new first chapter doesn't prove to be too mysterious. There are terms and concepts in there that might not be understood right away but explained in later chapters. For example, the lady in the mirror mentions something called "The Rending Spell." It's not explained in either dialogue or the narration what the "Rending Spell" is exactly, but it's apparently something the lady really wants to happen. (And with a name like that, you know it can't be good! It's like the antithesis of Smucker's.) I hope this kind of name-dropping will intrigue new readers and not put them off. In the worst-case scenario, a first-page skimmer would say, "Rending Spell? I can't wrap my head around a term like that! This book sucks!"
Lesson learned: Whatever is not working for your book (or movie or Youtube video), cut it out or change it into something that does. Seems like common sense, but who ever said common sense is common?
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