historical novels

May 08 2017

Get Scary!

YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE Stephen King to start your narrative with something scary. You don’t even have to be writing a horror story. Maybe you just want to grab your reader’s attention right away. Starting with a scary scene or description not only grabs a reader’s emotion—which is a wonderful way to keep them on the page—but also creates a compelling visual image in the reader’s mind. An alley where the dumpsters are overflowing with garbage. Footsteps. A sudden cold breeze.

This technique works well with certain genres, such as mysteries, thrillers, and, of course, horror stories. But it can and has been used with literary novels and contemporary up-market stories as well. Maybe the scene you write is a misdirect — at the start it seems as though a boy is about to get killed by a stranger, and then the stranger turns out to be the boy’s mother. But guess what? In that first page you’ve already done some of the heavy lifting of writing: establishing the characters and time and place in an interesting way.

Even if you don’t want to start with a fright, you can get the same effect in other ways. Because what I’m really talking about is setting a specific, compelling atmosphere. Setting up a specific atmosphere—whether it’s scary, eerie, bucolic, festive, exotic, or other-worldly—is a great way to captivate your reader. It also gives you almost instant style.

“The primary thing you must do is encourage your reader to think about your situation in such detail that she can’t help but keep thinking about it. This what compelling, picturesque, and vivid details are for.”
(Jane Smiley)

You can evoke the Christmas spirit by beginning your novel on the day before Christmas, or the Halloween spirit by beginning (where else) on Halloween. You can set your novel in a foggy swamp (evoking mystery, possibly danger) or an eighteenth-century cove (innocence, romance, or maybe danger if it’s a pirate’s cove). The immediate sense of place does much more to anchor a story than almost anything else.

The setting also draws readers in. As we read we like to paint pictures in our minds, and the more specific the picture, the better. This coupled with a strong emotional pull may not guarantee that every reader will stay with you, but it puts the odds up quite a bit.

So get scary (or romantic or bizarre or exciting). Play with your readers’ emotions. Be manipulative. Start fast and then slow down. This is not the only way to begin, but it’s a tried and true technique.

And after that first scene, you can draw a breath and begin to spin out your story more slowly. You’ll have your readers’ attention now, and that’s exactly what you want.

Feb 21 2017

Just received my ARC!

A big box of Advance Review copies came in the mail last week. I’m totally thrilled!

It’s 1838, and May Bedloe works as a seamstress for her cousin, the famous actress Comfort Vertue—until their steamboat sinks on the Ohio River. Though they both survive, both must find new employment. Comfort is hired to give lectures by noted abolitionist, Flora Howard, and May finds work on a small flatboat, Hugo and Helena’s Floating Theatre, as it cruises the border between the northern states and the southern slave-holding states.

May becomes indispensable to Hugo and his troupe, and all goes well until she sees her cousin again. Comfort and Mrs. Howard are also traveling down the Ohio River, speaking out against slavery at the many riverside towns. May owes Mrs. Howard a debt she cannot repay, and Mrs. Howard uses the opportunity to enlist May in her network of shadowy characters who ferry babies given up by their slave mothers across the river to freedom. Lying has never come easy to May, but now she is compelled to break the law, deceive all her new-found friends, and deflect the rising suspicions of Dr. Early who captures runaways and sells them back to their southern masters.

As May’s secrets become more tangled and harder to keep, the Floating Theatre readies for its biggest performance yet. May’s predicament could mean doom for all her friends on board, including her beloved Hugo, unless she can figure out a way to trap those who know her best.

The Underground River is now available for pre-order!

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Oct 23 2016

Start at the Last Possible Moment

THIS IS THE MOMENT WHEN, in your story world, everything has changed. The stranger has come to town, the father has died, the mother has left, the best friend has announced that she’s moving to Pakistan.

Like In Media Res, in which you begin in the middle of the action, this technique relies on triggering a reader’s curiosity. The world has suddenly changed. What will happen now? That’s the question you want in the back of your readers’ minds at all times, but especially at the beginning.

Some examples: In The Lovely Bones, it is the moment when Susie, a teenage girl, gets lured into a neighbor’s secret bunker. In The Hobbit, it is the moment when the wizard Gandalf appears and talks to Bilbo, then leaves a mysterious mark on Bilbo’s front door. In The Light Between Oceans, this is when the childless couple manning a lighthouse finds a baby in a lifeboat.

This technique answers the question of why a reader should care by creating drama immediately that will result in—what? We want to know what. If you start big, you can afford to fall back a bit afterwards, a least for a bit. Layer in some characteristics; maybe even give a bit of back story. You have won the first battle: getting the reader’s attention.

Starting at the last moment possible allows for a dramatic chapter one, which is great, but it raises the stakes. Your reader will probably want more of the same. Of course, it would be difficult for the writer and tiring for the reader to have constant, building drama. There is an ebb and flow to everything, even our attention. Down time is important—but not too much. The writer needs to create enough sparks in chapters two, three, and so on to prepare for the next dramatic moment without losing readers.

And a dramatic moment doesn’t have to be a natural disaster or a gunfight; it can be as small as one character’s timely decision. Drama in the Greek means “Action.” Think of how many kinds of action there are in life! So don’t worry if your novel begins not with a death, but with a simple decision to write an anonymous letter. That’s an action. That’s drama. That’s starting at the last possible moment.

Previous posts in “The Cold Open” series:

In Media Res

Oct 08 2016

The Cold Open – in media res

STARTING A NOVEL, writing that very first sentence, is as exhilarating and intimidating as riding a bicycle for the first time without training wheels.

Many new writers think they need to explain a good deal more than they need to explain. They think that the first chapter is about laying a foundation so that the story — the real story— can begin in chapter two.

They could not be more wrong.

In this and in the coming weeks, I’ll be writing a blog series about those hooks—different techniques writers have successfully to capture their reader’s attention.

In media res, or “in the middle of things,” drops your reader into the middle of the action with no warning. In other words, the action of the story began off stage, before the very first sentence, and the reader must play catch up. A great example of this is from “A Room with a View” by E.M. Forster. Here are the very first lines from Chapter One:

“The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”

“And a Cockney, besides!” said Lucy. . . “It might be London.”

Yes, the reader will be confused at first, and in fact that’s what you want. Whenever you put a question in a reader’s mind, the reader is more likely to keep reading so she can find out the answer. Of course, too much confusion results in a book thrown across the room in disgust, but usually this doesn’t happen on the very first page. When you open using the “In Media Res” technique, there is an implicit promise that whatever you are throwing your reader into will be explained. But not quite yet.

This logic also addresses the worry that readers won’t know (and care) enough about the characters to be sufficiently interested. Readers are generally patient for a few paragraphs or a page or maybe even a whole chapter, if you’re lucky. We want the writer to make us interested; that’s why we opened the book!

I’ll talk about another technique in the next blog post, which can be used in conjunction with “In Media Res”: starting at the last possible moment. And don’t worry, it’s not a pitch for procrastination (most writers don’t need that pitch, anyway).

flourish2

Martha Conway’s novel Thieving Forest won the North American Book Award in Historical Fiction, and her first novel was nominated for an Edgar Award. Her short stories have appeared in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Carolina Quarterly, Folio, and other journals. A recipient of a California Arts Council Fellowship, she teaches creative writing at Stanford University’s Online Writer’s Studio and UC Berkeley Extension.

Her new novel, Sugarland, is available now.

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