Lesson 5: Beginning your Book.
This lesson is about beginnings, and the specific focus age level is YA. In W.I.P. You get to make a start on Chapter 1.
How to Write a Good Beginning.
More About Beginnings.
Viewpoint
Tense
Specific Level - YA Novels.
Supplement. Anatomy of a Specific YA Novel.
W.I.P. Section. Writing Your First Chapter.
Exercises and Bibliography
How to Write a Good Beginning.
! Very few modern children’s books begin with that traditional storyteller’s opening; “Once Upon a Time”.
! Some writers write a first chapter and then dispose of it completely and begin their books at the original Chapter 2.
! If you can’t catch young readers’ attention in the first two or three pages, you probably never will.
! The first few pages of a book are sometimes the most difficult to write.
All these statements are true, and all are somewhat startling to some novice writers. So, what does comprise a good beginning for a children’s book? The answer to that is that a good beginning for a children’s book has the same attributes as a good beginning for any other kind of novel.
There are two things we think about as “beginnings”.
One is the first sentence, or the first scene. Sometimes, in a PB, the first sentence is the first scene. Let’s look at the first line of the PB we studied back in Lesson 2.
“Joey was hopping along with his mother”.
This line, with its supporting picture, presents a subject, characters, a name, action, setting, and familiar relationship all in one. Not bad for seven words! Any child hearing the opening sentence and seeing the picture would learn that –
Joey is a little animal (the picture shows a wallaby, but they may think it’s a kangaroo).
Joey is his name, as well as his stage of development. (If this were just a role name, he would be the joey.)
Joey is with his mother, and is going somewhere with her.
He is hopping. The picture shows an outback scene.
This kind of scene-setting, character, action (or the promise of action) works well on all levels, but the higher up the levels you go, the more words will be used to achieve the effect.
Here is the beginning of a very short JCB.
“When we moved into our new home, I was just an ordinary kid. Now I feel like a hero!”
The character is introduced. He has just moved house (action), now he feels like a hero. (Promises more action.)
Here’s the beginning of “The Orange Outlaw”.
“Dink, Josh and Ruth Rose stood on Uncle Warren’s balcony. Nine floors below, the cars, buses and taxis of New York zoomed by.”
Characters and place (balcony in New York) are introduced. The promise of action to come lies in the words “nine floors below”. Readers feel instinctively that something is bound to happen to people who are nine floors above the street.
Action need not be offered immediately, but the promise or possibility of action or excitement is useful. The older and more experienced readers get, the more likely they are to be willing to wait for the pay-off of action…as long as they know they are going to get it soon. In the SCB and YA Novel, you can sometimes have a deceptively quiet or calm beginning.
“It was a calm, peaceful night, with nothing but mist to disturb the stillness of the fields. It was the kind of night when nothing ever happens.”
Older readers know something of irony, and as soon as they read that second sentence they will be gleefully certain that something is going to happen, and that it will be dramatic. This doesn’t mean they will accept two or three pages of beautifully written scene setting before something does happen, so give them a pay-off soon.
Opening a book with dialogue is also a good technique. Speech is almost the same as action, and the speech tag (e.g. “said Laura”) acts to introduce at least one character. Try not to have an inconsequential remark as a beginning. Make it something interesting or dramatic.
“How do you freeze a teacher?” Laura wanted to know.
“Huh?” Zann stared fixedly at her cousin.
“How do you freeze a teacher?” repeated Laura.
“That’s what I thought you said…”
“So? How do you?”
”The question is not how you do it,” said Zann, “but why you’d want to.”
An exchange like this introduces two characters, gives a clue to both personalities and sets up a mystery and promise of action. Why is Laura talking like this? Would she really freeze a teacher? How? Why?
