Offenses to God & Man
“I have offended God and mankind because my work did not reach the quality it should have,” Leonardo da Vinci38 pages
266 paragraphs
639 lines
5,862 words
33,208 characters
The first chapter of my recently begun 19th novel.
Crap.
Technically well done crap. Compelling in places, stirring in others, the story advances, characters begin development, shape and form begin to present themselves.
Still crap.
Crap . . . because it’s not what it could be, not what it should be, not what it would be. It lingers rather than stands, preaches instead of convincing. It’s episodic instead of flowing; and would compel no reader to turn the page for Chapter Two.
I suppose I could press on, hope to correct the systemic problems as I move through the coming chapters; count on the rewrite process to smooth it out, polish it up, make it whole and engaging. I’m a good writer, a good rewriter; this isn’t the end of the world.
Well . . . maybe it is.
And since I have no particular desire to experience the end of the world, I’m not going anywhere until I fix it.
Why?
Because the first chapter in a novel, that first toe in the water, sets the tone, mass, coloration, music and substance of the rest of the novel. If that doesn’t work . . . nothing that follows will, no matter how brilliantly written.
There are non-creative reasons as well. If you’re looking for an agent, your first chapter will determine how seriously you’re taken. It will answer the first question in every talent seeking agent’s heart: can this writer write? Submitted to a publisher/editor who receives fifty or so manuscripts a week, your first chapter will tell them whether or not it’s worth their while to press on, or if they should move to the next in the pile. Submitted to a producer or studio or network it says whether or not you have a clue about storytelling.
Submitted to God, it decides heaven or hell.
Novels, almost by definition, are evolutionary creatures. You usually figure out what you’re really writing about as you journey through the creation process. On my largest selling novel, I didn’t know what I was writing about until after Chapter Eight.
But the novel knew . . . because I had given it strength, direction, sense, and the ability to survive my own clumsiness in Chapter One. After that, I just had to hang on for the ride until my own blindness fell away and I saw what the book had known all along.
Now I am not advocating the perfect chapter, nor am I suggesting that you work on Chapter One forever (or what seems like forever) letting the rest of the book slip away in the process. Of course, a balance must be struck. But let that balance lean a little bit toward Chapter One. Because what follows is the fruit of that seed. A brilliant majestical tree or a twisted and wizened little nothing. Set some standards for that chapter; ask yourself some simple questions, test it by your own standards, and once it passes, move on immediately. You can always make it even better later, so long as you have something solid to start with. Remember, you can’t build on what doesn’t exist.
My tests? For what they’re worth, here they are.
The relative quality of the writing aside, are there things (plural) which would compel the reader further into the novel? I love good writing, live for it, but it is story and the execution thereof that moves any reader through the work. You can write with extraordinary quality . . . that’s wordsmithing. But do those words also begin to tell the story? That, my friends, is storytelling. And storytelling is the moving walkway that your reader must be convinced, baited, or shoved onto to propel them the rest of the way. And if it ain’t moving in Chapter One, it ain’t gonna in Chapter Ten.
Is there a clear emotional tone to the chapter? Regardless of the story, regardless of whether or not you even know the story when you begin, the emotional tone or tonal colors are set in Chapter One. It is the connective vibe that binds reader to story. The thing they can rely on, even after they’ve forgotten that critical sequence on Page 32, or that plot point on page 119. Can you dip all the following blank pages you will write your novel on into this expressive coloration, so that it’s already there – like a watermark – seeping through into your prose and seasoning it with its sense? Story without emotional setting is recitation. Story with emotional setting is the stuff of the Gods.
Does the first page or two of your novel say something or describe something that is germane to the story? In some ways, these first two (rarely three or more) pages are all you have to sell the book to your reader, editor, agent. How many times have you paused in a bookstore to look at those first two pages? And how often has that been a large part of the deciding factor in buying that book? Publishers and agents are no different. Lock them in and lock them in early, and it makes the rest of the ride much more comfortable.
At the end of Chapter One, is there any reason for the reader to go to Chapter Two? Not necessarily a slam-bang ending or a cliffhanger – although almost by definition all chapter endings need to have an element of cliffhanger to them – but rather have you enmeshed your reader sufficiently in the net of your story to hold them and drag them forward? Reader entrapment can not take place after Chapter One! If you haven’t taken them by the scruff of their curiosity by then, you never will.
Last point: Have you done your best? Some writers ease into books, others jump in headfirst and pray that there’s enough water in the pool to cushion the dive. But none worth calling “writer” ever just float along in the first chapter. An old friend’s mother used to say you never get a second chance to make a first impression. And as obvious and assumed as that saying is, it also cuts to the heart of first chapters. Write the best novel ever written but cop out on the first chapter, and smart money says no one but you and your family, maybe a few friends will ever read it. It’s like the lead off hitter in baseball “sets the table” for the inning; the first chapter must be your best work or else you will continue to build the structure of your novel on a foundation of sand. Uninspired sand that is the quickest of them all.
FROM: THE GEMINI MAN
The rainbow never made it to Piatigorsk.
Three colors only were in evidence: the white of the snow, the gray of the sky, the black of the souls and the hearts.
No trees or plant life of any kind broke through the crust of the moonscape. No birds with their bright plumage ever appeared in the sky or came to rest on the power lines, the only break in the desolate scene. In fact, the only life of any kind that had ever been seen here was the gray shadows that passed for humanity
The only sounds: the wind, the muffled sob, the anguished scream, the snap of a breaking arm, leg, skull, or power line.
And everything in my novel grew out of those first 116 words. The remainder of Chapter One began to introduce the humanization of that tonal color. The conflicts, plot points, suspense, comedy, terror and drama all drawing life from that first chapter’s strengths.
And the weaknesses of that novel? Simple . . . virtually every flaw, every unbelievable moment, every piece of story inadequacy was caused by not having a base for it earlier in the story.
Particularly in Chapter One.
We write to be read. We write to express ourselves in ways that mere vocalizations fail at. We write because we reach for our humanity and try to recognize it in others. And we write because we too often find that humanity lacking in those animate biological bipeds that would call themselves human. We write, because we have been gifted with the need to write and sometimes the talent to write as well.
Before moralists, simpletons, power-grabbers, and social engineers redefined it, the word SIN meant simply and only: the failure to accept and or put to use a gift from God.
About the same time, the word WRITER meant simply and only: one who provides their fellow men with an accounting.
38 pages
266 paragraphs
639 lines
5,862 words
33,208 characters
The first chapter of my recently begun 19th novel.
A sin against man & God.
“I am irritated by my own writing. I am like a violinist whose ear is true, but whose fingers refuse to reproduce precisely the sound he hears within,” Gustave Flaubert
Time to resin the bow, tune the instrument, and begin again.
Believe!
Related posts:
- THE NONFICTION METHOD OF WRITING FICTION
- Hell On Earth
- Thirty Lights Along The Way
- SHORT STORY ENTHYMEMES
- And The Truth Shall Let You Sleep
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Comments
I think that sometimes we miss the importance of that early stuff. Trish will tell you that when I start writing something without an outline, the odds are that the first few pages (or even chapter) may be dumped after I hit stride and figure out what I’m really saying. I’m trying to get over that and to start with a clearer thought in mind…but it doesn’t always work for me….
Great essay..
DNW
I really like this quote:
“…we write because we too often find that humanity lacking in those animate biological bipeds that would call themselves human.”
I think early on that’s very much what drove me to put words to paper.
Excellent essay overall. Thanks much. 
–M
On the money about the alpha chapter, Rick. Houses built on stilts never make sense when you have the option of a solid foundation.
– Sully
Over a year ago I wrote a first chapter (and more.) I eventually stopped because I simply didn’t know where to go next.
As I read your essay I began to get excited about those languishing words. I’m confident in my answer to these questions.
Chapter 1
1,389 Words
35 paragraphs
120 Lines
130 to begin the tale…
Alastrina was the first to try to protect her son from death. She failed. She was not wrong to try, only too hopeful. No boy born in the dell has died since MacInnes. No boy born in the dell has lived in the dell since MacInnes.
No one remembers how or why their descendants came to live in the dell. No one knows if they found the cottage or built it. Generations have searched its library for answers but there are no records. It may be that they always lived in the cottage.
No document tells how many women lost boy children before MacInnes was born. It was easy to think that history began when Alastrina shut the door on her man and their son and some had believed it.
1. …do those words also begin to tell the story? YES
2. Is there a clear emotional tone to the chapter? YES
3. …the first chapter must be your best work … YES the best I was capable of then.
But I’d like to boldly put forth a fouth question that is clear to me now after reconsidering all I wrote. (and I didn’t even need to re-read it all to know the answer)
4. Did you continue to tell the story that began in Chapter 1? No.
So, now I know why I stopped, why things didn’t ‘feel’ right and why I had no sense of direction.
Maybe now I can find where started to tell a different story and get back to what I wanted to write about.
Thank you, Richard.
Fabulous essay, my friend. I tend to need a title that sings to me and an opening line or two that creates the melody–all of which often disappears down the road. After that, Chapter One must feel like a gift to man and God. –13