Getting It Right on Page One

A couple of weeks ago I began a working on a new mystery featuring a series character who has shown up in a number of short stories. The opening scene told the reader everything she needed to know and moved the story forward, but I wasn't happy with it. I kept writing scene after scene, exploring the characters and pleased with the ideas that came to me as I was writing farther into the story. I kept notes, deepened the characters and complicated the plot. But still, though I could feel the story was developing the way I wanted it to, I wasn't happy. I made more notes.

When a story idea feels like a good one to me, little pieces of the plot, snippets of dialogue, visuals show up waiting to be put in place. I don't try to force the ideas to come, sitting down and deciding this is the motive or that is the backstory. I let the ideas unfold. It's a slow process in the beginning but I pick up speed once I have the basic idea. The problem I was having was with the beginning--the scene that tells you what's going to come sooner or later, the promise and the expectations. I trust my process and I trust my ideas.

We've had wonderfully warm days lately, so my midday walk with the dog is especially enjoyable. A few days ago as we strolled down a quiet side street a helicopter flew overhead. This isn't terribly unusual here. Occasionally a news copter shows up and we all wonder what's been going on. I looked up and watched it hover and move on, not in any great hurry, as though the pilot were looking or perhaps teaching someone how to fly. Watching the copter from below as it flew nearly directly overhead I thought it looked like a tadpole. And just at that moment I had the opening of my new mystery--a young woman racing to get home before curfew who sees a copter flying overhead and stops to wonder why.

I won't tell the rest of the opening, but I knew I had it right by the the scene that took shape in that minute and the eagerness I felt to get to my computer and get to work. Because I had things I had to do at the end of the dog walk, I couldn't go back to work, but the idea stayed warm and grew warmer, with little details coming along to vivify the moment when the main character looks up and sees the copter overhead.

Because of the actions of the main character in the new opening scene, some of what I've already written needs to be recast. This is not unexpected, and I already know how I'll change a few things, adding and deleting. But the relief and excitement at having found the perfect opening for this tale is buoying. It feels like a different mystery now, and it is.

I need this kind of energy to keep the story flowing so the writing, the construction of the story, doesn't start to feel mechanical. The total narrative now has a somewhat different arc from my original intent, but the new one is much better. My desk is now littered with notes, a map of my fictional town, and research tidbits to work into the story. The month of November promises to be productive.

How to Begin

Every writer faces the blank page. If we have managed to finish at least one story or essay, we have learned one or two ways to begin the work. I recently had coffee with another writer who had worked primarily in the publicity/marketing side of the business, letting her own writing sit neglected in a file while she did other things. During our recent chat, she asked the big question. “How do I begin?” She knew what she wanted to write—the many stories she had collected over the years—but she couldn’t find a way into the mountain.

After a writer has written and published a number of stories, novels, articles, reviews, and more, we begin each project often without even thinking about it. But if I stop to consider the question, how to begin, I know I have several techniques that I use implicitly. Each project is different, fiction or nonfiction, short or long, humorous or serious, scholarly or more popular. Each characteristic will affect to some degree the beginning, but several techniques are applicable for almost every situation.

First, when I open to the first blank page I already have an idea of what I’m going to write. If it’s a

short story, I have been carrying around in my head the idea of the characters for perhaps a few days. I’ve been toying with an opening sentence, or a phrase that has stuck in my head. I sometimes write the opening sentence with pen and paper, to get a sense of the rhythm of the line and the story. I might tinker with it a bit, editing, rewriting, but I soon type it and go on from there. In the third Anita Ray, I knew I wanted the story to open with a scene about the monsoon and the threat to a particular person. I edited this opening several times but the original scene remained.

Second, the beginning of the work on subsequent days is also a challenge. I reread what I have written the day before, do light editing, and continue on. Some writers leave the final sentence of the day unfinished and use that to force (or inspire) themselves to continue. I haven’t used this technique and admit that it doesn’t appeal to me.

Third, if I am pushing myself to get started on something, usually nonfiction with a deadline, and I can’t come up with an opening line, I make a list of the ideas I want to cover, using short phrases or single words. I organize these and out of this process usually comes what I think of as the strongest aspect of what I want to say. Once I have discovered the idea of the sentence, I begin composing.

Fourth, fiction is a journey for both reader and writer. If I’m not confident how to begin, I pick a scene anywhere in the story and start writing that. I describe where the character is, what the setting looks like, who’s there and who’s talking or doing something. Out of this I find the first sentence.

Fifth, I keep a notebook of ideas and phrases or sentences I like, even if I have no idea what I’m going to do with them. I will never use most of them, but I can go to that material and comb it for something that sparks my imagination and can serve as a first sentence.

Sixth, this suggestion comes after every other one has been tried. Every writer wants her opening to be as strong as she can make it. We edit and rewrite and polish the opening probably more than any other passage in the story. Sometimes the best opening is discovered halfway down the first or second page, when we’ve used the already chosen first sentence to get our brain turned on and start a flow of creativity.

In my first Mellingham mystery I struggled with the opening, and in the end wrote three opening chapters. When I realized what I’d done, I read until I found a sentence that seemed to shift and move forward. I amputated the mss at that point, deleting three and a half chapters and making the entire story tighter and tidier.

Seventh, if the story feels strong but the opening won't come, I pick up a book by a favorite writer and read the opening of several chapters. This gets me into a better frame of mind, I don't feel so stuck, and I'm relaxed reading the work of writers I love. In the end I will probably delete whatever I come up with, but the point is to start moving forward.

These and other suggestions will help writers get down the first words of their writing project, but no one should spend more time worrying about how to begin than beginning. Whatever we write for an opening can be reviewed and deleted or improved. The point is to begin and let the characters in the story live their lives on the page.