The First Fifty Pages

Every writer learns early on the importance of the first fifty pages in a novel (or the first paragraph in a short story). Writing teachers and professional writers drum this into the student in every class, and add the comment to every manuscript they critique. And there's nothing wrong with this advice. The opening of any work of fiction is crucial to establishing the story and then the author as a worthwhile storyteller. But there is a downside to this advice.

For the decades I've been reading fiction in all genres, and especially mysteries, I've often been hooked by the opening paragraphs and then watched the story fade. This is more likely to happen in literary fiction than in crime fiction, but it is a problem in every genre. Sometimes this is called the problem of the sagging middle, or the ending that is more "talky" that anything else.

The emphasis on the opening pages or paragraphs stems from a very practical consideration. Editors read with the hope of finding something that will tell them the book (or story) isn't working and they can stop reading this one and move on to the next in the pile of mss filling their offices. The emphasis on the first fifty pages is basically a survival tool for editors. There is an assumption that if the writer can get the reader fifty pages into the story, he or she will want to keep reading to find out what happens. That isn't always true, but the belief is strong. I've fallen into the trap set by this dictum of the first fifty pages on both sides.

As an editor for The Larcom Review and The Larcom Press, and an occasional reader for contests, I looked for a sign that the author couldn't sustain the story over three hundred pages. And I looked for that sign in the first fifty. If a ms seemed promising I skipped ahead to page one hundred and then two hundred, to see if the writer could still keep my interest.

As a writer, I have found myself going over and over the first few chapters, to make sure they set the stage, establish character, and pose an enticing problem. But I know there is more. I have to avoid the trap of lavishing attention on the opening and skimping on the rest of the book.

To make sure I don't fall into the trap of focusing more attention on the beginning than the rest of the book I work on the ms in chunks, with a list of clues/details that have to be distributed throughout the story.

Despite my best efforts to avoid the trap of the first fifty pages, I fall into it just like every other writer. And then I work to climb out by giving as much attention to the rest of the book.

A Short Walk to Stardom by Susan Oleksiw

The white crockery sang its usual morning tune as Moonu, the Hotel Delite waiter, delivered breakfast dishes and pots of coffee or tea to the tables scattered around the upstairs dining room. Though barely eight o’clock, most of the guests had already ordered and plunged into newspapers or discussions for their plans for the day. Anita loved the sound of the hotel waking up.

“All is well?” Auntie Meena peered into the dining room.

“Everyone seems happy.” Anita made a half turn and glanced back at a young woman hunched over a steaming cup of coffee. “Miss Tiffany doesn’t seem very cheerful this morning.”

“Anita, she is an actress. She is achieving proper mood for her work. A sad story I am thinking.” Auntie Meena was nothing if not a devoted fan of the arts. “I shall offer my admiration.” And with that she marched across the dining room and stopped abruptly, her expression shifting from sweet anticipation to abject embarrassment. She opened and closed her mouth without speaking, stunned into silence in the face of fame. Anita decided to rescue her.

“Good morning, Miss Tiffany.” Anita stepped beside her aunt. “Do you find everything as you like it?”

Miss Tiffany, a young woman who looked like she’d earned the name at the moment of birth, stared up at Anita with the most startling green eyes and a complexion that always brought to mind the cliche of peaches and cream, no matter what country she landed in. She had silky blond hair that held a curl and swept down to her long neck from a perfect widow’s peak. Even Anita was taken aback by her beauty. “Oh, yes, everything’s wonderful,” Tiffany said.

“You look as though something is wrong,” Anita said. For once, Auntie Meena didn’t jump in to defend her beloved hotel, a sign of how smitten she was by this young foreigner. “Can we do anything to make your visit more enjoyable?”

Tiffany sighed deeply and tilted her head to the side. Really, Anita thought, she’d be wonderful on a soap opera. “I wish you could. But I guess I’m just not a very good actress.”

“But you are a superb actress, the very best. I am knowing this.” Auntie Meena clenched her hands together as though her feelings were almost too much for her to contain. Miss Tiffany smiled.

“Thank you, Mrs. Nair. But I’m not very good at all.”

“What has made you so disappointed?” Anita asked.

At the moment Hotel Delite was packed with guests, including a few members of the film crew making a romantic movie, a rom-com she’d been told, in the city. They retreated to the hotel every evening quite late, and sometimes not until after midnight. At first the hotel schedule was thrown way off kilter, but the staff adjusted, which meant Anita stayed up most of the night and Moonu dragged through the day like a zombie. The cook seemed unfazed and willing to stand at his stove for hours on end. Anita didn’t blame Tiffany for becoming dispirited.

“I’ve had to do the same scene over one hundred and seventy times already,” Tiffany said. She stared at her coffee.

“Perhaps it is especially difficult. Are there so many lines?” Meena asked.

“I have no lines.”

“No lines?” Meena screwed up her face and repeated this several times. “Why are you having no lines?”

“My role is to walk up to the hotel, speak to the doorman, and then enter. Then I walk through the hotel lobby to the restaurant. I know the exact number of steps, which foot to use to begin to climb the short stairs to the lobby, how many steps on the carpet and how many on the marble, when to lift my hand to acknowledge the doorman, the concierge, the clerk on the desk, the head waiter in the restaurant. I have it down to the nanosecond. But no lines that anyone hears.”

“You must be having lines,” Auntie Meena said. “Such a lovely voice you are having.”

“What happens then?” Anita asked.

“Then I do it again.” She shook her head. “Oh, you mean in the movie. I don’t know. The next scene takes place on the other side of the city, and the scene before takes place in an antique shop somewhere else.”

“But when is your next scene?”

“I don’t have one. When we all gathered for dinner on the first night I thought I could get the director to explain things to me, but he kept saying, Whatever and Who are you? I felt like I was getting in the way.”

“You should try to talk to him again,” Anita said.

“I do but our schedule never seems to mesh with his and we keep missing him.” And with that Tiffany sighed again and rose from the table. “Time to be off. We begin filming at nine—again.” She rolled her eyes and headed out of the dining room. When the cameraman saw Tiffany pass his table, he nudged the man next to him and the two followed her out, the cameraman tall and rangy with broad shoulders and sandals slapping against the terrazzo, and his assistant, apparently a student, a good foot shorter with short hair and heavy glasses.

“She should have lines,” Auntie Meena said when she returned to the registration desk.

“Yes,” Anita agreed. “She should.”

* * *

Moony delivered elevenses to the front desk right on time. He could barely keep his eyes open and Anita sent him home for a nap. She’d manage lunch herself, since it was usually a quiet meal in the hotel.

“Did you know, Auntie, there are three movies being made in the city even now?”

Auntie Meena waggled her head and preened. “Very popular place, isn’t it? Cinema people and artists and important people.”

“And not one of them is filming a story that calls for the Belvedere Hotel lobby, or any exclusive hotel lobby.” Anita continued reading.

“Nonsense. This is in the story. Tiffany is telling us.” Meena pulled the newspaper away from Anita. “Here. You are mistaking.” She read through the newspaper article, frowning and muttering. “Perhaps she is going to the wrong hotel.”

“With the cameraman and his assistant?” Anita slid off the stool and promised to be back later.

* * * 

Anita didn’t return to the hotel until almost six-thirty, when the sun was setting and a pink glow seeped into the sky. She was hot and tired and worried, and headed straight for her suite over the garage. Half an hour later, as the lights began to glow on the sandy terrace and dinner guests headed down the stairs, Anita found her aunt in the office, wringing her hands and staring around wild-eyed.

“Oh, Anita! A terrible thing has happened. Terrible.” Meena grabbed her niece’s wrists and pulled her into the office. “The police are in the upstairs dining room with Tiffany. She is to be arrested. And the cameraman and his assistant are gone! A great crime has been done. What is to be done?”

“Well, first I’ll go in and find out what the police are thinking,” Anita said.

“They are thinking terrible things about our Miss Tiffany.” Auntie Meena sank into her chair. “It is very bad you are not here to help. Very bad.”

Anita patted her aunt’s shoulder and headed into the dining room. She marched in without knocking on the door, and a young constable jumped to stop her but his superior waved him to the side and lifted his eyebrow in query. Anita introduced herself.

“We are almost finished here,” the subinspector said. “Miss Tiffany will be coming with us. She is refusing to cooperate, so she will come in for further questioning.”

Anita wondered if Miss Tiffany could have cooperated if she wanted to. She was crying so strenuously, sniffling and gulping air and wiping the tears streaming down her perfect pink cheeks that she could barely get out a word of protest let alone of explanation.

“That won’t be necessary,” Anita said. “The people you want are the cameraman and his assistant.”

“Exactly,” the subinspector said. “And Miss Tiffany refuses to tell us where they have gone.”

“They have absconded,” Anita said. “But they won’t get far.”

“And how are you knowing this?” The subinspector rose, and Anita realized how intimidating he was. She was glad they were on the same side, and she fervently hoped he knew that.

“The cameraman asked for the use of our car and driver for the day, so this afternoon, after I guessed what was happening, I texted Joseph and told him to take them wherever they wanted to go, but not to get there. They are stranded even now in the hills, where Joseph is trying to fix the car.” She pulled out her cell phone and turned the screen to the subinspector. He peered at it but didn’t reach for it.

“And why did you do this?” he asked. Even Tiffany stopped sniveling enough to listen. She stared at Anita with astonishment.

“Yes, why?”

“I went to watch the filming this morning to see you, Miss Tiffany,” Anita said. “You were struggling with your role, you said, and I wanted to see how it was going.” Anita knew no one but perhaps Auntie Meena later would challenge this blatant lie. “And I saw her going through her scene, marching in and out of the Belvedere Hotel.” The name of one of the poshest hotels in Kerala elicited approving murmurs from the subinspector. The constable’s eyes widened and then narrowed.

“They are having important exhibit,” the constable said. The subinspector was about to scold his underling when Anita turned to him and smiled.

“Exactly so.” Anita turned back. “And with Miss Tiffany’s unwitting help the cameraman and his assistant made off with a pile of jewelry, leaving Miss Tiffany to face the police and the hotel bill.”

Anita heard someone gasp behind her. “They are running off without paying the bill?”

“Alas, Auntie Meena, they have done this.”

“And Miss Tiffany will answer for it,” the subinspector said.

“She was a dupe,” Anita said.

“The concierge and others saw her go to the jewelry exhibit,” he said.

“They saw a person in her outfit in a blond wig,” Anita said. “While she is outside taking a short break, the assistant cameraman dressed in a wig with her makeup and a matching outfit  entered the hotel, deviating slightly from the script. But no one is noticing because they have seen this actress crossing the floor so many times that she is now invisible. The double is going to the jewelry display and in a moment taking three fine pieces worth lakhs and lakhs, and walking out the door. A moment later, Miss Tiffany returned to her place, despondent but determined to carry on. She enters and walks through and when she returns, the cameraman and his assistant are not there. But the concierge is there and the security guards on duty are there. And now she is here, not knowing where the other two have gone or what has happened.”

“But you say you know where they are?”

“I do.” She tapped in the instructions to Joseph and turned the screen to the subinspector again. “And now you do too.”

The subinspector grumbled, growled an order into his mobile, and headed out the door, ordering the constable to stand guard over the actress.

“What will happen to me now?” Tiffany asked.

“You will get a better role,” Auntie Meena said, sitting down beside her and patting her hands. “An artist must never give up. Another role is coming. I am certain of it.”

“Exactly,” Anita said. “The starring role in the trial of the cameraman and his assistant.”

-End-

For the Love of Sanskrit

Everyone occasionally experiences a jarring encounter with the unexpected. We enter a cafe to pick up a quick lunch and find ourselves standing in line behind an old high school classmate. We open a magazine in the waiting room at the dentist’s office and look down at a two-page spread about a book written by another former classmate, and this book is about married women having love affairs. Two worlds collide, and we are momentarily shaken.

Earlier this week I ran through the various emails announcing blog postings and was startled by see the word bahuvrihi in the title of a post on writing. The term refers to a class of compounds, possessives, in Sanskrit. I knew what it meant the second I saw it, but what was it doing at the heading of a post on writing English?

I began graduate school in Indian studies in the late 1960s, and back then most people didn’t even know the word Sanskrit, let alone any of its grammatical terms. The field was considered not only esoteric but also bizarre. On my first trip to India, at the very end of 1975, I stood behind an American chemist in the customs line. We shared our stories. She was on vacation, and I was taking up research in Sanskrit. “What good is that?” she said bluntly. Outside of India the reactions didn’t get any better as the years passed.

As more Western students became interested in the exotic world of India, classes in Indian studies began to grow. When the University of Pennsylvania required that all students take courses outside their preferred areas, in order to broaden their understanding of the world, even more students signed up for Indian art, civilization, and Sanskrit. Surprisingly, some students were shocked to discover they’d signed up for a language. For many, studying Sanskrit was their first brush with grammar—in any language.

Over the years I’ve grown used to the unvarnished reactions from friends and strangers when they first learn I have a PhD in Sanskrit. It’s one way to bring a dinner party to absolute silence, and it’s a surefire way to uncover prejudices in otherwise seemingly broadminded souls. One friend loves introducing me as her friend who . . . I don’t know why she loves to do that, but she does.

For those who are intimidated by the mere idea of studying Sanskrit, I can only say I know how you feel. My fellow Sanskrit students and I once admitted to an unnerving terror of the idea of studying Chinese. We couldn’t imagine how anyone succeeded.

It has been years since I did any serious work in Sanskrit, but once in a while I pull out a book and read a few verses or look up something technical that I want to understand, for my own satisfaction. I carry a torch for this language the way some people . . . you get the idea.

I left the field for practical reasons, but the love of the language remains. The study of Sanskrit was one way for me to explore my love of India, and I now have other ways, but my feelings for the language will never die.

The Sanskrit language is as near to perfection as a language can be, and I say this from my perspective as well as from that of others who have studied Latin, Greek, Farsi, Old Persian, Avestan, and then Sanskrit. “Perfect” in this context means the structure and forms have not been lost or fragmented, and the range of expression lives on. (Eat your heart out, you Avestans.)

If discovering the analysis of Sanskrit grammar helps writers in English develop a greater command and understanding of language, I’m all for it. I’ve waited over forty years for a good comeback to the chemist’s remark, and now I have it. But I also hope people will discover that Sanskrit has much more to offer than a detailed analysis of grammar.

And the article that started me on this post, is here:
http://www.dailywritingtips.com/bahuvrihi-compounds/

Resting and Revising

For the last three months I've been working on a novel built around a new series character. I followed my usual practice of scratching out on paper a few ideas about the story and making a list of scenes or clues I wanted to include. Then I began writing. Some days I produced only a thousand words, but other days I produced up to five thousand words or more, with my fingers chasing the story across the keyboard. Now, at the end of April, I have 80,000+ words. And it's time to rest.

Using the word resting can be misleading, as other writers know. This is really a period of pausing and stepping back, of forgetting enough of the feel of the story to be able to come to it fresh in three weeks or so. During the first writing period, I might begin a scene and realize that the protagonist is going to interpret a clue in a particular way and I have to prepare the reader for that. This means I have to go back a few scenes or even chapters and set things up. I may want to introduce another character much earlier in the story, and that too may mean returning to an earlier section and dropping in his or her name, or a casual sighting of the person in a cafe or on a sidewalk. Only as I write do I know what I need, and then I can go back and make sure I've supplied it.

During the writing of this draft I rewrote the first forty pages several times. I decided to remove a specific feature of the protagonist's life, and that meant rewriting several earlier scenes. The story is stronger for it, but it means that I've redone the first few chapters several times. On some days I felt like I was never going to get any forward motion, and I might as well have been writing with a quill pen for the time it was taking me to get through the beginning. But the beginning must make sense, so I kept reworking it.

What I regard as the completed first draft is really only the first one I'm willing to print out. I've revised pages and scenes and entire chapters throughout the last three months, but I haven't printed out anything yet. Now I'm ready to print.

The draft I print now will again be revised and rewritten. I may add another character to strengthen a subplot or complicate the villain's plan. I will certainly rewrite some of the critical moments, building suspense or deepening the protagonist's feelings.

Overall I may do as many as thirty drafts. This doesn't mean the entire book has been rewritten thirty times. It means that my perspective on some aspect of the story changed and that change had to be made and carried through the entire manuscript.

In three weeks or so I'll return to the printed manuscript and read it with fresh eyes. The purpose of this reading is to find anything that is jarring or off-putting for the reader, scenes that don't make sense, missing clues or faltering suspense, anything that doesn't work. I may do three or more pass-throughs after this, but I'll know I'm coming to the end of the revision process when I read a new printout and find only a few things here and there to tinker with.

By late June I hope to have a finished novel. I'll let you know if things go as smoothly as I hope.

Two Hundred Pages or Less

A week ago I walked through the new books section in my local library and pulled out a few titles that interested me. Before I moved on to the check-out desk it occurred to me that the two books I held in my hand and the last two I’d borrowed all had one thing in common—they were approximately 200 pages or less.

It’s not uncommon for mystery readers to finish a book and think it should be at least a hundred pages shorter, perhaps two hundred. This comment shows up in reviews official and unofficial, and in general conversation. The same comment less often but predictably shows up in reviews of other forms of fiction and nonfiction. But apparently no one is listening. Editors and publishers have embraced the idea that readers buy their books by the pound, and therefore, the more pages, the better. I disagree. Length has nothing to do with a good story. My reading choices at the moment are an eclectic mix that underscores how much quality can be packed into two hundred pages.

I spent an enjoyable evening with The Cellar by Minette Walters. I haven’t read anything by her in a while, and was glad to find she hasn’t lost her touch. A well-to-do African family immigrates to England, bringing with them an orphan girl as their daughter. Only she’s not their daughter, and she lives the life of a slave—until the younger son in the family goes missing.

Next up I learned I could change my life (in two hundred and six pages), according to The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo. I believe in taking good advice when I encounter it, so I went to my closet and kept only those things that truly sparked joy. I now have three pairs of khakis, four pairs of black pants and two black skirts and numerous blue tops and black turtlenecks. I have one black-and-white jacket and three blue jackets/sweaters. Fortunately, I have six months to make it through the entire process, by which time I will be wearing nothing but khakis and turtlenecks.

Less of a contrast than you might think because of the personal tone is my current read, Essays after Eighty by Donald Hall. To my great delight, the author offers writing and editing advice that is as pure and as succinct as any I have ever come across. The essays are leisurely, thoughtful, and captivating.

Next is Hemingway in Love: His Own Story, A Memoir by A.E. Hotchner. I haven’t begun this yet, but I’ve read the blurbs and cover copy a number of times and I suspect I’ll enjoy this book immensely.

Four books. Each two hundred pages.

I could add to this list, but it’s not necessary. Anyone who reads widely can name any number of books that come in at two hundred pages or less. My point is only that sometimes, and oftentimes, less is more.