Last time, we spoke of starting a novel with dialogue. Over the weekend, a friend and colleague emailed the first sentences to a couple of his novels, and I thought some might be useful in my quest to build a guide to a good novel’s first words.

Today, we’ll look at a few of them.

The first is a fine example of beginning a novel with dialogue, in order to pull the reader into the action. I’ve taken the liberty of changing a few of the words, but the example stands.

“Hand over your house keys.”

Resolve twisted Freddy’s features into a sneer. He imagined himself as some comic book villain as steam billowed out of his mouth in a jagged plume. At his feet, back propped against the door of his own car, Terry growled.

“That’s what this is about? The house?”

“You’ll give me the key, or I swear, Terry, I’ll take it by force.”

I’ll admit it, I’m a huge fan of hard-boiled detective stories and other archetypes of pulp fiction. To me, this intro has all the suspense of a good thriller. Furthermore, it’s full of information.

Character motivation: Freddy wants the keys to a house, and Terry doesn’t want to hand them over.

I love how Freddy imagines himself as a comic book villain. What you see, there, is a nice guy behaving in a way he wouldn’t normally behave. Already, the author has planted the seed of some inner conflict. Whatever he’s doing, Freddy knows it’s not right, but he truly believes he has no choice.

I just thought I’d mention it, since it’s such a potent and explosive way to start a book.

Now, let’s move on to a different way of starting books: Descriptions!

There are many ways of doing this. In Eugenie Grandet, Honoré de Balzac presents the whole street, building by building, using each structure as a metaphor for the people within. It’s done quite cleverly, actually, and it ends with a description of Eugenie’s house, which is oppressive, a perfect way to describe Eugenie’s father.

Mostly, it would be done in a much simpler way. For the free online serial One Night Downtown, Chris Headslice started by stating his character’s emotions, and then chose to describe what was directly in front of the protagonist’s eyes:

Head low, heart on the edge of my throat, fingers splayed and eyes half shut, I tried to peer through my tenement building’s heavy iron-barred glass front door, but I couldn’t make out what lurked on the other side. Dusk made the street a nest of shadows, and the cold air outside, mingling with the tepid air of the lobby, had covered every pane with a thick layer of icy fog. All over the translucent condensation, networks of spidery veins spread their crisscrossing, angular arms. (…)

This gives the reader indispensable clues. We know where the character is, we know how he feels, we know it’s dusk and we know it’s cold outside and warm in the lobby. The outside presents a vague threat, which is the author’s intended hook. Presumably, the reader would pursue the story until he found out more about the nature of the threat.

Now, here’s another sample in which the author chose description in order to begin his story:

The sun had just set on the longest day of the year. All in the span of a heartbeat, summer solstice was nearing its end. He set a tentative hand on the metal pipe. It was cool to the touch. He thought he heard a faint noise from inside it, as though his mind was playing tricks on him. He swore it was the sound of wings flapping – like the flutter of birds in an attic, but sharper, almost like the crack of a whip.

Here, the author has dropped us in the middle of a story, and what he is describing is an action accompanied by an impression. It’s a delicate opening, but effective. With such a technique, the author can then rely on flashbacks to inform us of what came before.

It’s likely at least the first half of the novel will describe all that led to this moment, and that the moment in question is actually the beginning of the novel’s final act.

I’m not saying any of the quoted material is perfect, or that it will invariably lead to a bestseller. I just think they’re good examples of some of the ways in which description can be used to pull the reader into a story.

This week, we’ll look at a few more techniques that can be used to pen your novel’s opening before moving on to other subjects.

Class dismissed.