A very important part of research consists of making use of acquaintances and friends. You’ll learn more about what it’s like to be a sandhog or a scrap dealer or a bond salesman by hanging out with one than by reading books on the subject. Friends with an expert’s knowledge of an area can frequently help you work out bits of plot business; if you present them with a problem, they may be able to think of a solution which would never occur to you.
I’ve found people even more useful after the book is written. They can read the manuscript and may spot the sort of howlers that, once in print, will draw you no end of angry letters from outraged readers. I don’t know much about guns, for instance, and I doubt I ever will; the subject is of limited fascination to me. But I’ve learned to check points occasionally with a friend of mine who’s a gun enthusiast; otherwise the mailman gets tired of bringing me letters from indignant gun nuts.
I wouldn’t worry too much over imposing upon acquaintances in this fashion. People like to help writers in their own areas of expertise. I suppose it’s ego food. Then too, it gives them a brief role in the writing world, a world which appears to those outside of it to be somehow touched with glamour and romance. I don’t know what they think is glamourous about it, but I do know that an astonishing percentage of people go out of their way to help writers, and it makes sense to take advantage of this help when you can use it.
Chapter 8
Getting Started
How to open the book up, when to begin at the beginning and when not to
Every novel has a beginning, a middle, and an ending.
I picked up this nugget of information when I first studied writing in college, and I’ve heard it restated no end of times since then. I pass it on to you because I’ve never been able to challenge the essential truth of the statement.
I’ve been trying to think of one solitary instance over the past twenty years when it’s helped me to know that a novel has a beginning, a middle and an ending. And I can’t come up with a one. I learned at about the same time that in 1938 the state of Wyoming produced one-third of a pound of dry edible beans for every man, woman and child in the nation, and that fact too has lingered in my mind for all these many years, and it hasn’t done me a whole hell of a lot of good either. But I pass it on, too, for whatever it’s worth.
A beginning, a middle and an ending?
Let’s start with the beginning.
Openings are important. In a more leisurely world — a couple of centuries ago, say — the novelist had things pretty much to himself. There was no competition from radio and television, nor were there very many other novelists around. The form was new. Furthermore, life as a whole moved at a gentler pace. There were no cars, let alone moon rockets. One took one’s time, and one expected others to take their time — in life or in print.
Accordingly, a novel could move off sedately from a standing start. A long first chapter might be given over to a thoroughgoing summary of events which we are told took place before our story gets underway. It is not uncommon to encounter a Georgian or Victorian novel in which the first chapter constitutes little more than an extended family tree; the story’s protagonist doesn’t even land in the cradle until Chapter Two.
Things are different now. Novels, crowded together like subway riders at rush hour, stand on tiptoe shouting “Read me! Read me!” They compete with each other and with the myriad other leisure-time activities clamoring for public favor. The reader, however prepared he may be for a long leisurely perusal, is not of a mind to spend a first chapter pruning a family tree. He expects a book to catch his interest right away; if it doesn’t, it’s the easiest thing in the world for him to reach for another.
“The first chapter sells the book,” Mickey Spillane says. “And the last chapter sells the next book.”
Spillane, I’m told, also claims to write a book’s final chapter first. His entire book is geared to build up to the impact of the finale, he theorizes, so he can best achieve a powerful climax by writing that last scene first, then writing the rest of the book as prelude, I can see the logic in this, but we’ll go with the premise for now that you’re going to write your book more or less in order, beginning with page one. If nothing else, it makes numbering the pages ever so much simpler.
To return to the point, the first chapter does indeed sell the book. If it is to do so successfully, the reader must be caught up in the story as quickly as possible. Things must be going on in which he can become immediately involved. If you can open with action, physical or otherwise, so much the better.
Beginners frequently have trouble managing this. I know I did. My first chapters tended to introduce characters. I would have them arriving in town, or moving into a new apartment, or otherwise embarking on a new chapter in their lives even as I embarked upon the first chapter of a new book. They would meet people and have exploratory conversations. What kind of a way is that to grab the reader’s attention in a grip of steel?
There’s a trick I’m going to share with you. I learned it almost twenty years ago and I’ve never forgotten it, and it’s yours for $9.95. If I were you and that were all I got for the price of this book, I don’t think I’d have cause to complain. So pay attention.
Don’t begin at the beginning.
Let me tell you how I first came to hear those five precious words. I had written a mystery novel, the second to be published under my own name; Gold Medal issued it under the eminently forgettable title of Death Pulls a Doublecross. The book was a reasonably straightforward detective story in the Chandler-Macdonald mode featuring one Ed London, an amiable private eye who drank a lot of brandy and smoked a pipe incessantly and otherwise had no distinguishing traits. I don’t recall that he was hit on the head during the book, nor did he fall down a flight of stairs. Those were the only two clichés I managed to avoid.
My original version of the book opened with London being visited by his rat of a brother-in-law, whose mistress has recently been slain in such a way as to leave the brother-in-law holding the bag, or the baby, or the bathwater, or whatever. In the second chapter London wraps the young lady’s remains in an oriental rug, takes her to Central Park, unrolls the rug and leaves her to heaven. Then he sets about solving the case.
I showed the book to Henry Morrison, who was then my agent. He read it all the way through without gagging, then called me to discuss it.
“Switch your first two chapters around,” he said.
“Huh?” I said.
“Put your second chapter first,” he said patiently. “And put your first chapter second. You’ll have to run them through the typewriter so the transitions work smoothly but the rewriting should be minimal. The idea is to start in the middle of the action, with London carting the corpse around, and then go back and explain what he’s doing and just what he’s got in mind.”
“Oh,” I said. And glanced up quickly to see if a lightbulb had taken form above my head. I guess it only happens that way in comic strips.
Now this change, which was a cinch to make, didn’t turn Death Pulls a Doublecross into an Edgar candidate. All the perfumes of Arabia wouldn’t have turned the trick. But it did improve the book immeasurably. By beginning with Chapter Two, I opened the book with the action in progress. There was movement. Something was happening. The reader had no idea who Ed London was or why this young lady was wrapped in her Bokhara like cheese in a blintz, but he had plenty of time later to dope out the whys and wherefores. After he’d been hooked by the action.