That blank computer screen. That’s what we writers face each time we begin new books. As we sit, contemplating that screen, fingers poised over the keyboard, the characters are voices in our heads. All the plot twists and turns are vying for attention, each wanting to make an early appearance.
What is the perfect moment to drop readers into the story, that place that propels readers forward and allows the backstory to unravel? Janet and D. Z. have some thoughts and examples.
When writing a mystery featuring a ghost, it makes sense to start with the ghost.
As a writer, when I start a novel, my head is a simmering stew of ideas—the plot, the setting, the characters who will populate the story and make it come alive. There’s a backstory of events and experiences that will lead these characters into the book. And who knows? Other characters and plot twists may crash the party later.
The beginning is designed to hook readers and make them keep going, turning pages until the end. But where is the beginning? I don’t want to bog down the story or deter readers with too much detail and backstory. Better to reveal it a little bit at a time, dropping it in like a pinch of salt, a shake of pepper or a sprig of rosemary, to season the stew.
The third book in the Jill McLeod series is The Ghost in Roomette Four. As the name implies, there’s a ghost.
Jill is a Zephyrette, a train hostess, works aboard the classic streamliner train called the California Zephyr. Between 1949 and 1970, the train ran between the Bay Area and Chicago. The books are set in the early 1950s.
Jill’s job as the only female member of the crew is to see to the needs of the passengers, whether it’s making announcements, taking dinner reservations, or rendering first aid. Which is what Jill has been doing in the opening chapter of the book. She’s on her way back to her compartment late at night. And then:
I am not seeing this, Jill McLeod told herself. But she was.
Light shimmered at eye level, about ten feet in front of her. The apparition seemed to have no source. None, anyway, that Jill could discern. What’s more, she could see through it.
Jill took a step toward the light. It brightened, then dimmed. She took another step. The light flickered and moved into roomette four.
She shook herself. A few more steps, then she stopped at the open doorway of the roomette and peered inside.
Empty.
Want to know more about that ghost and how it came to be haunting a train? I certainly hope so.
Let’s look at another beginning, this one from Kindred Crimes, first in my series featuring Oakland private investigator Jeri Howard. I rewrote that opening many times, trying to figure out the best place to begin. I finally decided to start with the classic trope of many PI novels—the detective in her office, conducting the initial interview with the prospective client.
Man, woman and child posed in front of a thick green Christmas tree, its branches laden with silver tinsel and gold balls. He stood behind her chair, hands resting lightly on her shoulders. Her blond hair fell in waves past the collar of her red dress. In her lap she held a cherubic toddler. They smiled at the camera, the image of a perfect middle-class nuclear family, caught forever in a five-by-seven glossy.
“When did she leave?” I asked.
The first paragraph gives readers the image of the supposedly perfect family. The second reveals that this marriage is far from perfect. In fact, as readers learn in the next few paragraphs, the wife left the kid with her in-laws, cleaned out the joint account and disappeared. The husband wants Jeri to find her. And Jeri, well, she’s not making any promises.
Let’s look at another Jeri Howard book, Take a Number. In earlier drafts, the murder victim, Sam Raynor was already dead, shot to death at his estranged wife’s apartment building. And she’s the number one suspect. I decided since Raynor was dead for most of the book, it was important to start with a scene where he is alive. So, I set up a meeting between Jeri, working for the wife, and Raynor.
It was just after noon on a bright hot August Friday when I met Sam Raynor for the first—and last—time.
Well, we know this character isn’t long for this world. Subsequent paragraphs show readers just why he was such a nasty piece of work and why Jeri says, later in the book, that if anyone wanted to kill Sam Raynor, they’d have to take a number and get in line.
Beginnings should lead readers right into the story and make them long for more.
When you start writing a book, there is always so much you want to tell. Yes, tell! After all, the reader should know everything you know about your characters and how their lives got them to this moment. Right? No, no and no. Too many beginnings are slowed down by good intentions.
Instead, you want to drop in at exactly the right moment, with the right scene, the right people, and the right tension. Easy enough?
There are challenges to this galore. What if you write an ongoing series, each episode set about three months apart? What if the reader hasn’t read the first books in the series? What if it isn’t a detective series where the hero (male or female) moves from case to case? What if, instead, it is a book about people who live in a small town, who have lives, who interact with each other, and whose lives proceed apace? What if you want to tell that story, as well as the mystery or thriller?
As a reader, I like to be led along as the tension rises and the discoveries are unveiled. So, there I sit with a blank page, a host of characters, a presumed mystery and the desire to have my little town live and breathe. This leads to a constant struggle to create beginnings that move the characters and the town forward a few months, explain a wee bit of what came before, and introduce a whiff of something about to come. Enough to interest series readers and not lose new readers because they’ve missed important trajectories.
For instance, the final version of A Confluence of Enemies begins with Sebastian Kanady discovering a body in a drying riverbed, then moves to Cora pondering the drought’s effect on Wanee.
As a favor to Dr. Shaw, Sebastian Kanady sampled the groundwater feed to Railtown whenever he had time away from his newspaper, The Courier.
Then, in the first chapter, Cora:
Little had changed in Wanee since the murders in May, except the weather. It hadn’t rained in weeks, leaving the lush green of Wanee a washed-out, yellow-tinged green.
It wasn’t always that way. In the first draft, Cora mulled the drought, then Kanady found the body.
Truth is, sometimes I don’t get the balance just right. Sigh.
I cannot tell you how many times I rewrote the opening of Saving Calypso. I knew I wanted to paint a clear picture of Grieg Washburn. But I also knew that if I didn’t juxtapose Calypso Swale’s story with his from the beginning, it wouldn’t work. So, the book starts with Calypso on the run, then segues to Grieg. Here’s the very beginning of each chapter.
Four Years Ago: They were back. Display advertisements in the San Francisco paper seeking Calypso Swale, a missing heiress, preceded the watchers by two weeks.
Now: Seated in a room with carpeted walls, Grieg Washburn finalized exploration rights to a small Kenyan rift. The two-day trek to view the formation involved Land Rovers, guides, guns, and sleeping under the big stars of the African nights.
Still, it is way too easy to get carried away with the backstory, all those things you want the reader to know about everybody and the dead body, too. I’m guilty. I always feel as though I could have done better. But here is the thing: if you don’t move past the beginning, there won’t be an end. Plus, you can always rewrite or rearrange, and you may have to once you reach the climax. Ask me. I can’t think of one book where I didn’t rewrite the beginning after I thought I was done.
No, that’s not true. Here is the first sentence of the one and only beginning to Booth Island:
My clothed body bumps off granite rocks as it descends into the frigid depths of a Canadian lake.
There you go. Perhaps the best advice for a thriller and mystery writer, after all, is: When in doubt, begin with a body, some action, a threat, or a hint.
Cora Countryman tapped her pencil on a line in her account ledger. Bored by bookwork, she considered the changes in Wanee, Illinois, over the last three months, including the addition of a new druggist, a new restaurant, and a new bar since mid-October, and the excitement of the bank and train robberies. The last in Rock Island. (From One Horse Too Many)
To beginnings. Where would we be without them?