In a post on Jane Friedman’s blog, Susan DeFreitas offers suggestions for writing a compelling opening scene for your novel.
While common writing advice says that opening scenes should have some tension, DeFreitas notes that many authors mistakenly interpret this to mean external trouble, something outside the protagonist’s control. Instead, writers should create tension from within, using their protagonist’s foibles. “What really sucks us in—and what really makes agents and acquisitions editors sit up and take notice—is internal trouble, because it’s trouble of this type that signals the beginning of a character arc,” DeFreitas says.
While your hero probably doesn’t understand their internal issue – or even know she has one – at the beginning of your story, there are still ways to bring these problems to the fore. DeFreitas suggests three strategies.
- Nagging doubts or misgivings. Create doubt surrounding whatever is happening in your protagonists life. “Misgivings on the part of the protagonist—even if they immediately tamp down, rationalize, and dismiss them—send a clear signal to the reader that something isn’t quite right with this character,” DeFreitas writes.
- Self-generated trouble. “Self-generated trouble indicates some way that the protagonist is getting in their own way,” DeFreitas explains. “It tells us that there’s some issue on the inside this character isn’t dealing with, and now it’s come to the point where that issue is starting to have a negative impact on their life.”
- The voice of dissent. If your hero doesn’t doubt the path they’re on, someone else can. “This is true of virtually any ground situation where the protagonist thinks everything in their life is perfectly fine: if someone else shows up to tell them that it isn’t, that they need to get their act together and change, the reader will have a clear sense that the story to come will in fact chronicle that change,” DeFreitas says.
