It’s often said that the only thing the opening 100-word chunk of a novel needs to do is make the reader read the next 100. After that, take it 100 words at a time and keep doing the same thing. Easy, right?
It’s a little more complex than that. In order to offer a slightly more ‘complex’ answer, while trying to avoid the charge of narcissism, let me talk about the strategies I’m using in my own work. I’m going to risk a case study. Here’s the opening 100 words of my latest novel, ‘The Typewriterists’:
Chapter One — Cambrai, December 1917
“After the retreat, he was hailed a hero and billeted in a makeshift bedroom that had once been a pigsty in the outbuildings of a grand château. The animal afterscents lingered under those of bleach and carboxylic scrub, but any room with stone walls was better than a tent and any tent better than the insides of a tank along the road to Cambrai. To Eustace Havershall, the lottery of survival felt absurd, but the absurdist thing of all was the typewriter on the three-legged table, its corner propped up by a hay bale.“
As the author, locked in a darkened room illuminated only by the blue light of a PC screen, I was thinking about several things in setting out this opening scene — on one hand, introducing and encouraging engagement with the main character(s); on the other, addressing the need to build the fictional world we’re entering (author, reader and protagonist together, hopefully with the same mindset). I was also trying to hint at what’s going to be important over the course of the whole novel (the themes). That’s three major objectives and only 33 words for each of them.
My strategy here with ‘The Typewriterists’ (after many aborted versions) was to start my main character in a place he’s unfamiliar with, so that his attempt to assess what he sees echoes the reader’s own need to do the same. He seems confused – he doesn’t know why he’s a survivor (something that permanently scars his moral character), or why there’s a typewriter in his bedroom (this latter mystery signalling that typewriters are going to be central to the plot). As confusions and questions, these both underline what the reader is probably already asking themselves. I’m aligning my reader with Eustace.
In addition, those 100 words offer the reader the following background information about Eustace Havershall, my protagonist Apart from his name (which I hold back for 70 words, until my reader has a chance to picture the room), I’m saying he’s been ‘hailed a war hero’, which perhaps suggests this acclaim might be undeserved. Someone has allocated him this room (the reader wonders who) and he’s glad to have a pigsty to sleep in. He’s recently been serving inside a tank (they were new and comparatively rare in WWI, so the reader might wonder how special Eustace might be). There’s the sensation of a sharp smell for the reader to share with Eustace (shared senses always create a good character/reader bond).
But hopefully, there’s other more-general world building going on at the same time. The reader has been shown the buildings of a French Chateau in 1917 (just so it’s clear it’s WWI). The British are retreating during (or perhaps after) the battle at Cambrai (which asks the question, ‘Why are they losing?’) Apart from a smell, the reader is offered a picture: imagine the inside of a pigsty that has been cleaned out to be a bedroom with stone walls, a rickety table and a typewriter (the reader might assume that accommodation is in short supply, and by extension, probably imagines that everything is rationed). There is no sense of luxury here, though there is a sense from Eustace that he thinks it better than any alternative he might have. Maybe this also asks for the reader’s sympathy; no one would want to be Eustace in this situation.
All that – character and world building – in the first 100 words! Or at least, that’s what I was trying for. Note: there is no explicit backstory revealed, or flashbacks to the past. (I’ve seen that attempted in many novels, but I have to care about the main character before I care about their past).
If you want to check out what happens after that in my novel (how the first 100 words leads to the second and so on), then here’s the link to The Typewriterists on Amazon.
And by the way, make sure you don’t miss the next event at the club, when Marc Gascoigne comes to talk on 13th February 2025.
Contributed by: Dave Martin
leicesterwritersclub.com 