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Dear members of RWD, here is our new novel: Daisy Darker. Today, we'll be discussing the first page, the "Note from the Author's Agent." The craft lesson is on "telling as a story accelerator" -- it's an awkward term, I know. Once you read the email, let me know if you can come up with a better title than that.

Synopsis: The novel opens with a note from the author's agent. The agent reports that the author of the novel is now dead and that the events described in the story may well be true. A general air of dread and dismay fills the agent's tone.

Read a preview of the opening here: Daisy Darker

Craft lesson: telling as a story accelerator

This novel opens with a fictional letter introducing the novel as a fictional object in the world (we probably assume that the pages we are about to read comprise that novel, but, of course, there is no guarantee of this, as the agent names neither the title nor the author). On the one hand, this opening gives the novel an old-time, archaic feel. It reminds us of those 18th century novels that pretended to be a collection of letters, or a found diary -- perhaps this gives the opening a cozy, familiar feeling.

On the other hand, this opening also does a great job of hooking our attention with a series of mysterious implied questions. These "open loops" motivate us to turn the page to figure what is going on.

how did the writer of the manuscript die?
is the Christmas date important?
why is the style so striking the agent knows who wrote it?
how did the manuscript get to the agent?

A vague air of horror / dismay is suggested in the final sentence of the paragraph, where the agent's clear, trim, blunt style shifts. Notice how firm and clear each sentence is -- until the end:

"I confess... I fear... at least some of... might be..."

This use of distancing, weasel words, and "filtering" language, frowned on by some creative writing teachers (after all, the sentence might be shortened to, "It could be true."), seems to imply that the events of the story will be so shocking the agent hesitates to accept them as real.

But what I'm really interested in is the way this kind of opening acts as a "story accelerator." It speeds up our reading experience.

Here is a funny problem about fiction: it is slow to read. This seems odd at first, because people read stories for fun, to escape and imagine other worlds, but we've all met the person who says, "I only read non-fiction these days."

There is a level of effort required to start a new story. You have to be patient while the author pieces together their world. You have to read on diligently while the stage is set and you don't really know what is going on. At some point, we hope, that effort will subside, and we'll just read for fun, but there is an initial lift.

Imagine you began a novel that started like this:

Angela sipped her coffee in the quiet bakery. The cup was warm in her hands, the indoor air still cold from the last customer who had stomped out. She began to read the local newspaper.

The typical reader, I imagine, has no problem reading these words. But they might be wondering, "Why are you telling me all this?" If it goes on in this vein for a while, they might find themselves turning the book over to check the synopsis. "What actually happens in this book?"

Most of the time, we readers want some sense of where the story is going. There are novels where that sense comes very, very late -- such as the literary multi-POV study of consciousness and society -- and you basically have to read the whole novel to know what the writer was getting at; these novels can be great, but they ask a lot of the reader. In other novels, we are supposed to understand that these early scenes present a sort of false picture of Angela's life: she is calm and at ease right now, but a killer / romantic interest / financial problem will soon intrude and complicate things.

Either way, there is still that early reading effort to smell the cinnamon in the little bakery, to quieten the mind, to identify with Angela and her thoughts.

And this, I think, is why it can be so useful to open with overt, explicit STORYTELLING in a story. Rather than wading through pages of Angela musing about the local news, or shopping for antiques, or observing the cold day, we get some kind of clue or heads up from the narrator about what is coming.

Angela sipped her coffee in the quiet bakery. The cup was warm in her hands, yet she had no idea that she had just lost her job at the library. She began to read the local newspaper.

A year to the day after she was exonerated from the murder of her husband, Angela sipped her coffee in the quiet bakery. The cup was warm in her hands...

There many ways, of course, to do this sort of opening that are more elegant than this. The point is that these moments of telling / storytelling speed up the reading process. We don't have to exert so much energy putting ourselves in Angela's shoes, unsure if it will be "worth it" -- we already have a clue about where the story is going. Our reading highway is well-lit and clear.

That's one reason I like this first page of Daisy Darker. It gives us a "fast lane" for reading: by hinting that the author / narrator / protagonist will be dead by the end of the story, and that the events in question will be hard to believe. Thus, when we begin the first chapter, we don't pause to wonder why we are learning about the protagonist's childhood. We bound forward, motivated by the mystery from page one.

What do you think about this? Could you add one sentence to a story you are working on right now -- a sentence of "storytelling promise" in the opening lines -- to give the reader a "fast lane" through the early part of your story?

Talk about the novel, and, if you like, share your one sentence, here:

RWD Daisy Darker page one

This course is only available for enrolled students only.

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