This week, I wanted to talk about just the opening of The Dark is Rising, by Susan Cooper.

This book means a lot to me -- I read it as a very young person and continue to re-read it -- so I may not be the most critical reader. Let's find out.

Synopsis: In what appears to be a quiet, rural area of England, strange portents are appearing. It is four days to Christmas, and Will Stanton's birthday is the following day. The radio crackles when he walks past and animals are skittish. A stranger seems to be watching him, and when he mentions these signs to the seemingly everyday and well meaning farmer Dawson, that old friend of the family seems to understand what it all means.

Craft lesson: the dragon's toe

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In some ways, the opening of this novel is a bit limited. We don't learn that much about Will's deep personality in these early pages; there is no clear source of "internal" tension or conflict in the story, other than the discomfort of being around lots of other people. It's not apparent that Will needs to change or grow; he has no "project," either, to use the term from my plotting courses.

But the novel is amazing in how it hints at dangers and magical troubles. These combined signs create a compelling opening chapter.

The idea of the dragon's toe is simple: in most novels, the reader isn't ready to meet the dragon in chapter one. They aren't warmed up enough yet; they don't know what a dragon would mean in that fiction world.

So you (usually) can't just show the dragon. You have to show only the dragon's toe.

Often this means that the big bad or important thing isn't even named at first. The reader isn't ready for its name! Instead, people speak more generally.

“The Walker is abroad,” he said again. “And this night will be bad, and tomorrow will be beyond imagining.”

Look at all the portents drops into these opening few pages: radio static, angry pets, rooks, a scuttling stranger, a local farmer offering mystical comments... We know something is coming. We don't know what -- which is good, because we aren't ready for it.

Will screwed up his eyes nervously, peering down the little side road. “It was a weird-looking man all hunched over, and when he saw me looking he ran off behind a tree. Scuttled, like a beetle.”

There is so much forward plot motion that we are eager to keep reading!

In your own fiction -- how could you introduce the big (or a big) problem, danger, or threat very early in your novel -- but without naming it?

Yours,

Daniel

The Dark is Rising – chapter one

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