It’s Monday and who says Monday says: writing tips! Today we’re going back to writing a novel. I’ll give you my little tips (non-exhaustive, as always) to start a novel well. We can never say it enough: the beginning is very very very important! It’s often during the first few pages that the reader will form their opinion, they may very well decide to stop reading if the beginning is too average in their eyes. It would be a shame to lose your readership because of a poorly written first chapter… Notwithstanding the spelling and syntax (I won’t insist on that, of course…), there are some fairly simple little tricks to prevent the reader from closing your book.
1. The prologue is not essential (nor more badass than Chapter 1
When you start writing novels, you tend to want to write a prologue. I fell into this rather characteristic flaw of fantasy novels: wanting at all costs to start with a prologue, if possible badass, classy, and very mysterious. I swear to you and it’s my number 1 advice: a prologue is not always essential. It is often superfluous.
The number one risk is wasting your time writing the prologue. Of course, it’s the very beginning and we want it to be perfect! But how many novels have stopped at the prologue? I have a good number! By insisting too much on the prologue, and by wanting to refine it too much, we end up forgetting the essential: the story.
The prologue is a pain in the neck. In my opinion, it is better to start with the story and when you are more or less finished (or everything is more or less planned), come back to this business of the prologue. A prologue is ultimately quite external to the story. Like a satellite, something in orbit. It is an appetizer and you do not need to write it to start your novel. So yes, maybe your story needs a prologue, don’t start obsessing over it. Otherwise, you will never move forward and your novels will join the graveyard of my own cowardly abandoned prologues…
There is a tendency to believe that a prologue is classy and professional. No. Some stories need a prologue, but in my humble opinion, they are fewer than those that don’t.
In every novel that starts with a useless prologue when it only needed a good old chapter 1, a baby panda dies.
2. Avoid big clichés (or at least don’t use them all at once
In bulk: the announcement of a prophecy (1000 years old, it’s classier), the Kleenex characters (= that we will never see again) talking about the main character when he is not there (if possible in a place where alcohol is served), the chase where we do not even understand who is running after whom, the main character who gets dressed in the morning and looks at himself in the mirror (a good excuse to describe him, I know!), the “my name is Machine, I am 15 years old and I am at the high school of Roche-Fontaine-sous-les-Bois”, the flashback to the birth of the main character, the main character on his deathbed (or in a retirement home, that works too) who will tell his life story so exciting for three thousand years while he is supposed to be dying AND SO ON.
These clichés have proven their effectiveness, I know. But do we have to use them every time? All at the same time… We all know that the prophecy thing is cool and that everyone uses it (especially in fantasy). We also know that it’s super practical for the characters to look at themselves in a mirror so that the reader knows what they look like. Sometimes clichés are good. If they have become clichés, it’s because they were really good ideas to begin with. So much so that everyone started using them. A little is fine. Too much and it becomes a kind of plagiarism patchwork of more or less assumed references. Let’s control ourselves!
3. Avoid the encyclopedia (even though Tolkien did
Any normal person has been somewhat traumatized by Chapter 1 of The Lord of the Rings. Before the start of Book 1, we are treated to 15 pages on hobbits. I think that this prologue (I think we can call this chapter a prologue since it is not part of the books that make up The Lord of the Rings ) has discouraged a good number of readers. I admit that when I first read this book, I skipped straight to the beginning of the story. I was 9 years old, forgive me.
In the Lord of the Rings, it’s not a problem in the end. This work is a monument, Tolkien is a god I pray to every night before going to bed (see my article next Wednesday), he can afford to fit in sick appendices and songs in Elvish with a 7-page translation every 30 pages.
The thing is, not everyone is a future Tolkien. Not everyone will be lucky enough to have a gigantic movie to encourage readers to ignore the first 50 pages of your book devoted to the geopolitics of the world you invented. This kind of stuff (even in Tolkien) is annoying. I know that it can be very useful to explain the context of your story, especially in Fantasy and SF, but the average reader does not necessarily want to waste an hour with that. Put a map, a summary of the characters like at the beginning of Game of Thrones with the different clans/families/groups if you think it is necessary and that’s it. The rest: put it in appendices.
If you think that it is essential to give the reader a brief overview of the geopolitics or mythology of the area: keep it short. It’s good to invent lots of things, but you have to think about the reader (a bit lazy around the edges) who doesn’t know you from Adam and who will wonder what the hell you are doing and when you plan to launch your *censored* plot. Think that on every page of an encyclopedia placed at the beginning of a novel, a baby unicorn dies. Think twice before you start, especially if you have already killed baby pandas with a point.
