As if you haven’t heard enough about openings…yeah well, here’s something more to think about…

Openings are critical. They have to accomplish a lot. That’s the common wisdom and there’s much advice available, including from me. However, there’s one piece of advice you probably haven’t heard before: do less.

Let me explain.

There’s one ingredient in openings that many writers fail to consider: the reader. For you, the writer, the opening likely is a challenge to pack in as much intrigue as you can. Opening line. Tension. Plot problem. Story question. Character intro. Atmosphere. Mood. Promise words. Narrative voice. Cram all that in and your fishing line is in the lake. It’s bound to hook a reader, right?

Sadly, that’s not necessarily so. If you’ve ever gone fishing, you know that you can cast your line for hours and reel in nothing. Relying on intrigue as an opening strategy is like that. You might get a bite, you might not. Comforting thought, eh?

Breathe. Let’s re-start with a few simple thoughts. First, what actually is the opening anyway? Is it the opening line? First page? First five? First chapter? Forget all that and consider this instead: The opening is whatever draws the reader into the story. That’s it. At the outset, that’s all that matters.

Notice something about what I just said. What draws…the READER…into the story. The fish has a mind of its own. The fish may or may not bite, but one thing’s for sure: The fish won’t bite right away. The fisherman (you) probably doesn’t think about it but the trout has a part to play in the afternoon. Before it bites, it is tempted. It considers. It imagines.

Putting it in human terms, there is an interplay between story and reader. You (the writer) imagine the story, but the reader must imagine it as well, and imagination needs space. If you clutter that space too much there’s no room for the reader’s imagination to participate.

Here’s another thought: The opening is not where “the story” starts, meaning events. The opening is an invitation: an invitation to dream. That is why in workshops I emphasize that while what we can visualize is important, equally important is the voice of the storyteller. It is that voice which weaves the spell. Invites the reader in. Hypnotizes. Prepares the reader to dream.

So, how do you make interplay happen?

There’s tons to say about openings, but for today I’ll focus on something simple: what the storyteller is not doing on the page. Not telling too much. Not trying too hard. A confident storyteller knows that it is enough to tease. Hint. Suggest. Let readers do some of the work. Leave the reader some room—room for imagination.

Read as many manuscripts as I do and you can tell when the storyteller is anxious. There’s a tightness, a feeling of trying too hard. That bleeds into the characters and the situation. To illustrate what I mean, let’s look at a hypothetical opening that, technically speaking, does what it is supposed to do.

Let’s call this novel Memory Lake. Here’s the technically correct opening:

David had started early from Chicago. Even so, it was four hours before he turned his Mercedes into the winding dirt road to his grandfather’s cottage at Memory Lake. What he saw as he parked his car and stepped into the hot summer sunshine dismayed him. The cottage was a wreck. Needed paint. Yard work. Tons of it.

Jimmy from town, whom David had hired to look after the place after his grandfather’s health took a dive, approached him. “I’ve sent Bobby to the hardware for exterior paint, and Gilbert is bringing his mower. We’ll have this place looking new in no time.”

“So, what have I been paying you for up until now?” David snapped.

That opening delivers much of what it is supposed to: character, setting, tension, intrigue, story questions. Why hasn’t Jimmy been doing what he was paid to do? Why hasn’t David kept closer tabs? Has grandfather died? Problems abound.

Notice also how tight and unhappy that opening is. Dismayed. Wreck. Snapped. It’s anxious. Lacks confidence. You can tell that because it slips into past perfect tense (“had”). And what does it make you feel? Welcome? David is sour. Feeling guilty, perhaps? Jimmy is covering his ass. The cottage and yard are a mess. A problem. Like the novel probably is going to be to read.

Do you really want to keep reading? When I read that opening aloud in workshops, very few participants want to keep going. Let’s try the same opening a different way. Same situation. Same characters. Same lake.

The drive from Chicago to the cottage on Memory Lake was four hours. Not long enough for David. Not this time. His grandfather was gone and now that place could only be sad. He hadn’t been there for a while.

The twisting dirt road to the cottage was the same as always, but the cottage itself was not. David switched off his car, stepped out and stared. The roof was like a broken spine. The yard had gone native. His grandfather’s old charcoal grill was on its side, rusted through. A wooden rowboat leaned against the side of the cottage with holes that he could see through to the wall’s peeling paint.

Jimmy was limping toward him. “Hey David, I know what you’re thinking. What have you been paying me for?”

“I wasn’t thinking that.”  

“It’s just, your grandfather wouldn’t let me touch anything.”

“I’m not angry.”

“No?”

“I’m glad that there’s plenty to do.”

David walked toward the cottage, kicking aside cans and pieces of rubber hose. Pieces of hose? What had been going on here?

Do you like that version more? Most do. Let’s look at what’s going better. David’s emotions are more evident but also a bit more surprising. He isn’t mad at Jimmy, he’s glad there’s clean up to keep him busy. (Repressed grief?) Story questions are still there, too, but they point not at the situation but at the deceased grandfather, who’s not around to answer them. Why didn’t grandfather want Jimmy to “touch anything”? And what’s with the pieces of hose in the yard?

Things have been happing here at Memory Lake, things which David—nor the reader—can yet know. The storyteller is in no hurry to tell us, either. The storyteller doesn’t set up the situation, fill in David’s backstory, or explain why David hasn’t visited his grandfather in a while. The storyteller understands that space is good. It’s space for the reader to wonder. To contribute.

To imagine.

So, are you saying that I’m trying too hard?

Yeah, I kinda am saying that. A confident opening is relaxed, even when the situation is tense. The confident storyteller doesn’t rush. The confident storyteller knows that packing in too much puts a brake on momentum. Momentum is not explaining things but allowing the reader explain them.

Momentum is not taking us backwards—which is what past perfect tense does—but aiming us forwards. In the first version above, David gets angry and accuses Jimmy. Do you think Jimmy is going to feel defensive? I guarantee that the reader is. That’s a full stop on momentum. In the second version, David skips annoyance and is already moving ahead to the next thing. We need to keep up. Will we keep up? Only if we do some of the work—some of the imagining.

So, where does Memory Lake go from there? No idea. Made it up. I sort of hope that David will find inside the cottage a young woman. Squatter? Relative he didn’t know about? A daughter he didn’t know about? That would be cool. Or maybe you have an idea? If you do, then the second opening of Memory Lake is doing the most important thing that it ought to do…

…make you, the reader, imagine. That is what I mean by interplay.

Donald Maass

Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).