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Inspirations

BERNARDINE EVARISTO: peripatetic writing tutor

BEGINNINGS: MAKE US HUNGRY FOR MORE

An ongoing series of Mslexia writing workshops on prose and poetry, inspired by the novelist’s travels and teaching experiences.

What is it about a novel that makes you want to read on? Some writers have a prose style that is so alive and vibrant it jumps off the page, grabs you by the throat and will throttle you to death if you don’t pay attention. Others open their fiction with a quietness that creeps up on you and insinuates itself into your consciousness so that before you know it, you’re hooked. Indeed, the beginning section of a work of fiction is called the narrative hook.

The opening gambit of A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens is pretty unbeatable:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spirit of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us…

And so it continues. You’re sucked into the rhythm and velocity of the prose and, in the absence of a full stop, you simply can’t tear yourself away.

Or take George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four:

It was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.

Clocks striking thirteen? Huh? The futuristic universe of the novel is immediately intimated – and it’s so intriguing that you want to find out more.

I rarely buy books randomly or browse in bookshops, I usually know what I’m looking for. I rely on word-of-mouth, interviews and reviews. But on the rare occasion that I do browse to buy, I always read the first page to see if the writing appeals. What am I looking for? A distinctive voice, a story or characters that interest me, something different. When I run creative writing workshops I get a very good sense of a new student’s ability by the time I’ve read a page or two of their work. On the rare occasion a student’s writing sings, so do I.

Of course, openings can be misleading. Some fiction begins badly and comes into its power as the novel progresses. Ian McEwan’s latest novel On Chesil Beach, begins with a sentence that seems wilfully throwaway:

They were young, educated, and both virgins on this, their wedding night, and they lived in a time when a conversation about sexual difficulties was plainly impossible.

Now, if a student presented me with this as the first sentence of a novel, the advice I’d offer would be to elaborate, texturise, vivify and pay attention to the cadences of the sentence. The creative writing tutor’s well-used adage would roll off my tongue: You must show, not tell. But McEwan has been praised for the pared-down elegance of his prose. In his hands such an opening becomes a quietly confident, un-showy statement from someone who knows he has a massive, loyal readership.

You can do it when you’re McEwan, but can you get away with it when you’re Annie Anonymous and your unpublished first novel is the 50th manuscript a tired editor (or, more likely) a tired agent is flicking through that week? If you think editors and agents have the time and inclination to wait until chapter five before putting a dull manuscript down, think again. You might know that your book takes off into the stratosphere from chapter five, but they don’t. So how do you get and maintain their attention?

Often, the first person narrator speaking directly to the reader and establishing character is an effective way to begin a novel. Alice Walker does it brilliantly in The Color Purple which begins:

Dear God/ I am fourteen years old. I am I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.

In a mere 31 words a lot of basic information is conveyed about this person. What do we know? That she’s female, aged 14, that she’s religious (Christian) and she wants to be good. The crossed-out I am might indicate poor education, her need to get things right or, more significantly, that she wants to emphasise that she’s not just good now, she has always been good. Her sweet child’s voice is innocent and empathetic. We care about her and we want to know what is going on in her life.

This introduction to the life of Celie, who is subjected to child abuse, made millions of people want to read on.

A word of warning on this point. I came across an important American literary journal not so long ago which featured a host of new fiction writers. I couldn’t believe how many of the writers’ stories were written with punchy, attention-seeking first person voices. A version of this, just to give you an example, was: ‘Fuck you, Mom. If we’re not rich, how come we live in a mansion? And by the way, I killed Dad.’

The editor’s taste was obvious. The writers’ designs upon us were obvious. It was all so obvious the stories cancelled each other out and became too tedious to read.

Sometimes in creative writing workshops students present me with opening chapters where the characters are characterless. I don’t know who they are, where they are, or what they want. I’m told by the student that their intention is to withhold, for example, the gender of a character, because it keeps the reader guessing and creates tension. Oh-kaaay. Look, the information you provide and where in the narrative you provide it is up to you. As I always say, there are no hard and fast rules, but remember that people need some fundamental facts to hold on to, and that the architecture of narrative suspense is a lot more complex than withholding basic character data.

One of my all-time favourite novels is New Zealand writer Keri Hulme’s maverick novel The Bone People. It’s a novel about a part-Maori, asexual woman who lives alone in a remote lighthouse. Yet the strange prologue to the novel is obscure and off-putting:

He walks down the street. The asphalt reels by him. /It’s all silence./ The silence is music./ He is the singer./ The people passing smile and shake their heads./ He holds a hand out to them.

And so it goes on, for several painfully indecipherable pages, until I wanted to shout, ‘Stop it!’ Then, when the novel proper starts, it’s with a complete change of style and voice that I think works. Hulme didn’t want her manuscript edited and I respect her for that because a more original novel is hard to find. Nor did it do her any harm – it won the Booker Prize in 2005. Still…

I didn’t get past the first few chapters of Toni Morrison’s novel Paradise and I’m her greatest fan. Even though the novel opens with the memorable line ‘They shoot the white girl first…’ it went way off-piste and was far too clever for its own good, as my mother would say. That’s not to suggest that literature should subscribe to our impatient, fast-food culture of sound-bites and shock-tactics, but there’s a reason there are no latter-day Prousts in the 21st Century (In Search of Lost Time: one novel, seven volumes, 3,200 pages).

Maintaining the quality of a powerful opening throughout a novel is another challenge altogether. How many novels break down after a promising start; implode into linguistic lethargy and narrative inertia?

Another writer I greatly admire is short story writer and first time novelist Jacob Ross. His recently-published novel Pynter Bender is an acutely-observed portrayal of a tiny Caribbean community set among the cane fields during the 1960s. Ross is a very un-harried writer and from the onset he establishes place, people and atmosphere:

Saturday mornings, the women came down from the river. They were larger than their menfolk. They balanced basins as wide as ships on their heads and their voices carried across the foothills and washed the bright morning air.

This is a beautiful, simple introduction to a novel that is beautiful and profound. From the start there is poetry and imagery, the voice is gentle, mature and self-assured. You trust that this writer is a safe pair of hands. And he is, but it’s not a cosy, folksy read; rage simmers beneath the surface.

Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of the Kgale Hill....

Thus we are introduced to the protagonist of The No.1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. Unlike Ross, McCall Smith does not produce poetic sentences swelling with meaning. Instead he is a straightforward storyteller and this novel, the first in a series, has great charm. McCall Smith is a very upfront writer; he tells it like it is, and I was immediately fascinated by the fact that an African woman was running a detective agency in Africa. I don’t read crime fiction but this one had to be different, I surmised. And it was. Yet again, in one simple sentence, the author made me hungry to know more.

There are so many ways of opening a novel (as you can see in the variety of examples demonstrated here): setting the scene, grabbing readers’ attention, opening a world one can slide right in to. So craft your opening well: don’t make the beginning of your novel the end of our relationship with it.

BERNARDINE EVARISTO’s new novel Blonde Roots will be published by Penguin in June 2008. She is co-editor with novelist Maggie Gee of this year’s British Council/Granta anthology NW15. For more info, visit www.bevaristo.net.

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New Writing

From Issue 40 ◊ Jan/Feb/Mar 2009

Homepleasure

• Go to your bookshelves, select ten novels you’ve enjoyed, and see how the authors began them. Register at what point you felt propelled to read on and what it was about the writing that had this effect.
• Go to your bookshelves, select ten novels you didn’t really enjoy, or were disappointed with, and work out at what stage you became disillusioned.
• Learn from all of the above and try experimenting with ways to write your opening paragraph. You might find new ways into your novel if you try various routes, so take the plunge.
• Maybe you hate the idea of a workshop but still need help. See the book list below.
• Don’t get stuck – you can always rework the beginning later.
• Bernardine Evaristo
• PHOTO © Portia St. Hilaire-Daley