Yes, never is a strong word, and no, I didn’t get a degree in creative writing. But considering I’ve written eleven manuscripts, I thought my ‘experience’ qualified me to offer this advice to those writers who are lacing up their boot and heading out on their writing journey. Down the path of dazzling dialogue, over the hills of hyperbole, and through the harrowing woods of wrong word choices you go. Okay, you get the point.
Maybe you’ve just finished your first draft and you think you’re story’s pretty good. You’ve read it out loud to a friend or maybe just to yourself. You didn’t see any typos. Bonus!
But I encourage you to look it over one more time, looking for these two things. And if you see them, they might be symptoms of a larger problem.
It was a simple question by my editor friend that led me to start thinking about this in depth. I had asked her what she thought of my introduction to my new mystery novel and if she had any suggestions. Her suggestion was: Why don’t you say something like, “she was young and full of promise?” to describe the protagonist in the first scene?
It seemed innocent enough, but after so many query rejections, I knew the answer was NO! but I needed to give her, and myself a well-thought-out reason why.
Which leads us to the two things to never put in the first page of your manuscript, or even the first chapter if you can help it:
1) Exposition. Exposition has its place, but if you’re starting a novel in medias res, which is Latin for “in the midst of things,” which is a very good place to start to captivate the reader from the beginning. But in the midst of the action, there is no place for narrating or describing the protagonist’s horrible, sordid past, or even what she had for breakfast. You might think you’re helping the reader, but you’re really, in all honesty, just making them yawn, wondering why they should care.
2) Point of View Shifts. It should go without saying, that if you’re in one character’s head, you should stay there for the entire scene. So, when my mystery story started in my protagonist, Shelby’s, head, I knew she wouldn’t think of herself as “young and full of promise,” and to say that she was young and full of promise would only distract from the action and pull the reader out of the story. The reader would be wondering, “who’s head am I in?” The answer would be, “the writer’s” instead of “the protagonist’s.” That’s not what any writer wants.
This all seems instinctual for a lot of writers, but it’s easy, when you’re first starting out, to want to help the reader by piling on as much information and backstory as you possibly can. But, if you just focus on one scene at a time, as you go along, you’ll see the benefits of letting the story unfold; just like it would in real life.
So, take it from someone who’s been there, done that.
Happy Writing.