Dear Reader, Do You Need Your Hand Held?

  I went back to The Critic for  Three novelists pushing the bloat out.  the writer reviews three novels as examples that might answer a question asked at the opening.

Second, there appears to be a decreasing appetite among editors and publishers for stretching readers, for risking the casual browser bailing early because they don’t immediately “get” the book. Yet the benefits of allowing the readers to do some of the thinking for themselves are obvious: a reader who is a participant rather than simply a bystander will be more engaged with the work. So this month’s column offers some novels that still dare to leave the reader’s hand unheld — without, it must be accepted, universal success.

Do you read to learn or to be taught? I see two different states of mind there. The first is internal, and the other is external. The example that comes to mind right now is Fifty Shades of Gray. It was quite popular while I was in prison, so I decided to give it a go. I read a page and gave up. Nothing in the prose style was interesting; nothing about the characters grabbed me. On the other hand, I stuck with Jose Saramago's opening for The Double, a forty-five-page paragraph (if memory serves) because the prose had energy and I wanted to see what happened.

KH is having trouble with my characters for "Chasing Ashes" because he thinks they cannot be real and therefore must be hallucinations. I am hoping readers will wonder why Captain Ahab is walking around 2024 Indiana and will want to find out what happens.

S.B. Caves writes in Building and Maintaining Tension in a Thriller Novel what has been my goal in my openings:

The first few lines of any novel are, in my opinion, the most important. They should offer enough mystique and curiosity to keep the reader’s eyes scrolling over the following sentences, but it should also have the reader mentally reaching for more. I’m a firm believer that the tension should start on the opening page and create a palpable sense of unease throughout the rest of the book. 

If possible, your opening paragraph should unbalance the reader, to let them know that they aren’t entering a safe space; something bad is going to happen in this story, perhaps to a character you might connect with, and there’s nothing you can do about it. You can hope for the best, but you won’t know where you stand until you’ve finished the novel—or when the novel is finished with you.

If you think that applies only to thrillers, then give another look at the openings of Moby-Dick and Anna Karenina. There is unease in both. 

I am having trouble with my opening to "Love Stinks" because people have found it confusing. My plan was for the opening to be like the opening of a film - we see these characters and then we see these characters and we find out there are connections between them, but what will come out of these connections is to come. More bothersome is whether my protagonists interest my readers - if they do not then no one will read further.

Again from S.B. Caves:

Once you begin to establish the core elements of your story—introducing characters, setting, and scenarios, you will want to eventually get the reader in a constant state of anticipation. A reader cannot ever feel completely comfortable, nor safe in the knowledge that they know the outcome of a story, or the fate of the characters. 

 Okay, one thing I am doing with "Love Stinks" is letting the reader see inside the minds of both protagonists. What is not shown is why the two of them remain married, or why one has opened the idea of divorce. Not everyone is always as self-aware as they think.

I had not thought in these terms until I read Building and Maintaining Tension in a Thriller Novel:

Whenever I’m thinking of a story idea, I like to envision scenarios that place ordinary people in threatening or extremely uncomfortable situations. The characters have to use their wits, willpower, and any skills they have to struggle through whatever trials they encounter in the plot. The aim here is to set up a sense of morbid intrigue and pose the question to the reader: What would you do if you found yourself in this situation? 

Maybe here is a clue to my problem with "Love Stinks". Its opening is meant to be cinematic - the reader is a voyeur. But does anyone want the reasons for their relationships to be closely examined?

No one has gotten to the end of "Love Stinks" to critique its ending. Caves uses the metaphor of a rollercoaster. I have to think about that - this may be the place where I diverge. My own metaphor has been history as a flooding river.

So, do you need your hands held? Do I need to spell out everything about my characters in the first pages - full biographies, perhaps? Let me know what you think.

sch 7/13