Manual For Fiction Writers, Block, Lawrence [best books to read for beginners txt] 📗

for the ensuing narrative. It sets the tone, and we're ready to be drawn into what follows.

3. ESTABLISHING THE PROBLEM. Sometimes a writer's foremost concern in opening a story is to present the central plot-problem to the reader as expeditiously as possible. Here's how Jack Ritchie uses dialogue to acquaint the reader with a complicated situation:

I had just returned from my vacation and Ralph began filling me in on the case assigned to us.

Three members of the jury were murdered, he said.

I nodded wisely. Ah, yes. I see it all. The jury convicted a felon and he swore he would get his revenge.

Not quite, Ralph said. Actually it was a hung jury. Four for acquittal and eight for conviction.

But of course, I said. So the criminal promptly proceeded to kill three of the jurors who had voted for his conviction.

Not that either, Henry. All three of the jurors murdered had voted for his acquittal.

Why the devil would he want to murder three jurors who voted for his acquittal?

He didn't really murder anybody, Henry. He couldn't because he was dead.

The problem here is extremely complex; Ritchie's opening draws us in simply by having one detective explain things to the other.

In The Problem of Li T'ang, Geoffrey Bush gets things going by summing up the problem, one that can be stated much more simply than Ritchie's:

I had a problem. I had sixteen midterm papers from my course on Chinese painting, the first papers from the first course I'd ever taught, and one of them was brilliant.

In a sense, of course, most effective openings do several things at once. They get the action going, set the tone, and establish the problem?and while they're at it they may sketch a character or two, convey some important information, take out the garbage and sew a button on your cuff.

The opening's not everything. You can start off with Call me Ishmael and still lose your reader down the line if you're not careful. But your opening has to be good?or the rest of the story won't have a chance because nobody'll stick around to read it.

CHAPTER 25

First Things Second

NEVER EAT at a place called Mom's. Never play cards with a man named Doc. And never lie down with a woman who's got more troubles than you.

These precepts, according to Nelson Algren, are What Every Young Man Should Know. I came upon them at an early age and never forgot them, and indeed I've never ordered an omelette at Mom's CafŽ or dealt aces and eights to Doc McGee.

I figure two out of three ain't bad.

All the same, Algren's admonition isn't the best advice I ever received. That designation has to be reserved for a watchword I was given many years ago by Henry Morrison, boon companion and my erstwhile agent. Candidly, I feel a certain amount of reluctance about sharing this kernel of wisdom with you. It's stood me in such good stead over so many years that I'm not altogether certain I should let the world in on it.

Oh, what the hell. We're friends, aren't we? We're members of that international brotherhood of hacks and scribblers, so why shouldn't we share a trick of the trade. There are indeed tricks to every trade but ours, as the carpenter said while hammering a screw, so don't blab this one around. Keep it to yourselves, gang.

Don't begin at the beginning.

Let me tell you how I first came to hear those five precious words. I had written a mystery novel which I called Coward's Kiss, and which Knox Burger at Gold Medal in his finite wisdom retitled Death Pulls a Double-cross. The book is mercifully out of print and we can all be happy about that. It was a reasonably straightforward detective story featuring one Ed London, an amiable private eye who drank a lot of Cognac and smoked a pipe incessantly and otherwise had no distinguishing traits. I don't believe he was hit on the head during the book, nor did he fall down a flight of stairs. Those were the only two clichŽs I managed to avoid.

As I wrote the book, it opens with London being visited by his rotten brother-in-law, whose mistress has recently been slain in such a way as to leave the brother-in-law holding the baby, or the bag, or what you will. In the second chapter London wraps the young lady's remains in an Oriental rug, lugs her to Central Park, unrolls the rug and leaves her to heaven, or to whatever necrophiles are prowling that expanse of greensward. Then he sets about to solve the case.

I showed the book to Henry. He read it all the way through without gagging. Then we got together to discuss it.

Switch your first two chapters around, he said.

Huh? I said.

Put your second chapter first, he said patiently. And put your first chapter second. You'll have to run them through the typewriter so the transitions work smoothly but the rewriting should be minimal. The idea is to start in the middle of the action, with London carting the corpse around, and then go back and explain what he's doing and just what he's got in mind.

Oh, I said. And looked up quickly to see if a light bulb had perchance taken form above my head. But I guess it only happens that way in comic strips.

Now this change, which was a cinch to make, didn't convert Death Pulls a Doublecross into an Edgar candidate. All the perfumes of Arabia wouldn't have turned that trick. But