I'm not going to lie, since beginning to write my story years ago before ever encountering this book, insecurity over my opening chapter has always been constantly on my mind. The reason being that I had constantly wondered to myself- all obvious biases aside- if I picked up my story at the book store and sat down to read it, would I really be interested enough at the end of the first chapter? And the answer, I realized, was no.
I am a reader of great impatience; I want something I'm reading to draw me in immediately and refuse to let go of me, only constantly tightening its grip, until the end. I don't wait around for something to "get good". If I'm not immediately intrigued, the chances are that I will force myself to read at most a hundred pages to see if I'm starting to get a feel for the story, and if not, I put it down. While I certainly don't think my story would take a hundred pages to get interesting, I am aware of the fact that there are also readers out there who wouldn't give me the same one hundred page courtesy as me; they would give me a chapter and then leave if they weren't interested, and if that were the case, I was fairly certain that they would.
You see, the first chapter of my story was not only short, but uneventful. It is narrated by Jenn- who we don't hear from again until three chapters later when she wakes up for the first time in her delusional state of mind after her accident- as she gets ready for a double date with her best friend Blayke and boyfriend Liam, goes on the date, and leaves the date. That's it. There was quite a bit of original intent on my part when I'd first written it, and that was to not only provide the reader with a small bit of exposition regarding the relationships of the main characters, but also to give them an insight into Jenn's mind before her accident when everything gets blown out of proportion, because that first chapter would mark exactly the only one where Jenn is unbiased like that. Blayke and Jake on the other hand, have at best several chapters where they remain untainted by Jenn's accident. What I had failed to do in the making of that first chapter however, was provide the audience with any kind of cliffhanger or anything else at all that would possibly intrigue them to want to continue on.
Les Edgarton starts off his chapter by immediately telling me what I already knew, saying "This"- as in the introduction of the plot- "is the opening's main goal." He goes on to explain in more depth just how necessary it is for editors and publishers, let alone your readers, to be interested in your plot, and how they of all people will certainly not give you any sort of benefit of the doubt; if they aren't pulled in, they're out. So immediately, I knew I had to change.
I spent a lot of time debating just how I was going to go about changing this chapter. My first thought was to continue the chapter through the night with Jenn up until the moment of her car crash, and to give the author her jumbled narration as everything that will change the rest of her life happens suddenly at a million miles an hour, but very quickly I rejected this idea too. I realized that if I did this, that there would still be a couple of chapters where the reader would know more than the other narrators during the present- Jake and Blayke- and would have to wait impatiently to get more information. While it would possibly excite the reader to continue on, it would make Jake and Blayke's narration for the next couple of chapters seem insignificant and annoying, which would not be a good goal to arrive at either. So after much more deliberation I finally arrived at the right conclusion; a flash forward.
Though it may not be the most original technique out there, starting off a story- particularly a work of fiction like mine- with a scene from the future can invoke many desirable emotions from the reader if done right. For one thing, it could create from the get go a sense of anxious excitement to know what major event brought the character to that point in time, which would certainly keep them turning pages, and on top of that it wouldn't make the in-between narrations seem unimportant, as was my fear with the previous idea.
The opening scene I crafted for my first chapter ended up consisting of a moment in Jenn's life- as narrated by her- about a year or two after her accident, when she has long since recovered emotionally, though not physically, from the reality of her accident. The scene opens with Jenn being introduced to speak at her high school during an assembly as a guest speaker- which the reader would much later come to learn is what Jenn dedicates her life to after the accident: giving speeches at high schools spreading her story and self-awareness of the dangers of distracted driving. The chapter does not go into depth of Jenn telling her entire story, in fact, she doesn't give any specific details at all. The chapter consists of her introducing herself to her old student body, giving small details to break the ice such as her full name, age, a couple of quick facts including that she was a cheerleader for that high school during her years of attendance, and then ending with a shocking statement; "And I have permanent brain damage." By ending the chapter here, I am putting the reader in the gymnasium as a student listening to Jenn speak. They don't know a thing about her, only what she tells them slowly. They don't know what she's going to preach, they only know that it is going to be something important. And then the bombshell. When I leave them hanging with that final sentence, I am forcing them to have to turn the page and begin the story a year and a half earlier with Jake as he describes arriving to class and finding Jenn to be absent on top of the knowledge that she hadn't been returning his calls for the last couple of days, as he- nor the reader- knows she is actually fighting for her life in a coma that has not yet been revealed. Ultimately, throughout the rest of the story, the reader is listening to Jenn's speech as they read hers and Jake's and Blayke's takes on everything that happens. As I said, I am putting them in that gymnasium with no prior knowledge, but with a craving to attain it.
I could not be more pleased with changing the story to begin in this fashion. I would like to believe it will have a much better effect of the reader to go about the story in this way. Where would you start to tell your life story if someone approached you on the street and asked you to tell them? Would you start in the present and work backwards, or would you start from the moment of your birth and work chronologically? Which do you think would make a better story for your listener to hear?
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