I should be writing

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I’m simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.” – Shannon Hale 

“Don’t be afraid to write crap because crap makes great fertilizer.”  –  Jessica Brody 

In my video on common writing mistakes, I highlight the fact that many writers try too hard to make their very first line stand out - often to the detriment of consistency and style. So, here are my tips for writing a good first scene:

1. The 4Ws

This may sound like a high school essay lesson, or tips on writing a newspaper article. But hear me out.

Your readers (or potential agents) will probably judge whether or not to continue with the book based off the first few pages.

This means that you have to give them a good idea of what the story is about.

No, that doesn't mean summarizing everything and giving away your plot twists. It means showing the reader what the story is about, giving them a character to root for (who), introducing setting (where), placing the reader in the timeline (when) and establishing motivation (why).

2. In medias res?

One of the ways you can start your novel is in the middle of some action.

This is a great way to write an exciting opening scene BUT it must be done with caution.

The reader will only be excited by action if they are rooting for the main character. If you jump right into a fight scene or something of that nature, your reader has had no time to get to know the character or understand why they should care about their survival.

So, my advice would be to insert some action AS SOON AS you think the character has been established sufficiently.

So, for some characters, that might be done a sentence or two. For others, it might take a chapter.

Take only as much time as is necessary to establish character before diving into the inciting incident.

3. The Don'ts

There are certain types of opening lines/scenes that have been done too many times. Agents often reject books that start with the following:

A dream

A character getting ready (with nothing strange/exciting happening)

A character looking in a mirror

The weather

Pages and pages and pages of ordinary life with no clues as to what the story is about

4. Dialogue?

Perhaps you'd like to start your novel with characters speaking to each other. This is a good option, but it has its pitfalls

Once again, the reader will only feel invested in the conversation if they know who the characters are. So, you'll have to weave information about those 4ws between the dialogue.

Don't just throw your readers into a pages-long dialogue about things they've never heard of, between characters they've just met.

It might be a good idea to have the opening line be dialogue, and then switch over into narration for one or two paragraphs to orient the reader.

5. Breathe

I know that as a writer, we stress about the beginning of the book. We have anxiety about people reading it and then putting the book down.

But your opening scene is just like any other scene. Yes, it's important. But so is the rest of your book.

Don't try to write the best opening scene ever written and then write a mediocre story from there.

Just focus on introducing the reader to the story and writing as good a scene as you can. If you can write other things, you can write an opening scene as well.

DON’T

•Dehumanize poc characters. This includes giving only your poc characters monstrous features (animal ears, tails, fangs)

•Don’t make your white girl oc’s soft and cute or fun while your brown/black girl oc’s are Muscular and Strong with Don’t Need No Man and strict attitudes, let brown and black girls be soft and cute and fun, too

•Make the only poc characters as villains, victims, refugees, especially the tan and dark-skinned poc—let poc be heroes, too

•Write your Muslim (and any brown) character in an arranged marriage or being forced into anything in general (ie, hijab)

•Give your East-Asian oc’s yellow skin, even if it’s light enough to almost look ‘natural’—it doesn’t, and no one has that skin tone

•Make your only East-Asian character(s) meek, submissive, quiet, brooding

•Describe poc skin tone with food (ie, chocolate skin)

•Make only your poc characters the edgy, temperamental, brooding or jealous characters while your white oc’s get to be colorful and bright and strong and fun

•Have your white oc’s always better off than the poc characters (whether it’s money, status, beauty, power, etc)

•Kill all your poc characters off or torture them repeatedly while the white characters get everything they want

•Fetishize your poc characters (ie, how the brown girls in Disney films are all sexualized vs the soft innocence of white Disney princesses, how Native Americans are often sexualized, etc)

•This includes the sexy “Exotic” trope

•Write about an experience or identity that isn’t yours to write about—IE, you shouldn’t be writing from the perspective of a Muslim Arab-American girl facing racism and islamophobia in a small, white town. Write about another white character witnessing the events instead. (ie, secret life of bees)

And lastly…

•Don’t be afraid to ask.

DO

•Your research

•Include poc in a respectful manner (no it’s not that complicated)

•Be mindful of harmful tropes (angry Black woman, Muslim women being oppressed, etc)

•Let brown and black girls be love interests

•Romanticize (not sexualize) poc features (black and brown eyes, monolids, tan and dark skin tones, different nose shapes)

•Let girls have darker skin tones than their male love interest

•Let poc be disabled or have other identities—no it isn’t ‘too much’ to have a deaf, black, non-binary Muslim character

•Be mindful of internalized racism. The best way to avoid this is to…

•Ask poc about your non-white oc’s; if you think you’ve got a good handle on things, it’s likely you don’t. Don’t get mad if/when poc correct you. If you don’t know any poc, that already sounds like a problem and you should reach out to some people and go to @writingwithcolor’s blog, and do some of your own research as well

•Include interracial couples (yes it’s okay to have a poc in a relationship with a white person)

•Let brown/black men be soft and weak and romantic and kind

•Include tan and dark-skinned poc

And lastly…

•Write them as a person.

*opens a doc*

me: ok brain now let’s write

my brain:

you’ll be able to hold it in your hands, feel the weight of it - each chapter, each page, each word that you so lovingly crafted. you’ll be able to watch each scene, something you built and tended and know most intimately, unfold beneath your hands again with every turn of the page. you’ll be able to run your thumb down the spine of the book and feel the shape of your name pressed into the side, because this is yours.

site for when you can only remember part of a word/its definition 

site that gives you words that rhyme with a word

Me: receives (1) critique

Me: