First page terror

The pressure of nailing your start

Welcome to the free newsletter of David (D. V.) Bishop, author of the Cesare Aldo historical thrillers set in Renaissance Italy. This time: fear of the first page…

Pre-writing or procrastination?

Granite Noir snapshots (above): I was on a panel with Essie Fox, deftly chaired by Jo Durrant

After a trip to Aberdeen for Granite Noir, this past weekend was all about trying and flailing at writing the first page of a new novel. Starting afresh always seems to give me The Fear (as discussed here). You’d think after so many published novels, this wouldn’t be a thing… No, The Fear exists and I spent Saturday stuck there.

I’ve been in prep mode since the start of February, undertaking essential research into the places, clothes and food which will populate the new novel. Part of my pre-writing process also involves re-examining the story I’ve been carrying around in my head for months, stress testing the efficacy of my putative plotline.

All of this is very necessary, otherwise I run the risk of charging into the opening chapters believing I know where everything is going, only to discover my trajectory is askew. That requires a dead stop, identifying where it all went wrong and backing up for a load of unwanted rewriting to course-correct the wandering narrative.

I did that with my fourth Cesare Aldo historical thriller A Divine Fury and it put me behind for the rest of the book. This can have a cascade effect. When I changed the killer’s identity near the end there wasn’t time to resolve all the problems generated. My then-editor helped me to fix things, but it wasn’t a pretty process.

To avoid that I’ve been doing my due diligence, making sure I can write my way into events without going too far astray. Advance research means that when I do start building momentum, I don’t have to stop to find out what Tuscans ate for lunch in 1540. Each such stop risks inertia, making it hard to get the story started again.

Fear of a blank screen

Eventually even I have to concede that pre-writing has turned into procrastination, merely a means to delay the thing I often fear most as an author: writing the first page. Get that right and what follows seems a tiny bit easier. Get it wrong and the doubt which always lingers chuckling in the shadows will step forward to haunt you.

All too true: Photo by Annie Spratt on Unsplash

The first page of a novel has come to assume an outsized significance. Why? Because it sets out the stall for what is to come. The first page is the thing potential readers will encounter once persuaded to open a book or click through to a digital sample. It needs to tempt and tease, entice and excite, all in just a few hundred words.

A novel’s opening also exemplifies the tone and style of the narrative which follows. It makes a contract with the reader, saying I will be this kind of book - if that is to your liking, read on. The first page becomes a promise, a trailer for what will follow, a glimpse of the path ahead. No wonder it seems so important to get this right.

Happily, if you’re writing the second book in a series (or the third, fourth or sixth), some of that heavy lifting has already been done for you. Most readers will know what to expect so the pressure to wow them from the first page - even the first sentence – is not quite so huge and oppressive, nor quite so all-consuming.

(Sidebar: First sentences are their own special hell. If a first page is challenging, nailing the perfect first sentence is even worse. To solve that I sometimes borrow a first sentence from another novel as a temporary placeholder. Ian Fleming’s Bond books have helpfully provided stopgap openings for my novels in the past!)

Into new territory

My fears about this new novel arise from the fact it is a departure from my previous Cesare Aldo books. Fear not, it is still a historical thriller set in Renaissance Italy, but the style and approach will be quite different from what has come before, not least because I’m using a single first person narrative position to tell the story.

False starts aplenty: Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

The first six Aldo novels all employ a range of third person points of view ( apparently this is a polyphony, in academic parlance). That means there is always somewhere to which the story can cut away, and it enables weaving of subplots through the main storyline. It’s an approach that can provide flexibility and a nimble, varied narrative.

But a single first person POV binds the reader to that one character and their perspective throughout. If this proves unappealing, readers may DNF the book. (For proof, compare reviews of The Spy Who Loved Me – Ian Fleming’s lone first person Bond novel - with others in that series.) So there’s that to fret about as well. Yikes.

As a bonus challenge, my new novel is the first for a new editor after working with the same person on all six Aldo adventures. I’m sure it won’t be a problem, but this is the start of a new professional relationship which is always a little unnerving. In short, a lot’s riding on this particular draft. Feels like I need to nail it from page one!

The good news is I got up early on Sunday morning and managed to write a first page. That may not end up being the first page of the published novel but is enough to get things moving forwards. After hesitating at the ocean’s edge, I am into the water. Now I just need to swim all the way to the other side by July. Wish me luck…

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