Too many too fast

Did you ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? There are about eighty characters onstage all the time. But Dahl keeps the names to a minimum--everyone is "Veruca's mother" and "Mike's father."

If you can show how all your characters are related to a one or two or three of the people in the scene, no one will feel overwhelmed.

Publishers don't necessarily want BOOM in the first paragraph. But they want something to happen in the first chapter or so, instead of just characters sitting around navel gazing.

One thing to have a good BOOM is to keep the suspense going -- make the actual boom the end of the chapter, but build it up. Introduce your major or relevant characters and, like Shady Lane said, keep the names to a minimum by using generic terms (the tall blonde) or relations (Alice's father).

In Mitch Albom's Five People You Meet In Heaven, you know from line one that Ed is going to die, but you don't really care about Ed at that point, but as the first chapter moves along, the death is in the back of your mind and you get to know more about Ed and the plot actually leads to his impending death -- so things are happening. By the end of the chapter, when he dies, you care about him but you already know he will be dead. So you get sort of the BOOM, but not really but still have a chance to care about the character when the actual BOOM happens.

And read Stephen King's Cell. Again, things are happening to a large group of people (basically all of Boston) and you know terrible things are going to happen but it unfolds in a way that makes you at least care about the main character. Also, he keeps the number of names to a minimum.

I'm sort of doing the same thing with my first chapter. I'm to the point now where it's like I can't not give a backstory to each of my characters because if I excluded any of that the reader would be lost as to what is going on, and then when the time comes to skip a lot of years, the publisher won't think twice about turning it down.

So, I guess my question involved with this topic is....how can you write too much without really saying much at all? I need to build character for my four main characters, but how can I do that without giving too much away? I have where they start off as young adults, all four coming from different worlds, and then years have passed where I write them as struggling adults.

It's like writing your character, but from two view points: One as when they are a kid, the other when they are an adult.

Grrrrrrr...........but as I've been doing, I am writing my story first, putting the skeleton together and getting the general idea of how I want each scene to say or what not to say, and then I will go back in my second draft and put in my descriptions, dialogue, etc.....I mean, isn't that what you're suppose to do?

And with the whole BOOM thing...my chapter one is a "running" scene as in everything is happening at once, but switching from each character's view point all in the same atmosphere, same time.

In my wip I talk about my children but I refer to them as my son/daughter. There are 4 characters in my work but others make an entrance. I want to keep it relativly simple without character overcrowding. I suppose my BOOM is my MC being abused by her ex husband, but that's in chapter 2.

Delarege said:

.... My first used chapter one to build the characters and back story. No one complained. But it's one of those things where publishers read the first pages and say nothing is happening.?

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If agents and editors say, 'nothing is happening,' they do not mean -- 'There are no car chases,' or 'Nobody gets shot,' or 'the dam doesn't break.'

They mean -- no one accomplished a goal, or changed, or confronted another person, or faced his own inner demons, or made a decision, or was presented with a challenge, or acted upon reality in a way that will affect the outcome of the story.

Delarege said:

Actually, plenty happens but just not the BOOM publishers think needs to grab readers. I hate boom.?

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And it is very comforting to believe the absence of vehicular mayhem is why they will not publish you. But you are wasting the advice you've received if you fail to understand what is being said.

To investigate 'boom' beginnings, pick up thirty books at random at your local bricks and mortar, flip to the first pages, and see how many start with body parts flying all over.


What an editor wants in the early part of your story is along the lines of

-- evidence that you can write compellingly,
-- connection with the character,
-- immersion in the fictive world,
-- presentation of a conflict that is going to rip the guts out of the MC,
-- a sense of forward momentum. The reader is gripped by -- 'what happens next?'


You are mistaking violence and sensation for 'story action'.

A well-written,
'Maryann crushed the page up in a tight ball and threw it in the fire. She stayed absolutely still, watching it burn,'
is a hell of a lot more intriguing and exciting than,
'The car exloded.'

Give editors credit for knowing the difference between story action and random 'boom'. When they say 'nothing happened,' they are not talking about a lack of 'boom', but a lack of significant story action.

Delarege said:

.... Publishers want boom.?

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Some stories -- action adventure genre, spy genre, and so on need violence and spectacle the way romance stories need sexual tension. The editor does want 'boom' somewhere along the line. Maybe to start with. Maybe not.

If you have an otherwise excellent action adventure story and the editor wants it to start with a boom, she says ... .
"I'm sending you a contract. I want gore in the first ten pages. Have you considered a giant snake? Let's talk about it."
because this is a minor and solvable plot problem.

If the editor comes back and says -- 'nothing is happening', then she is not talking about lack of boom.

Delarege said:

.... So, second book starts with boom. The problem is, it starts in a small restaurant with a dozen people. Six of them are in action on the first page. Something happens. Everyone rushes out and contributes to the disaster..?

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So the reader needs to know why this particular blast is important to one or more of the six people. How does it change the course of the whole story? Which of these people is changed because of the blast?

It is not intrinsically interesting that the sky is raining body parts.
Why it is important to the characters -- that is interesting.

Delarege said:

.... How do you build an event involving a community without overloading the reader with names?

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You stop looking at the overall community and the political repercussions and the price of eggs in Kiev and look at one specific character.
What does he think? What does he feel?
He needs the names of the men and women he meets. He needs the names of the people he thinks about -- and he needs a good and immediate reason for thinking about them.

Not the general, the specific. Connection with the reader is all about specific.

You might begin with a sort of parallel scene - something interesting that will impact your characters but not actually involve them at this point. For example, I opened my medieval novel with a funeral scene and some dark grumblings about the murder of the lord and lady of the manor. My protag is in the next scene with her husband, having inherited the manor of the deceased lord and lady. I was then free to introduce the rest of my characters and build some background. Hope that helps.
Linnea

In my chapter one, my boom is my MC as a teen running away from home because someone close to her wished her to be dead. A terrible event happens then to her best friend, and I had to write their friendship in chapter one, also, because for what happens to her best friend will only heighten the need for my MC to come back home and back to the very reason she left in the first place.

So, should I just tell their "little" story for chapter one, giving insight on the other characters but not exactly telling a section from their POV yet?

SuzyB said:

I have where they start off as young adults, all four coming from different worlds, and then years have passed where I write them as struggling adults.

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Have you tried starting the main story with them as struggling adults first -- get the wheel going, and then do a chapter or two of "back stories" about how they first met as youngsters?

That's what I did with my novel -- the opening chapter is NOW, hinting at a past. Then I alternated past and present until they merged again. It seemed to have worked well.

SuzyB said:

In my chapter one, my boom is my MC as a teen running away from home because someone close to her wished her to be dead. A terrible event happens then to her best friend, and I had to write their friendship in chapter one, also, because for what happens to her best friend will only heighten the need for my MC to come back home and back to the very reason she left in the first place.

So, should I just tell their "little" story for chapter one, giving insight on the other characters but not exactly telling a section from their POV yet?

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Seems like a prologue, even though a lot is happening. I think you have to ask yourself, when does the MAIN story start? If you describe something that happened 10 years ago but your main story really starts now, then the first chapter really is just a back story. Do we need to know the back story now, to get into the main story? When you see something happening to someone in real life, you don't start asking them "and what happened to you 10 years ago?" You care about that person NOW, and then maybe later as you get to know them better, you get more insight about who they were and how they got there... if done well, that is suspense.

I think one of the problems with writers is that they feel like they have to tell everything from birth to the time the main story starts because if they don't, somehow the readers will be lost. I think you need to give your readers more credit, and if your characters are good, they will want to know how the characters get to that point -- that is when you've HOOKED them.

I was going to say everything Job said, but he/she (sorry) says it way better than anything I could have come up with. So instead of reading this message, go back and read Job's agan. .

Yep -- study Job's comment.

It's not about the boom. It's about character and conflict. In the now of the story.

JD

"My story doesn't have 'boom' at the beginning because I need to introduce all this information or else the reader won't know what's going on."

If this is you, drop your first chapter. I don't know why so many writers thing everything needs to be explained up front. If I know everything about a character, there's no reason for me to follow him through the rest of the book because I already know what he's going to do. If I already know his back story, there's no sense of mystery.

Here's an example everyone will be familiar with: Star Wars (A New Hope). Not only is this the FOURTH of a cycle of films George Lucas has planned, so literally starting right in the center of his "history," but nothing at all is explained. A planet and a ship appear on the screen. All we know is that this is in the future. Bullets are flying, some chick in white is running around, there are two robots arguing, and there's a guy in a big black mask who looks scary. We're dropped right into the middle of the story.

Now, when you saw Star Wars for the first time, did you sit there thinking, "WTF is going on?! I need back story! Who are these people? Why are they fighting? I can't relate!"

Uh, no. You thought, "Wow. Something interesting's going on here. I don't know who this lady in white is, but if I were her I'd be scared of that big dude in black."

It's not even about the bullets. In fact I would posit that the thing that snags you most about that first scene is two robots arguing while bullets are flying all around. Robots? Arguing? Why do they even have emotions to begin with? Why aren't they just running?

And to take it any further, at ANY POINT in Star Wars, does George Lucas sit you down and tell you that there was this big galactic conflict and what all the details were and who was on what side, blah blah blah? Nope.

One of the most awesome and fantastic things about Star Wars is that everything appears to have a history. The ships look OLD. Everything is used. You feel the sense that there are generations behind the entire backdrop, stories just waiting to be told-- but they aren't. Which is probably why Star Wars has spawned so many books.

Or Harry Potter. There is a wealth of history and backgrounds of the wizard world, but Harry Potter opens with only small bits of information, just enough to hook you but not too much to bog you down with details. Then you're in the middle of the story -- Harry is old enough to go to Hogwarts. We don't linger and wonder what happened to Harry Potter in those 11 years. What? Why? And how? No need to spell them all out in the beginning... that's what makes the journey fun: the discovery.

I agree with Job and I would also say, you can't write a novel with the attitude: I'm going to give these idiots what they want and throw in a lot of boom. The reader is going to pick up on your contempt. Better to imagine your reader as a friend and think of a really interesting story you want to tell her and try to figure out how to get it across. Hang in there.

Your first paragraph needs conflict. This can be done without resorting to violence. It can be a contrasting mood or a juxtaposition of radical opposites. The point the agent/publisher is trying to convey by saying "nothing is happening" is that the opener is missing escalating conflict.

For example, you might start out with something small, contrasting the dull hum of conversation inside the diner while outside a streetperson is screaming incoherently at passersby (conflict). It's not about the diners nor the streetperson, but you already have established interest. Next you close in on two diners having coffee, one of them not listening to the other because he's afraid/terrified/reluctant to go outside (conflict). His dining mate notices his distraction and complains that he never listens (conflict). You go on like that, building small conflicts into larger ones until you define or hint at the main conflict your MC is up against.

Staying aware of the need for escalating conflict as you write is arduous, distracting, painful. But when you acquire the habit, it begins to flow naturally from your fingers almost without plan or intent. Sometimes it comes out as a delightful serendipitous surprise. ("How did I come up with that?") But getting there takes more than laying down word streams, and that is the CRAFT aspect of our work that I missed for a long time.

In terms of early chapters and character development and backstory.
If you were sitting in a restaurant booth and you heard folks at the next table saying --


"So Maggie decided to sell the dog in Mexico and use the money to bail Duane out of ..."

or

"... just bad judgement, sleeping with both twins at once, not to mention Herr Thorkill was always in and out of the lab at all hours ..."

or

"... reloading, because six bullets weren't enough to stop the damned hyenas coming out of the supermarket ...

or

"... the baby didn't look like Michael. But it didn't look like her either, which was the real kicker. So they went back to the hospital ...


... would you just turn around and ignore them because you don't know who Duane, Michael and Herr Thorkill are or how they got their jobs or whether the supermarket is in Mali or Detroit?

The reader will trustingly follow you through great swathes of story without any explanation at all.

Wow....... So much good advice, but where to start and how to use it.... But just when you think you have something going with your particular story, somehow it isn't good enough.

You see, for my beginning chapter I do have conflict because my MC is struggling with the loss of her lover she's been with for years after he told her to run away before he kills her. But it's all apart of my big plan for my characters. He's not really a bad guy. He doesn't really want to kill her. He in fact loves her to death, but he's pushing her away from someone who will inflict cruelty on her life. In a way, he's protecting her but doesn't tell her.

Also, I need to set up a catching background between the MC and her best friend because fate does catch up to her friend, but years later and as I said the only reason my MC travels back home after so long.

I need to get the point across between these two friends, am thinking about excluding the two male characters in the book until later. I just want to build their friendship and make them look as real as can be, and show the reader how hard it really was to come back home, to keep living after everything that has happened.

Then that is where my story begins, when my MC comes home.

Blah....rambling is a horrible habit of mine................................. and not doing, instead of thinking all the time.

SuzyB said:

I'm sort of doing the same thing with my first chapter. I'm to the point now where it's like I can't not give a backstory to each of my characters because if I excluded any of that the reader would be lost as to what is going on

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The alternative is to let the reader wonder about at least some of the characters' motivations. When I have a character act in an odd way, I gently let the reader know he's right to wonder what's going on, by having my MC wonder, "what is it with that jerk?" or somesuch. Then the reader knows he didn't fail to pick up on some hidden clue, it's right for him to not "get" what's going on, and there's more to come...

Although I'm no fan of the show, I'm reminded of Lost. In the first episode, one of the characters lies on the beach after the plane crash, and looks at his own foot as he wiggles his toes. No explanation. Only several episodes later does the show re-visit that scene, then fill in his backstory of having been wheelchair-bound until the plane crash somehow put him back together.

It may seem to you while you're writing that the backstories are necessary from the start, but in fact many stories rely on withholding backstory, which can in itself create suspense.

All these details don't have to be revealed at the outset. Gradually introduce details as the story progresses rather than info dumping. And I agree with all those who suggested you reread Job's post.
Good luck to you!

"Boom" doesn't have to be a car crash on a busy street with bodies everywhere. Remember, there are quiet booms and little booms and not all of them are flatulance related.



(sorry)

It doesn't have to EXPLODE at the reader. It just has to be interesting and make them want to keep going.

If we're talking about how to intro a million people at once (okay, six, but I exaggerate), I suggest doing it strictly as needed. Instead of a laundry list of "Jack was sitting at this table with his wife Jill, and at the next table Little Bo Beep was pondering whether to get the lamb or the mutton, while in the corner booth Little Boy Blue snored softly with his head in his soup," you could show Jack and Jill arguing at their table, and suddenly Jack leaps up in anger and throws his glass on the floor, spraying wine all over Little Bo Beep, who now butts into their conversation and wants him to pay for her designer dress, but just at that moment Little Boy Blue leaps to his feet, gun in hand, and threatens to shoot the place up if they don't all shut their mouths NOW.

Okay, corny example. But basically I've found the best way to intro a lot of people is to start with one or two, then let them meet the next person, then they all meet the fourth person, etc.

Ravenlocks said:

If we're talking about how to intro a million people at once (okay, six, but I exaggerate), I suggest doing it strictly as needed. Instead of a laundry list of "Jack was sitting at this table with his wife Jill, and at the next table Little Bo Beep was pondering whether to get the lamb or the mutton, while in the corner booth Little Boy Blue snored softly with his head in his soup," you could show Jack and Jill arguing at their table, and suddenly Jack leaps up in anger and throws his glass on the floor, spraying wine all over Little Bo Beep, who now butts into their conversation and wants him to pay for her designer dress, but just at that moment Little Boy Blue leaps to his feet, gun in hand, and threatens to shoot the place up if they don't all shut their mouths NOW.

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Except that if all of this takes place in a couple of pages, and isn't FOLLOWED by something really intruiging, then it could come off as white noise, and I'd put the book down non-plussed. It's like a Tom Clancy opening where the soldiers are rushing into battle! Fighting! Dying! And you're meeting them in heroic moments! And...and....who cares? Who are these people? So what?

I dunno. So often, the thing that brings me into the book isn't action, it's well-done narrative or an interesting character. A Terry Pratchett Sam Vimes book frequently starts off with Sam shaving or reading the newspaper, or walking to work. That's not a boom. But it's told entertainingly and amusing little things happen, and it's interesting to read. So it works.

(And before someone gleefully points out that Terry Pratchett doesn't count, he's an established author, he can do what he wants, I know. So what? The example stands.)

Well, to let you all know I just got home from a night out with some friends thinking about nothing hardly when an idea popped in my head with how to start off my book. It's stunning, and I have the perfect attention grabber.

Wish me luck!