First fifty pages

I'm with you. I don't know either, but I'm thinking about re-writing my first chapter to make it more lively.

Raphee said:

when the conflict starts in earnest in the novel. Ironically at page 60 onwards.

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Make page 60 page 1, and find a way to get the material you consider essential in pages 1-59 into the story as you proceed from there. I'll venture that you'll be able to condense those first 59 pages into about 15-20 pages worth of truly essential material as you proceed. But you're shooting your foot with 59 pages of character set-up, even in a "literary" novel. I read a fair amount of novels that would be considered "literary" by most, and I'm having real trouble coming up with an example of a successful one in which the conflict doesn't begin until page 60.

caw

Chop!

I'm with Blackbird. Whatever the genre (unless it's Mystery), it's best not to give readers information ahead of when they need it.

Suggestion: Chop the 1st 60 pages and send the novel to a somebody who hasn't read it before. Don't tell them about the cut.

blacbird said:

Make page 60 page 1, and find a way to get the material you consider essential in pages 1-59 into the story as you proceed from there. I'll venture that you'll be able to condense those first 59 pages into about 15-20 pages worth of truly essential material as you proceed. But you're shooting your foot with 59 pages of character set-up, even in a "literary" novel. I read a fair amount of novels that would be considered "literary" by most, and I'm having real trouble coming up with an example of a successful one in which the conflict doesn't begin until page 60.

caw

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Were any of them a Kunstleroman?

As a reader, I must say, if a book has set up and characterization for the first 60 pages...well, I'd probably put it down before I got to 61.

This is actually why the agents ask for the first fifty pages. A lot of writers spend about that just doing set up and introducing the characters without really getting their feet into the story until much later--almost like the they're trying to get themselves oriented into the story.

But with agents overloaded with manuscripts, they aren't going to read long enough to see that you started your novel on page 60. The story has to start on page one and draw the reader into it. That's why the first three chapters are so difficult to write. They have to pull the reader into the story itself and then gradually filter in enough details and backstory to keep the reader involved without giving it all to them up front.

Like the others said, page 60 is where your story starts. Start there.

While I agree with the others I want to give a different tip to you just in case you want to save (most of) those first 60 pages.

Try to see if you can introduce the conflict early on already and slowly build up towards it. Give people something to look forward to until it actually happens. That way you keep them interested, and give the agent an indication that bug things will happen after those 50 pages.

For instance, in my current WIP I have one of my main characters finds out that her boss is about to do something very nasty. This happens halfway chapter 1, less than 10 pages into the book. But she knows it's going to be a few more days until he attempts it. She also needs several days to prepare to stop him (because the police doesn't believe her). So the actual conflict stays dorment for a long time while I write several chapters of introduction and her preparing (there is other stuff that also happens that fill even more pages). The actual first confrontation won't be until about halfway into the novel.

Hi Raphee. I don't believe you have to dump the first 60 pages. And, although the main conflict in your story might start late, there are plenty of other opportunities for different kinds of conflict. In the chapter of yours that I read, there is conflict between the narrator and the grandmother. It's gentle, but it's conflict none-the-less. Not only can you set up character and setting, you can have conflict of personalities to keep readers interested.

For the second part of your question, I think you can get almost the same empathy and emotional bond with a character using either 1st-person or close 3rd-person narration. The choice comes down to what works best for the story, and only you can answer that.

Best of luck!!

One of the biggest mistakes authors make - and I include myself - is an eagerness to tell everything up front, right away. Slow down. Bits and pieces of info - including backstory - can be revealed over the course of the novel. Every single page must have some kind of conflict on it - not "Hit 'em up" conflict, but some reason to turn to the next page in order to see what happens next. This can happen with literary novels, too, through characterization - little tidbits that you reveal here and there, that tantalize the reader. But if you dump all the information up front, you'll have nothing left for this.

I agree with the above - sounds like page 60 is your actual page 1.

Having no conflicts until page 60 is a problem, not characterization. If you're a name (such as John Grisham), you can do that (as he did in A Painted House). But even John Grisham lost me and I promptly put the book down multiple times before I finally decided to finish it (because it was John Grisham). Even if it's literary, you need something hook and hold a readers right off the bat -- a crisis, death, betrayal, whatever... once you hook and hold your readers, then you can relax a bit to do some exposition. But not before. In The Hours, Cunningham started with the Virginia Woolfe's suicide -- now that's riveting to see how the "back story" unfolds.

You need to reexamine the first 50 pages and see if you have enough to hook and hold your readers. Are their any conflicts? Is there anything to make the readers want to go on reading. The first few pages tell an agent if you can actually write, but the first 50 pages tell an agent if you can tell a story that sells. Even literary fiction needs something; just because it's literary doesn't mean you have to bore everyone. (That said, I have read literary fiction that really was boring with nothing happening, and of course, I stopped reading them.)

The first thing you should do is run your character up a tree, not show how much he hates trees, heights, and loves his wife but harbors dark secrets about lost love and enemies.

Run 'im up the tree, let him think about that stuff while he's up there, trying to dodge the rocks you're chucking.

Hey, Raphee -- I agree with all the advice you've been given. With the additional info you provided about your story, and keeping in mind I still know very little about it, CaroGirl's comments sound like a great possibility. The boy can be shown in early chapters facing conflict after conflict -- little things that paint the picture of the area, characters, family, personal challenges... Then the big challenge arises.

If you can hint at bigger things to come throughout the first 60 pages, that'd be great.

And if you can start the novel later or condense the 60 pages, and add conflict to them, and hint at the bigger conflict to come, even better.

My two cents (mostly borrowed from those who already posted).

KAP

The first 60 pages of my book were slow, and it didn't get cooking until chapter 4 or 5. It wasn't until I wrote a synopsis that I really was able to focus on the theme of the book, and with that theme in mind, I was able to rewrite the beginning of the book. With the theme as my guide, I was able to do it very quickly, because I knew exactly what I was looking for. I am not sure mine is a model you want to follow, but I'd advise finishing the whole book, and then editing the first sixty pages to match the theme and tone you want for the book.

Raphee said:

In my WIP written in First POV, the narrator is a boy of 12. His story revolves around the changes that happen to him and his village in the course of one summer. The first sixty pages are the ramblings of the idyllic life in the village and then his life gets torn to pieces when the conflict arises. [60 pages of non-conflict thats embarrasing.]

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Sounds exactly like A Painted House. I must admit I put down the book many times even though I think Grisham did a good job describing the setting and the idyllic life... there was just no story until way into page 70 or so when the first conflict occurred. However, he did set up some tension -- mostly racial and socio-economical -- right off the bat. Even then, the book had a hard time holding my interest. Once the first conflict happened, the book read great (for me).

Funnily enough that's exactly the way I do it, Prawn. I write without an outline straight through, just get the damn thing finished. Then I read it through to see what themes present themselves and those are what I concentrate on in my re-write.

I changed the beginning of my WIP as well, to make the action start straight away. Well, it's more of a supernatural thriller, but I wanted to start dropping clues earlier in the book to draw the reader in, and I was only able to do that when I had a complete view of the whole book - i.e. after the first draft was done.

Literary fiction has a bit of a leeway -- you don't have to start with bing-bam-boom and they can be much slower than other genres. However, 60 pages is too long for a set up. I will give you 20 pages. But if after 20 pages there's no tension, conflicts, suspense, or some kind of plot, there is trouble.

Raphee said:

As all of have said and rightly so that the conflict has to start early. Should the conflict start as early as the first chapter OR
do I try to condense the sixty pages into something like 15 pages. and then bring in the conflict.

In my WIP written in First POV, the narrator is a boy of 12. His story revolves around the changes that happen to him and his village in the course of one summer. The first sixty pages are the ramblings of the idyllic life in the village and then his life gets torn to pieces when the conflict arises. [60 pages of non-conflict thats embarrasing.]
Its this sense of peace that the boy has before things happen that I want to preserve. And also to have readers bonding emotionally with the narrator.

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Well, you definitely have to read Dandelion Wine by Ray Bradbury. It's the story of a 12-year old boy and the changes that happen to him and his town in the course of one summer...

It is a wonderful story, but I strongly suspect it wouldn't sell if it were written today. There is no central conflict, although there are all kinds of smaller ones. There is a central metaphor. Like its title, it's a book you read to sip at and savour. But again, I think it would be a hard sell in today's market.

You do need to draw the reader in before page 60. A good voice, some humour, some foreshadowing, and minor conflicts could all be useful. Or just getting the conflict in there somehow...

You might watch Flight 93, for an example of a movie that is mainly setting up for the first while. It is the foreshadowing that saves it. All the little details of daily life become almost unbearably poignant instead of crushingly boring. I've read novels (sorry, no titles come to mind) where much the same thing was done. The nasty event was told right off the bat, and instead of killing the suspense, it augmented it. I'm not sure if this can be used in your novel, but it might bear thinking about.

Have you tried giving those first fifty pages to beta readers to see how they react? Or are you still working on the first draft?

Dandelion Wine, if my memory serves, was written as various short stories that were then collected into the book form. Much like The Martian Chronicles, or most of Bradbury's books. Actually, he's written very few novels that, upon closer inspection, don't turn out to be linked short stories...

I recently dealt with a similar thing in one of my WIPs. I ended up cutting like the first 20,000 words when I realized there was a lot of backstory in there. Turned out what I really needed to do was open the book with a house exploding, instead of having it three chapters in.

I took the really great bits that I'd cut out, and incorporated them in later on. So far it's working. I think from now on I can just pretty much plan on deleting the first three chapters I put on paper.

maestrowork said:

Literary fiction has a bit of a leeway -- you don't have to start with bing-bam-boom and they can be much slower than other genres. However, 60 pages is too long for a set up. I will give you 20 pages. But if after 20 pages there's no tension, conflicts, suspense, or some kind of plot, there is trouble.

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That's right. People cut literary fiction a lot more slack in those areas. On the other hand, the writing has to be a lot more crisp.

The test comes in the first five to ten pages of a manuscript. If you were in a bookstore or a library and read them, would you want to buy the book or take it out? If the characters and setting aren't enough to draw a reader in, the manuscript needs some work.

It's not purely an issue of "conflict". It's an issue of getting the reader, right quickly, to trust that you have a story worth reading. I've always thought that "tension" is a better word than "conflict" for what needs to happen on page one. "Conflict" generates this vision of bombs and car chases.

caw

I actually gave a workshop at Barnes & Noble last November on the first 3 chapters of a character-driven story to hook and hold an agent/editor. If anyone is interested, let me know and I will send you the material.