The bottom line-, storytellingyour reader's attention and don't let it go." They all mean the same
thing: a reader will not become fully engaged in your story until
conflict appears.
The fear most authors have about putting conflict on page one is
that it may be too obvious. They imagine that if they set up the cen-
tral problem right away then their novel will read like an action-
packed pulp magazine yarn, or like an overheated confession article
of the type found lying around in cheap beauty salons. Most authors
want to be taken seriously. They want their novels to exhibit craft, to
elicit admiration.
For that reason, many authors begin by setting the scene, using
long, mostly visual descriptions to put us in the right mood. It is
hard to argue with that kind of opening. Some great writers have
opened their books that way; Charles Dickens, for example: "It was
the best of times, it was the worst of times."
The truth is that it takes enormous skill to pull off a descriptive open-
ing. The same is true of openings that first set up character and give us
all the background to the story. The latter approach is essential to nov-
els in which a cast of players must gather in one place, but as with the
openings that are purely descriptive there is a trick to them, and it
involves infusing the opening with some alternate type of tension.
Take another look, for instance, at the opening line of A Tale of Two
Cities: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times." The
dichotomy in those ideas is striking. Their juxtaposition carries ten-
sion. We want to know why the times were both good and bad, and
for the next six hundred pages or so Dickens tells us.
A more complicated opening situation occurs when it is essential
that a certain event be included because it sets up the components
of the conflict to come. Take the opening scene of John Grisham's The
Firm. It is a job interview. In it, the novel's young lawyer protagonist,
Mitch McDeere, is being scrutinized by several partners in a promi-
nent tax law firm. They want the right man for the job, and Mitch very
badly wants the job, too. The scene is ripe with tension.
Later on we discover that the firm is crooked and that McDeere
is in danger, but first it is necessary for Grisham to establish that
McDeere badly wants this particular position. It has to mean a lot to
McDeere; otherwise the whole premise falls apart, since as a top