THE CAREER NOVELIST
Harvard Law School graduate McDeere could have had any job. The
novel's main conflict is still chapters away, but Grisham wisely fills
this opening scene with intermediate conflict.
Intermediate conflict is a temporary conflict that keeps the story
going while it is on its way to the main source of tension.
Let me illustrate with an example from an entirely different sort of
novel, Anton Myrer's The Last Convertible. Myrer's is a generational
novel: it tells the story of a group of five friends, beginning at
Harvard during World War II and ending in the present day. The
action of the novel moves back and forth in time, as well. As the char-
acters grow and change, lose love and find it, we come to care for
them deeply. (Trust me.) Now, where do you begin a novel like that?
What is the story's inciting incident, its first moment of change?
Myrer opens the novel at his narrator's family breakfast table. At the
breakfast table? It might seem that there is nothing dramatic about that,
but it serves several functions. First, it introduces two of the main
players, George and Nancy, and gives us an opportunity to hook into
the loving hurly-burly of their family. Sympathy is established. So is
the novel's unifying symbol, a classic green Cadillac convertible
called the Empress that once belonged to the five friends and now
sits up on blocks in George's garage. The story is foreshadowed.
The real reason that this opening works, though, is that it is shot
through with intermediate conflict. There is friction between George
and Nancy. They are at odds over their daughter Peg's boyfriend,
Ron. Nancy judges him harshly; George not at all. And then there is
the Empress: George loves it, but Nancy wants to wish it good rid-
dance. You see? Conflict.
Needless to say, sustaining conflict throughout a novel is impor-
tant. Raising its level is also helpful. Mystery writers, for example,
will drop several bodies on the way to the solution. Thriller writers
frequently set their action against a ticking clock, creating a "count-
down to doom." A good romance is darkest before the dawn.
But before any of that comes the novelist's first job: putting
conflict on page one.
SETTINGS: IT'S ALL IN THE DETAILS
A story is not a story unless it is set in a place that is both believ-