READ A BOOK TO BEGIN A BOOK
According to literary science,1 completing a novel lands somewhere between climbing Mount Everest and extinguishing the sun in terms of difficulty. Note the gerund2 in that sentence: Completing a novel is hard. Beginning a novel is easy. If you’re like me, you probably started about five novels this morning, all of which collapsed into ruin by around the third sentence.
Like everything else in this business, there’s no shortage of advice on every aspect of writing a novel—and most of that advice centers on what not to do. And, as always, most of that advice contradicts all the other advice, leaving you no closer to a finished novel.3
As usual, books are the answer. The best piece of advice any writer can receive is “read,” after all—read widely, read continually, and take notes as you do so.4 Here are 10 successful, well-reviewed, and award-winning novels that begin in creative, interesting ways—often ways you’ve been advised are “forbidden”—that you can steal and try out on your next attempt.
10 Ways to Kick Off a Novel
NOVEL: To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
WHAT YOU CAN LEARN: Yes, Virginia, you can start a novel with dialogue.5
If you’ve ever investigated the supposed rules surrounding starting a novel, you’ve probably been told you can’t start one with dialogue, because it distances the reader immediately: Since we haven’t met any of the characters or received any context, the exchange will be meaningless and confusing.
Except, you know, the dialogue can do a lot of work without any of those do a ton of work:
