Today, we’ll be looking at memorable beginnings from five critically acclaimed novels. We’ll analyze why the opening sentences work and think about how we can apply the principles of these beginnings to our own first chapters.
Our examples come from Milan Kundera, Anthony Doerr, Lydia Netzer, Virginia Woolf, and Gustave Flaubert. Each first paragraph sets the scene, catches the reader off guard, and creates the sensation that something is not quite right, that something is out of the ordinary.
This lesson is excerpted from my course The Art of Plot: How to Plot and Structure Your Novel.
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Milan Kundera
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, originally published in 1979, is worth reading again at this moment in history. Chapter one introduces the theme of forgetting—a forced forgetting in service to a flawed political ideal. The novel begins with an image: an actual snapshot.
In February 1948, the communist leader Klement Gottwald stepped out on the balcony of a Baroque palace in Prague to harangue hundreds of thousands of citizens massed in Old Town Square. That was a great turning point in the history of Bohemia. A fateful moment of the kind that occurs only once or twice in a millennium.
Gotwald was flanked by his comrades, with Celmentis standing close to him. It was snowing and cold, and Gottwald was bareheaded. Bursting with solicitude, Clementis took off his fur hat and set it on Gottwald’s head...
Four years later, Clementis was charged with treason and hanged. The propaganda section immediately made him vanish from history and, of course, from all photographs. Ever since, Gottwald has been alone on the balcony. Where Clementis stood, there is only the bare palace wall.
Notice how chapter one locates us in space and time—Prague, the Czech Republic, zeroing in on Wenceslaus Square, the country’s most famous landmark, which is at center of the Prague Spring and, later the Velvet Rebellion.
Chapter one also alerts us to the historical context. The photo will reappear a number of times in the novel, a touchstone that hammers home the idea of erasure, of corrupted narrative, of the way in which story becomes propaganda. The first chapter is just a few paragraphs, taking up less than a full page. And yet, so much is accomplished!
Chapter 2 introduces us to the protagonist, Mirek. We have an inkling of what’s going to get him into trouble—this diary that he keeps, which will ultimately be used against him and the woman he loves.
It is 1971, and Mirek says: The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory and forgetting.
Shine Shine Shine, by Lydia Netzer
Locating your story in place and time is an essential part of making readers feel that they are entering the narrative on solid footing. Setting naturally includes sensory details, which serve to immediately make the scene more real to the reader.
Shine Shine Shine, by , takes us literally out of this world in the first sentence:
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.