Start In the Middle of the Action
Start in the middle of the action – that is my mantra.
It is the rule I have applied to all my writing since I discovered it.
It’s not really as original as all that, though. Mysteries and thrillers start in the middle of the action when the crime is committed or the body found. After that comes the search for and the discovery of who did it and why it was done.
But what exactly does it mean, start in the middle of the action? For not all novels are action novels, what then?
Modify the word ‘action’ with the word ‘emotional’ and you have the formula – start in the middle of the emotional action.
Here is an example.
An earlier version of my book, The Language Professor, began like this:
The phone call came at three o’clock on a Tuesday afternoon, nine days before Naomi was scheduled to go back to work…
“I’ve been instructed to tell you that when you come back to work, you will not be coming back to your position as Director of Admissions…”
“This must be some kind of joke, Reuben…”
There was no rejoinder.
“I don’t believe this…”
The emotion Naomi is experiencing is implied. The action is taking place in front of the reader but it remains static, as if it were taking place on a canvas. The reader remains outside.
The present version starts like this:
The bastard, the fucking bastard, Naomi swore…
Here the emotion is proclaimed vehemently. The reader cannot remain outside but is pulled in and deposited squarely in the middle of the emotional action.
This rule can be applied not just to the beginning of a novel, but to every chapter and key scene in a novel as well.
A practice followed in The Language Professor.
Debora Resnick
author of
The Language Professor
Eloquent Books
Strategic Book Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-60911-868-6 http://www.strategicpublishinggroup.com/title/TheLanguageProfessor.html