The Novel's First Line
How I decided on Community Day's first impression
NOTE: This column was originally published on Governing Right on Aug 08, 2024
A novel’s first sentence is often seen as its most important. Discussions of books often start with the first line. Agents frequently say they want to be captured by a manuscript’s opening sentence.
So how does an author ensure those first few words are memorable and meaningful?Here’s how I tackled it.
I knew I wanted the first chapter to consist primarily of the narrator describing his neighborhood and wife and then alluding to the major event at Community Day, which orients the rest of the book. So I knew the first line should relate to some or all of that. But that’s all I had.
So I started to think about what should be accomplished straight away. Obviously, introducing the “narrator voice” was at the top of the list—providing a pithy example of how the narrator sees and explains the world. Since he’s an exaggerator and tale-spinner, I wanted the line to be punchy but definitely in an over-the-top way.
I also wanted to give a hint of the novel’s big question/quest—the problem that shapes the overarching plot. As an author, you have the first few chapters to clarify that, but I wanted readers to get a taste of it immediately. You see, there’s plenty in the book to keep readers guessing, so I want them to have absolute certainty about the big issue: namely, what happened on Community Day 2020 and why.
I knew the novel was going to track one character’s arc—her name is Nelly. Her story helps explain the neighborhood and why Community Day 2020 was shaping up to be a big deal. I also knew that the conclusion of Nelly’s arc was going to be the novel’s false end. (I don’t want to spoil the novel for you, but some big things happen after Nelly’s happy-ish ending.) So I figured Nelly should be part of the opening line.
So I had the outlines of the kick-off: The narrator introduces Nelly as a way of starting his explanation of Community Day, but that introduction must also show the reader that the narrator is a bit of a fabulist. Hmmm.
The most important literary device in the book is the narrator’s unreliability. There is space between what he says and what actually is. A purpose of the novel is to explore that distance. Why is he unreliable? Is it because he’s just an old-fashioned story teller? Is he being satirical to make a point? Is he delusional? This is the intellectual core of Community Day.
I wanted to introduce that concept as early as possible: We can’t accept at face value everything he says. But he’s not just a liar. He’s not trying to deceive in order to get over on you. In some way, he’s in on the joke—he knows he’s telling a tale.
I realized that maybe I could make his opening salvo completely over-the-top while implying that he knows he’s being over-the-top. A-ha! But also….hmmm.
Nelly is perpetually anxious. This is part of her arc and key to the history of Community Day. She also owns a dealership that specializes in recreational vehicles. This is tied up with a few of the novel’s big themes (e.g., travel, family, searching for community, rural America). Her dealership is also central to an event that happened 17 years earlier—the event that made Community Day 2020 inevitable.
I wanted her dealership to be part of her introduction.
As though this were not enough stuff to jam into an opening line, I also wanted to allude to two other things if possible. The first is gambling. This is a key theme of the book. I’ve long been attracted to the idea that casinos and high-stakes gaming can be a symbol of hopelessness. When you have nothing left, when you are in dire straits, when conventional planning and hard work won’t solve your problems, you hope for a miracle. You are willing to gamble. You think gambling is all that remains.
I use gambling throughout Community Day. The narrator’s wife takes a gamble on the troubled narrator when they are first dating. One of the characters has a terrible gambling problem. The novel is set mostly during Covid, and one of the region’s bars realizes that it can stay open under state rules if it turns itself into a casino. At this casino, members of the local teachers’ union gamble while voting to keep schools closed.
Maybe I could somehow work betting into the first line? Hmmm.
Lastly, the novel’s climax is built around a series of surprises. What actually happened at this neighborhood event? Who is responsible? What are the consequences?
I literally worked for years figuring out how to hook readers. I decided that the only way to make the final 50 pages really work was to carefully set them up early and often. I had to give them reasons to believe X when in fact it was Y. So throughout the novel, there are instances of things not being what they seemed. I constantly hint at this. One character always dresses up in crazy costumes. A few journalist characters write in deceptive ways. One character makes up an elaborate story for attention. The curb appeal of one character’s house disguises the rot in the backyard.
But my favorite example is an ongoing joke I use about money laundering. I’ve always thought the concept behind money laundering is kind of brilliant. If you get lots of cash via illegal means, you have to concoct a legal explanation for all that cash. So you set up a fake-ish business that deals in cash. You pass the ill-begotten “dirty” money through the ostensibly legit business and now the money is “clean.” So it’s a business that’s not what it seems.
Could I work that into the opening line somehow? Hmmm.
So how would I put all of this together in one or two sentences? Make it entertaining and include gambling, money laundering, the narrator’s self-aware over-the-top-ness, and Nelly’s dealership. In other words, get the reader prepared for the narrator’s voice, the big events, and the big themes.
This is how Community Day begins:
I would’ve bet every dollar I had and every cent I could’ve borrowed that Nelly’s RV-and-camper dealership was nothing but a money-laundering operation. I had no proof yet, but I felt it in my bones.