The First Five Pages

by Tosh McIntosh

At Roundtable we often talk about the importance of how our novels open, and The First Five Pages by Noah Lukeman is usually mentioned as a valuable source reference. Based on over a decade of participation in NIP, I think it’s safe to say that most of our first drafts don’t do that as well as they should, and we dedicate a good bit of revision effort to fine-tuning how our stories engage readers from the git-go and hopefully never turn them loose.

The purpose of this post is to offer an example of how an author grabbed me immediately, and point out what I believe is an instructive illustration of the difference between what we frequently discuss at Roundtable as being the characteristics of a good opening, and a broader criteria best described as, Whatever works.

But first, and in violation of one principle we typically consider to be gospel, here’s some relevant backstory and a caveat.

I majored in psychology with a minor in criminology and abnormal behavior. At the time, two approaches to the study of human development dominated: learning theory as advanced by B.F. Skinner, and the teachings of Sigmund Freud. Without a more definitive scientific explanation of the existence of the Id, Ego, and Superego I set those concepts aside in favor of Skinner’s demonstrations of stimulus-response.

The corollary overarching concept that defined the difference in these two approaches to the development of personality was nature versus nurture, and when combined with the study of criminology and abnormal behavior, the key question for me became that of whether criminal behavior is primarily genetic or learned.

Over the years since I’ve read about cases of identical twins separated at birth, both of whom ended up with similarities in their adult lives that are hard to explain by coincidence alone. In some cases, these individuals have both ended up in prison after being convicted of murder.

My continued interest in the origins of criminal behavior led me to the writings of John Douglas and Mark Olshaker, who are credited with the groundbreaking research that ultimately became the cornerstone of the Behavioral Science Unit of the FBI and the science of criminal profiling.

And that backstory brings me to the following caveat: I offer this example of an effective novel opening not with a recommendation that you might want to read the book, but to illustrate that given an interest in a mystery/thriller about the hunt for a pair of serial killers, I downloaded a sample from Amazon and within a few paragraphs decided to purchase the book in spite of the fact that the opening pages contained a significant amount of backstory.

But backstory slows pacing, right? And we’re cautioned about letting our early pages drag, which risks losing readers before they can become invested in the characters or the story. That didn’t happen, however, and the reason can be found in a combination of two factors: my interest in mystery/thrillers and the origins of criminal behavior, and the author’s superb command of psychic distance and characterization.

As a footnote to the issue of opening the novel, my interest as noted in the backstory above kept me reading in large part because of the in-depth characterization of one of the killers. The author expertly uses the science of criminal profiling to create a classic product of a horrific childhood, which in my opinion reflects which of the two factors, nature or nurture, exerts the most influence as reflected in the following definition: Our personality is the sum total of the reactions of others to us.

If you’re interested in taking a look at this example of a novel opening that I think works in spite of breaking a commonly discussed guideline, you can check it out here at no cost by reading the sample.

TheKillingLessons


Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *