GCSE Creative Writing: First-Person Narrators. How to create a compelling opening.
Read these two openings and see how the writers create their characters and entice their readers.
Part I
Chapter I
I am a sick man. … I am a spiteful man. I am an unattractive man. I believe my liver is diseased. However, I know nothing at all about my disease, and do not know for certain what ails me. I don’t consult a doctor for it, and never have, though I have a respect for medicine and doctors. Besides, I am extremely superstitious, sufficiently so to respect medicine, anyway (I am well-educated enough not to be superstitious, but I am superstitious). No, I refuse to consult a doctor from spite. That you probably will not understand. Well, I understand it, though.
Dostoevsky, Notes from the Underground.
- Look at the word choice of the narrator. His obsessive character is demonstrated through his preoccupation with his health and illnesses in particular.’ I am a sick man. ..a spiteful man.’ If you can match the word choice to your character’s state of mind or predicament, then this will deepen the reality of your characterisation and will force the reader to enter their world, even if we may feel uneasy in such a narrator’s company. The intensity of Dostoevsky’s narrator’s declarations induces a feeling of claustrophobia for the reader. We feel almost repulsed by his preoccupation with self, yet we may also feel fascinated and even occasionally sympathetic.
- We are also plunged straight into a challenging situation for the narrator. The story starts when the narrator is exploding with anger and self-pity. He obviously has a history behind such feelings and the reader is left to make sense of the predicament and the character as we follow the story. So start your story in the middle of a problem or situation. This heightens the drama and makes the language charged with tension. The reader is playing catch up straight away and this increases intrigue too.
- If it is practical to use direct address then do so. The pronoun ‘you’ or indeed the pronoun ‘we’ invite the reader into the world of the speaker. It can make the story feel like a conversation with the reader, almost as if we are eavesdropping on another life.
- Jeopardy of some sort heightens the dramatic tension of a story. We do not know why the narrator feels so melancholy and so full of self-loathing, but we suspect he may do something violent and again, this makes the story involving. Turn the screw of tension through a steadily increasing sense of jeopardy. Remember the jeopardy can be within the character’s mind as well as being outside too. There may be a metaphorical ‘scorpion’ in Macbeth’s mind, but he is also quite prepared to murder the King in the external world too.
Part One
Meet New People and Try New Things
1
Joyce
Well, let’s start with Elizabeth, shall we? And see where that gets us?
I knew who she was, of course; everybody here knows Elizabeth. She has one of the three-bed flats in Larkin Court. It’s the one on the corner, with the decking? Also, I was once on a quiz team with Stephen, who, for a number of reasons, is Elizabeth’s third husband.
I was at lunch, this is two or three months ago, and it must have been a Monday, because it was shepherd’s pie. Elizabeth said she could see that I was eating, but wanted to ask me a question about knife wounds, if it wasn’t inconvenient?
I said, ‘Not at all, of course, please,’ or words to that effect. I won’t always remember everything exactly, I might as well tell you that now. So she opened a manila folder, and I saw some typed sheets and the edges of what looked like old photographs. Then she was straight into it.
Elizabeth asked me to imagine that a girl had been stabbed with a knife. I asked what sort of knife she had been stabbed with, and Elizabeth said probably just a normal kitchen knife. John Lewis. She didn’t say that, but that was what I pictured. Then she asked me to imagine this girl had been stabbed, three or four times, just under the breastbone. In and out, in and out, very nasty, but without severing an artery. She was fairly quiet about the whole thing, because people were eating, and she does have some boundaries.
So there I was, imagining stab wounds, and Elizabeth asked me how long it would take the girl to bleed to death.
By the way, I realize I should have mentioned that I was a nurse for many years, otherwise none of this will make sense to you. Elizabeth would have known that from somewhere, because Elizabeth knows everything. Anyway, that’s why she was asking me. You must have wondered what I was on about. I will get the hang of writing this, I promise.
The Thursday Murder Club, Richard Osman.
- In this opening, the use of a conversational style is immediate and striking. The speaker is recording events, rather like Dr Watson to Elizabeth’s Sherlock Holmes. And we feel as if we are listening to some confidential confession pulling us further and further into the events of the story. Confession is used differently here. We rather like the seemingly apologetic, diffident voice of the narrator. She seems trustworthy despite her unreliable memory.
- Look at the clever use of context here. The ‘shepherd’s pie’ identifies the day and precise context The events have a history, a beginning in the narrator’s consciousness. Thus we learn that the narrator lives in a regulated way, where routines are well- established and life is probably unsurprising until the advent of Elizabeth and her knife questions. The surprise is very useful as it shifts our expectations and refreshes the cosy narrative. In fact, the familiar suddenly becomes something more shocking and transformative.
- Structure your writing to delay the release of information. This heightens tension and delays comprehension. When Joyce casually mentions she is a retired ‘nurse’ at the end of the passage it suddenly brings illumination to the story because we realise why Elizabeth might need information from Joyce.
- Introduce something in your opening that is the enemy of what the other aspects of your scene. So place a ‘scorpion’ of some sort into your opening and then write out the effect of this destabilising, unfamiliar even estranging force,
- Sensory details are essential to writing a compelling opening. Be prepared to describe your world surprisingly through the senses. Don’t stick to banal insights into a narrator’s situation. Maybe focus on neglected senses. Make these insights help us to build a very raid and compelling picture. ‘In and out, in and out.’
- Finally, look at the way the writers in these examples make their characters associate things in an individual way. ‘Shepherd’s pie’ leads to the ‘knife’ and the whole discussion of blood loss. Association gives the reader an insight into the workings of your protagonist’s mind. Make the associations idiosyncratic and memorable.
