“Does the Egg Man bring the Son of Man his eggs?”

“He yet brings him his eggs.”

“How does he like his eggs?”

“Who?”

“Son of Man. How do he like his eggs?”

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

“I don’t know him,” Nate said.

“It doesn’t matter,” Miggy said. “He knows you.”

The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store by James McBride

I checked this book out from the library, but I want to have my own copy. I’ll be buying one soon.

This tiny quotation ends a chapter. It ends that chapter with a mystery as one character knows something that neither readers nor another character knows. Not reading on, especially given the context the rest of the chapter provides, feels impossible to me.

The context consists of Miggy sharing information about her job and eating a slice of pie, which could be catastrophically boring but in McBride’s narrative isn’t. Part of the reason it isn’t boring is because of earlier characterization and who is at stake. But even if the chapter stood alone it would include characters’ reactions to each other. Those reactions provide tension. The dialogue also characterizes, and it reflects tensions between characters, but much of it is long paragraphs of Miggy describing her workplace. Those descriptions matter to readers because of earlier work McBride has done, but also because of the setting as she shares those descriptions and how Miggy uses an element of it: the pie. Finally, the description is interesting because she has reasons to not give it. She’s in favor of how the information she’s presenting might be used, but wary of being the source of it and explicitly presents it in a way she feels will give her deniability. This also adds to the tension. She’s presenting a plan for a rescue. (I’ll avoid spoilers by saying no more.)

There is much more to say about this chapter and this book: the way dialogue characterizes, the implications of names characters give themselves and that characters give each other, how backstories can contain mysteries and move the plot, and how chapters can be structured to hook reads as much as first lines. I highly recommend The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store as a novel but also as a textbook on fiction writing.

Last night I dreamed I went to Manderley again.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier

This is an appealing first sentence in part because it hints at so many possibilities. Short stories often begin with first sentences that suggest something at risk for a character, or that’s certainly one of my favorite approaches. Some novels start the same way, but here is another technique. Options, enough that a reader literally wonders what will happen next, are another great way to begin and might be an especially good way to start a novel.

Among the options and directions the next sentence could take readers, among the questions the next sentences, paragraphs, and chapters can answer are why is Manderley important enough to dream of, what is Manderley, what is the character’s life like during the day (is it better or worse than their dream), and even what have other dreams (nightmares?) of this person or place been like.

Sharing dreams is also an intimate thing. Readers are immediately invited inside the character’s inner life and into a version of that inner life the character does not control perfectly but that probably has some relationship to their daily life. Dreams characterize. Readers know they are getting something they’ll need to interpret. Characters might offer interpretations of their own dreams (or refuse to interpret them) in ways that reveal who they are to readers. Readers will get to know who this “I” is by reading on.

Journal entries might provide similar invitations into inner lives. Epislatory fiction adds the possibility of an audience and complicates the degree of invitation as a result. A similar first sentence might begin with a dilemma: “My new boyfriend left his journal/laptop/browser open on his desk.” A dilemma like this is an opportunity for intimacy but doesn’t seem an invitation to the same degree of closeness as a dream, at least not to me this morning.

“One of them moved forward with a courteous smile, his hands crossed over his chest like a bishop. He must have been in his early fifties, and his build and spare hair lent him the air of a bird of prey. He had a penetrating gaze and gave off an aroma of fresh eau de cologne and mothballs.”

–Father Fernando Ramos in The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon

This is a brief three sentence description of a minor character (I think; I haven’t finished the book yet). Ruiz Zafon descriptions are a strength. In the first sentence, Father Fernando Ramos sets himself apart from a group of priests by moving toward the characters; he also gestures in a way that invites comparison to others higher in the hierarchy. (Does this suggest he is ambitious?) The physical description continues in the second sentence and ends with another comparison, this one more dangerous. It also includes a rhyme and a pun. The third sentence includes another direct description and contrasting (perhaps funny?) sensory details.

In other words, Ramon is created in three sentences with a movement, context (the hierarchy and an attitude toward it), two sets of physical descriptions and comparisons, and a (non-visual) bit of sensory information.

Here is an attempt at something similar: The old man drew his bow slowly over the strings, letting the sound quiet the tavern like the gongs that called the town to prayer. He was at least seventy, spotty in his baldness, his face as blank and his fiddle as steady as stone. He exhaled loudly but slowly and sounded both tired and excited.

(“Tired” and “excited” are both too abstract, but it’s a start.)