In the Beginning of Your Story

Establish your setting early on. Give The When, The Where, The Weather — the overall tone — as John Steinbeck does so well in the beautiful opening of Of Mice and Men:

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees — willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ‘coons, and with the spreadpads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

In the beginning, let us also see your main characters — or, at the very least, let us glimpse them, or hear about them in an intriguing way. For example:

“But at the last moment, she left him for a man no one knew, a dark-horse from nobody knew where, a man of great strength and strange habits…”

Or:

“See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt.”

In the beginning, show your characters in the face of some adversity. (“Plots stem from characters under adversity,” wrote Crawford Kilian.) Show us your characters struggling.

The greater the struggle, the better the plot.

Differentiate early on for us the protagonist from the antagonist. Let us know in whom we’re to be emotionally invested. Which character is good? Which bad?

For example:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

In the beginning, give us a hint of your story’s Situation. Show us something of the nature of the struggle that is to come. Let us glimpse what’s at stake — as Nabokov does in the following excerpt, which is from the beginning of his book Laughter in the Dark:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling.

Finally, if your protagonist bleeds badly in the last chapter, have him cut himself in the beginning of your story. This is called foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is effective and poetic.

But don’t feel as if you need to cram all this into your beginning. Think of it as a way to structure and organize your beginning, so that it flows and gives you a method by which you tell your story.

Subject-Matter And Things That Matter

“There is no work of art without a subject,” said Ortega, and with him I do not demur.

Subject-matter isn’t the only element of art — nor is it the most complicated element — but it is the most fundamental: It is the element toward which all others are geared.

Subject is what the artist presents; it is the ends. All the other components are the means.

In the following sketch, for example, the subject-matter is the human eye:

The paper, the medium, the artist’s style, and so on — these are the means by which the artist has presented her subject.

Because art is selective and because the artist is the selector, an artist’s choice of subject-matter discloses precisely what that artist regards as relevant in human life.

The same is of course true of writers and the art of writing.

What does a writer write about?

That is the most fundamental question a reader can ask — and answering it will tell you exactly what any given writer regards as metaphysically important.

A writer might, for instance, choose for a subject love, or war, or injustice.

Or a writer might choose horror.

Or crime.

Or religion.

Or emotion.

Or any one of a number of other things.

The point here isn’t in the specific. The point here is that it’s the subject in collaboration with the theme that projects what the artist believes the human place in the universe to be.

And the drive to present this is, I say, the driving force behind all art.

Top Thirteen Best First Sentences In Literature

“Don’t judge a book by its cover; judge it by its opening.”

Said Douglas Bunting.

Actually, the first sentence doesn’t mean everything, and at least half the books listed below don’t particularly satisfy me. And yet there’s no denying it: a good opening contains all the promise of a new dawn. What follows is my top-thirteen list of the best first sentences in literature:

13. The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. (H.P. Lovecraft, The Call of Cthulhu)

12. Jasper Maskelyne was drinking a glass of razor blades when the war began. (David Fisher, The War Magician)

11. A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hill-side bank and runs deep and green. (John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men)

10. A screaming comes across the sky. (Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow)

9. He was born in an air-raid shelter — and his first wail was drowned by the shriek of bombs, the thunder of falling walls and the coughing chatter of machine guns raking the sky. (L Ron Hubbard, Final Blackout)

8. He was born with a gift of laughter and a sense that the world was mad. (Rafael Sabatini, Scaramouche)

7. A voice comes to one in the dark. (Samuel Beckett, Company)

6. See the child. (Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian)

5. On an exceptionally hot evening in early July a young man came out of the garret in which he lodged in S. Place and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards K. bridge. (Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment).

4. In lower Manhattan, there is an improbable point where Waverly Place intersects Waverly Place. (Nicolas Christopher, Veronica)

3. There is a lovely road that runs from Ixopo to the hills. (Alan Paton, Cry, The Beloved Country).

2. Miss Brooke had that kind of beauty which seems to be thrown into relief by poor dress. (George Eliot, Middlemarch).

1. If it made any real sense — and it doesn’t even begin to — I think I might be inclined to dedicate this account, for whatever it’s worth, especially if it’s the least bit ribald in parts, to the memory of my late, ribald stepfather, Robert Agadganian, Jr. (J.D. Salinger, De Daumier-Smith’s Blue Period)


I showed you mine. Now tell me yours.

Interview With Slagheap

Ray Harvey: writer, bartender, and nobody's bitch

The following questions were submitted to me some time ago by Mr. Maxwell Hoaglund, of Slagheap magazine, which unfortunately closed its doors before this Q & A appeared. I publish it here with Mr. Hoaglund’s full knowledge and permission.

Q: If your finger isn’t typing, where is it?

Ray Harvey: It’s on the pulse of the people.

Q: Are you really a bartender?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: What is your signature cocktail?

Ray Harvey: The Harvey Fingerbanger.

Q: It sounds fantastic.

Ray Harvey: You have no idea.

Q: What all’s in it?

Ray Harvey: Two parts finger, three parts banger. The rest is secret.

Q: Working in the food and beverage industry — has it made you into a foodie?

Ray Harvey: Perish the thought!

Q: Do you have dietary restrictions? Vegetarian? Vegan?

Ray Harvey: No, no, no. Not that which goeth into a man can defile him but only that which cometh out; for out of the abundance of the heart, the mouth speaketh. Gourmandizing of any kind is one of the surest signs of stupidity. The food snobbery of the vegan or the food snobbery of the vegetarian or the food snobbery of the organic-only cult, no matter how shabbily dressed, is every bit as beastly as the food snobbery of the rich and famous.

Q: As an anti-postmodernist — if I may put it that way — are you stalking your victims? If so, doesn’t your tendency to shoot from the hip startle them?

Ray Harvey: On the contrary, it lulls them into a false sense of security.

Q: Speaking of which, your article on Postmodernism, including the comments, created a small sensation in our office. What, may I ask, is reality? Can you prove existence?

Ray: Reality is existence. And existence is that which exists. Reality is that which is. The only alternative to existence is non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. There is only existence. In the words of Victor Hugo: “There is no nothing.” Regarding whether we can prove existence: yes, in a sense. Proof, by virtue of what it is, assumes existence, you see. How so? Existence must necessarily come before proof, because of what proof actually is: i.e. the preponderance of evidence which admits no other alternative. Evidence means that something exists. The very proof of existence is existence itself, to which there is only one alternative: non-existence. But non-existence does not exist. Only existence exists.

Q: Where do thoughts go when one is not thinking?

Ray Harvey: Where does the wind go when it’s calm? Said Voltaire.

Q: Who or what have been your biggest literary influences?

Ray Harvey: Karl Shapiro, Dostoevsky, Blood Meridian and Suttree, J.D. Salinger’s Nine Stories, Transparent Things, Pale Fire, certain sections of Ada.

Q: More than once, you’ve been accused of declaiming, as you’ve also been accused of ribaldry.

Ray Harvey: Paraphrasing Nabokov, conventions and cliches, particularly of the sexual variety, breed remarkably fast: the blotchy buttock, the bulbous breast, the baggy balls, phony moans of bliss, the endless talky-talky of dick this, ass that, vagina this, oral that — it’s worse than primitive; it’s boring. The lack of style in these discussions of various copulation techniques is enough to wilt the most tremendous of boners.

Q: You’ve said that your novel is in some measure concerned with justice. Is that correct?

Ray: Yes.

Q: What is justice?

Ray Harvey: Justice is the legal recognition of the fact that each and every human being, regardless of race, sex, sexual orientation, color, class, or creed, is individuated and sovereign, and no human or government institution may therefore infringe upon another’s property or person. Money, never forget, is also property.

Q: Why is justice important?

Ray Harvey: The path of the just is as a shining light, which shines more and more unto the perfect day. But what is the alternative? Only injustice. We are each born free. Freedom is a birthright.

Q: Gordon Gano once said “Happiness is a word for amateurs.” Do you think that’s true?

Ray Harvey: No, I do not.

Q: What is happiness? A chocolate turtle?

Ray Harvey: Yes.

Q: Would it be fair to say that you see life as a funny but cruel joke?

Ray Harvey: No, it wouldn’t fair. That question has the unmistakable shimmer of inanity. Life is neither inherently silly, nor inherently angst-ridden. The only alternative to life is death. And death is what gives life meaning in the sense that death is what life constantly strives against. But it’s not the other way around: from the perspective of the dead, life obviously doesn’t carry any particular relevance. I think you may be confusing me with the walleyed Existentialist Jean Paul Sartre, or one of his ventriloquist dolls.

Q: What is the purpose of it all?

Ray Harvey: Whatsoever thy hand findest to do, do it with all thy might; for there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom, in the grave, whither thous goest.

Q: Where is The Good located?

Ray Harvey: The Good ultimately resides inside the human brain, which is conceptual by nature and operates (therefore) by means of choice. There can be no good nor evil if there is no choice. Thought is not automatic. Thought requires effort; it requires an act of will. Quoting the psychologist Rollo May: “When we analyze will with all the tools that modern psychology brings us, we shall find ourselves pushed back to the level of attention or inattention as the seat of will. The effort which goes into the exercise of will is really effort of attention; the strain in willing is the effort to keep the consciousness clear, i.e. the strain of keeping attention focused.” That is where The Good resides. That is ultimately the source of all good and all bad behavior: the choice to pay attention or not. The rest is just an elaboration on this.

Q: Where may we see an excerpt of your book?

Ray Harvey: Well, you can hear me read the Prelude, in my surliest voice:

How To Begin Your Story

Establish your setting early on. Give us The When, The Where, The Weather — the overall tone. Is your story happy, soft, somber?

John Steinbeck does this so well in the beautiful opening of Of Mice and Men:

A few miles south of Soledad, the Salinas River drops in close to the hillside bank and runs deep and green. The water is warm too, for it has slipped twinkling over the yellow sands in the sunlight before reaching the narrow pool. On one side of the river the golden foothill slopes curve up to the strong and rocky Gabilan Mountains, but on the valley side the water is lined with trees — willows fresh and green with every spring, carrying in their lower leaf junctures the debris of the winter’s flooding; and sycamores with mottled, white, recumbent limbs and branches that arch over the pool. On the sandy bank under the trees the leaves lie deep and so crisp that a lizard makes a great skittering if he runs among them. Rabbits come out of the brush to sit on the sand in the evening, and the damp flats are covered with the night tracks of ‘coons, and with the spreadpads of dogs from the ranches, and with the split-wedge tracks of deer that come to drink in the dark.

In the beginning, let us also see your main characters — or, at the very least, let us glimpse them, or hear about them in an intriguing way. For example:

“But at the last moment, she left him for a man no one knew, a dark-horse from nobody knew where, a man of great strength and strange habits…”

Or:

“See the child. He is pale and thin, he wears a thin and ragged linen shirt.”

In the beginning, show us your characters in the face of some adversity. (“Plots stem from characters under adversity,” wrote Crawford Kilian.) Show us your characters struggling.

Remember always: the greater the struggle, the better the plot.

Early on, differentiate for us the protagonist from the antagonist. Let us know in whom we’re to be emotionally invested. Which character is good? Which bad? For example:

“The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.”

Your hero — even if she’s an antihero — must be someone with whom we can identify, at least on some level. There must be good qualities in your protagonist, or qualities with which we can relate.

Conversely, your antagonist, who can indeed be remarkable and even admirable, must in some way be pitted against your protagonist. (A la Javert.)

In the beginning, give us a hint of your story’s Situation. Show us something of the nature of the struggle that is to come. Let us glimpse what’s at stake — as Nabokov does in the following excerpt, which is from the beginning of his book Laughter in the Dark:

Once upon a time there lived in Berlin, Germany, a man called Albinus. He was rich, respectable, happy; one day he abandoned his wife for the sake of a youthful mistress; he loved; was not loved; and his life ended in disaster.

This is the whole of the story and we might have left it at that had there not been profit and pleasure in the telling.

Finally, if your protagonist bleeds badly in the last chapter, have him cut himself in the beginning of your story. This is called foreshadowing.

Foreshadowing is effective and poetic.

Lastly, don’t feel as if you need to cram all this into your beginning. Think of it as a way to structure your beginning, so that it flows and gives you a method by which you tell your story.