The Invitation

by Kimberley Allen McNamara

What draws the reader in, the Invitation into your novel, well, it better be pretty fantastic. 

Crafting the Invitation

The biggest decision you will probably make as a novel writer is how you invite your readers to enter the novel. Some writers believe the invitation or the draw into your novel hinges on the  Voice. Others say: it's the POV, point of view. And others say: it’s the intrigue of your opening line. They are not wrong. In fact, they are all correct. In that intriguing first line, the Voice and/or the POV are conveyed. And while that first line may hook ‘em it’s the Voice and POV on that first page that will get them to stay.  

Sage Advice on The Invitation

In a 2013 interview in the Atlantic, Stephen King was asked about the power of the first line. He said that while so much does depend on the first line it is not the focus of his first draft. The First line, the first paragraph King says is the way into the story for the reader but it’s also the way in for the writer.  He plays with that line over and over until it is the right fit. Reducing the first line to a recipe card, to mechanics, bothers King. However, King said “there's one thing I'm sure about. An opening line should invite the reader to begin the story. It should say: Listen. Come in here. You want to know about this.”

King asserts readers come for the voice.

“But for me, a good opening sentence really begins with voice. You hear people talk about "voice" a lot, when I think they really just mean "style." Voice is more than that. People come to books looking for something. But they don't come for the story, or even for the characters. They certainly don't come for the genre. I think readers come for the voice.

Some authors contend the door into your novel is your POV, get that right and the rest will follow. 

Peter Selgin, author and writing professor, maintains that NO POINT OF VIEW =  NO STORY. 

Selgin states (in his essay  as a guest contributor on Jane Friedman’s blog) :

Fiction’s stock in trade is human experience, and experience is subjective: things don’t just happen; they happen insofar as characters feel and react to them. Subjectivity requires a nervous system. That no two nervous systems respond identically to stimuli gives fiction its raison d’etre.

To be authentic, fictional experiences should pass through a subjectivity filter. They must be sorted and sifted either through the sensibility of a character or characters or that of a so-called “omniscient” narrator — one who, to a variable extent, shares their nervous systems and perspectives on events. Unless this subjective filter or narrator has been created and is firmly in place, what’s conveyed to the reader isn’t experience, but information.

All of this happens on the first page of your novel and it all comes down to WHAT IS YOUR POV? Consider this: you return home from a trip to the grocery store and there in the foyer is a blood colored stain on the rug. You, the reader, open the door and you see the stain through whose eyes? Who is looking at that godforsaken stain on the carpet and how is that character/person processing it? The POV is the filter for you, the reader. 

Seglin makes a strong case for why the POV matters - without it the reader is unmoored, adrift. POV tethers the reader, gives the reader someone to cling to as they enter the unknown territory of the novel. And more importantly POV gives the reader a subjective filter to experience the trials and tribulations of the novel through, a companion on the journey. 

The First Line, aka The Hook

But do you see the other glaring item?  Why the initial item that will arouse your reader’s curiosity? That thing that would pique your reader’s interest from the get-go? 

The beginning of a novel has to start with something that makes the reader curious, so curious that they will keep reading, curious enough that they will become invested in the characters and curious enough that they will keep reading even if this initial item (the blood colored stain in the foyer) is explained as another more overreaching dilemma is reported. The listing of a 100 Best First Lines curated by the American Book Review. Chances are you’ve read and remembered a few of these. A similar search of famous first lines turns up this listing which provides you with the line and the book covers 83 Opening Lines of Famous Books That Will Make You Want to Read Them Now. What did these lines promise you? Did they invite you in with voice? With POV? Or with both?

Good first lines do both (Voice & POV) and sometimes even more (they also can give you setting, psychic distance) In that 2013 Atlantic interview with King, the interviewer, Joe Fassler began by asking about King’s favorite first lines. King cited two favorites. 

“They threw me off the hay truck at noon.” - James M. Cain from his novel: The Postman Always Rings Twice 

Per King: 

Suddenly, you're right inside the story -- the speaker takes a lift on a hay truck and gets found out. But Cain pulls off so much more than a loaded setting -- and the best writers do. This sentence tells you more than you think it tells you. Nobody's riding on the hay truck because they bought a ticket. He's a basically a drifter, someone on the outskirts, someone who's going to steal and filch to get by. So you know a lot about him from the beginning, more than maybe registers in your conscious mind, and you start to get curious.

The other first line King favorited: 

“This is how it happened.” - Douglas Fairbairn from his novel: Shoot

For me, [King] this has always been the quintessential opening line. It's flat and clean as an affidavit. It establishes just what kind of speaker we're dealing with: someone willing to say, I will tell you the truth. I'll tell you the facts. I'll cut through the bullshit and show you exactly what happened. It suggests that there's an important story here, too, in a way that says to the reader: and you want to know.

King continues to state that he recalls everyone of his novels' first lines. 

I can tell you right now that the best first line I ever wrote -- and I learned it from Cain, and learned it from Fairbairn -- is the opening of Needful Things. It's the story about this guy who comes to town, and uses grudges and sleeping animosities among the townspeople to whip everyone up into a frenzy of neighbor against neighbor. And so the story starts off with an opening line, printed by itself on a page in 20-point type:

You've been here before.

All there by itself on one page, inviting the reader to keep reading. It suggests a familiar story; at the same time, the unusual presentation brings us outside the realm of the ordinary. And this, in a way, is a promise of the book that's going to come. 

The Invitation into your novel invites the reader in and asks them to stay awhile. Some will say it’s POV and still others, a good first line. An invitation if done well does all of these things: captures your interest and gives you the experience. But most importantly, a good invitation is Voice. Voice is the reason why you enter, why you are prepared to stay, voice is what captivates you. A great first line gives you all: Voice, a Hook, and POV.

“You’ve been here before.” - Needful Things by Stephen King

Now, I’ve never read Needful Things by Stephen King but I can tell you that the first line makes me want to, so I’ll be adding that to my TBR pile all 816 pages of it, something (the Voice) tells me it’ll be a good one.

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